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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is the

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

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Speaker 2: If you've been listening to our core episodes of Stuff

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Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind, you know that we've been talking

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Speaker 2: about our Solar System's innermost planet, Mercury. So I thought

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Speaker 2: it would be appropriate here to discuss some of the

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Speaker 2: various fictional alien species and factions and races associated with

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Speaker 2: Mercury in the Marvel Comics universe. In our core episodes,

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Speaker 2: I've already talked a little bit about some of the

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Speaker 2: other sci fi denisons that have been assigned to this world.

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Speaker 2: But this time I want to take just a close

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Speaker 2: look at a couple of entries from Marvel Comics. First

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Speaker 2: of all, dating back to the mid nineteen seventies, we

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Speaker 2: have a group of Mercurians who are described is a

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Speaker 2: genetically engineered species of humans who were engineered to thrive

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Speaker 2: specifically on the surface of Mercury. Their gray skinned, they

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Speaker 2: have fiery hair, and they factor into the pages of

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Speaker 2: the Defenders. While the humanoid Mercurians here no relation to

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Speaker 2: the mutant character Mercury are played for high superhero space

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Speaker 2: opera Vibes and The Defenders. The basic concept is firmly

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Speaker 2: rooted in sci fi and even some serious considerations of

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Speaker 2: humanity's long term future beyond Earth. In broad strokes, we

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Speaker 2: as humans looking to potentially live beyond Earth, we have

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Speaker 2: three plays, right. We can change nothing on other worlds. Instead,

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Speaker 2: we can just live in our own little contained environments. There,

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Speaker 2: we can tear aform worlds into something more accommodating for

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Speaker 2: our physiology, or we alter ourselves to better thrive on

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Speaker 2: these far flung worlds. Again, these are just three broad

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Speaker 2: categorizations of tactics can have some manner of vision that

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Speaker 2: involves combining to or even all three. I often think

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Speaker 2: of this last one, though, this idea of changing ourselves

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Speaker 2: to live on another world, in terms of Clifford D.

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Speaker 2: Simmo's nineteen sixty seven novel The were Wolf Principle, which yes,

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Speaker 2: is a space were wolf story, but it's also a

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Speaker 2: lot weirder than that, and it centers around an individual

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Speaker 2: human who has been augmented to rapidly adjust to the

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Speaker 2: environmental demands of other worlds. In a way, it's the

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Speaker 2: less stubborn of the three proposals, as it involves self change,

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Speaker 2: biological compromise, and in its most extreme forms, it asks

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Speaker 2: us to consider what are the bare necessities that we

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Speaker 2: really think of when we think of humanity. What of

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Speaker 2: humanity needs to thrive beyond our world? Does it need

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Speaker 2: to look like us? Does it even need to be organic?

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Speaker 2: And so forth. Now, going back to the pages of

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Speaker 2: Marvel Comics, let's jaunt back an additional two decades to

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Speaker 2: Space Squadron in nineteen fifty one, where we have the

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Speaker 2: character Jet Dixon and friends battling the indigenous alien Mercurians.

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Speaker 2: These are presented as two headed fire resistant giants with

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Speaker 2: literal mercury for blood. One of their heads is good,

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Speaker 2: one of their heads is evil, with blood temperature determining

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Speaker 2: which head is going to be dominant. As you might guess,

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Speaker 2: the hotter the blood, the more dominant the evil head.

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Speaker 2: The actual plot of this comic book adventure entails an

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Speaker 2: evil force that has moved the sun closer to mercury.

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Speaker 2: I think in reality will be the other way around,

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Speaker 2: but at any rate, this is said to cause all

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Speaker 2: of the Mercurians to shift towards evil, that dominant evil

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Speaker 2: head on most of them becomes the more powerful. As

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Speaker 2: ridiculous as all of this is, I do wonder if

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Speaker 2: the good slash bad head duality might be linked to

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Speaker 2: older pre nineteen sixties astronomical models that consider Mercury tidally locked,

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Speaker 2: with one half always facing the sun in one half

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Speaker 2: always facing away, one side always hot and one side

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Speaker 2: always cold. You know, it just makes sense to them

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Speaker 2: put some creatures on there that have two heads. One

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Speaker 2: had always good, one had always bad. Right. Again, this

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Speaker 2: isn't actually the case for Mercury, though it is the

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Speaker 2: case for Earth's moon and various other moons in our

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Speaker 2: Solar system, which are tidally locked so that the same

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Speaker 2: side always faces the planet in question. Outside of Marvel Comics,

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Speaker 2: there are also reptilian denizens of Mercury in the pages

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Speaker 2: of DC Comics. I believe they are subterranean dwellers, and

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Speaker 2: as outlined in our core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode,

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Speaker 2: there are also numerous Mercurian species from the pulp and

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Speaker 2: Golden ages of sci fi. While more recent science fiction

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Speaker 2: tends to render the planet inhospitable to native life forms

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Speaker 2: and maybe only partially hospitable to grim technologically aided human

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Speaker 2: colonists or miners. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster, Fact,

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Speaker 2: The Artifact or Animalius tu Pendium each week. As always,

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Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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