Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome this stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
Speaker 1: we've discussed in the past how robots and uh in technology,
Speaker 1: the the emergence of both of these overtime, the evolution
Speaker 1: of these technologies. Um, we go hand in hand with
Speaker 1: the side idea that we but we look at the
Speaker 1: human body and we eventually discover, hey, this is basically
Speaker 1: a machine. It's a machine made out of blood and
Speaker 1: muscles and bone and tissue of different types. But we
Speaker 1: can look at like say the arm, and we can
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well that moves because that pulled on
Speaker 1: something there and that released there. Yeah, And it is
Speaker 1: so on one one side, we're figuring out how the
Speaker 1: human body works. On the other side, we're learning how
Speaker 1: to build things. We're learning how to make little machines,
Speaker 1: little eventually clockwork devices even And you see this as
Speaker 1: you know, I mean way back to Leonardo da Vinci's day,
Speaker 1: where we're creating things that can can move of their
Speaker 1: own power, or can where you can manipulate and use
Speaker 1: like a puppet or something you know, so we begin
Speaker 1: to reach this point where we're like, Hey, the human
Speaker 1: body is a machine and I can make machines. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a machine that is the human body,
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna attempt to make a mechanical effects simile
Speaker 1: of this particular um part of the human body. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not enough that you would just create something in
Speaker 1: your own image. We actually want to see how the
Speaker 1: systems work. Yeah, I mean it's part of the you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's part of understanding it. Let me create a
Speaker 1: working model of that so I can better understand how
Speaker 1: that works and at the same time, I can, you know,
Speaker 1: live this whole Frankenstein dream a little bit of of
Speaker 1: creating another human body. Almost. Yeah, And so to me
Speaker 1: it means that we just get to merge two of
Speaker 1: of our favorite topics, or at least for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are those robots and poop? Yes? In this podcast, Yes,
Speaker 1: as the title UH indicates, we are going to discuss
Speaker 1: a robotic pooping duck uh from the past. Uh, specifically
Speaker 1: from the seventeenth century. But but having discussed this whole
Speaker 1: idea that you know that we really want to mechanically
Speaker 1: replicate different functions to the human body, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: And within that framework, yeah I'm pooping duck. You just
Speaker 1: hear about it, you know, just read off the cuff
Speaker 1: and it seems insane. Yeah, it sounds like I remember
Speaker 1: finding these. People may have seen these before, but they
Speaker 1: used to make these little I think we're made out
Speaker 1: of a lead or something horrible, maybe some sort of metal,
Speaker 1: but uh, but it seems like they were probably made
Speaker 1: out of lad or something. But you you would put
Speaker 1: a little firework in it, and it looked like a
Speaker 1: little dog. And when the firework would go off, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the little things that make snakes, like
Speaker 1: these little black actions. Yeah, and they would they made
Speaker 1: a version of it, you know, back in like I
Speaker 1: don't know, the thirties ere or even say for like
Speaker 1: the World Exposition or something. Yeah, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's the kind of thing that like
Speaker 1: my dad would have played Luther when he was a kid. Um,
Speaker 1: and you would put the fire work in the little
Speaker 1: metal dog lighted up and then like it would look
Speaker 1: like the dog was pooping. It would look like black
Speaker 1: excrement was coming out of the little metal dogs behind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's an example of where the you know, the
Speaker 1: science was making the dog do something that was funny.
Speaker 1: It was funny that this little tiny dog was pooping.
Speaker 1: Science was making a joke. So on one one hand,
Speaker 1: the duck we're about to discuss does that. It is
Speaker 1: amusing to see a robotic duck defecate. Um, but it
Speaker 1: is all It also ties well into this idea of
Speaker 1: here's a function of the human body. Uh, if the
Speaker 1: human body is a machine, then I should be able
Speaker 1: to create a machine that does this function. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: so we'll discuss that and and I'm jumping ahead just
Speaker 1: for a moment, but we'll also talk about creating a
Speaker 1: machine a machine just for the purpose of creating excrement
Speaker 1: at some point, and then we will talk about its
Speaker 1: true pooping robot. Yes, because this first model that we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at is is slightly problematic. But but let's
Speaker 1: go back blueprint. Yes, so let's go back to the hundreds.
Speaker 1: All right, we're in France. Um, let's say you were
Speaker 1: You're on the streets of France, uh, streets of Paris,
Speaker 1: and you're just you're walking around. You get maybe you
Speaker 1: got a little extra coin in your pocket, jingling there,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you're you're you're a little loaded with
Speaker 1: delicious wine and and fatty foods and uh, and suddenly
Speaker 1: you hear somebody talking about, Hey, come see the pooping
Speaker 1: duck we have or the canal did you Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: that was so slaughtered. But what that means is digesting duck.
Speaker 1: The digesting duck, the fabulous digesting duck. So you can imagine, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you go into this exhibition hall and they you,
Speaker 1: you pay, you drop your coins into the bucket and
Speaker 1: you get to go in, and then they unveil this
Speaker 1: amazing um um example of modern technology and it really yeah, yes, automato,
Speaker 1: which is really important to talk about too, But it
Speaker 1: is this gleam beautiful sculpture. Basically, imagine setting up on
Speaker 1: this pedestal and it's it's gold. It's a gold plated
Speaker 1: copper duck, all right. Um. The it has gilded copper
Speaker 1: feathers that are that are that have a little holes
Speaker 1: in and that allows you to see the inside a
Speaker 1: little bit, so you can tell that it's it's both
Speaker 1: the work of art and it's and it's some sort
Speaker 1: of a machine. It's uh. And then it's in the
Speaker 1: shape of a duck, which is it. So it's both
Speaker 1: you see both the natural world. You have the comedic
Speaker 1: going on there because ducks are inherently funny, um and uh.
Speaker 1: And then it's also clearly a machine of human ingenuity.
Speaker 1: And then it's also this you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's made out of gold. It's it's it has precious metals.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful to the hole. Yeah, I mean some ofs
Speaker 1: like it was, you know, taken down from Olympius Mount Onlympius,
Speaker 1: you know, from the gods, and it has tons of
Speaker 1: moving parts, hundreds four hundred moving parts and each wing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you said you were reminded of the mechanical owl from
Speaker 1: Clash of the Titans, right, Oh, actually there's something else that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I often am reminded of Bibo. Yes, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of Febo as well. But okay, so you're you're there,
Speaker 1: and the things pretty awesome. And then it starts to move.
Speaker 1: It muddles its water with its beak, it appears to drink.
Speaker 1: It kind of sets up and sets down, and then
Speaker 1: somebody feeds it some with some grain pellets, I believe,
Speaker 1: and it eats it and it kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it actually has a swallowing motion, swallowing motion and uh,
Speaker 1: and then it eventually poops. Yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 1: the big part of it, right, And this is this
Speaker 1: is the part of the funny equation. Right again, it's
Speaker 1: it's a duck, and it's already funny, but it's now
Speaker 1: it's pooping. Yeah. And it's explained though that the grain
Speaker 1: is passing through tubes to a chemical filled stomach in
Speaker 1: the base and then on through the duck's bowels anus
Speaker 1: and a mechanical sphincter. Yeah. And again that there are
Speaker 1: parts of it where you can see you could like
Speaker 1: part the wings and you can see the glass beneath
Speaker 1: it and the duck's innards. So this is completely fascinating,
Speaker 1: Like I'm here and now, but can you imagine in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds beholding such a spectacle? Yeah? It begs
Speaker 1: the question who created this duck? Right? Who's this? Who?
Speaker 1: What kind of brilliant and maybe slightly demented mind came
Speaker 1: up with this? Right? A talented French engineer by the
Speaker 1: name of Jacques de vi Clessan. Yeah, he was born
Speaker 1: in seventeen o nine died two and ms French engineer.
Speaker 1: He was really into creating these automatons. These uh, specifically
Speaker 1: what we're referred to as philosophical toys, which are curios
Speaker 1: that combines science and amusement, which you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, a pooping duck or or or
Speaker 1: something to where it's the the ultimate function of this
Speaker 1: particular automaton. It's like the iPhone of its time, well,
Speaker 1: but the iPhone has purpose. This is more like, let's demonstrate.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like some of these demo robots you
Speaker 1: see today where it's like, wow, it does something amazing,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of pointless, like it's it's demonstrating a
Speaker 1: certain technological skill and it shows that, oh, well, these
Speaker 1: guys really figured out something clever in making this, but
Speaker 1: ultimately it doesn't do anything. Well, yes, not to him,
Speaker 1: because he and this is from the book Digital People.
Speaker 1: He gave an address in which he said he wanted
Speaker 1: to construct an automat on that will quote imitate in
Speaker 1: its movements, animal functions, the circulation of blood, respiration, digestion,
Speaker 1: and the combination of muscles, tendons, nerves to understand the
Speaker 1: different states of human beings and to heal their ills.
Speaker 1: So he really did have a purpose beyond this. It
Speaker 1: was about, let's create a model, working model of something
Speaker 1: so we can understand the original, which is not unlike
Speaker 1: what we do today when we when we are dissect
Speaker 1: animals or we run studies and we try to figure
Speaker 1: out how they react to their environment so and so forth,
Speaker 1: so that we can then take that knowledge and apply
Speaker 1: it to ourselves. But the model in and of itself
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything aside from right. Yeah, now, some of
Speaker 1: the other thing, earlier things he had done. He had
Speaker 1: made android waiters in seventeen to serve dinner and clear
Speaker 1: a table, yes each apparently um was some visitors deemed
Speaker 1: this profane and ordered the workshop destroyed this one who's
Speaker 1: working and more closely with the church. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean that probably did seem like some sort of weird
Speaker 1: witchcraft right at the time. And you can imagine it
Speaker 1: going kind of off to like uh in the Walls
Speaker 1: and Grament cartoons, where he's always making like the automated
Speaker 1: UH like delivery system that shoots him down to his
Speaker 1: breakfast table, dresses him, yeah, and dresses him and drops
Speaker 1: toast out and put butters the toast, and it always
Speaker 1: goes wrong, so it ends up like getting jam fired
Speaker 1: into his face. I like to picture that like church
Speaker 1: officials coming and uh uh and uh vakasan um having
Speaker 1: all these devices that just end up, you know, shooting
Speaker 1: jelly and terrifying and they're like forget it. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: then he also created a mechanical flute player that was
Speaker 1: supposedly just really impressive too, because it was like powered
Speaker 1: by nine different bellows, and it was this little wooden
Speaker 1: man that would play twelve different melodies in the flute.
Speaker 1: It had like a metal tongue supposedly that regulated air
Speaker 1: passing through the lips. It had gloved wooden fingers that
Speaker 1: covered the holes in the flute as required to play
Speaker 1: these different melodies that would seal off the air. So
Speaker 1: it's like this fabulous little clockwork wooden man would play
Speaker 1: the flute and people were just really in office, and
Speaker 1: and then he would he realized the time was right
Speaker 1: for the duck, right, and the duck really sort of
Speaker 1: vaulted his career quite a bit. You would think that,
Speaker 1: you know, some people might look down in it, but no,
Speaker 1: I mean it made him are more famous than he
Speaker 1: already was. Yeah, he seemed to realize that apparently he
Speaker 1: was quoted as saying that some ladies or some people
Speaker 1: who is that French enough, that's kind of gone off
Speaker 1: into some sort of some ladies or something. Now it's
Speaker 1: it's sounding like laughing or something. Some ladies or some
Speaker 1: people who only like the outside of animals, would have
Speaker 1: rather seen something else. Uh, you know, he's that he
Speaker 1: that he was. He was sort of already sort of
Speaker 1: joking like this is kind of I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're ready for this. So there's you know, he even
Speaker 1: he realized there's sort of a freak show kind of
Speaker 1: vibe to this. Yeah. Yeah, right, he had to kind
Speaker 1: of put that disclaimer out there. Although we'll say the
Speaker 1: ladies were probably most excited to see it, even if
Speaker 1: they couldn't voice it at the time. Uh. Yeah, Voltaire
Speaker 1: was actually he seemed impressed. Although it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: say because this comment could be taken anyway, but he
Speaker 1: said without vau consonance, duck, you have nothing to remind
Speaker 1: you have the glory of France. Like he was a
Speaker 1: bit of a smart alec, because it's hard to say
Speaker 1: whether or not he really felt that way. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was really fascinated too by the by one particular
Speaker 1: theory as to why he was fascinating fascinated with with
Speaker 1: defication and UH and mechanical ducks and again it ties
Speaker 1: into the whole. Let's make a working model of something
Speaker 1: so we can understand it, um. And uh. Apparently he
Speaker 1: was a man preoccupied by the state of his digestion.
Speaker 1: He may have suffered from fistula of the anus um
Speaker 1: and so this plagued him and UH, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into the details of this, but
Speaker 1: it's a really horrible thing to have to suffer from,
Speaker 1: especially uh in this day, at this day and age.
Speaker 1: And so his own focus on this machine bowels and
Speaker 1: anus and sphincter um may have been his own reflection
Speaker 1: on his his personal preoccupations. That makes sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: if he especially if he's trying to solve the riddle
Speaker 1: of his digestive self system for himself, and you know,
Speaker 1: and he had the capabilities to make this this uh
Speaker 1: piece of technology, why not do it? UM. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a bit a little bit how it worked real quick.
Speaker 1: It had a rubber hose meant to mimic a digestive canal.
Speaker 1: And that's the important thing here because as it turns
Speaker 1: out it is not really it's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a brilliant con way because it doesn't really digest food.
Speaker 1: As far as we know, it's it's we we can't
Speaker 1: really point to the duck today. The duck kind of
Speaker 1: like disappeared a little throughout history and and a lot
Speaker 1: of this is his guesswork. But but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the the hose was pretty importan because it was this
Speaker 1: um it was an illusion, and it was said that
Speaker 1: you know that you would put the chemicals down the hose,
Speaker 1: and then of course you can peek in and you
Speaker 1: can see something that approximates basically a digestive system, right
Speaker 1: the small intestine or you know, intestines in any case.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of fascinating in that sense. But again,
Speaker 1: this was just a bit of make believe magic here
Speaker 1: going on. As far as we can tell. The food
Speaker 1: or went into a slot in the base of the
Speaker 1: neck basically and stopped there. And then the the the
Speaker 1: duck excrement be it fake duck excrement, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: concocted from you know, materials around the kitchen or actual
Speaker 1: duck excrement. I don't know, but but that would have
Speaker 1: have come from a different chamber. Yeah, that was actually
Speaker 1: a secret compartment where that was coming from. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and someone observed that the duck kible I guess you
Speaker 1: could call it, was getting stuck in the base of
Speaker 1: the throat, so whatever came out on the other end
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly be the same thing, right, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a combination of magic trick and clockwork ingenuity. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, if you're interested, there is a replica at
Speaker 1: the Museum of Automatons in Grenoble, France, which I think
Speaker 1: would be a fascinating museum to go to. And it's
Speaker 1: really I mean, the the pooping duck has a pretty
Speaker 1: big reputation. UM recently came up in a Radio Lab episode. UM,
Speaker 1: it has showed up as motifs in film and art,
Speaker 1: and most notably in Thomas Pinchon's novel Mason and Dixon,
Speaker 1: the duck comes alive and terrorizes a French chef with
Speaker 1: his belt the beak of death. So, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely captured people's imaginations. But having talked about that,
Speaker 1: I think we need to return to what we tend
Speaker 1: to return to all the time. I'm pretty happy to
Speaker 1: talk about it the Cloaca first, this break. This presentation
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow. Okay,
Speaker 1: the Kloeca shows up again and just you know, in
Speaker 1: case you guys haven't checked out an other podcast about
Speaker 1: dinosaurs having sex. I believe it's called tsur sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Kloeca is a sort of uh well, it's let
Speaker 1: me put it this way. The Latin term means sewer,
Speaker 1: so it kind of does double duty for everything, so
Speaker 1: you can have sex, double duty, double duty, and you
Speaker 1: can do your duty. It's the Yeah, it's it's the
Speaker 1: naughty parts of of birds and and perhaps dinosaurs and
Speaker 1: definitely the platypus. That was the other podcast that the
Speaker 1: the Cloaca emerged from. Yeah, and as you can tell,
Speaker 1: it always makes me uncomfortable because I say things like
Speaker 1: you can have sex there. But it's important to to
Speaker 1: bring up in this instance because there's something called the
Speaker 1: Kloaca machine. Yes, and it's offying. It is terrifying, It
Speaker 1: truly is, even though it's it's the most sterile contraption
Speaker 1: ever made. It is uh has been created by Belgian
Speaker 1: conceptual artists them Delvoy and it's a thirty nine foot
Speaker 1: long machine. Yeah, and the pictures of it, it's like
Speaker 1: it it looks like it's laid out on tables and
Speaker 1: it's in this big, barren room and it's just kind
Speaker 1: of disturbing now, I mean looking at it and knowing
Speaker 1: what it is. Well, I mean it could be an
Speaker 1: autopsy room too, because it's so sterile. Uh. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that it's meant to be housed in a
Speaker 1: room sized installation of six glass containers connected to each
Speaker 1: other with wires, tubes and pumps. And every day the
Speaker 1: machine receives a certain amount of food. This is from
Speaker 1: art nett dot com. Meat, fish, vegetables, and pastries passed
Speaker 1: through a giant blender and then we're mixed with water
Speaker 1: impoured into jars filled with acids and enzyme liquids. There
Speaker 1: they got the same treatment that's the human stomach, and
Speaker 1: electronic and a mechanical units controlled the process, and after
Speaker 1: almost two days, the food came out of a filtering
Speaker 1: unit as something close to genuine human scat. It was
Speaker 1: nourished by a first class chef who prepared two meals
Speaker 1: a day in and detached kitchen. The atmosphere suggested a
Speaker 1: hospital equipped for a strange experiment, the birth and care
Speaker 1: of a machine that eats and defecates a mechanical baby. Hi,
Speaker 1: it seems to say, I'm almost like you, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about that last part um, but no, no,
Speaker 1: it does seem to drive home like two facts. A.
Speaker 1: It definitely ties in with the whole idea of let's
Speaker 1: make a machine that does what a human does, in
Speaker 1: this case turning food and processing and turning into excrements.
Speaker 1: And also there's this kind of it is kept, this
Speaker 1: kind of frightening, the humanizing thing to it, like look
Speaker 1: at this, this is what you basically are humans? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the machine. In fact, that same article goes on to
Speaker 1: say that there was a little girl in the field
Speaker 1: trip and she started crying at the side of it.
Speaker 1: Whose idea for a field trip with this kid? Like,
Speaker 1: all right, kids, we can either go to the zoo
Speaker 1: or we can go see the robotic cloaca at the
Speaker 1: art museum. Um. Yeah, and it really is awful when
Speaker 1: you you should definitely look at some videos online of
Speaker 1: it because the the end part, I suppose the anus
Speaker 1: part is squirting it out almost like a pastry. But truly,
Speaker 1: this is this is a this is poop coming out
Speaker 1: now it bags itself. It doesn't bag itself. Um, But
Speaker 1: because that would be an awesome like innovation. But no,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't believe it does. But I know
Speaker 1: that on display they had dozens of vacuum packed Kloeca
Speaker 1: eliminations that were made during the five first exhibits of
Speaker 1: the machine around the world, and there's apparently a waiting
Speaker 1: list of collectors that are really eager to buy one
Speaker 1: of those, especially the ones in the New York exhibition.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty sought after stuff. This sounds it sounds
Speaker 1: like a very kind of like turning the art wear
Speaker 1: world on its head. Its kind of a banks kind
Speaker 1: of thing, like I'm going to create a machine that
Speaker 1: creates poop and then I'm gonna sell it to art lovers. Yes,
Speaker 1: right right, which the artist I mean, he loves this, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to him in a second. Um. But
Speaker 1: the matter is, just in case you're worried about hygen,
Speaker 1: it's irradiated with gamma rays to kill the bacteria and
Speaker 1: dried and vacuum packed, um. And then after that they're
Speaker 1: packed air tight in a plexiglass box. So there you go.
Speaker 1: There's the Chloaca machine. UM. And then the reaction. Of course,
Speaker 1: I think the little girl starting to cry is pretty perfect.
Speaker 1: But what they found is that when they compared the
Speaker 1: human created excrement to the Chloaca machines excrement, it was
Speaker 1: remarkably similar in bacterial content. UM. And the machine also
Speaker 1: seemed to suffer from constipation and stomach upsets, caused in
Speaker 1: part by the diet that was fed to it and
Speaker 1: the different acids the ratio is used. Well, it's hard
Speaker 1: to follow that. UM. I mean just think good, it's
Speaker 1: the thing that have teeth. But I do want to say,
Speaker 1: just real quick, them delvoid the artist. He's completely obsessed
Speaker 1: with Pooh pursuits. Um. He created tiles that from far
Speaker 1: away looked like kind of like le Moorish tiles, but
Speaker 1: when you get up close on them you realize that
Speaker 1: it's like this curling figure and it's actually of his own. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a painted on their orders
Speaker 1: to photograph that's then put on there, but it's of
Speaker 1: his own excrement. UM. And this is the same guy,
Speaker 1: just just so you know, because obviously he's pretty much
Speaker 1: proporcifal um. He had an x ray in which excuse me,
Speaker 1: had an installation in which he X rayed people having
Speaker 1: sex using sonograms. Um well, not having sex using sonograms,
Speaker 1: but he used sonograms, mammograms, m r s, and X
Speaker 1: rays and then to film them having sex and I
Speaker 1: mean very intimate. So that guy, because I think I've
Speaker 1: I've run across that, but yeah, yeah, I mean we're
Speaker 1: talking about very graphic intimate scenes here. And he turned
Speaker 1: those into stained glass church windows and he was able
Speaker 1: to capture the images by slathering the models with barium
Speaker 1: powder mixed with nibia cream in order to eliminate illuminate
Speaker 1: the bones during X raying. Well, I'm glad he's not.
Speaker 1: Everything he does is vow that's scatological. So it does
Speaker 1: make me wonder. I wonder if he has like what
Speaker 1: if there's a reason for the fixation. I wonder if
Speaker 1: he has digestion problem. Yeah, well, well I don't know,
Speaker 1: because there's an interview in which he proclaims he's very
Speaker 1: proud of his experiment and he proclaims his like the
Speaker 1: best smelling, the best formed, the best texture. It's like
Speaker 1: he's like Kellogg And in that movie where Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 1: played him, Yes, he is subccessful. Yes, he's obsessed with
Speaker 1: goes into his toilet, are onto tile. Well he can
Speaker 1: be proud, but nobody likes likes a braggert um. Now
Speaker 1: there's another robotic if you might think, well, one, we
Speaker 1: have one actual pooping robot, right, so that's enough. Well
Speaker 1: there's another project that takes it much farther because the
Speaker 1: thing about the Chloaca machine, uh, is that it is
Speaker 1: not really creating energy from this and that's the crucial thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, our bodies don't just turn food into poop obviously, uh,
Speaker 1: just for the spectacle of that. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: purpose is I need to take the energy that is
Speaker 1: in food, use it from I've harvested for my body,
Speaker 1: turn it into more of my body, and then the
Speaker 1: excrement is the product byproduct, the unusable parts. So the
Speaker 1: real interest here to some robotists, specifically the robotist at
Speaker 1: Bristol Robotics Laboratory, have been to create a truly self
Speaker 1: sustainable robot. So they've had earlier projects and we're talking
Speaker 1: about basically robot predators. They can hunt down and eat
Speaker 1: living organisms then break them down into energy. Okay, does
Speaker 1: that sound a little bit, Well, yeah, I guess a
Speaker 1: little bit that can can eat. But so they have
Speaker 1: they've had earlier products, like they had the slug bot
Speaker 1: that thrives on garden because I guess they're easy pickings, right, um.
Speaker 1: And then they've had there was the echo Bot two,
Speaker 1: which eats flies, and they've even explored the possibilities of
Speaker 1: a plankton eating robot for the oceans. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like like some of these like you can imagine like
Speaker 1: a gardening robot going through your garden and then at
Speaker 1: and and not only is it there is it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a rumba that eats slugs. You want to
Speaker 1: de slug your garden, get a rumba that that eats slugs,
Speaker 1: but instead of having to recharge itself, it just charges
Speaker 1: itself on all the slugs it eats. You know. I
Speaker 1: think that's the basic I actually think it's a really
Speaker 1: cool idea. Um. But they use microbial fuel cell to
Speaker 1: the digest that biomass, right and turn it into electricity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They the echo about three is the most recent one
Speaker 1: and this and they've been really showing this one off
Speaker 1: and they they talk it up as the world's first
Speaker 1: robot to exhibit truly self sustainable functions. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: capable of operating with an enclosed environment for seven days,
Speaker 1: collecting its food and water from the area environment and
Speaker 1: by this weaning liquid food and little dishes. It's not
Speaker 1: this one isn't actually like hunting down slugs or anything
Speaker 1: quite so vigorous. But yeah. The the actual digestion is
Speaker 1: done by a series of microbial fuel cells uh bacteria
Speaker 1: in the south. And these cells consume the food and
Speaker 1: produce hydrogen atoms as a by product. All right. Then
Speaker 1: the hydrogen goes into the fuel cell itself, which generates
Speaker 1: electricity to the powers the robot. And then there's also
Speaker 1: it drinks water because it needs the water to keep
Speaker 1: from dehydrating. B exactly. And the remaining biomass goes through
Speaker 1: the entire cycle once more. So there's it's not just
Speaker 1: food food to poop with this thing. It actually cycles
Speaker 1: in another time just to make sure it gets everything
Speaker 1: it needs out of the out of the the food,
Speaker 1: water and uh, and then it basically goes potty. Ye.
Speaker 1: What I think it's interesting about this too, is that
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the Venus fly trap of robots,
Speaker 1: although it doesn't quite catch its own flies yet, right right.
Speaker 1: Then they've worked with some designs that would would enable
Speaker 1: that will do that, but not in a very cool,
Speaker 1: not like in a venus fly trap kind of mouth,
Speaker 1: the kind of way. Now then there's a so so yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an example of it catches, it catches something,
Speaker 1: digest that and turns it into energy and then excretes.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, the biproduct is, of course what you said,
Speaker 1: the potty part right now. And then there's one more
Speaker 1: and this this one got a little more play in
Speaker 1: the media because it's it's called the it was part
Speaker 1: of a DARPA concept and it was it's called the
Speaker 1: energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or e a t R eater,
Speaker 1: which uh, you know, so yeah, this one got a
Speaker 1: lot of play because people were like, they are designing
Speaker 1: a military robot that will eat human corpses, and so
Speaker 1: like everybody who is into writing headlines was like instantly like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's that's because it's headline gold. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: but you know, like for for people like myself who
Speaker 1: fear the singularity a bit, it does kind of seem like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's how it's gonna go down. Humans become food
Speaker 1: for robots, right, of course, it's one of the you
Speaker 1: know they say, like, you know, uh, dog bites man,
Speaker 1: that's not a story. Dog man bites dog. That's a story.
Speaker 1: But actually, robot eats human, human eats robot. Both are
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. So it's kind of a toss up there.
Speaker 1: But this was definitely the robot eats human thing, though
Speaker 1: the DARPA actually played that down. They're like, no, this
Speaker 1: is not about a deadly robot, uh, you know, eating
Speaker 1: the dead on the battlefield. But but basically the way
Speaker 1: this would it would depend on this thing called a
Speaker 1: Cyclone Mark five, which is uh, this company called Cyclone
Speaker 1: Power came up with and it's basically a steam engine. Uh,
Speaker 1: and most of the time it would not be uh,
Speaker 1: it would be digesting, like burning vegetable matter that it finds,
Speaker 1: so that that would be it's would primarily be a vegetarian. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When we're talking about the energy too that it's getting
Speaker 1: from these food sources, it's it's just not quite that
Speaker 1: big of a deal yet that it could actually um
Speaker 1: power these robots to the point where they would be
Speaker 1: zooming around. Yeah, this is not as near nearly as
Speaker 1: robust a design as the echo bot. Yeah, I mean this,
Speaker 1: this is fairly rudimentary. So it's going to take a
Speaker 1: couple of years before they eat us. Yeah, yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: I think it's actually really cool because it's an alternative
Speaker 1: to how we make and use energy. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: just another way we could harness ergy. Yeah. And it's like,
Speaker 1: imagine again, imagine a gardening robot that doesn't actually need
Speaker 1: to be refueled with by plugging itself into the electrical outlet.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be filled with gas. Imagine it
Speaker 1: going around and eating like just some you know, decaying
Speaker 1: vegetable matter and fueling itself or catching slugs or catching flies.
Speaker 1: So I see, I see a couple of unfortunate chipmunks there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's possible, all right. So there
Speaker 1: again terrifying future of robots. Plus well, digestion. It depends
Speaker 1: on how you look at it. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: digesting itself, you know. Um. But yeah, on one hand,
Speaker 1: we have you know, robots seating human corpses. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, we have robotic models of human functions that
Speaker 1: we would want to better understand. All right, take me
Speaker 1: to the light to some emails. All right, Yes, we
Speaker 1: have some emails that actually deal with ye, both of
Speaker 1: wese deal with our mentioned and discussion of non Pho
Speaker 1: non Cloe related topic. So Adam writes in Adam says,
Speaker 1: I am an open nonbeliever in all religions, but belief
Speaker 1: but believe that the basic ideas associated with them will
Speaker 1: always have their place in society. And he's responding to
Speaker 1: our religion in Space episode Don't Kill, Don't steal, don't
Speaker 1: sleep with your neighbor's life, respect your blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: it goes on forever. I really enjoyed the reference to
Speaker 1: the buffet, where I said that I kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea personally of of uha future humans taking the
Speaker 1: best aspects of different religions and carrying them with them
Speaker 1: in the future and leaving the batty stuff on the
Speaker 1: table with human belief. He says, I really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: reference to buffet because that's the way I have always
Speaker 1: loved my life, and that's the way I teach my
Speaker 1: kids to live their lives. Religion in Space would need
Speaker 1: to be flexible so that you could effectively understand what
Speaker 1: you discover about other people in their religion. So in
Speaker 1: short of a face style religion, with tolerance being the
Speaker 1: rack of lamb with a nice plum sauce, and flexibility
Speaker 1: being the asparagus with shallots, and uh o blanc sauce
Speaker 1: is the way to go. And yes, I would gladly
Speaker 1: wear a turtle neck to the table. All right, turtleneck
Speaker 1: Carl Sagurn reference there. Oh, yes, yes, because we were
Speaker 1: discussing a sagan religion of the in which we would
Speaker 1: all wear title. Next cool, here's another one. This one
Speaker 1: is responding to the Memory Palace episode that we did
Speaker 1: about the about human memory and this memory trip. That
Speaker 1: well technique that we used that to relies on spatial um.
Speaker 1: Spatial memory um. Anyway, Sean writes in and says, hey,
Speaker 1: Robert Julie, I just listened to the Memory Palace episode.
Speaker 1: I was blown away. Uh as you were talking. It
Speaker 1: was almost step by step how I remember everything I
Speaker 1: get with a lot of meetings, and it's sometimes rude
Speaker 1: to take notes, So I just uh sit, listen and
Speaker 1: associate where they're sitting with the words in relation to me,
Speaker 1: and I can recall entire meeting for weeks after and
Speaker 1: everyone is so baffled by it. But I have been
Speaker 1: doing it since grade school. In fact, I failed classes
Speaker 1: while I aced the finals in tests because notes are large,
Speaker 1: great percentage, and I've had to retest because teachers believed
Speaker 1: I was cheating. I love this episode. I finally know
Speaker 1: what to call the method to my madness. Thanks Sean.
Speaker 1: It's very cool. Yeah, that's really cool. There's somebody using
Speaker 1: the memory palace or or related techniques in their daily
Speaker 1: life to remember things. I have to say I've been
Speaker 1: employing it now and again sometimes so my attention gets
Speaker 1: diverted by some of the images that I come up with.
Speaker 1: So you find yourself at the grocery store and you're like, what,
Speaker 1: like you created this like fantastic image of like chipmunks
Speaker 1: dressed in like tutor uh costuming and yeah, sumo wrestler
Speaker 1: with a bikini on? Like what was that actually representing?
Speaker 1: What that congees? Yeah? Well cool h. If you have
Speaker 1: anything you would like to share with us, cool links,
Speaker 1: cool tidbits, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: as Blow the Mind, and you can always drop us
Speaker 1: a line at Blow the Mind. It has to work
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Staffork's staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.