Speaker 1: He lives there. From there he plots my destiny and
Speaker 1: schemes to usurp my throne. His eyelids of stone taunt me,
Speaker 1: insatiable minotaur. My dreams chafe against his horns. In my dreams,
Speaker 1: I enter the labyrinth. I'm there alone, unchained. The scepter
Speaker 1: bends in my fist, and he comes before me, monstrous, sweet, monstrous, free,
Speaker 1: And I can no longer govern my dreams. So many
Speaker 1: deliberations wait for the day when the world of men
Speaker 1: will harbor my story and blood. Secret River. You have
Speaker 1: not heard me yet. Kill me first. Now you provoke
Speaker 1: me as if you're plotting some kind of scheme I've
Speaker 1: made up my mind. Ultimate freedom is fostered by that
Speaker 1: blade which you hold in your fist, the same as
Speaker 1: a sun and parting of waters in the ocean deep.
Speaker 1: What do you know of death grant her of profound life? Look,
Speaker 1: there is only one way to kill a monster, and
Speaker 1: that is to embrace you. Welcome to stot to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with Part three.
Speaker 1: Of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. We're coming out of
Speaker 1: the dark at you once again. So those opening selections
Speaker 1: were from a play called The King's by Julio Cortissar,
Speaker 1: who's an Argentinean writer that we've been talking about recently.
Speaker 1: That that translation was by Kari Dad's veach. But so
Speaker 1: the first part I read were the words of of
Speaker 1: King Minos, and then after that was an exchange between
Speaker 1: Theseus and the Minotaur, with our producer Seth as Theseus
Speaker 1: as the jerk of the story. Yes, um, this is
Speaker 1: a This is such an interesting uh play. I had
Speaker 1: never heard of this before until I ran across this
Speaker 1: very translation at in translation dot Brooklyn Rail dot org Um.
Speaker 1: Because I don't believe it is currently in print in English.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong on that. I see that it
Speaker 1: is in print in Spanish, but not in English. Cortessar
Speaker 1: has a number of really interesting short stories that I
Speaker 1: read back when I was in college. One of them
Speaker 1: that I remember really liking is called Axcelotal, and it's
Speaker 1: a story about a man who repeatedly visits an axcel
Speaker 1: lotal tank at the Jardine de Paris, and he gradually
Speaker 1: finds himself transforming into an axl odal as he watches them.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to read that one.
Speaker 1: Uh you you sent me a copy to check out.
Speaker 1: In fact, a number of his short story sound just
Speaker 1: right up my alley. But I've never at anything by Cortazar.
Speaker 1: Now another fun thing about this, so some of you
Speaker 1: might remember that we had a call an opening reading
Speaker 1: on a previous episode about the minotaur from uh Borhes
Speaker 1: the House of Asterion. Bores, of course, was also an
Speaker 1: Argentinian writer. Um, perhaps you know, one of the most
Speaker 1: famous Argentinian writers. And it's interesting that this play The
Speaker 1: Kings or las Areles was published in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: just a year after Borges wrote, uh that story to
Speaker 1: begin with the House of Hysterion. Oh, is there like
Speaker 1: an implication of inspiration or common inspiration between the two. Well,
Speaker 1: I was looking into this because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people assumed that Cortisar was inspired by the House
Speaker 1: of Hysterian Um. Borges himself actually published the play alongside
Speaker 1: Asterian in the literary journal that he edited in ninety seven.
Speaker 1: But I was I was looking at an article titled
Speaker 1: the Incessant Return of a Minotaur by Amy Fraser Yoder
Speaker 1: and just keeps coming back. Yeah, And they write that
Speaker 1: while it was often assumed that bores story influence cortis Are,
Speaker 1: there's evidence from letters between Cortazar and Borhees that cortis
Speaker 1: Are might not have read borhees story previously, so there
Speaker 1: might be more convergence here than inspiration. But still it
Speaker 1: seems that Borees was was very much a fan of
Speaker 1: this piece. I mean, he published it, and obviously how
Speaker 1: could Bores not like an entire play with all of
Speaker 1: this this this beautiful you know, poetic language and contemplation
Speaker 1: of the labyrinth and the and the the various kings
Speaker 1: that are caught within its grasp. Really, this is what
Speaker 1: I was just telling you earlier, before we started hitting
Speaker 1: the court. You could basically you could print this play out.
Speaker 1: You could throw a dart at it, and you could
Speaker 1: you could find something beautiful. Uh. That's like, there's this
Speaker 1: whole stretch where because I should point out that the
Speaker 1: minotaur and theseus have a very long conversation, uh, considering
Speaker 1: that most of the time it's just about and fighting,
Speaker 1: they have a long conversation in this play, and there's
Speaker 1: this whole bit about the string that theseus has uh
Speaker 1: has has has has wound out behind him, you know,
Speaker 1: so he can return so you can escape the labyrinth,
Speaker 1: about how it is like a river flowing out to
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. So it's and and then the ocean
Speaker 1: is also the minute, our sister, there's there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of beautiful stuff in it. So even if you're
Speaker 1: you're not really into reading a lot of unproduced plays,
Speaker 1: you should, you should. I recommend you check this out
Speaker 1: at the website we mentioned earlier, and if you've had
Speaker 1: a chance to see it, Uh, that sounds awesome. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear about it. That's interesting that you mentioned
Speaker 1: the twine as a river, because that goes back to
Speaker 1: in Avid Avid's telling of the story when he's talking
Speaker 1: about Dadalus's design of the labyrinth. He describes it as
Speaker 1: like a river that twists and turns back and forth,
Speaker 1: and waters that churn in upon themselves going this way
Speaker 1: and that. Ah, that's right, that's right. So this is
Speaker 1: indeed our our third episode on the Minotaur Um and
Speaker 1: we wanted to I guess kick things off here first
Speaker 1: of all with that that that brief reading, but also
Speaker 1: just to discuss pop culture. Minotaur is a little bit
Speaker 1: um and cultural minotaurs of the more modern era in
Speaker 1: a little bit more more detail. Um. As far as
Speaker 1: just cinema goes, I have to say, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's really hard to find a quality minotaur in a
Speaker 1: film or TV. I don't know if you've had the
Speaker 1: same experience, Joe, but I feel like even when the
Speaker 1: costume or the c g I or overall presentation is
Speaker 1: solid enough, and lord knows, it often isn't um. Minotaurs
Speaker 1: are often presented as just mirror beastly brutes. You know
Speaker 1: they're there, They're in that. A big part of that
Speaker 1: is that they are not in the labyrinth. Yes, a
Speaker 1: minotaur out of its labyrinth is like a hermit crab
Speaker 1: out of its shell. It's just not even really the
Speaker 1: same creature, is it. The best on screen minotaur I
Speaker 1: can think of is actually one that we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the first episode, which is the one in Jim Henson's
Speaker 1: Story to Aller Greek Myths with Michael Gambon as as
Speaker 1: deadal as I think, or at least as the storyteller. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that that one is really good because you don't
Speaker 1: get too much of a look at the minotaur. I think,
Speaker 1: as it should be, you know, it should be glances
Speaker 1: here and there, and or glances or glimpses whichever. I
Speaker 1: meant to say that. But the glimpses you do get
Speaker 1: are full of terror and pity. It's it's very good.
Speaker 1: It conveys sort of both of the meanings of the
Speaker 1: story as we read it today, the probably the more original,
Speaker 1: terrifying reading, but also the subtle reading where you see
Speaker 1: the monster as an object of of of sadness and pity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: that one is is just excellent and I highly recommend
Speaker 1: folks check that out if you haven't seen it already.
Speaker 1: I think it all holds up really well. Uh. David Morrissey,
Speaker 1: who would go on to of course play the Governor
Speaker 1: and the Walking Dead? Uh? Is in that a young
Speaker 1: David Morrissey As theseus. I have never seen The Walking
Speaker 1: Dead or I've never made it past the second episode.
Speaker 1: But but when I was looking at him, first of all,
Speaker 1: he kind of reminds me of Tom Cruise's creepy looking
Speaker 1: brother who was in Lost. Do you remember that guy? No,
Speaker 1: I don't. Tom Cruise's brother was in what was Unlost
Speaker 1: Seth offers a correction, I was entirely wrong. He his
Speaker 1: name is William Pother and he's Tom Cruise's first cousin,
Speaker 1: not his brother. But he looks kind of like Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: but with an extra dose of boyish charm and creepiness
Speaker 1: at the same time. And he played a role in
Speaker 1: Lost that was I don't know. I lost ultimately was
Speaker 1: such a betrayal, but but there was a really good
Speaker 1: moment in the first season involving his his character. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought he kind of looked like him, And in
Speaker 1: any case, he does look like a jock bully, which
Speaker 1: is kind of what Theseus is. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: mentioned in a previous episode that John Would, another great
Speaker 1: actor of the British stage, was in the The Greek
Speaker 1: myths Um series as well, playing Minos. But uh in
Speaker 1: another episode that's about Data List and Icarus. But still,
Speaker 1: if you take them all in you kind of you
Speaker 1: kind of get into different We're really multiple episodes. You
Speaker 1: get the story of of Minos and the Minotaur and Theseus. Well,
Speaker 1: somebody out there who is a filmmaker who is dedicated
Speaker 1: to practical sets and effects, you make this movie, make
Speaker 1: the Labyrinth and Minotaur movie. No, no, no green screen
Speaker 1: set junk no uh no c G I Minotaur. I
Speaker 1: want a good costume with really classic makeup effects and
Speaker 1: and go all out. Now in terms of Minotaurs out
Speaker 1: of context, there is one example that I think works
Speaker 1: really well, and it is from the music video for
Speaker 1: Einstreew's Into New Baton's song Sabrina, which is which is
Speaker 1: on YouTube. I I have no idea. Check it out.
Speaker 1: Oh it's well. Einstreet's on the New Baton is a
Speaker 1: Is this this great German band? They started out more
Speaker 1: industrial or post industrial, but then they kind of change
Speaker 1: their sound as they win. They have a number of
Speaker 1: great songs, but this particular video consists entirely of this
Speaker 1: sad minotaur. That's that's well brought to life. Uh, putting
Speaker 1: on makeup in this really dank kind of bathroom. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it now. Yeah, it's that's all that happens
Speaker 1: in it. But it captures this. It captures the sadness
Speaker 1: of minotaur at least that that I feel like should
Speaker 1: be a vital component alongside the savage minotaur. This video
Speaker 1: is strong, with the cinematography of a nineties anti drug
Speaker 1: p S A commercial. Yeah, it's got that that gross
Speaker 1: green film on everything like that, This is your brain
Speaker 1: on drugs. Yeah it does. It does remind me in
Speaker 1: some ways of various p s as I remember from
Speaker 1: UH as a child watching Canadian television, where there might
Speaker 1: be something that's like really weird and fantastic, and then
Speaker 1: at the end you find out, oh, this is the message. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get a little more into the science of
Speaker 1: mazes and UH and zoonotic diseases, you promised at some
Speaker 1: point that you were going to come back to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the minotaur and D and D.
Speaker 1: You mentioned this in the first episode. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 1: if the the error is to take the minotaur out
Speaker 1: of its place and just presented as a mere brute uh,
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons has certainly been guilty of that. Uh
Speaker 1: and and not only Dungeons and Dragons, but just individual
Speaker 1: dungeon masters, who of course have the power to to
Speaker 1: take a minotaur and drop him in anywhere you go
Speaker 1: into the you go into the end, the inn keeps
Speaker 1: a minotaur as see what you'd like to drink? Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's a lot of room to
Speaker 1: to misuse the minotaur, you know, at an individual level.
Speaker 1: But I will say that at least in the fifth edition.
Speaker 1: I can't really speak to earlier editions because I just
Speaker 1: don't have those numbers in my head. But in the
Speaker 1: most recent edition they do have a very high wisdom
Speaker 1: score and they have an ability called labor then recall. Uh,
Speaker 1: so the minotaur can perfectly recall any path that has traveled,
Speaker 1: which I feel like that ability. It'll least, at the
Speaker 1: very least, it is a nudge to the dungeon master. Hey,
Speaker 1: you should put this minotaur somewhere where it can take
Speaker 1: advantage of this. You should create some sort of labyrinth.
Speaker 1: Be that labyrinth an actual you know, stone dungeon, or
Speaker 1: perhaps something like a hedge maze or like a really um,
Speaker 1: you know, complicated city. I mean, there's so many different
Speaker 1: directions you could go in there. And in terms of
Speaker 1: actual adventure modules and campaigns, uh, the campaign out of
Speaker 1: the Abyss does put minotaurs in a place referred to
Speaker 1: as the Labyrinth, which which is very nice and I
Speaker 1: thought they did a good job in that. The labyrinth
Speaker 1: then recall things seems like it would also close to
Speaker 1: the adventurers. The option of certain strategic responses to the minotaur,
Speaker 1: like you can't do to the minotaur what Danny does
Speaker 1: to Jack at the end of the Shining movie, right,
Speaker 1: you can't get it turned to ound in his own maze,
Speaker 1: like he's going to know his way around. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: is the ultimate master of this location unless you have
Speaker 1: some sort of privileged knowledge or magical um abilities that
Speaker 1: have been gifted to you by other parties. So I
Speaker 1: was thinking about mazes, and I actually had an etymological
Speaker 1: question that I had to look up because I was
Speaker 1: wondering are the English words maze and a maze as
Speaker 1: an amazing related, And it turns out that they are.
Speaker 1: They probably do come from the same linguistic route. So
Speaker 1: by around the beginning of the fourteenth century, the now
Speaker 1: maze meant something like a delusion or a bewilderment, a confusion,
Speaker 1: and this is related to the Old English verb a
Speaker 1: mac n or a m a s i a n
Speaker 1: meaning to confuse, and so the origins of this word
Speaker 1: are not exactly clear. I saw one comparison on the
Speaker 1: online Etymological Dictionary to a Norwegian word um mass m
Speaker 1: a s or mace meaning exhausting labor, which I thought
Speaker 1: would be a kind of interesting place for that concept
Speaker 1: to come from. But apparently maze came to have its
Speaker 1: current meaning in English, meaning something like a labyrinth the
Speaker 1: structure with branching paths around the end of the fourteenth century.
Speaker 1: But but so now you know, like amazement is related
Speaker 1: to a maze. They're the same thing, and they come
Speaker 1: from the idea of bewilderment, confusion and and being confounded.
Speaker 1: But hey, practical survival question. Imagine you are not theseus,
Speaker 1: You're not armed with a with a sword or whatever.
Speaker 1: You don't have a ball of twine to make your
Speaker 1: way out of a maze. If you were just one
Speaker 1: of the Athenian youths finding yourself trapped in an unfamiliar maze,
Speaker 1: could you get out? Is there actually a strategy for
Speaker 1: optimizing the solution of a maze other than trying to
Speaker 1: cut through walls? Obviously you can't do that well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have heard the whole
Speaker 1: only take like right hand turns right, keep turning right exactly,
Speaker 1: So it depends on how maze is constructed. But that
Speaker 1: actually is a successful strategy for most mazes. The solution
Speaker 1: if you don't have a ball of twine. Is what's
Speaker 1: known as the right hand rule, and that's actually arbitrary,
Speaker 1: could be the right hand or the left hand rule,
Speaker 1: but it's as simple as this. So you reach out
Speaker 1: with your right hand and you touch the right side
Speaker 1: wall of the corridor, and then you just proceed forward
Speaker 1: without ever taking your hand off the wall. So if
Speaker 1: you come to a dead end, you pivot around with
Speaker 1: your hands still touching the right side of the wall. Again,
Speaker 1: the same thing would work with the left hand. It's
Speaker 1: also known as the wall follower algorithm. And always following
Speaker 1: the same wall surface will mean that you bear in
Speaker 1: the same direction at every turn, which is what you
Speaker 1: were saying. If you always make the right turn, eventually
Speaker 1: you will find your way out. This will uh you know,
Speaker 1: even if you hit a dead end, you'll double back
Speaker 1: on your path. And if you keep following this method,
Speaker 1: you could actually solve the maze even blindfolded, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what orientation you have mentally, you will just
Speaker 1: always be executing a new pathway unless you're trying to
Speaker 1: get yourself out of a dead end. But there is
Speaker 1: a catch here, and the catches that for this to work,
Speaker 1: the maze has to be what they call simply constructed,
Speaker 1: and what that means is all of the walls of
Speaker 1: the maze are connected to the outer wall or to
Speaker 1: each other, and this method will not necessarily work in
Speaker 1: a maze with what are called island walls, walls that
Speaker 1: are not connected to the outer boundary, and with these
Speaker 1: types of mazes you can just end up going in
Speaker 1: circles around a wall segment in the middle. I've actually
Speaker 1: read about some funny cases of people going people going
Speaker 1: into corn mazes, you know, these things for fun or
Speaker 1: hedge mazes, and they get stuck in there and they
Speaker 1: try to use the wall follower pathway to get out,
Speaker 1: but they get stuck in there because they're just tracing
Speaker 1: around some isolated internal wall that doesn't connect to the
Speaker 1: outer walls, forced to wander forever until the fall festival
Speaker 1: employees come and retrieve you. But there there is another catch.
Speaker 1: So even if you are in a maze with island
Speaker 1: walls walls that don't connect to the outer boundary, you
Speaker 1: can still use the right hand rule if you use
Speaker 1: it beginning at the entrance, Because if you start at
Speaker 1: the entrance and you stick to it, you will never
Speaker 1: actually start following an island wall to begin with, because
Speaker 1: you'll always be attached to a wall that's attached to
Speaker 1: the exterior boundary. So if you start doing the doing
Speaker 1: the right hand rule at the entrance, it will work,
Speaker 1: though it might make the maze less fun, I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on whether this is like a torture human sacrifice
Speaker 1: scenario or just like a corn maze for fun. Right.
Speaker 1: But I guess if you if you use the right
Speaker 1: hand rule and it's the right kind of maze, you
Speaker 1: are in a sense transforming a maze into a labyrinth,
Speaker 1: if we're going to that, if you're using those terms
Speaker 1: exclusively for a maze is something with many different branching
Speaker 1: paths in which you can get lost in a labyrinth
Speaker 1: as being this complex system through which there is only
Speaker 1: one path, uh, and you don't have to to think
Speaker 1: about what you're doing as you follow it. Right, multi
Speaker 1: cur soul versus unicursal, you're turning it into a unicursal
Speaker 1: pathway where you are again just submitting to the design
Speaker 1: of the maze and taking decision making entirely out of it. Right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you go to Ikea and
Speaker 1: you just decide, I'm just gonna go with the I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna buy anything, but I'm just gonna just go straight,
Speaker 1: just gonna follow the path. By everything my right hand touches,
Speaker 1: you end up in a maze of meatballs. But thinking
Speaker 1: about how to solve maze is also got me, uh,
Speaker 1: thinking about another tangent here, which is the role that
Speaker 1: mazes have played in the history of psychological research, so
Speaker 1: much that in a way, the maze became almost a
Speaker 1: physical emblem of the discipline of psychology and popular culture
Speaker 1: like well, especially the behavior at schools. Of course, So
Speaker 1: if you saw a research psychologist in a movie made
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties or fifties, what were they doing?
Speaker 1: I mean, they're probably running rats through a maze, right,
Speaker 1: Like every psychology lab in a movie has a rat
Speaker 1: maze in it. Yeah, and you think, I feel like
Speaker 1: they're a fair number of educational shorts that also feature
Speaker 1: footage of mice and mazes. And here I think the
Speaker 1: maze as a research tool emerges in a very interesting
Speaker 1: relationship with the maze of myths. So consider the following
Speaker 1: with the myth of Theseus and the minotaur in mind.
Speaker 1: I was reading an article about the history of maze
Speaker 1: research by a psychologist named ce James Goodwin in the
Speaker 1: Monitor on Psychology, which is the magazine of the American
Speaker 1: Psychological Association or the a p A. And Goodwin begins
Speaker 1: by producing a really unbelievable quote from a neo behaviorist
Speaker 1: psychologist named Edward Chase Tolman, who was president of the
Speaker 1: APIA at the time. He uttered these words, and this
Speaker 1: was part of his yearly addressed to the a p
Speaker 1: A in nineteen thirty seven, And this is what he said.
Speaker 1: Everything important in psych cocology can be investigated in essence
Speaker 1: through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determinants
Speaker 1: of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze.
Speaker 1: So everything, every everything, everything you could want to know
Speaker 1: about minds can be understood by watching how rats behave
Speaker 1: in a maze. Like, given enough time and enough rats
Speaker 1: and enough mazes, we can fully understand minds. I mean,
Speaker 1: undoubtedly it's useful for various things. That everything is going
Speaker 1: a bit far. Yeah, So I mean, I guess, to
Speaker 1: be fair to Tolman, I think maybe he was intentionally
Speaker 1: overstating his case a bit to be provocative. But this
Speaker 1: is actually indicative of like a powerful strain of thinking
Speaker 1: in the history of behaviorist psychology, basically that psychological science
Speaker 1: is not really concerned with internal phenomena. I remember, this
Speaker 1: was the behaviorist school, so it's not really about thoughts
Speaker 1: or feelings and uh. And also the belief that differences
Speaker 1: between in species are not necessarily very relevant. Brains in
Speaker 1: general were just sort of imagined as learning and conditioning
Speaker 1: machines that produce behavior based on how they've been conditioned,
Speaker 1: and so careful study of how rats behave under various
Speaker 1: controlled conditions and how they respond to various incentives and
Speaker 1: stimuli and training can eventually tell you pretty much everything
Speaker 1: that you would want to know about brains, even about
Speaker 1: human psychology. Now, I think this is clearly an extremely
Speaker 1: misguided point of view, But an interesting question is how
Speaker 1: did you get to their Like, how how did you
Speaker 1: get to the place where somebody could say that about
Speaker 1: rats and mazes and not immediately be mocked for it,
Speaker 1: you know, like, it just sounds so ridiculous. So maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break and then when we come
Speaker 1: back we can talk about the origins of rat maze research. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, So how did we get so many mice
Speaker 1: in these mazes. Okay. So I mentioned this article by
Speaker 1: by C. James Goodwin, and Goodwin writes in his article
Speaker 1: that most historians of science agreed that the animal maze
Speaker 1: as a research tool was really pioneered in the eighteen
Speaker 1: nineties by researchers at Clark University. Specifically, this was a
Speaker 1: couple of graduate students named Willard Small and Linus Klein,
Speaker 1: who were working in the lab of the early American
Speaker 1: psychologist Edmund Sandford Uh. Though sometime around the same time,
Speaker 1: the psychologist Edward Thorndyke also experimented with building a sort
Speaker 1: of maze for research on baby birds. He did this
Speaker 1: by stacking books in odd configurations, but he he thought
Speaker 1: of these structures as pens. But the mazes constructed in
Speaker 1: the Sanford lab at Clark University had an interesting couple
Speaker 1: of points of inspiration. So one was in the structures
Speaker 1: built by rats under a porch. Uh the so Klein's
Speaker 1: Mall and Sanford were interested in studying the home finding
Speaker 1: ability of rats. Home finding, of course, is a very
Speaker 1: important skill for many motile animals. How do you find
Speaker 1: your way back to home base after leaving to forage,
Speaker 1: or how do you find your way through confusing twist
Speaker 1: and turns to locate a source of food or another
Speaker 1: familiar location. And so Klein recalled an incident where there
Speaker 1: had been digging under the porch at a cabin on
Speaker 1: his father's farm in Virginia, and when the porch was excavated,
Speaker 1: they discovered that there were these runways that had been
Speaker 1: left quote by large feral rats to their nests under
Speaker 1: the porch, and the runways client thought somehow resembled mazes,
Speaker 1: and this led to the idea of designing a test
Speaker 1: environment based on a maze to study the psychology of rats.
Speaker 1: And the model they ended up using for this maze
Speaker 1: was the Hampton Court Maze in England. And Robert, I've
Speaker 1: got a picture or for you to look at here.
Speaker 1: This is still a popular tourist attraction. It's a hedge
Speaker 1: maze just outside London that was commissioned by William the
Speaker 1: Third around the year seventeen hundred and it is said
Speaker 1: to be the oldest surviving hedge maze in England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a very impressive, very famous maze, kind of
Speaker 1: trapezoidal in shape. I think they restructured it somewhat to
Speaker 1: make it more of a rectangle in the lab version.
Speaker 1: The irony is that mice would have no problem at
Speaker 1: all with with the actual handed chordinates. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just cut underneath. Yeah, So of course you had
Speaker 1: to create one that's much more unforgiving to the body
Speaker 1: of a mouse. So what they did was at the
Speaker 1: Clark Lab they made a tiny version for rodents for
Speaker 1: rats with slight redesigns. UH had a wooden floor and
Speaker 1: walls made of wire mesh, and so research with rats
Speaker 1: there in this maze went on for several years, mostly
Speaker 1: under Willard Small, and Goodwin writes the following quote. This
Speaker 1: was the time when it's like pology was the science
Speaker 1: of mental life. So it was not surprising that Small
Speaker 1: described his maze study in quote mentalistic terms rather than
Speaker 1: in the kind of language one might expect to read
Speaker 1: in a more modern learning study. So instead of reporting
Speaker 1: results in terms of error rates and time to completion,
Speaker 1: Small tried to infer what the rats were doing as
Speaker 1: they made their way through the maze, and this led
Speaker 1: to observations such as and here I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from Small. When describing a rat almost making a wrong
Speaker 1: turn in the maze, Small wrote that the rat quote
Speaker 1: hesitated as if scratching his head, then entered this dead
Speaker 1: end path slowly and doubtfully only a few steps. However,
Speaker 1: then with a sudden turn and a triumphant flick of
Speaker 1: his tail, he returned to the correct path. Which is
Speaker 1: funny because that does not sound like scientific writing. Yes,
Speaker 1: hesitated as if scratching his head, the triumphant flick of
Speaker 1: his tail. I mean this. This is a kind of
Speaker 1: qualitative description that's unusual to more modern psychological methods, where
Speaker 1: in modern psychological methods you would try to turn everything
Speaker 1: into unambiguous quantitative data points and remove the subjective judgment
Speaker 1: of the researcher as much as possible. But here Small
Speaker 1: is just saying like, I wonder what little Mr Rat
Speaker 1: is thinking as he goes to the left or the right. Well,
Speaker 1: I think he I think he feels triumphant. Now I
Speaker 1: think he feels like a big, strong rat. Now I
Speaker 1: know he's getting dangerously close to writing a smashing pumpkin song.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always had questions about that song because
Speaker 1: if the world is a vampire sent to drain aane,
Speaker 1: what is it drain ain Ing? The world contains everything,
Speaker 1: doesn't it? The way the world is invoked there. It's
Speaker 1: like the some some total of existence is sent to
Speaker 1: drain what's outside of itself to drain. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it is outer reality versus inter reality, right, Okay, it's
Speaker 1: Newmana and Phenomena. Yeah, I guess so that's the way
Speaker 1: I always interpreted. I mean, not that I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time. I'm really analyzing the lyrics that song.
Speaker 1: But um, but that would be my guest. The Phenomena
Speaker 1: is a vampire sent to dra and the New Mina. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: Or I guess you could say the maze or the
Speaker 1: cage is the thing the environment that contains the rat
Speaker 1: or the minotaur, what have you. Here's a twist. What
Speaker 1: if that song is sung from the point of view
Speaker 1: of a minotaur, like among the Athenian youths, there is
Speaker 1: a secret destroyer. You know. I don't think I even
Speaker 1: looked for actual minotaur songs. Uh. There may be some
Speaker 1: really good ones out there, and I then I just
Speaker 1: don't know about them. Is there not a misfit song?
Speaker 1: Is there that they just say the minotaur and then
Speaker 1: you and it's the minotaur again or something? It seems
Speaker 1: like I can't I can't really find much of anything.
Speaker 1: But yeah, whether you're talking about the standards of modern
Speaker 1: research today or the behaviorist research that would come into
Speaker 1: vogue in the twentieth century, in any case, you know,
Speaker 1: you would not want to say, I think that the
Speaker 1: rat is thinking that the world is a vampire sent
Speaker 1: to dray a a. And you just want to like
Speaker 1: neutrally describe unambiguous objective behaviors and and and avoid being anthropomorphic.
Speaker 1: And Smallest research was criticized even by some people at
Speaker 1: the time for being anthropomorphic, like trying to inhabit the
Speaker 1: mind of the rat as if it had human thoughts. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: small made some interesting and influential discoveries, and these included
Speaker 1: the idea that rats could learn navigation and home finding
Speaker 1: with very little reliance on their sense of site. Two
Speaker 1: of the rats in his study group were blind, and
Speaker 1: yet they learned the maze just as well as the
Speaker 1: sighted rats. And the use of senses other than site
Speaker 1: can make sense when you consider that rats are often
Speaker 1: navigating almost completely dark spaces, or navigating spaces at night,
Speaker 1: you know, under floorboards and so forth. And Small believed
Speaker 1: he had established with his research that rats learned through
Speaker 1: a gradual accumulation of direct associations between sensory stimuli and
Speaker 1: the maze and patterns of success, and this would later
Speaker 1: prove foundational to the behavior as school of psychology, which
Speaker 1: was very focused on associative learning and gradual conditioning as
Speaker 1: the root of animal behavior. But probably more important than
Speaker 1: what these studies actually found in their conclusions was the
Speaker 1: precedent they set for research methods, because Small's research led
Speaker 1: to this huge surge in maze research, much of which
Speaker 1: used rats as the study animal. The most classic variation
Speaker 1: is that you can mess around with independent variables to
Speaker 1: create an average learning curve for rats by you know,
Speaker 1: you run rats through a maze multiple times, and you
Speaker 1: chart the time it takes them to complete the maze
Speaker 1: and the number of errors they make along the way
Speaker 1: with each successive attempt, which is a very useful tool
Speaker 1: for studying a certain kind of learning and how various
Speaker 1: things affect that kind of learning, like drugs and so forth.
Speaker 1: But some maze studies also used other animals at the
Speaker 1: very simple and we've talked before about the the sort
Speaker 1: of maze like research done on worms that was focused
Speaker 1: on plan areah. This was the origin actually of the
Speaker 1: memory transfer research of James McConnell that we talked about
Speaker 1: in a couple of full length episodes that you can
Speaker 1: check out in our archive called Devour of Memories. But
Speaker 1: the short version is that the American psychologist James McConnell
Speaker 1: believed he had discovered that memories in the form of
Speaker 1: learned associations could be transferred from one flat worm to
Speaker 1: another via cannibalism. So you teach one flat worm, grind
Speaker 1: it up, feed it to another flat worm, and it learns,
Speaker 1: you know, eat your brains and gain your knowledge. Later
Speaker 1: research through some doubts on that conclusion, but they're still interesting.
Speaker 1: Ongoing research today hinting that planaria might possibly retain memories
Speaker 1: after having their heads cut off, so there might be
Speaker 1: some kind of memory in the bodies that's not just
Speaker 1: in the brain. And of course, at the opposite end
Speaker 1: of the scale, you've got studies that actually put humans
Speaker 1: in full size mazes with consent, of course, to study
Speaker 1: their behavior. But anyway, this huge sir in maze research
Speaker 1: lead to regimes that meant a researcher could make a
Speaker 1: claim like the one Tolman made in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: The idea that basically all you need to study psychology
Speaker 1: is some rats in a maze, And he could say
Speaker 1: that and still be taken seriously. Uh. Tolman's assertion, of course,
Speaker 1: seems again ridiculous on its face today, but maze research
Speaker 1: does still remain very important, especially in narrower domains like
Speaker 1: animal motor behavior, problem solving, spatial memory and things like that.
Speaker 1: And mazes are used in studying the effects of particular
Speaker 1: drugs on behavior, So like you could say, does this
Speaker 1: anti anxiety drug cause a rat or a crayfish to
Speaker 1: take one path or the other rather than you know,
Speaker 1: freezing paralyzed at T junction? Or does a drug promote
Speaker 1: obsessive recurring checks of the same path and things like that. Now,
Speaker 1: and looking at what kind of maze research is going
Speaker 1: on today, I came across one thing that I that
Speaker 1: I was thoroughly amazed by and very disturbed by, which
Speaker 1: is this invention known as automated team mazes. I guess
Speaker 1: there's actually nothing more nefarious about this than there is
Speaker 1: about a regular maze for for research, but watching video
Speaker 1: of it somehow kind of bothered me. Basically, an automated
Speaker 1: team maze is a robot maze with movable walls that
Speaker 1: can be raised and lowered to alter the maze path
Speaker 1: as the animal proceeds, and I don't know, it feels
Speaker 1: very house of leaves to me. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: we we brought up a house of leaves yet, by
Speaker 1: the way, but that is a great use of a
Speaker 1: maze and a minotaur uh in uh is a literary example.
Speaker 1: I'm actually in the middle of reading it right now
Speaker 1: for the first time, so I haven't finished yet. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil too much for people, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the middle of that book is a good place to
Speaker 1: be because the book is is intentionally, quite intentionally is
Speaker 1: a labyrinth, and you are supposed to, I think, feel
Speaker 1: to a certain extent lost within it and hunted within it.
Speaker 1: It's one of the more unnerving things I think I've read,
Speaker 1: and you know, over the past ten years, extremely creepy
Speaker 1: now in terms of labyrinths that change and move around you.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think datals would be proud, like
Speaker 1: this is exactly the sort of thing that you can imagine. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they're the great inventor having created it also
Speaker 1: reminds me of of the wonderful cinematic maze that we
Speaker 1: find in Jim Henson's Labyrinth. Uh. There, in the early
Speaker 1: phases of that they go through to you know, Sarah
Speaker 1: goes through different parts of the Labyrinth to try to
Speaker 1: get to the Goblin city to rescue her brother. But
Speaker 1: there's a there's one section in particular where she begins
Speaker 1: to realize that she can't mark the path behind her
Speaker 1: because the path keeps changing. Goblins keep moving things around,
Speaker 1: moving stones that she's marked, or even just seemingly magically,
Speaker 1: she'll turn around and what was once a passage is
Speaker 1: now just a blank wall. I recall this being a
Speaker 1: plot point in the movie Cube as well. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: the very very Cube like as well this video. There's
Speaker 1: no minotaur in Cube, but that should have been well
Speaker 1: in a way, there are a lot of all the
Speaker 1: traps are kind of like mini minotaurs. There are killing instruments,
Speaker 1: and again coming back to the idea that the minotaur
Speaker 1: is sort of the kill function of the Labyrinth, it
Speaker 1: just has a lot of little kill functions instead of
Speaker 1: one great all encompass and kill function. I want to
Speaker 1: come back and say, I, in all honesty, I don't
Speaker 1: want to throw aspersions on an automated team maze, which
Speaker 1: seems like a perfectly useful research tool. Uh. It seems
Speaker 1: like they're actually mainly to automatically track data on the
Speaker 1: movements of the animals, so it it makes the human
Speaker 1: rat run are obsolete very useful. But before we move
Speaker 1: on from rats and mazes, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: one more thing that I found interesting, and it ties
Speaker 1: into something I know you've covered on at least one
Speaker 1: older episode, uh, Rob, which was the idea of cargo
Speaker 1: cult science that was explored in this famous talk given
Speaker 1: by the physicist Richard Feynman in nineteen seventy four. He
Speaker 1: was giving a commencement address to cal Tech. I guess
Speaker 1: it was the graduating class or something, and that's usually
Speaker 1: who would be at a commencement address, why, I said,
Speaker 1: probably uh, And he was, you know, talking about various subjects, pseudoscience,
Speaker 1: the need for rigor in in designing experiments, scientific research,
Speaker 1: and uh. And so, in simple terms, I think the
Speaker 1: idea of cargo cult science is it's a bad form
Speaker 1: of science where uh, there is not enough rigorous effort
Speaker 1: devoted to trying to disprove hypotheses. Rather every basically you
Speaker 1: just kind of establish a hypothesis based on what data
Speaker 1: you've already collected, and then further occurrences of the same
Speaker 1: types of data are taken as confirmation of the hypothesis. So,
Speaker 1: for an example, I'm just making this up. If you
Speaker 1: were to find that rats run mazes faster in the
Speaker 1: daytime than they do in the night time, and then
Speaker 1: you say, oh, I'm gonna fit a hypothesis to that,
Speaker 1: it's because they come from the planet Crypton and are
Speaker 1: given extra strength by the rays of our yellow sun
Speaker 1: during the day. And then subsequent studies finding yet again
Speaker 1: that rats run mazes faster in the daytime than than
Speaker 1: in the nighttime, those are taking his confirmation of the
Speaker 1: yellow sun hypothesis when they don't actually provide any support
Speaker 1: for that at all. So, in general, Fineman in the
Speaker 1: speech is advocating that researchers adhere to more rigorous methods
Speaker 1: to rule out false positives and things like that, and
Speaker 1: and they avoid the temptation to rush to publish with
Speaker 1: sloppy experimental designs. And so I can read from the
Speaker 1: part of his speech here where he talks about rats
Speaker 1: and mazes. He uh, he says, quote, there have been
Speaker 1: many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes and
Speaker 1: so on, with little clear result. But in ninety seven
Speaker 1: a man named Young did a very interesting one. He
Speaker 1: had a long corridor with doors all along one side
Speaker 1: where the rats came in, and doors along the other
Speaker 1: side where the food was. He wanted to see if
Speaker 1: he could train the rats to go in at the
Speaker 1: third door down from wherever he started them off. So
Speaker 1: what he's looking for is a spatial relationship between the
Speaker 1: entrance door and the food reward door. Will they learn
Speaker 1: that inference? Uh? And fine man continues, No, the rats
Speaker 1: went immediately to the door where the food had been
Speaker 1: the time before. The question was, how did the rats know?
Speaker 1: Because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform
Speaker 1: that this was the same door as before. Obviously there
Speaker 1: was something about the door that was different from the
Speaker 1: other doors, So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging
Speaker 1: the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the
Speaker 1: rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to
Speaker 1: change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell.
Speaker 1: Then he realized the rats might be able to tell
Speaker 1: by seeing the fights and the arrangement in the laboratory
Speaker 1: like any common sense person. So he covered the corridor
Speaker 1: and still the rats could tell. He finally found that
Speaker 1: they could tell by the way the floor sounded when
Speaker 1: they ran over it, and he could only fix that
Speaker 1: by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one
Speaker 1: after another of all possible clues and finally was able
Speaker 1: to fool the rats. So they had to learn to
Speaker 1: go in the third door. If he relaxed any of
Speaker 1: his conditions, the rats could tell. Now, from a scientific standpoint,
Speaker 1: this is an a number one experiment. That is the
Speaker 1: experiment that makes rat running experiments sensible because it uncovers
Speaker 1: the clues that the rat is really using and not
Speaker 1: what you think it's using. And that is the experiment
Speaker 1: that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in
Speaker 1: order to be careful and control everything in an experiment
Speaker 1: with rat running. I looked into the subsequent history of
Speaker 1: this research. The subsequent experiment and the one after that
Speaker 1: never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of
Speaker 1: his criteria of putting the corridor on sand or being
Speaker 1: very careful. They just went right on running rats in
Speaker 1: the same old way and paid no attention to the
Speaker 1: great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not
Speaker 1: referred to because he didn't discover anything about the rats.
Speaker 1: In fact, he discovered all the things you have to
Speaker 1: do to decipher something about rats. But not paying attention
Speaker 1: to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science. Now,
Speaker 1: just as a follow up, I was reading an article
Speaker 1: by Ross Pomeroy on Real Clear Science that was about
Speaker 1: this story that Fineman tells trying to identify who this
Speaker 1: uncited researcher was. Uh, the author of this article Pomeroy,
Speaker 1: he thinks that this is probably referring to the animal
Speaker 1: scientist Paul Thomas Young, but it's not known for sure
Speaker 1: who Fineman is referring to. If we take Fineman's word
Speaker 1: that you know, he was familiar with this unpublished research
Speaker 1: and stuff. Uh, It's it's very sad that this went forward,
Speaker 1: but it's such a wonderful illustration of how difficult and
Speaker 1: tedious it can be just to get to the point
Speaker 1: where you can start to establish conclusions in animal research.
Speaker 1: I also love in Environment's writings here that you you
Speaker 1: also get the sense of the the construction of a maze,
Speaker 1: you know, like this, the thing that is that is
Speaker 1: just there to confuse and and and provides no clear
Speaker 1: solutions to itself or to the world. Well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really funny because so design It highlights how designing a
Speaker 1: maze for a rat is kind of different than designing
Speaker 1: a maze for a human, right because rats, uh might,
Speaker 1: because of their their ecological niche, they might have senses
Speaker 1: that are attuned to things that humans wouldn't even imagine
Speaker 1: would be a useful clue in in you know, cheating
Speaker 1: and seeing through the confusion that the maze is supposed
Speaker 1: to provide. Yeah, yeah, we have to remember that that rats,
Speaker 1: other organisms that we might put in maze, they live
Speaker 1: in a different sense realm than we do. Like their
Speaker 1: dependence on you know, site versus smell, etcetera. Are going
Speaker 1: to be rather different than ours. And then there you know,
Speaker 1: they're theirs. Their smell abilities, they are going to beyond,
Speaker 1: be beyond what we have at our disposal. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: reaching here, but I was imagining some interesting parallels here
Speaker 1: between the maze as a psychological research instrument and the
Speaker 1: maze of myth, because what they're doing in both cases
Speaker 1: is trying to strip away extraneous detail and context from
Speaker 1: from the decision of the character, whether that's a an
Speaker 1: animal that's the subject of research or a character in
Speaker 1: a story, and just sort of like isolate one salient
Speaker 1: trait at a time. That that's often what mythology does,
Speaker 1: like it boils down a human too courage embodied and
Speaker 1: has no other really identifiable human traits in that moment
Speaker 1: in the story. And the same thing for the rat.
Speaker 1: You're trying to like take away all of the things
Speaker 1: that make a rat a rat at accept its ability
Speaker 1: to decide between X and Y based on z Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. So I guess it doesn't exactly
Speaker 1: work with theseus because theseus does bring bring context from
Speaker 1: the outside world into the maze. Right. He comes in
Speaker 1: armed with tools and with information that he technically should
Speaker 1: not have if this were a fair fight, right, right,
Speaker 1: he has he has broken the game. Yeah, he has
Speaker 1: corrupted the experiment. These are not legitimate results. All right.
Speaker 1: On that note, we're going to take one more break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back than alright, we're back. Uh now, Robert,
Speaker 1: is it time to talk about the minotaur and zoonotic diseases? Yes,
Speaker 1: it is. I was actually delighted to run to run
Speaker 1: across this paper titled Europe The Bull and the Minotaur
Speaker 1: The Biological Legacy of a Neolithic love Story. This is
Speaker 1: by Harold Brusso, published in the journal Environmental Microbiology back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. Now, Harold Bruce is a
Speaker 1: research scientist and he's the author of the book The
Speaker 1: Quest for Food and Natural History of Eating, And incidentally
Speaker 1: he's also an author on several COVID nineteen papers to
Speaker 1: come out this year. Yeah, I saw that. I looked about.
Speaker 1: It looks like he's affiliated with the Nestly Research Center
Speaker 1: in Switzerland and uh and at some point I think
Speaker 1: I also saw him affiliated with the University of Geneva,
Speaker 1: but the main things I saw recently were the Nestly
Speaker 1: Research Center. I gotta say he's got a very unusual
Speaker 1: writing style for scientific papers. It's very whimsical, Yes, definitely whimsical.
Speaker 1: Um and you get a sense of that from the
Speaker 1: title here as well. Basically, in this article, Brusso uses
Speaker 1: the minotaur myth as a means of discussing the Neolithic
Speaker 1: revolution and the manner in which the domestication of goats
Speaker 1: and cattle, etcetera. Opened the door for new pathogens. As
Speaker 1: he points out, hunters only had limited contact with prey
Speaker 1: and most close contact occurred after the animal death. Not
Speaker 1: to say this is safe for the human hunter, but
Speaker 1: quote all the mechanisms which microbes induced in the infected
Speaker 1: host to assure their transmission, like sneezing, coughing, or diarrhea,
Speaker 1: are not any longer operative in the dead animal. Okay,
Speaker 1: So he's saying that. And despite the fact that people
Speaker 1: who hunted for a living would be coming in contact
Speaker 1: with animals and their body fluids pretty often, people who
Speaker 1: do animal agriculture are actually more at risk for animal
Speaker 1: transmitted diseases than hunters are, right because suddenly you're not
Speaker 1: just hunting the animal down, killing it, process and then
Speaker 1: processing it, which is you know, certainly processing the animal
Speaker 1: could come with some risks, but it's one's dead. It's
Speaker 1: not going to sneeze on you. But with the domestication,
Speaker 1: humans come into close contact with these animals all the time.
Speaker 1: They come into clause contact with sick animals as well
Speaker 1: as the animals dung, which was valuable for fuel and fertilizer,
Speaker 1: uh and also another pathway for disease. And you're going
Speaker 1: to be spending time. I mean, I just imagine there's
Speaker 1: more time with the animal. Like you kill an animal
Speaker 1: when you're hunting, and then you kind of deal with it.
Speaker 1: But like, but that's one animal for a sort of
Speaker 1: limited period of time. While you're processing it or carrying
Speaker 1: it back to home or wherever this other thing would be,
Speaker 1: you're just sort of like wandering around with herds of
Speaker 1: sheep or cows or something all day and there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of them all crammed together, right, And and thus
Speaker 1: he states that you know, we can we can safely
Speaker 1: anticipate quote that the early farming society was plagued by
Speaker 1: new diseases zoonosis was feeding new pathogens into the human population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very interesting to consider. I mean, we we think
Speaker 1: about the advent of agriculture in in the Neolithic period
Speaker 1: as you know, one of the progenitors of civilization, but
Speaker 1: we don't often imagine a lot of the downsides that
Speaker 1: might have come along with it. And it seems quite
Speaker 1: possible that he's correct that zoonotic diseases, an increase in
Speaker 1: diseases transmitted from animals to humans would be one of
Speaker 1: those consequences. Yeah, so he writes that humanities growth simply
Speaker 1: created new opportunities for these microbes, which in turn discovered
Speaker 1: humans as quote an attractive life support um. This, he says,
Speaker 1: follows the principle of the marine microbiologists call killing off
Speaker 1: the winning population. So he points out that the viruses
Speaker 1: had co evolved with their host during evolution, we would
Speaker 1: expect the closest relatives of measles viruses in paramixo viruses
Speaker 1: of primates instead. However, the most important human pathogens, such
Speaker 1: as highly transmissible agents like measles and smallpox, are closely
Speaker 1: related to viruses from domesticated animals. Measles, for instance, circulates
Speaker 1: exclusively in the human population, but is a close relative
Speaker 1: of render pest virus that is found in cattle. And
Speaker 1: of course this uh is not limited just to ancient times.
Speaker 1: I mean, human viruses emerging from cultivated animal stocks still
Speaker 1: happens today. I mean, I think it's pretty common for
Speaker 1: flu strains to come out of say like pigs or
Speaker 1: birds that are domesticated by humans now. Bruso also points
Speaker 1: out that the close relationship between smallpox and cow pox
Speaker 1: was actually really important for the history of vaccination. Physician
Speaker 1: Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had acquired cow pox
Speaker 1: were resistant to smallpox. He also points out that tuberculosis
Speaker 1: is caused by the Microbacterium tuberculosis complex, to which M.
Speaker 1: Bovis belongs. Any lists several other examples, and also discusses
Speaker 1: the idea popularized by Jared Diamond and Guns, Germs and
Speaker 1: Steel that Europeans brought with them their Old World viruses
Speaker 1: which they had, which they had generated out of their
Speaker 1: history of animal domestication, all this time spent in close
Speaker 1: confines with their domesticated species. Now, I will say, with
Speaker 1: reference to Diamond, Uh, it's been along time since I
Speaker 1: read that book. Years ago I read Guns, Terms and Steel. Uh,
Speaker 1: I can tell that he Diamond has recently been subject
Speaker 1: to a lot of criticism by experts in the fields
Speaker 1: he covers. Uh. If so, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be too unfair, but it seems like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of allegations of kind of cherry picking,
Speaker 1: the thing that often happens when somebody's got a very broad,
Speaker 1: sweeping explanation of history. Um. But I do think one
Speaker 1: of the basic genres of things explored in that book
Speaker 1: is interesting, which is the broad thrust of it is
Speaker 1: trying to explain human history in terms of environmental biogeography.
Speaker 1: So showing that you know what people's come to power
Speaker 1: at what place in time, can at least in large
Speaker 1: part be explained by often otherwise overlooked environmental biological and
Speaker 1: geographical factors such as like what types of crops grow here,
Speaker 1: or what types of animals nearby could be domesticated, what
Speaker 1: kinds of pathogens or people exposed to and things like that.
Speaker 1: So uh So, whatever one would think of Diamond himself
Speaker 1: or or his fuller argument, I do think it's important
Speaker 1: to remember that history is not just a battle of
Speaker 1: wills and virtues between like powerful individual people and their personalities.
Speaker 1: It's also very much about mosquitoes and rainfall patterns and
Speaker 1: farming equipment and stuff like that. Now, to come back
Speaker 1: to Bruso here, the idea that he's presenting here isn't
Speaker 1: that the Neolithic door opens and immediately all of these
Speaker 1: zoonotic diseases rush in um. This would have taken place
Speaker 1: over early in a long period of time. Uh It
Speaker 1: still opens the door, though, but sometimes the these these
Speaker 1: basically these zoonotic events are going to occur just throughout
Speaker 1: that the history that unfolds. For example, measles seems to
Speaker 1: have emerged from render past between c E eleven hundred
Speaker 1: and c E twelve hundred, and is pointed out by
Speaker 1: Ferous at All in Origin of measles of the measles
Speaker 1: virus UH. Divergence from render pest virus between likely occurred
Speaker 1: between the eleven and twelveth entries that was in Virology
Speaker 1: Journal in two thousand ten UH, and they were likely
Speaker 1: limited outbreaks prior to this, when the pathogen wasn't fully
Speaker 1: adapted to humans yet. And then Bruso also points out
Speaker 1: that there were population issues to consider as well. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, as the duration of epidemics are influenced by
Speaker 1: population density. So again, not only in the wake of
Speaker 1: the you know, the Linolithic Revolution, we get to the
Speaker 1: point where we are we are building cities, we are
Speaker 1: living in closer confines to each other, and we're creating
Speaker 1: not only the the environments in which a pathogen could
Speaker 1: leap from one species to another, but also these robust
Speaker 1: environments in which a pathogen could then spread, you know,
Speaker 1: massively through a larger human population. Yeah, this is all
Speaker 1: interesting and important to consider so I'm wondering, where does
Speaker 1: the minotaur come in. Ah, yes, the minotaur. Uh so
Speaker 1: there is a minotaur and all of this um and uh.
Speaker 1: And he sets it up out rather nicely. I think
Speaker 1: he says, generations of poets, philosophers, and psychologists have interpreted
Speaker 1: and reinterpreted ancient Greek myths. I will thus take the
Speaker 1: liberty to add a biological interpretation to this strange story. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think he's being very clear about the
Speaker 1: fact that he's not making an argument that the minotaur
Speaker 1: is about um zoonotic diseases. But he's saying, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take the minotaur and it's myth, and I am
Speaker 1: going to use it to make a statement about about this,
Speaker 1: to to explain something or attempt to explain something about
Speaker 1: this relationship between animals, humans and their pathogens. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it's not like there's actually a good case that zoonotic
Speaker 1: diseases are literally the historical inspiration of the minotaur myth.
Speaker 1: But it does work pretty amazingly as a metaphor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does a great job with it. Again, he's a
Speaker 1: kind of kind of a whimsical writer, especially in this piece. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hear it, so point he he you know, relates
Speaker 1: the minotar myth a bit, but points not only to
Speaker 1: the minotaur but also to Uh, you know, the of
Speaker 1: Zeus in his bull form, seducing the Princess Europa or
Speaker 1: Europe and taking her to Crete, where he impregnates her
Speaker 1: with three sons. One of those three sons is Minos Uh.
Speaker 1: Europe's brothers then search the known world for her and Uh,
Speaker 1: and then Bruso writes this quote. The paths of Europe's
Speaker 1: brothers recall partly the migrations of the early farmers from
Speaker 1: the Near East into Europe and North Africa, partly Phoenician colonization.
Speaker 1: The too close relationship of Mino's wife with a bull
Speaker 1: leads to a children eating chimera, stretching a bit of
Speaker 1: the fantasy. I would interpret this monster as the species
Speaker 1: crossing virus derived from the new close contact between cattle
Speaker 1: and farmer. The labyrinth might be a type of quarantine
Speaker 1: imposed on infected subjects. Sir Evans, the excavator of the
Speaker 1: Minoa Crete, suggests that it reflects the plan of the
Speaker 1: Royal Palace Innsis. Some viruses are bovine. Human chimera is
Speaker 1: like Minotaur, which both ate the young children of the
Speaker 1: earlier inhabitants of Europe. This myth might thus keep the
Speaker 1: memory of the hardship following the encounter of the cattle
Speaker 1: farmers with the hunter gatherers of prehistoric Europe, and in
Speaker 1: the rest of the article deals primarily with examples of
Speaker 1: this and discussions of its import That's great, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say, to reiterate, of course, I'm not convinced,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he's necessarily making the case that
Speaker 1: actually this was the literal inspiration of the myth, But
Speaker 1: it is a really awesome metaphor the idea that the
Speaker 1: introduction of domesticated livestock such as cattle and sheep and
Speaker 1: stuff into the lives of humans would have these echoes
Speaker 1: throughout history that have biological implications. In the myth, they
Speaker 1: are the biological implications of creating a hybrid monster. In reality,
Speaker 1: the biological implications are creating these zoonotic diseases that are
Speaker 1: in a way a hybrid type being because they jump
Speaker 1: from one species to another when you're living in close
Speaker 1: contact long enough off. And even though the inspiration of
Speaker 1: the myth is probably not direct in any way, I mean,
Speaker 1: I do wonder about a kind of loose, un semiconscious
Speaker 1: connection and that like, isn't there always a sort of quiet,
Speaker 1: wordless unease about civilization and its products? And it just
Speaker 1: shows up again and again every generation, even while we
Speaker 1: enjoy the fruits of civilization, like we enjoy the stability
Speaker 1: of food supply and the opportunity for the diversification of
Speaker 1: labor and all of that, all the stuff we get
Speaker 1: from a settled urban existence, from agriculture, from technology and
Speaker 1: so forth, isn't there in every generation a new expression
Speaker 1: of the feeling that something is kind of wrong with
Speaker 1: all this, that there, that it is somehow perverted or dangerous,
Speaker 1: even monstrous, and that people should somehow get back to
Speaker 1: nature in one way or another. Some version of this
Speaker 1: philosophy is always there. It seems like, yeah, I mean, really,
Speaker 1: to come back to the the idea of the labyrinth
Speaker 1: itself and and the other creations of datalists, there's this,
Speaker 1: I you know, there's so much of that science fictional energy,
Speaker 1: that anxiety concerning technology. Uh in this figure. You know,
Speaker 1: what if we created something that lifted us up on
Speaker 1: high but also lead to our destruction? Uh? What what
Speaker 1: if we created something so elegantly designed that it was
Speaker 1: too confusing for even its creator to escape that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, Yeah, totally. I mean you can look at
Speaker 1: a million different kinds of technology as essentially the labyrinth,
Speaker 1: the thing that becomes so complicated it escapes the intentions
Speaker 1: of its creator. And uh, yeah, I mean an obvious
Speaker 1: place to look at that would be artificial intelligence. I
Speaker 1: mean people often use the people often use the metaphor
Speaker 1: of Pandora's box. They're like, are you opening the box?
Speaker 1: Who knows what what will come out? But the labyrinth
Speaker 1: is also a pretty good metaphor for for what's happening
Speaker 1: with AI. Yeah, and and there's always the concern that
Speaker 1: there will be the minotaur within it as well, the
Speaker 1: thing that is not just passively anti human but act
Speaker 1: the anti human. But I mean it's easy to imagine
Speaker 1: that kind of thing with AI, because at least AI
Speaker 1: reaches such a level of complexity that you're imagining it
Speaker 1: almost as an agent that you can't control, you know.
Speaker 1: I think you can even apply this idea of our
Speaker 1: our perennial anxiety or suspicions about the downsides of of
Speaker 1: civilization and it's technological products um to too earlier innovations,
Speaker 1: even things as seemingly simple as agriculture, because in fact,
Speaker 1: agriculture comes with tons of consequences that would not have
Speaker 1: been predicted by the people who invented. It comes with
Speaker 1: risk of zoonotic diseases, It comes with changes in diet
Speaker 1: and how that affects human life, and a million other things.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean when it was many of the
Speaker 1: the catastrophic problems that we're dealing with today in our world.
Speaker 1: Are you know the the end results of this these
Speaker 1: initial revolutions. But you mentioned Pandora's Box earlier. So I
Speaker 1: want to come back just one more time to Bruso
Speaker 1: here Be because he has this particularly haunting closing to
Speaker 1: the paper, and again this is from two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: in which he considers how modern global environmental changes will
Speaker 1: lead to another quote highly dynamic phase of viral transmissions
Speaker 1: into the human population. He writes, quote viruses must be
Speaker 1: the dark side of the heritage from the Neolithic revolution
Speaker 1: to remain with Greek myths, they might correspond to a
Speaker 1: half open Pandora's box, a poisoned gift of the bull
Speaker 1: god Zeus to mankind. Humans go now into a phase
Speaker 1: of globalization whose ecological impact might represent a full opening
Speaker 1: of this cursed box. Man is today a major evolutionary force,
Speaker 1: and we can safely anticipate that man made environmental changes
Speaker 1: will lead to a new deal in our relationship with microbes.
Speaker 1: When the diseases had left the box, the Greek myth
Speaker 1: told that only hope remained in the box. Today we
Speaker 1: are probably better served with science as our best fence
Speaker 1: against surprise attacks from the viral empire, uh, than with
Speaker 1: the principal hope. Got some chills from that. I mean
Speaker 1: to say nothing against hope. I mean, hope is good,
Speaker 1: but don't show up with a hope to a science fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or if you're gonna bring hope in one hand, bring
Speaker 1: science in the other. All right, So there you have it.
Speaker 1: This was episode three of our journey through the Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: our consideration of the minotaur, uh and and the myth
Speaker 1: that it emerges out of the culture, It emerges out
Speaker 1: of the various ideas that it is still stirring and
Speaker 1: the human imagination today. Uh. This one is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Yeah, totally. And we have got so much
Speaker 1: more October stuff for you. We're busting it seems here. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: there's so yeah, we we've we've got We've got so
Speaker 1: many more ideas to go. I think we even still
Speaker 1: have a few ideas to come up with. But but
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a full month of of Halloween related
Speaker 1: wonder In the meantime, you would like to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind if you
Speaker 1: want to catch up on our current Halloween offerings, uh,
Speaker 1: explore our past Halloween offerings, or some of our past
Speaker 1: myth related episodes, you know, such as our our study
Speaker 1: of the Medusa from earlier this year. Well, you can
Speaker 1: find this podcast wherever you get your podcasts and wherever
Speaker 1: that happens to be. We just ask that you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. If you want to find us, like really quickly,
Speaker 1: you can just go to stuff to Blow your Mind
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Speaker 1: heart listing for this show. And if you do go there,
Speaker 1: there's a place you can click on somewhere on that
Speaker 1: page kind of a labyrinth. Uh, you can click on
Speaker 1: like store merchandise or what have you. That'll take you
Speaker 1: to our our t shirt store where we have a
Speaker 1: few different designs with stuff like our logo maybe a
Speaker 1: Medusa or to that sort of thing. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
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