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Speaker 1: He lives there. From there he plots my destiny and

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Speaker 1: schemes to usurp my throne. His eyelids of stone taunt me,

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Speaker 1: insatiable minotaur. My dreams chafe against his horns. In my dreams,

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Speaker 1: I enter the labyrinth. I'm there alone, unchained. The scepter

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Speaker 1: bends in my fist, and he comes before me, monstrous, sweet, monstrous, free,

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Speaker 1: And I can no longer govern my dreams. So many

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Speaker 1: deliberations wait for the day when the world of men

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Speaker 1: will harbor my story and blood. Secret River. You have

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Speaker 1: not heard me yet. Kill me first. Now you provoke

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Speaker 1: me as if you're plotting some kind of scheme I've

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Speaker 1: made up my mind. Ultimate freedom is fostered by that

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Speaker 1: blade which you hold in your fist, the same as

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Speaker 1: a sun and parting of waters in the ocean deep.

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Speaker 1: What do you know of death grant her of profound life? Look,

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Speaker 1: there is only one way to kill a monster, and

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Speaker 1: that is to embrace you. Welcome to stot to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with Part three.

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Speaker 1: Of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. We're coming out of

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Speaker 1: the dark at you once again. So those opening selections

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Speaker 1: were from a play called The King's by Julio Cortissar,

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Speaker 1: who's an Argentinean writer that we've been talking about recently.

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Speaker 1: That that translation was by Kari Dad's veach. But so

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Speaker 1: the first part I read were the words of of

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Speaker 1: King Minos, and then after that was an exchange between

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Speaker 1: Theseus and the Minotaur, with our producer Seth as Theseus

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Speaker 1: as the jerk of the story. Yes, um, this is

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Speaker 1: a This is such an interesting uh play. I had

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Speaker 1: never heard of this before until I ran across this

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Speaker 1: very translation at in translation dot Brooklyn Rail dot org Um.

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Speaker 1: Because I don't believe it is currently in print in English.

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Speaker 1: I could be wrong on that. I see that it

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Speaker 1: is in print in Spanish, but not in English. Cortessar

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Speaker 1: has a number of really interesting short stories that I

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Speaker 1: read back when I was in college. One of them

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Speaker 1: that I remember really liking is called Axcelotal, and it's

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Speaker 1: a story about a man who repeatedly visits an axcel

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Speaker 1: lotal tank at the Jardine de Paris, and he gradually

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Speaker 1: finds himself transforming into an axl odal as he watches them.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to read that one.

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Speaker 1: Uh you you sent me a copy to check out.

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Speaker 1: In fact, a number of his short story sound just

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Speaker 1: right up my alley. But I've never at anything by Cortazar.

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Speaker 1: Now another fun thing about this, so some of you

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Speaker 1: might remember that we had a call an opening reading

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Speaker 1: on a previous episode about the minotaur from uh Borhes

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Speaker 1: the House of Asterion. Bores, of course, was also an

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Speaker 1: Argentinian writer. Um, perhaps you know, one of the most

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Speaker 1: famous Argentinian writers. And it's interesting that this play The

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Speaker 1: Kings or las Areles was published in nineteen forty seven,

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Speaker 1: just a year after Borges wrote, uh that story to

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Speaker 1: begin with the House of Hysterion. Oh, is there like

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Speaker 1: an implication of inspiration or common inspiration between the two. Well,

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Speaker 1: I was looking into this because I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of people assumed that Cortisar was inspired by the House

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Speaker 1: of Hysterian Um. Borges himself actually published the play alongside

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Speaker 1: Asterian in the literary journal that he edited in ninety seven.

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Speaker 1: But I was I was looking at an article titled

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Speaker 1: the Incessant Return of a Minotaur by Amy Fraser Yoder

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Speaker 1: and just keeps coming back. Yeah, And they write that

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Speaker 1: while it was often assumed that bores story influence cortis Are,

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Speaker 1: there's evidence from letters between Cortazar and Borhees that cortis

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Speaker 1: Are might not have read borhees story previously, so there

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Speaker 1: might be more convergence here than inspiration. But still it

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Speaker 1: seems that Borees was was very much a fan of

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Speaker 1: this piece. I mean, he published it, and obviously how

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Speaker 1: could Bores not like an entire play with all of

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Speaker 1: this this this beautiful you know, poetic language and contemplation

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Speaker 1: of the labyrinth and the and the the various kings

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Speaker 1: that are caught within its grasp. Really, this is what

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Speaker 1: I was just telling you earlier, before we started hitting

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Speaker 1: the court. You could basically you could print this play out.

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Speaker 1: You could throw a dart at it, and you could

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Speaker 1: you could find something beautiful. Uh. That's like, there's this

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Speaker 1: whole stretch where because I should point out that the

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Speaker 1: minotaur and theseus have a very long conversation, uh, considering

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Speaker 1: that most of the time it's just about and fighting,

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Speaker 1: they have a long conversation in this play, and there's

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Speaker 1: this whole bit about the string that theseus has uh

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Speaker 1: has has has has wound out behind him, you know,

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Speaker 1: so he can return so you can escape the labyrinth,

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Speaker 1: about how it is like a river flowing out to

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Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. So it's and and then the ocean

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Speaker 1: is also the minute, our sister, there's there's just a

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Speaker 1: lot of beautiful stuff in it. So even if you're

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Speaker 1: you're not really into reading a lot of unproduced plays,

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Speaker 1: you should, you should. I recommend you check this out

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Speaker 1: at the website we mentioned earlier, and if you've had

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Speaker 1: a chance to see it, Uh, that sounds awesome. I'd

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Speaker 1: love to hear about it. That's interesting that you mentioned

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Speaker 1: the twine as a river, because that goes back to

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Speaker 1: in Avid Avid's telling of the story when he's talking

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Speaker 1: about Dadalus's design of the labyrinth. He describes it as

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Speaker 1: like a river that twists and turns back and forth,

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Speaker 1: and waters that churn in upon themselves going this way

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Speaker 1: and that. Ah, that's right, that's right. So this is

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Speaker 1: indeed our our third episode on the Minotaur Um and

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Speaker 1: we wanted to I guess kick things off here first

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Speaker 1: of all with that that that brief reading, but also

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Speaker 1: just to discuss pop culture. Minotaur is a little bit

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Speaker 1: um and cultural minotaurs of the more modern era in

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Speaker 1: a little bit more more detail. Um. As far as

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Speaker 1: just cinema goes, I have to say, I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's really hard to find a quality minotaur in a

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Speaker 1: film or TV. I don't know if you've had the

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Speaker 1: same experience, Joe, but I feel like even when the

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Speaker 1: costume or the c g I or overall presentation is

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Speaker 1: solid enough, and lord knows, it often isn't um. Minotaurs

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Speaker 1: are often presented as just mirror beastly brutes. You know

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Speaker 1: they're there, They're in that. A big part of that

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Speaker 1: is that they are not in the labyrinth. Yes, a

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Speaker 1: minotaur out of its labyrinth is like a hermit crab

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Speaker 1: out of its shell. It's just not even really the

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Speaker 1: same creature, is it. The best on screen minotaur I

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Speaker 1: can think of is actually one that we mentioned in

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Speaker 1: the first episode, which is the one in Jim Henson's

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Speaker 1: Story to Aller Greek Myths with Michael Gambon as as

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Speaker 1: deadal as I think, or at least as the storyteller. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And that that one is really good because you don't

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Speaker 1: get too much of a look at the minotaur. I think,

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Speaker 1: as it should be, you know, it should be glances

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Speaker 1: here and there, and or glances or glimpses whichever. I

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Speaker 1: meant to say that. But the glimpses you do get

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Speaker 1: are full of terror and pity. It's it's very good.

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Speaker 1: It conveys sort of both of the meanings of the

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Speaker 1: story as we read it today, the probably the more original,

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Speaker 1: terrifying reading, but also the subtle reading where you see

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Speaker 1: the monster as an object of of of sadness and pity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, again,

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Speaker 1: that one is is just excellent and I highly recommend

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Speaker 1: folks check that out if you haven't seen it already.

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Speaker 1: I think it all holds up really well. Uh. David Morrissey,

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Speaker 1: who would go on to of course play the Governor

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Speaker 1: and the Walking Dead? Uh? Is in that a young

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Speaker 1: David Morrissey As theseus. I have never seen The Walking

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Speaker 1: Dead or I've never made it past the second episode.

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Speaker 1: But but when I was looking at him, first of all,

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Speaker 1: he kind of reminds me of Tom Cruise's creepy looking

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Speaker 1: brother who was in Lost. Do you remember that guy? No,

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Speaker 1: I don't. Tom Cruise's brother was in what was Unlost

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Speaker 1: Seth offers a correction, I was entirely wrong. He his

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Speaker 1: name is William Pother and he's Tom Cruise's first cousin,

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Speaker 1: not his brother. But he looks kind of like Tom Cruise,

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Speaker 1: but with an extra dose of boyish charm and creepiness

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Speaker 1: at the same time. And he played a role in

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Speaker 1: Lost that was I don't know. I lost ultimately was

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Speaker 1: such a betrayal, but but there was a really good

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Speaker 1: moment in the first season involving his his character. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: I thought he kind of looked like him, And in

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Speaker 1: any case, he does look like a jock bully, which

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Speaker 1: is kind of what Theseus is. Yeah, I think I

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Speaker 1: mentioned in a previous episode that John Would, another great

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Speaker 1: actor of the British stage, was in the The Greek

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Speaker 1: myths Um series as well, playing Minos. But uh in

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Speaker 1: another episode that's about Data List and Icarus. But still,

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Speaker 1: if you take them all in you kind of you

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Speaker 1: kind of get into different We're really multiple episodes. You

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Speaker 1: get the story of of Minos and the Minotaur and Theseus. Well,

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Speaker 1: somebody out there who is a filmmaker who is dedicated

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Speaker 1: to practical sets and effects, you make this movie, make

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Speaker 1: the Labyrinth and Minotaur movie. No, no, no green screen

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Speaker 1: set junk no uh no c G I Minotaur. I

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Speaker 1: want a good costume with really classic makeup effects and

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Speaker 1: and go all out. Now in terms of Minotaurs out

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Speaker 1: of context, there is one example that I think works

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Speaker 1: really well, and it is from the music video for

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Speaker 1: Einstreew's Into New Baton's song Sabrina, which is which is

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Speaker 1: on YouTube. I I have no idea. Check it out.

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Speaker 1: Oh it's well. Einstreet's on the New Baton is a

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Speaker 1: Is this this great German band? They started out more

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Speaker 1: industrial or post industrial, but then they kind of change

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Speaker 1: their sound as they win. They have a number of

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Speaker 1: great songs, but this particular video consists entirely of this

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Speaker 1: sad minotaur. That's that's well brought to life. Uh, putting

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Speaker 1: on makeup in this really dank kind of bathroom. I'm

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Speaker 1: looking at it now. Yeah, it's that's all that happens

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Speaker 1: in it. But it captures this. It captures the sadness

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Speaker 1: of minotaur at least that that I feel like should

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Speaker 1: be a vital component alongside the savage minotaur. This video

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Speaker 1: is strong, with the cinematography of a nineties anti drug

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Speaker 1: p S A commercial. Yeah, it's got that that gross

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Speaker 1: green film on everything like that, This is your brain

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Speaker 1: on drugs. Yeah it does. It does remind me in

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Speaker 1: some ways of various p s as I remember from

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Speaker 1: UH as a child watching Canadian television, where there might

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Speaker 1: be something that's like really weird and fantastic, and then

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Speaker 1: at the end you find out, oh, this is the message. Now,

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Speaker 1: before we get a little more into the science of

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Speaker 1: mazes and UH and zoonotic diseases, you promised at some

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Speaker 1: point that you were going to come back to talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the minotaur and D and D.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned this in the first episode. Oh yeah, So

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Speaker 1: if the the error is to take the minotaur out

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Speaker 1: of its place and just presented as a mere brute uh,

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons has certainly been guilty of that. Uh

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Speaker 1: and and not only Dungeons and Dragons, but just individual

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Speaker 1: dungeon masters, who of course have the power to to

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Speaker 1: take a minotaur and drop him in anywhere you go

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Speaker 1: into the you go into the end, the inn keeps

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Speaker 1: a minotaur as see what you'd like to drink? Yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's a lot of room to

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Speaker 1: to misuse the minotaur, you know, at an individual level.

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Speaker 1: But I will say that at least in the fifth edition.

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Speaker 1: I can't really speak to earlier editions because I just

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Speaker 1: don't have those numbers in my head. But in the

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Speaker 1: most recent edition they do have a very high wisdom

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Speaker 1: score and they have an ability called labor then recall. Uh,

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Speaker 1: so the minotaur can perfectly recall any path that has traveled,

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Speaker 1: which I feel like that ability. It'll least, at the

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Speaker 1: very least, it is a nudge to the dungeon master. Hey,

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Speaker 1: you should put this minotaur somewhere where it can take

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Speaker 1: advantage of this. You should create some sort of labyrinth.

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Speaker 1: Be that labyrinth an actual you know, stone dungeon, or

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Speaker 1: perhaps something like a hedge maze or like a really um,

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Speaker 1: you know, complicated city. I mean, there's so many different

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Speaker 1: directions you could go in there. And in terms of

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Speaker 1: actual adventure modules and campaigns, uh, the campaign out of

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Speaker 1: the Abyss does put minotaurs in a place referred to

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Speaker 1: as the Labyrinth, which which is very nice and I

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Speaker 1: thought they did a good job in that. The labyrinth

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Speaker 1: then recall things seems like it would also close to

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Speaker 1: the adventurers. The option of certain strategic responses to the minotaur,

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Speaker 1: like you can't do to the minotaur what Danny does

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Speaker 1: to Jack at the end of the Shining movie, right,

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Speaker 1: you can't get it turned to ound in his own maze,

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Speaker 1: like he's going to know his way around. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: is the ultimate master of this location unless you have

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Speaker 1: some sort of privileged knowledge or magical um abilities that

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Speaker 1: have been gifted to you by other parties. So I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about mazes, and I actually had an etymological

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Speaker 1: question that I had to look up because I was

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Speaker 1: wondering are the English words maze and a maze as

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Speaker 1: an amazing related, And it turns out that they are.

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Speaker 1: They probably do come from the same linguistic route. So

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Speaker 1: by around the beginning of the fourteenth century, the now

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Speaker 1: maze meant something like a delusion or a bewilderment, a confusion,

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Speaker 1: and this is related to the Old English verb a

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Speaker 1: mac n or a m a s i a n

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Speaker 1: meaning to confuse, and so the origins of this word

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Speaker 1: are not exactly clear. I saw one comparison on the

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Speaker 1: online Etymological Dictionary to a Norwegian word um mass m

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Speaker 1: a s or mace meaning exhausting labor, which I thought

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Speaker 1: would be a kind of interesting place for that concept

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Speaker 1: to come from. But apparently maze came to have its

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Speaker 1: current meaning in English, meaning something like a labyrinth the

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Speaker 1: structure with branching paths around the end of the fourteenth century.

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Speaker 1: But but so now you know, like amazement is related

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Speaker 1: to a maze. They're the same thing, and they come

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Speaker 1: from the idea of bewilderment, confusion and and being confounded.

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Speaker 1: But hey, practical survival question. Imagine you are not theseus,

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Speaker 1: You're not armed with a with a sword or whatever.

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Speaker 1: You don't have a ball of twine to make your

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Speaker 1: way out of a maze. If you were just one

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Speaker 1: of the Athenian youths finding yourself trapped in an unfamiliar maze,

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Speaker 1: could you get out? Is there actually a strategy for

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Speaker 1: optimizing the solution of a maze other than trying to

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Speaker 1: cut through walls? Obviously you can't do that well. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have heard the whole

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Speaker 1: only take like right hand turns right, keep turning right exactly,

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Speaker 1: So it depends on how maze is constructed. But that

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Speaker 1: actually is a successful strategy for most mazes. The solution

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Speaker 1: if you don't have a ball of twine. Is what's

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Speaker 1: known as the right hand rule, and that's actually arbitrary,

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Speaker 1: could be the right hand or the left hand rule,

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Speaker 1: but it's as simple as this. So you reach out

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Speaker 1: with your right hand and you touch the right side

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Speaker 1: wall of the corridor, and then you just proceed forward

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Speaker 1: without ever taking your hand off the wall. So if

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Speaker 1: you come to a dead end, you pivot around with

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Speaker 1: your hands still touching the right side of the wall. Again,

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Speaker 1: the same thing would work with the left hand. It's

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Speaker 1: also known as the wall follower algorithm. And always following

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Speaker 1: the same wall surface will mean that you bear in

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Speaker 1: the same direction at every turn, which is what you

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Speaker 1: were saying. If you always make the right turn, eventually

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Speaker 1: you will find your way out. This will uh you know,

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Speaker 1: even if you hit a dead end, you'll double back

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Speaker 1: on your path. And if you keep following this method,

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Speaker 1: you could actually solve the maze even blindfolded, because it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter what orientation you have mentally, you will just

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Speaker 1: always be executing a new pathway unless you're trying to

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Speaker 1: get yourself out of a dead end. But there is

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Speaker 1: a catch here, and the catches that for this to work,

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Speaker 1: the maze has to be what they call simply constructed,

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Speaker 1: and what that means is all of the walls of

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Speaker 1: the maze are connected to the outer wall or to

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Speaker 1: each other, and this method will not necessarily work in

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Speaker 1: a maze with what are called island walls, walls that

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Speaker 1: are not connected to the outer boundary, and with these

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Speaker 1: types of mazes you can just end up going in

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Speaker 1: circles around a wall segment in the middle. I've actually

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Speaker 1: read about some funny cases of people going people going

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Speaker 1: into corn mazes, you know, these things for fun or

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Speaker 1: hedge mazes, and they get stuck in there and they

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Speaker 1: try to use the wall follower pathway to get out,

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Speaker 1: but they get stuck in there because they're just tracing

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Speaker 1: around some isolated internal wall that doesn't connect to the

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Speaker 1: outer walls, forced to wander forever until the fall festival

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Speaker 1: employees come and retrieve you. But there there is another catch.

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Speaker 1: So even if you are in a maze with island

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Speaker 1: walls walls that don't connect to the outer boundary, you

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Speaker 1: can still use the right hand rule if you use

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Speaker 1: it beginning at the entrance, Because if you start at

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Speaker 1: the entrance and you stick to it, you will never

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Speaker 1: actually start following an island wall to begin with, because

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Speaker 1: you'll always be attached to a wall that's attached to

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Speaker 1: the exterior boundary. So if you start doing the doing

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Speaker 1: the right hand rule at the entrance, it will work,

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Speaker 1: though it might make the maze less fun, I mean,

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Speaker 1: depending on whether this is like a torture human sacrifice

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Speaker 1: scenario or just like a corn maze for fun. Right.

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Speaker 1: But I guess if you if you use the right

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Speaker 1: hand rule and it's the right kind of maze, you

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Speaker 1: are in a sense transforming a maze into a labyrinth,

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Speaker 1: if we're going to that, if you're using those terms

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Speaker 1: exclusively for a maze is something with many different branching

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Speaker 1: paths in which you can get lost in a labyrinth

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Speaker 1: as being this complex system through which there is only

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Speaker 1: one path, uh, and you don't have to to think

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Speaker 1: about what you're doing as you follow it. Right, multi

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Speaker 1: cur soul versus unicursal, you're turning it into a unicursal

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Speaker 1: pathway where you are again just submitting to the design

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Speaker 1: of the maze and taking decision making entirely out of it. Right.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you go to Ikea and

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Speaker 1: you just decide, I'm just gonna go with the I'm

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Speaker 1: not gonna buy anything, but I'm just gonna just go straight,

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Speaker 1: just gonna follow the path. By everything my right hand touches,

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Speaker 1: you end up in a maze of meatballs. But thinking

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Speaker 1: about how to solve maze is also got me, uh,

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Speaker 1: thinking about another tangent here, which is the role that

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Speaker 1: mazes have played in the history of psychological research, so

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Speaker 1: much that in a way, the maze became almost a

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Speaker 1: physical emblem of the discipline of psychology and popular culture

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Speaker 1: like well, especially the behavior at schools. Of course, So

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Speaker 1: if you saw a research psychologist in a movie made

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties or fifties, what were they doing?

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're probably running rats through a maze, right,

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Speaker 1: Like every psychology lab in a movie has a rat

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Speaker 1: maze in it. Yeah, and you think, I feel like

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Speaker 1: they're a fair number of educational shorts that also feature

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Speaker 1: footage of mice and mazes. And here I think the

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Speaker 1: maze as a research tool emerges in a very interesting

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Speaker 1: relationship with the maze of myths. So consider the following

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Speaker 1: with the myth of Theseus and the minotaur in mind.

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Speaker 1: I was reading an article about the history of maze

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Speaker 1: research by a psychologist named ce James Goodwin in the

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Speaker 1: Monitor on Psychology, which is the magazine of the American

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Speaker 1: Psychological Association or the a p A. And Goodwin begins

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Speaker 1: by producing a really unbelievable quote from a neo behaviorist

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Speaker 1: psychologist named Edward Chase Tolman, who was president of the

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Speaker 1: APIA at the time. He uttered these words, and this

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Speaker 1: was part of his yearly addressed to the a p

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Speaker 1: A in nineteen thirty seven, And this is what he said.

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Speaker 1: Everything important in psych cocology can be investigated in essence

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Speaker 1: through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determinants

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Speaker 1: of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze.

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Speaker 1: So everything, every everything, everything you could want to know

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Speaker 1: about minds can be understood by watching how rats behave

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Speaker 1: in a maze. Like, given enough time and enough rats

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Speaker 1: and enough mazes, we can fully understand minds. I mean,

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Speaker 1: undoubtedly it's useful for various things. That everything is going

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Speaker 1: a bit far. Yeah, So I mean, I guess, to

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Speaker 1: be fair to Tolman, I think maybe he was intentionally

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Speaker 1: overstating his case a bit to be provocative. But this

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Speaker 1: is actually indicative of like a powerful strain of thinking

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Speaker 1: in the history of behaviorist psychology, basically that psychological science

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Speaker 1: is not really concerned with internal phenomena. I remember, this

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Speaker 1: was the behaviorist school, so it's not really about thoughts

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Speaker 1: or feelings and uh. And also the belief that differences

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Speaker 1: between in species are not necessarily very relevant. Brains in

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Speaker 1: general were just sort of imagined as learning and conditioning

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Speaker 1: machines that produce behavior based on how they've been conditioned,

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Speaker 1: and so careful study of how rats behave under various

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Speaker 1: controlled conditions and how they respond to various incentives and

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Speaker 1: stimuli and training can eventually tell you pretty much everything

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Speaker 1: that you would want to know about brains, even about

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Speaker 1: human psychology. Now, I think this is clearly an extremely

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Speaker 1: misguided point of view, But an interesting question is how

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Speaker 1: did you get to their Like, how how did you

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Speaker 1: get to the place where somebody could say that about

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Speaker 1: rats and mazes and not immediately be mocked for it,

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Speaker 1: you know, like, it just sounds so ridiculous. So maybe

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Speaker 1: we should take a break and then when we come

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Speaker 1: back we can talk about the origins of rat maze research. Alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back, So how did we get so many mice

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Speaker 1: in these mazes. Okay. So I mentioned this article by

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Speaker 1: by C. James Goodwin, and Goodwin writes in his article

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Speaker 1: that most historians of science agreed that the animal maze

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Speaker 1: as a research tool was really pioneered in the eighteen

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Speaker 1: nineties by researchers at Clark University. Specifically, this was a

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Speaker 1: couple of graduate students named Willard Small and Linus Klein,

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Speaker 1: who were working in the lab of the early American

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Speaker 1: psychologist Edmund Sandford Uh. Though sometime around the same time,

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Speaker 1: the psychologist Edward Thorndyke also experimented with building a sort

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Speaker 1: of maze for research on baby birds. He did this

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Speaker 1: by stacking books in odd configurations, but he he thought

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Speaker 1: of these structures as pens. But the mazes constructed in

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Speaker 1: the Sanford lab at Clark University had an interesting couple

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Speaker 1: of points of inspiration. So one was in the structures

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Speaker 1: built by rats under a porch. Uh the so Klein's

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Speaker 1: Mall and Sanford were interested in studying the home finding

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Speaker 1: ability of rats. Home finding, of course, is a very

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Speaker 1: important skill for many motile animals. How do you find

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Speaker 1: your way back to home base after leaving to forage,

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Speaker 1: or how do you find your way through confusing twist

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Speaker 1: and turns to locate a source of food or another

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Speaker 1: familiar location. And so Klein recalled an incident where there

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Speaker 1: had been digging under the porch at a cabin on

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Speaker 1: his father's farm in Virginia, and when the porch was excavated,

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Speaker 1: they discovered that there were these runways that had been

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Speaker 1: left quote by large feral rats to their nests under

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Speaker 1: the porch, and the runways client thought somehow resembled mazes,

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Speaker 1: and this led to the idea of designing a test

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Speaker 1: environment based on a maze to study the psychology of rats.

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Speaker 1: And the model they ended up using for this maze

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Speaker 1: was the Hampton Court Maze in England. And Robert, I've

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Speaker 1: got a picture or for you to look at here.

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Speaker 1: This is still a popular tourist attraction. It's a hedge

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Speaker 1: maze just outside London that was commissioned by William the

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Speaker 1: Third around the year seventeen hundred and it is said

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Speaker 1: to be the oldest surviving hedge maze in England. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a very impressive, very famous maze, kind of

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Speaker 1: trapezoidal in shape. I think they restructured it somewhat to

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Speaker 1: make it more of a rectangle in the lab version.

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Speaker 1: The irony is that mice would have no problem at

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Speaker 1: all with with the actual handed chordinates. That's right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you just cut underneath. Yeah, So of course you had

428
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 1: to create one that's much more unforgiving to the body

429
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: of a mouse. So what they did was at the

430
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:42,879
Speaker 1: Clark Lab they made a tiny version for rodents for

431
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:47,159
Speaker 1: rats with slight redesigns. UH had a wooden floor and

432
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:51,399
Speaker 1: walls made of wire mesh, and so research with rats

433
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: there in this maze went on for several years, mostly

434
00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: under Willard Small, and Goodwin writes the following quote. This

435
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:01,160
Speaker 1: was the time when it's like pology was the science

436
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 1: of mental life. So it was not surprising that Small

437
00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: described his maze study in quote mentalistic terms rather than

438
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: in the kind of language one might expect to read

439
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:15,280
Speaker 1: in a more modern learning study. So instead of reporting

440
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: results in terms of error rates and time to completion,

441
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,960
Speaker 1: Small tried to infer what the rats were doing as

442
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,200
Speaker 1: they made their way through the maze, and this led

443
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 1: to observations such as and here I'm going to quote

444
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 1: from Small. When describing a rat almost making a wrong

445
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: turn in the maze, Small wrote that the rat quote

446
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 1: hesitated as if scratching his head, then entered this dead

447
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: end path slowly and doubtfully only a few steps. However,

448
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,199
Speaker 1: then with a sudden turn and a triumphant flick of

449
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: his tail, he returned to the correct path. Which is

450
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 1: funny because that does not sound like scientific writing. Yes,

451
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: hesitated as if scratching his head, the triumphant flick of

452
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 1: his tail. I mean this. This is a kind of

453
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: qualitative description that's unusual to more modern psychological methods, where

454
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: in modern psychological methods you would try to turn everything

455
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 1: into unambiguous quantitative data points and remove the subjective judgment

456
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: of the researcher as much as possible. But here Small

457
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: is just saying like, I wonder what little Mr Rat

458
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: is thinking as he goes to the left or the right. Well,

459
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:26,159
Speaker 1: I think he I think he feels triumphant. Now I

460
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 1: think he feels like a big, strong rat. Now I

461
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,560
Speaker 1: know he's getting dangerously close to writing a smashing pumpkin song.

462
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:35,720
Speaker 1: You know, I've always had questions about that song because

463
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 1: if the world is a vampire sent to drain aane,

464
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:43,160
Speaker 1: what is it drain ain Ing? The world contains everything,

465
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: doesn't it? The way the world is invoked there. It's

466
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: like the some some total of existence is sent to

467
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 1: drain what's outside of itself to drain. Well, I think

468
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:54,359
Speaker 1: it is outer reality versus inter reality, right, Okay, it's

469
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:57,520
Speaker 1: Newmana and Phenomena. Yeah, I guess so that's the way

470
00:26:57,520 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: I always interpreted. I mean, not that I spent a

471
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: lot of time. I'm really analyzing the lyrics that song.

472
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: But um, but that would be my guest. The Phenomena

473
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:09,120
Speaker 1: is a vampire sent to dra and the New Mina. Okay, yeah,

474
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 1: Or I guess you could say the maze or the

475
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: cage is the thing the environment that contains the rat

476
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:18,800
Speaker 1: or the minotaur, what have you. Here's a twist. What

477
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:20,960
Speaker 1: if that song is sung from the point of view

478
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: of a minotaur, like among the Athenian youths, there is

479
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: a secret destroyer. You know. I don't think I even

480
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: looked for actual minotaur songs. Uh. There may be some

481
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: really good ones out there, and I then I just

482
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: don't know about them. Is there not a misfit song?

483
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:39,920
Speaker 1: Is there that they just say the minotaur and then

484
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: you and it's the minotaur again or something? It seems

485
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:44,680
Speaker 1: like I can't I can't really find much of anything.

486
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, whether you're talking about the standards of modern

487
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: research today or the behaviorist research that would come into

488
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: vogue in the twentieth century, in any case, you know,

489
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: you would not want to say, I think that the

490
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: rat is thinking that the world is a vampire sent

491
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 1: to dray a a. And you just want to like

492
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 1: neutrally describe unambiguous objective behaviors and and and avoid being anthropomorphic.

493
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,199
Speaker 1: And Smallest research was criticized even by some people at

494
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: the time for being anthropomorphic, like trying to inhabit the

495
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,919
Speaker 1: mind of the rat as if it had human thoughts. Nevertheless,

496
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: small made some interesting and influential discoveries, and these included

497
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 1: the idea that rats could learn navigation and home finding

498
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: with very little reliance on their sense of site. Two

499
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:33,199
Speaker 1: of the rats in his study group were blind, and

500
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: yet they learned the maze just as well as the

501
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 1: sighted rats. And the use of senses other than site

502
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,480
Speaker 1: can make sense when you consider that rats are often

503
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: navigating almost completely dark spaces, or navigating spaces at night,

504
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: you know, under floorboards and so forth. And Small believed

505
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: he had established with his research that rats learned through

506
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 1: a gradual accumulation of direct associations between sensory stimuli and

507
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: the maze and patterns of success, and this would later

508
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 1: prove foundational to the behavior as school of psychology, which

509
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: was very focused on associative learning and gradual conditioning as

510
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 1: the root of animal behavior. But probably more important than

511
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: what these studies actually found in their conclusions was the

512
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: precedent they set for research methods, because Small's research led

513
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: to this huge surge in maze research, much of which

514
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: used rats as the study animal. The most classic variation

515
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 1: is that you can mess around with independent variables to

516
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: create an average learning curve for rats by you know,

517
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: you run rats through a maze multiple times, and you

518
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: chart the time it takes them to complete the maze

519
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: and the number of errors they make along the way

520
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 1: with each successive attempt, which is a very useful tool

521
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: for studying a certain kind of learning and how various

522
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: things affect that kind of learning, like drugs and so forth.

523
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: But some maze studies also used other animals at the

524
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,440
Speaker 1: very simple and we've talked before about the the sort

525
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 1: of maze like research done on worms that was focused

526
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 1: on plan areah. This was the origin actually of the

527
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: memory transfer research of James McConnell that we talked about

528
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: in a couple of full length episodes that you can

529
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: check out in our archive called Devour of Memories. But

530
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: the short version is that the American psychologist James McConnell

531
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 1: believed he had discovered that memories in the form of

532
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: learned associations could be transferred from one flat worm to

533
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: another via cannibalism. So you teach one flat worm, grind

534
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: it up, feed it to another flat worm, and it learns,

535
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: you know, eat your brains and gain your knowledge. Later

536
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: research through some doubts on that conclusion, but they're still interesting.

537
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 1: Ongoing research today hinting that planaria might possibly retain memories

538
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: after having their heads cut off, so there might be

539
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 1: some kind of memory in the bodies that's not just

540
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: in the brain. And of course, at the opposite end

541
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: of the scale, you've got studies that actually put humans

542
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: in full size mazes with consent, of course, to study

543
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 1: their behavior. But anyway, this huge sir in maze research

544
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: lead to regimes that meant a researcher could make a

545
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 1: claim like the one Tolman made in nineteen thirty seven.

546
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 1: The idea that basically all you need to study psychology

547
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: is some rats in a maze, And he could say

548
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 1: that and still be taken seriously. Uh. Tolman's assertion, of course,

549
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: seems again ridiculous on its face today, but maze research

550
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: does still remain very important, especially in narrower domains like

551
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: animal motor behavior, problem solving, spatial memory and things like that.

552
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: And mazes are used in studying the effects of particular

553
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: drugs on behavior, So like you could say, does this

554
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: anti anxiety drug cause a rat or a crayfish to

555
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: take one path or the other rather than you know,

556
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: freezing paralyzed at T junction? Or does a drug promote

557
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: obsessive recurring checks of the same path and things like that. Now,

558
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 1: and looking at what kind of maze research is going

559
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: on today, I came across one thing that I that

560
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:03,520
Speaker 1: I was thoroughly amazed by and very disturbed by, which

561
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: is this invention known as automated team mazes. I guess

562
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 1: there's actually nothing more nefarious about this than there is

563
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:14,160
Speaker 1: about a regular maze for for research, but watching video

564
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: of it somehow kind of bothered me. Basically, an automated

565
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 1: team maze is a robot maze with movable walls that

566
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: can be raised and lowered to alter the maze path

567
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: as the animal proceeds, and I don't know, it feels

568
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 1: very house of leaves to me. Yeah, I don't think

569
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: we we brought up a house of leaves yet, by

570
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 1: the way, but that is a great use of a

571
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:39,960
Speaker 1: maze and a minotaur uh in uh is a literary example.

572
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: I'm actually in the middle of reading it right now

573
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: for the first time, so I haven't finished yet. I

574
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil too much for people, but yeah,

575
00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 1: the middle of that book is a good place to

576
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: be because the book is is intentionally, quite intentionally is

577
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:56,040
Speaker 1: a labyrinth, and you are supposed to, I think, feel

578
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:00,320
Speaker 1: to a certain extent lost within it and hunted within it.

579
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: It's one of the more unnerving things I think I've read,

580
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: and you know, over the past ten years, extremely creepy

581
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,479
Speaker 1: now in terms of labyrinths that change and move around you.

582
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: First of all, I think datals would be proud, like

583
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: this is exactly the sort of thing that you can imagine. Uh.

584
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 1: You know, they're the great inventor having created it also

585
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: reminds me of of the wonderful cinematic maze that we

586
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: find in Jim Henson's Labyrinth. Uh. There, in the early

587
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 1: phases of that they go through to you know, Sarah

588
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: goes through different parts of the Labyrinth to try to

589
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: get to the Goblin city to rescue her brother. But

590
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 1: there's a there's one section in particular where she begins

591
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: to realize that she can't mark the path behind her

592
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 1: because the path keeps changing. Goblins keep moving things around,

593
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: moving stones that she's marked, or even just seemingly magically,

594
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: she'll turn around and what was once a passage is

595
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: now just a blank wall. I recall this being a

596
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 1: plot point in the movie Cube as well. Oh yes,

597
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: the very very Cube like as well this video. There's

598
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 1: no minotaur in Cube, but that should have been well

599
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 1: in a way, there are a lot of all the

600
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: traps are kind of like mini minotaurs. There are killing instruments,

601
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: and again coming back to the idea that the minotaur

602
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 1: is sort of the kill function of the Labyrinth, it

603
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: just has a lot of little kill functions instead of

604
00:34:20,680 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: one great all encompass and kill function. I want to

605
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 1: come back and say, I, in all honesty, I don't

606
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,879
Speaker 1: want to throw aspersions on an automated team maze, which

607
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 1: seems like a perfectly useful research tool. Uh. It seems

608
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: like they're actually mainly to automatically track data on the

609
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 1: movements of the animals, so it it makes the human

610
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: rat run are obsolete very useful. But before we move

611
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: on from rats and mazes, I wanted to talk about

612
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:49,320
Speaker 1: one more thing that I found interesting, and it ties

613
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,319
Speaker 1: into something I know you've covered on at least one

614
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,800
Speaker 1: older episode, uh, Rob, which was the idea of cargo

615
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: cult science that was explored in this famous talk given

616
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,799
Speaker 1: by the physicist Richard Feynman in nineteen seventy four. He

617
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 1: was giving a commencement address to cal Tech. I guess

618
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 1: it was the graduating class or something, and that's usually

619
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: who would be at a commencement address, why, I said,

620
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:17,320
Speaker 1: probably uh, And he was, you know, talking about various subjects, pseudoscience,

621
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 1: the need for rigor in in designing experiments, scientific research,

622
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:24,880
Speaker 1: and uh. And so, in simple terms, I think the

623
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 1: idea of cargo cult science is it's a bad form

624
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:33,720
Speaker 1: of science where uh, there is not enough rigorous effort

625
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 1: devoted to trying to disprove hypotheses. Rather every basically you

626
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: just kind of establish a hypothesis based on what data

627
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:46,880
Speaker 1: you've already collected, and then further occurrences of the same

628
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 1: types of data are taken as confirmation of the hypothesis. So,

629
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:53,920
Speaker 1: for an example, I'm just making this up. If you

630
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: were to find that rats run mazes faster in the

631
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: daytime than they do in the night time, and then

632
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: you say, oh, I'm gonna fit a hypothesis to that,

633
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:05,359
Speaker 1: it's because they come from the planet Crypton and are

634
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:08,479
Speaker 1: given extra strength by the rays of our yellow sun

635
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: during the day. And then subsequent studies finding yet again

636
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 1: that rats run mazes faster in the daytime than than

637
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: in the nighttime, those are taking his confirmation of the

638
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,760
Speaker 1: yellow sun hypothesis when they don't actually provide any support

639
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,360
Speaker 1: for that at all. So, in general, Fineman in the

640
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 1: speech is advocating that researchers adhere to more rigorous methods

641
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,320
Speaker 1: to rule out false positives and things like that, and

642
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: and they avoid the temptation to rush to publish with

643
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 1: sloppy experimental designs. And so I can read from the

644
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: part of his speech here where he talks about rats

645
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: and mazes. He uh, he says, quote, there have been

646
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes and

647
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:53,240
Speaker 1: so on, with little clear result. But in ninety seven

648
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: a man named Young did a very interesting one. He

649
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: had a long corridor with doors all along one side

650
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,439
Speaker 1: where the rats came in, and doors along the other

651
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: side where the food was. He wanted to see if

652
00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: he could train the rats to go in at the

653
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: third door down from wherever he started them off. So

654
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: what he's looking for is a spatial relationship between the

655
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:17,879
Speaker 1: entrance door and the food reward door. Will they learn

656
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:22,000
Speaker 1: that inference? Uh? And fine man continues, No, the rats

657
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 1: went immediately to the door where the food had been

658
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 1: the time before. The question was, how did the rats know?

659
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:33,280
Speaker 1: Because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform

660
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:36,359
Speaker 1: that this was the same door as before. Obviously there

661
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 1: was something about the door that was different from the

662
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: other doors, So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging

663
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:45,879
Speaker 1: the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same.

664
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,239
Speaker 1: Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the

665
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 1: rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to

666
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell.

667
00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: Then he realized the rats might be able to tell

668
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: by seeing the fights and the arrangement in the laboratory

669
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: like any common sense person. So he covered the corridor

670
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: and still the rats could tell. He finally found that

671
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: they could tell by the way the floor sounded when

672
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: they ran over it, and he could only fix that

673
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one

674
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,719
Speaker 1: after another of all possible clues and finally was able

675
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: to fool the rats. So they had to learn to

676
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: go in the third door. If he relaxed any of

677
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:31,239
Speaker 1: his conditions, the rats could tell. Now, from a scientific standpoint,

678
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,799
Speaker 1: this is an a number one experiment. That is the

679
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:39,040
Speaker 1: experiment that makes rat running experiments sensible because it uncovers

680
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: the clues that the rat is really using and not

681
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,280
Speaker 1: what you think it's using. And that is the experiment

682
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 1: that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in

683
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 1: order to be careful and control everything in an experiment

684
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,840
Speaker 1: with rat running. I looked into the subsequent history of

685
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:58,239
Speaker 1: this research. The subsequent experiment and the one after that

686
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 1: never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of

687
00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 1: his criteria of putting the corridor on sand or being

688
00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:07,799
Speaker 1: very careful. They just went right on running rats in

689
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: the same old way and paid no attention to the

690
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not

691
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 1: referred to because he didn't discover anything about the rats.

692
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 1: In fact, he discovered all the things you have to

693
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: do to decipher something about rats. But not paying attention

694
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science. Now,

695
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,400
Speaker 1: just as a follow up, I was reading an article

696
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: by Ross Pomeroy on Real Clear Science that was about

697
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: this story that Fineman tells trying to identify who this

698
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: uncited researcher was. Uh, the author of this article Pomeroy,

699
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 1: he thinks that this is probably referring to the animal

700
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: scientist Paul Thomas Young, but it's not known for sure

701
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: who Fineman is referring to. If we take Fineman's word

702
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: that you know, he was familiar with this unpublished research

703
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: and stuff. Uh, It's it's very sad that this went forward,

704
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:02,440
Speaker 1: but it's such a wonderful illustration of how difficult and

705
00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: tedious it can be just to get to the point

706
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:09,960
Speaker 1: where you can start to establish conclusions in animal research.

707
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: I also love in Environment's writings here that you you

708
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: also get the sense of the the construction of a maze,

709
00:40:17,200 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 1: you know, like this, the thing that is that is

710
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:23,720
Speaker 1: just there to confuse and and and provides no clear

711
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:26,960
Speaker 1: solutions to itself or to the world. Well, yeah, it's

712
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:30,800
Speaker 1: really funny because so design It highlights how designing a

713
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 1: maze for a rat is kind of different than designing

714
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: a maze for a human, right because rats, uh might,

715
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 1: because of their their ecological niche, they might have senses

716
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: that are attuned to things that humans wouldn't even imagine

717
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: would be a useful clue in in you know, cheating

718
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:53,720
Speaker 1: and seeing through the confusion that the maze is supposed

719
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: to provide. Yeah, yeah, we have to remember that that rats,

720
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: other organisms that we might put in maze, they live

721
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,479
Speaker 1: in a different sense realm than we do. Like their

722
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: dependence on you know, site versus smell, etcetera. Are going

723
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 1: to be rather different than ours. And then there you know,

724
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: they're theirs. Their smell abilities, they are going to beyond,

725
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 1: be beyond what we have at our disposal. Maybe I'm

726
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: reaching here, but I was imagining some interesting parallels here

727
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 1: between the maze as a psychological research instrument and the

728
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: maze of myth, because what they're doing in both cases

729
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: is trying to strip away extraneous detail and context from

730
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: from the decision of the character, whether that's a an

731
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 1: animal that's the subject of research or a character in

732
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: a story, and just sort of like isolate one salient

733
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 1: trait at a time. That that's often what mythology does,

734
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 1: like it boils down a human too courage embodied and

735
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: has no other really identifiable human traits in that moment

736
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 1: in the story. And the same thing for the rat.

737
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: You're trying to like take away all of the things

738
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,360
Speaker 1: that make a rat a rat at accept its ability

739
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 1: to decide between X and Y based on z Yeah. Yeah,

740
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:08,280
Speaker 1: that's a great point. So I guess it doesn't exactly

741
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: work with theseus because theseus does bring bring context from

742
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 1: the outside world into the maze. Right. He comes in

743
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: armed with tools and with information that he technically should

744
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 1: not have if this were a fair fight, right, right,

745
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: he has he has broken the game. Yeah, he has

746
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:27,319
Speaker 1: corrupted the experiment. These are not legitimate results. All right.

747
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: On that note, we're going to take one more break,

748
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:35,720
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back than alright, we're back. Uh now, Robert,

749
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: is it time to talk about the minotaur and zoonotic diseases? Yes,

750
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: it is. I was actually delighted to run to run

751
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: across this paper titled Europe The Bull and the Minotaur

752
00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: The Biological Legacy of a Neolithic love Story. This is

753
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 1: by Harold Brusso, published in the journal Environmental Microbiology back

754
00:42:56,080 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. Now, Harold Bruce is a

755
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:03,279
Speaker 1: research scientist and he's the author of the book The

756
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: Quest for Food and Natural History of Eating, And incidentally

757
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: he's also an author on several COVID nineteen papers to

758
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:13,399
Speaker 1: come out this year. Yeah, I saw that. I looked about.

759
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: It looks like he's affiliated with the Nestly Research Center

760
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 1: in Switzerland and uh and at some point I think

761
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:22,800
Speaker 1: I also saw him affiliated with the University of Geneva,

762
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:25,400
Speaker 1: but the main things I saw recently were the Nestly

763
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: Research Center. I gotta say he's got a very unusual

764
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: writing style for scientific papers. It's very whimsical, Yes, definitely whimsical.

765
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: Um and you get a sense of that from the

766
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:41,320
Speaker 1: title here as well. Basically, in this article, Brusso uses

767
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 1: the minotaur myth as a means of discussing the Neolithic

768
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: revolution and the manner in which the domestication of goats

769
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:52,960
Speaker 1: and cattle, etcetera. Opened the door for new pathogens. As

770
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: he points out, hunters only had limited contact with prey

771
00:43:57,200 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 1: and most close contact occurred after the animal death. Not

772
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: to say this is safe for the human hunter, but

773
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:08,920
Speaker 1: quote all the mechanisms which microbes induced in the infected

774
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:13,320
Speaker 1: host to assure their transmission, like sneezing, coughing, or diarrhea,

775
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:17,320
Speaker 1: are not any longer operative in the dead animal. Okay,

776
00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 1: So he's saying that. And despite the fact that people

777
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: who hunted for a living would be coming in contact

778
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: with animals and their body fluids pretty often, people who

779
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: do animal agriculture are actually more at risk for animal

780
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 1: transmitted diseases than hunters are, right because suddenly you're not

781
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: just hunting the animal down, killing it, process and then

782
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 1: processing it, which is you know, certainly processing the animal

783
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: could come with some risks, but it's one's dead. It's

784
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:47,800
Speaker 1: not going to sneeze on you. But with the domestication,

785
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:51,719
Speaker 1: humans come into close contact with these animals all the time.

786
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:55,399
Speaker 1: They come into clause contact with sick animals as well

787
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:58,959
Speaker 1: as the animals dung, which was valuable for fuel and fertilizer,

788
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: uh and also another pathway for disease. And you're going

789
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: to be spending time. I mean, I just imagine there's

790
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:07,760
Speaker 1: more time with the animal. Like you kill an animal

791
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: when you're hunting, and then you kind of deal with it.

792
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,319
Speaker 1: But like, but that's one animal for a sort of

793
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: limited period of time. While you're processing it or carrying

794
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,880
Speaker 1: it back to home or wherever this other thing would be,

795
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,680
Speaker 1: you're just sort of like wandering around with herds of

796
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: sheep or cows or something all day and there's a

797
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: bunch of them all crammed together, right, And and thus

798
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:29,320
Speaker 1: he states that you know, we can we can safely

799
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: anticipate quote that the early farming society was plagued by

800
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 1: new diseases zoonosis was feeding new pathogens into the human population. Yeah,

801
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: that's very interesting to consider. I mean, we we think

802
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 1: about the advent of agriculture in in the Neolithic period

803
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: as you know, one of the progenitors of civilization, but

804
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 1: we don't often imagine a lot of the downsides that

805
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 1: might have come along with it. And it seems quite

806
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 1: possible that he's correct that zoonotic diseases, an increase in

807
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: diseases transmitted from animals to humans would be one of

808
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: those consequences. Yeah, so he writes that humanities growth simply

809
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: created new opportunities for these microbes, which in turn discovered

810
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: humans as quote an attractive life support um. This, he says,

811
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 1: follows the principle of the marine microbiologists call killing off

812
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 1: the winning population. So he points out that the viruses

813
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:25,879
Speaker 1: had co evolved with their host during evolution, we would

814
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: expect the closest relatives of measles viruses in paramixo viruses

815
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:35,439
Speaker 1: of primates instead. However, the most important human pathogens, such

816
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: as highly transmissible agents like measles and smallpox, are closely

817
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: related to viruses from domesticated animals. Measles, for instance, circulates

818
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:49,520
Speaker 1: exclusively in the human population, but is a close relative

819
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:53,120
Speaker 1: of render pest virus that is found in cattle. And

820
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 1: of course this uh is not limited just to ancient times.

821
00:46:56,640 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: I mean, human viruses emerging from cultivated animal stocks still

822
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: happens today. I mean, I think it's pretty common for

823
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 1: flu strains to come out of say like pigs or

824
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: birds that are domesticated by humans now. Bruso also points

825
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 1: out that the close relationship between smallpox and cow pox

826
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: was actually really important for the history of vaccination. Physician

827
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:22,360
Speaker 1: Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had acquired cow pox

828
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: were resistant to smallpox. He also points out that tuberculosis

829
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:32,959
Speaker 1: is caused by the Microbacterium tuberculosis complex, to which M.

830
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,840
Speaker 1: Bovis belongs. Any lists several other examples, and also discusses

831
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 1: the idea popularized by Jared Diamond and Guns, Germs and

832
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 1: Steel that Europeans brought with them their Old World viruses

833
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:49,239
Speaker 1: which they had, which they had generated out of their

834
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: history of animal domestication, all this time spent in close

835
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:57,759
Speaker 1: confines with their domesticated species. Now, I will say, with

836
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: reference to Diamond, Uh, it's been along time since I

837
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:03,719
Speaker 1: read that book. Years ago I read Guns, Terms and Steel. Uh,

838
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:06,800
Speaker 1: I can tell that he Diamond has recently been subject

839
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: to a lot of criticism by experts in the fields

840
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: he covers. Uh. If so, I don't know, I don't

841
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: want to be too unfair, but it seems like there

842
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:17,800
Speaker 1: are a lot of allegations of kind of cherry picking,

843
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,360
Speaker 1: the thing that often happens when somebody's got a very broad,

844
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: sweeping explanation of history. Um. But I do think one

845
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: of the basic genres of things explored in that book

846
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:31,160
Speaker 1: is interesting, which is the broad thrust of it is

847
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:35,720
Speaker 1: trying to explain human history in terms of environmental biogeography.

848
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:39,720
Speaker 1: So showing that you know what people's come to power

849
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:42,120
Speaker 1: at what place in time, can at least in large

850
00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 1: part be explained by often otherwise overlooked environmental biological and

851
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: geographical factors such as like what types of crops grow here,

852
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: or what types of animals nearby could be domesticated, what

853
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:57,919
Speaker 1: kinds of pathogens or people exposed to and things like that.

854
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: So uh So, whatever one would think of Diamond himself

855
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 1: or or his fuller argument, I do think it's important

856
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 1: to remember that history is not just a battle of

857
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 1: wills and virtues between like powerful individual people and their personalities.

858
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:14,319
Speaker 1: It's also very much about mosquitoes and rainfall patterns and

859
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: farming equipment and stuff like that. Now, to come back

860
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 1: to Bruso here, the idea that he's presenting here isn't

861
00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:25,160
Speaker 1: that the Neolithic door opens and immediately all of these

862
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:28,920
Speaker 1: zoonotic diseases rush in um. This would have taken place

863
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 1: over early in a long period of time. Uh It

864
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:35,360
Speaker 1: still opens the door, though, but sometimes the these these

865
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: basically these zoonotic events are going to occur just throughout

866
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:43,960
Speaker 1: that the history that unfolds. For example, measles seems to

867
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:48,240
Speaker 1: have emerged from render past between c E eleven hundred

868
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:51,279
Speaker 1: and c E twelve hundred, and is pointed out by

869
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 1: Ferous at All in Origin of measles of the measles

870
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: virus UH. Divergence from render pest virus between likely occurred

871
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:02,000
Speaker 1: between the eleven and twelveth entries that was in Virology

872
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 1: Journal in two thousand ten UH, and they were likely

873
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 1: limited outbreaks prior to this, when the pathogen wasn't fully

874
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 1: adapted to humans yet. And then Bruso also points out

875
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:15,600
Speaker 1: that there were population issues to consider as well. Um,

876
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:18,759
Speaker 1: you know, as the duration of epidemics are influenced by

877
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 1: population density. So again, not only in the wake of

878
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 1: the you know, the Linolithic Revolution, we get to the

879
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:28,200
Speaker 1: point where we are we are building cities, we are

880
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 1: living in closer confines to each other, and we're creating

881
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:35,919
Speaker 1: not only the the environments in which a pathogen could

882
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 1: leap from one species to another, but also these robust

883
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:44,239
Speaker 1: environments in which a pathogen could then spread, you know,

884
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 1: massively through a larger human population. Yeah, this is all

885
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:51,440
Speaker 1: interesting and important to consider so I'm wondering, where does

886
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 1: the minotaur come in. Ah, yes, the minotaur. Uh so

887
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 1: there is a minotaur and all of this um and uh.

888
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:00,319
Speaker 1: And he sets it up out rather nicely. I think

889
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: he says, generations of poets, philosophers, and psychologists have interpreted

890
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:08,120
Speaker 1: and reinterpreted ancient Greek myths. I will thus take the

891
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 1: liberty to add a biological interpretation to this strange story. So,

892
00:51:13,719 --> 00:51:15,360
Speaker 1: you know, I think he's being very clear about the

893
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 1: fact that he's not making an argument that the minotaur

894
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 1: is about um zoonotic diseases. But he's saying, I'm going

895
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:25,480
Speaker 1: to take the minotaur and it's myth, and I am

896
00:51:25,520 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 1: going to use it to make a statement about about this,

897
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: to to explain something or attempt to explain something about

898
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 1: this relationship between animals, humans and their pathogens. Okay, So

899
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:40,280
Speaker 1: it's not like there's actually a good case that zoonotic

900
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:44,040
Speaker 1: diseases are literally the historical inspiration of the minotaur myth.

901
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:46,919
Speaker 1: But it does work pretty amazingly as a metaphor. Yeah,

902
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: he does a great job with it. Again, he's a

903
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:51,719
Speaker 1: kind of kind of a whimsical writer, especially in this piece. Okay,

904
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:54,840
Speaker 1: let's hear it, so point he he you know, relates

905
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:57,120
Speaker 1: the minotar myth a bit, but points not only to

906
00:51:57,160 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 1: the minotaur but also to Uh, you know, the of

907
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:04,319
Speaker 1: Zeus in his bull form, seducing the Princess Europa or

908
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: Europe and taking her to Crete, where he impregnates her

909
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:12,240
Speaker 1: with three sons. One of those three sons is Minos Uh.

910
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 1: Europe's brothers then search the known world for her and Uh,

911
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: and then Bruso writes this quote. The paths of Europe's

912
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:24,719
Speaker 1: brothers recall partly the migrations of the early farmers from

913
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 1: the Near East into Europe and North Africa, partly Phoenician colonization.

914
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:33,320
Speaker 1: The too close relationship of Mino's wife with a bull

915
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 1: leads to a children eating chimera, stretching a bit of

916
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: the fantasy. I would interpret this monster as the species

917
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:44,840
Speaker 1: crossing virus derived from the new close contact between cattle

918
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 1: and farmer. The labyrinth might be a type of quarantine

919
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 1: imposed on infected subjects. Sir Evans, the excavator of the

920
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:55,799
Speaker 1: Minoa Crete, suggests that it reflects the plan of the

921
00:52:55,920 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: Royal Palace Innsis. Some viruses are bovine. Human chimera is

922
00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:03,759
Speaker 1: like Minotaur, which both ate the young children of the

923
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 1: earlier inhabitants of Europe. This myth might thus keep the

924
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 1: memory of the hardship following the encounter of the cattle

925
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:15,560
Speaker 1: farmers with the hunter gatherers of prehistoric Europe, and in

926
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,160
Speaker 1: the rest of the article deals primarily with examples of

927
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:21,359
Speaker 1: this and discussions of its import That's great, I mean,

928
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 1: I would say, to reiterate, of course, I'm not convinced,

929
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 1: and I don't think he's necessarily making the case that

930
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:30,120
Speaker 1: actually this was the literal inspiration of the myth, But

931
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 1: it is a really awesome metaphor the idea that the

932
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,600
Speaker 1: introduction of domesticated livestock such as cattle and sheep and

933
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 1: stuff into the lives of humans would have these echoes

934
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:44,799
Speaker 1: throughout history that have biological implications. In the myth, they

935
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 1: are the biological implications of creating a hybrid monster. In reality,

936
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: the biological implications are creating these zoonotic diseases that are

937
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: in a way a hybrid type being because they jump

938
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 1: from one species to another when you're living in close

939
00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: contact long enough off. And even though the inspiration of

940
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:05,319
Speaker 1: the myth is probably not direct in any way, I mean,

941
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:08,920
Speaker 1: I do wonder about a kind of loose, un semiconscious

942
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: connection and that like, isn't there always a sort of quiet,

943
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 1: wordless unease about civilization and its products? And it just

944
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: shows up again and again every generation, even while we

945
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:25,000
Speaker 1: enjoy the fruits of civilization, like we enjoy the stability

946
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:28,160
Speaker 1: of food supply and the opportunity for the diversification of

947
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: labor and all of that, all the stuff we get

948
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:34,440
Speaker 1: from a settled urban existence, from agriculture, from technology and

949
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:38,520
Speaker 1: so forth, isn't there in every generation a new expression

950
00:54:38,520 --> 00:54:41,279
Speaker 1: of the feeling that something is kind of wrong with

951
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:45,839
Speaker 1: all this, that there, that it is somehow perverted or dangerous,

952
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 1: even monstrous, and that people should somehow get back to

953
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: nature in one way or another. Some version of this

954
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:56,719
Speaker 1: philosophy is always there. It seems like, yeah, I mean, really,

955
00:54:56,800 --> 00:54:59,320
Speaker 1: to come back to the the idea of the labyrinth

956
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:02,279
Speaker 1: itself and and the other creations of datalists, there's this,

957
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 1: I you know, there's so much of that science fictional energy,

958
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 1: that anxiety concerning technology. Uh in this figure. You know,

959
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,359
Speaker 1: what if we created something that lifted us up on

960
00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:17,080
Speaker 1: high but also lead to our destruction? Uh? What what

961
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:21,759
Speaker 1: if we created something so elegantly designed that it was

962
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 1: too confusing for even its creator to escape that sort

963
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:27,359
Speaker 1: of thing, Yeah, totally. I mean you can look at

964
00:55:27,360 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 1: a million different kinds of technology as essentially the labyrinth,

965
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 1: the thing that becomes so complicated it escapes the intentions

966
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:37,840
Speaker 1: of its creator. And uh, yeah, I mean an obvious

967
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 1: place to look at that would be artificial intelligence. I

968
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: mean people often use the people often use the metaphor

969
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: of Pandora's box. They're like, are you opening the box?

970
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 1: Who knows what what will come out? But the labyrinth

971
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:51,120
Speaker 1: is also a pretty good metaphor for for what's happening

972
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:54,319
Speaker 1: with AI. Yeah, and and there's always the concern that

973
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:56,799
Speaker 1: there will be the minotaur within it as well, the

974
00:55:56,880 --> 00:55:59,879
Speaker 1: thing that is not just passively anti human but act

975
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: the anti human. But I mean it's easy to imagine

976
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 1: that kind of thing with AI, because at least AI

977
00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:08,719
Speaker 1: reaches such a level of complexity that you're imagining it

978
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: almost as an agent that you can't control, you know.

979
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 1: I think you can even apply this idea of our

980
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:21,160
Speaker 1: our perennial anxiety or suspicions about the downsides of of

981
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:26,879
Speaker 1: civilization and it's technological products um to too earlier innovations,

982
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: even things as seemingly simple as agriculture, because in fact,

983
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: agriculture comes with tons of consequences that would not have

984
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:37,960
Speaker 1: been predicted by the people who invented. It comes with

985
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 1: risk of zoonotic diseases, It comes with changes in diet

986
00:56:42,120 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 1: and how that affects human life, and a million other things.

987
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:47,080
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean when it was many of the

988
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 1: the catastrophic problems that we're dealing with today in our world.

989
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:52,960
Speaker 1: Are you know the the end results of this these

990
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 1: initial revolutions. But you mentioned Pandora's Box earlier. So I

991
00:56:57,080 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: want to come back just one more time to Bruso

992
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:03,520
Speaker 1: here Be because he has this particularly haunting closing to

993
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:06,320
Speaker 1: the paper, and again this is from two thousand nine,

994
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: in which he considers how modern global environmental changes will

995
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:14,360
Speaker 1: lead to another quote highly dynamic phase of viral transmissions

996
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: into the human population. He writes, quote viruses must be

997
00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:22,160
Speaker 1: the dark side of the heritage from the Neolithic revolution

998
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:25,720
Speaker 1: to remain with Greek myths, they might correspond to a

999
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 1: half open Pandora's box, a poisoned gift of the bull

1000
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:33,080
Speaker 1: god Zeus to mankind. Humans go now into a phase

1001
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: of globalization whose ecological impact might represent a full opening

1002
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:42,600
Speaker 1: of this cursed box. Man is today a major evolutionary force,

1003
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:46,520
Speaker 1: and we can safely anticipate that man made environmental changes

1004
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 1: will lead to a new deal in our relationship with microbes.

1005
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: When the diseases had left the box, the Greek myth

1006
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 1: told that only hope remained in the box. Today we

1007
00:57:57,400 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 1: are probably better served with science as our best fence

1008
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:04,960
Speaker 1: against surprise attacks from the viral empire, uh, than with

1009
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:08,560
Speaker 1: the principal hope. Got some chills from that. I mean

1010
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 1: to say nothing against hope. I mean, hope is good,

1011
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:14,520
Speaker 1: but don't show up with a hope to a science fight. Yeah,

1012
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: Or if you're gonna bring hope in one hand, bring

1013
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 1: science in the other. All right, So there you have it.

1014
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:24,040
Speaker 1: This was episode three of our journey through the Labyrinth,

1015
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:27,680
Speaker 1: our consideration of the minotaur, uh and and the myth

1016
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 1: that it emerges out of the culture, It emerges out

1017
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:34,440
Speaker 1: of the various ideas that it is still stirring and

1018
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:37,120
Speaker 1: the human imagination today. Uh. This one is a lot

1019
00:58:37,120 --> 00:58:39,680
Speaker 1: of fun. Yeah, totally. And we have got so much

1020
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:44,280
Speaker 1: more October stuff for you. We're busting it seems here. Yes, yes,

1021
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: there's so yeah, we we've we've got We've got so

1022
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:48,520
Speaker 1: many more ideas to go. I think we even still

1023
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:50,480
Speaker 1: have a few ideas to come up with. But but

1024
00:58:50,560 --> 00:58:53,920
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a full month of of Halloween related

1025
00:58:54,000 --> 00:58:57,520
Speaker 1: wonder In the meantime, you would like to check out

1026
00:58:57,560 --> 00:58:59,280
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind if you

1027
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 1: want to catch up on our current Halloween offerings, uh,

1028
00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 1: explore our past Halloween offerings, or some of our past

1029
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 1: myth related episodes, you know, such as our our study

1030
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: of the Medusa from earlier this year. Well, you can

1031
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:16,200
Speaker 1: find this podcast wherever you get your podcasts and wherever

1032
00:59:16,200 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 1: that happens to be. We just ask that you rate, review,

1033
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:21,960
Speaker 1: and subscribe. If you want to find us, like really quickly,

1034
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: you can just go to stuff to Blow your Mind

1035
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 1: dot com and that will take you to the I

1036
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:27,960
Speaker 1: heart listing for this show. And if you do go there,

1037
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:30,920
Speaker 1: there's a place you can click on somewhere on that

1038
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,760
Speaker 1: page kind of a labyrinth. Uh, you can click on

1039
00:59:34,160 --> 00:59:36,800
Speaker 1: like store merchandise or what have you. That'll take you

1040
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:39,080
Speaker 1: to our our t shirt store where we have a

1041
00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:41,960
Speaker 1: few different designs with stuff like our logo maybe a

1042
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: Medusa or to that sort of thing. Huge thanks as

1043
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:48,640
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1044
00:59:48,640 --> 00:59:50,040
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1045
00:59:50,120 --> 00:59:52,480
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1046
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can

1047
00:59:54,960 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1048
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:07,920
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of

1049
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1050
01:00:10,800 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1051
01:00:13,480 --> 01:00:23,640
Speaker 1: you're listening to your favorite shows.