Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie, and we're
Speaker 1: picking up with where we left up in the last episode.
Speaker 1: This is Surgical Wings Part two. Highly recommend that you
Speaker 1: go back and listen to Surgical Wings Part one before
Speaker 1: you continue with this one. Sometimes we'll have a part
Speaker 1: two one and a part two where you can really
Speaker 1: take them in any order, but this is definitely a
Speaker 1: case where you want to go part one and then
Speaker 1: part two so you'll know exactly why we're talking about
Speaker 1: taking a human arm, doing a whole bunch of plastic
Speaker 1: surgery on it, and turning it into a bird one indeed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've discussed in the past about how we have
Speaker 1: augmented ourselves before. I believe there's someone who had an
Speaker 1: ear grafted onto his skin um or rather that the
Speaker 1: tissue was grown for it. Yeah, that was in our
Speaker 1: performance art episode. Yeah, and um, you know we've had
Speaker 1: we've talked about people who have taken out ribs before
Speaker 1: to have like, you know, twelve inch wast um. We
Speaker 1: have certainly manipulated and bottle bodily modified ourselves to the
Speaker 1: extent where it's a little bit shocking, but you get
Speaker 1: two surgical wings or the idea of it, and is
Speaker 1: it that shocking? Yeah, it's that is the question we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about in the second half. First of all,
Speaker 1: I do want to say just a quick thing about
Speaker 1: plastic surgery again. And when I was growing up and
Speaker 1: I would hear the term plastic surgery almost exclusively in
Speaker 1: reference to people who had new noses and or new
Speaker 1: chest augmentations. Um, I kind of had in my mind
Speaker 1: that it was plastic, like it was actually literally plastic, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: they have a plastic nose. It's like a humpty hump
Speaker 1: or something, you know, where it's just you know, set
Speaker 1: that right up there in their face, or that obviously
Speaker 1: reast implants. I was kind of like, well, that's kind
Speaker 1: of like plastic. I guess you see them. I would
Speaker 1: see them in like Newsweek magazine and my grandparents at
Speaker 1: and so I'm like, oh, well, that's plastic surgery. It's
Speaker 1: putting plastic in or on the body and making things new.
Speaker 1: You thought there are water balloons in there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought they were water balloons. But but just for a
Speaker 1: quick primer, plastic and plastic surgery means plasticity. So essentially
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is flesh sculpting. And the idea
Speaker 1: goes back a long time. For instance, Uh, skin graphs
Speaker 1: may have taken place as early as eight hundred BC,
Speaker 1: which is crazy to think about that, just the the
Speaker 1: idea that we were we were already figuring out ways
Speaker 1: to sculpt the flesh of the human body. Uh, even
Speaker 1: in eight hundred BC we have I mean, humans just
Speaker 1: can't help but tinker with themselves, right, Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: certainly if there's a if there's a medical advantage, even
Speaker 1: if you're trying to help somebody, you know, improve their
Speaker 1: quality of life, I mean that land or appeal to
Speaker 1: their vanity, that's all. That's what you need to get
Speaker 1: to learn more about it and to get the research
Speaker 1: done to achieve the the already lofty heights the plastic
Speaker 1: surgery we have today. Yeah, and of course I was
Speaker 1: about to say, you know, of the technology is commensurate
Speaker 1: with the procedures. So what you have in place is
Speaker 1: what is going to determine what happens with your body
Speaker 1: or how you decide to manipulate it. So as we
Speaker 1: were discussing or later Rosen proposed that, Yeah, he thinks
Speaker 1: you could. You could give people winks. Now, what would
Speaker 1: this consist of? How would this possibly work? Because when
Speaker 1: we're talking about plastic surgery, we're talking about sculpting the body.
Speaker 1: So it's most interpretations, we're not talking about making some
Speaker 1: wings and cooking them up in a lab and then
Speaker 1: just stitching them on the body. We have to essentially
Speaker 1: look to nature and see how nature flies. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we have to look at nature, but we also have
Speaker 1: to look at the mind because this is an important
Speaker 1: part of the process. Right. Um, we've talked about how
Speaker 1: the mind also has its own type of plasticity and
Speaker 1: can certainly conform to whatever is going on with the body.
Speaker 1: And you've used the wonderful analogy of the horse and
Speaker 1: rider before that it's not, you know, the two things
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily separate when you're talking about the mind and body.
Speaker 1: It's not the mind is the rider and the body
Speaker 1: of the horse, but it's both are one. They were
Speaker 1: essentially a centaire instead. Yeah, so you know you're this
Speaker 1: brain plasticity. Plasticity gives us the ability to make physical
Speaker 1: changes that are then incorporated by the brain. This is
Speaker 1: from the Doctor Dedelius article. Rosen explains that when quote,
Speaker 1: when we lose a limb, the brain absorbs its map
Speaker 1: or rewires it to some other center. Similarly, when we
Speaker 1: gain a limb, the brain almost immediately senses it and
Speaker 1: goes about hooking it up via neural representation. He said,
Speaker 1: if I were to attach a sonographically powered arm to
Speaker 1: your body, your brain would map it. If I were
Speaker 1: to attach a third thumb, your brain would map this
Speaker 1: as well. Our bodies change our brains, and our brains
Speaker 1: are infinitely moldible. If I were to give you wings,
Speaker 1: you would develop literally a winged brain. If I were
Speaker 1: to give you an echo location device, you would develop
Speaker 1: in part a that brain. I mean, there's some truthfuls
Speaker 1: right now, totally, and it's important to do think in
Speaker 1: terms of brain mapping and and neural adaptation to these features.
Speaker 1: Because you can talk all day about so in bits
Speaker 1: under your body, but if you if you can't, if
Speaker 1: they are not actually a part of you, if they're
Speaker 1: not part of that centaur uh that is the mind
Speaker 1: body connection, then it's really not a part of you
Speaker 1: or your body. So in a sense, whatever you dream
Speaker 1: up your brain can hang with but um, it comes
Speaker 1: down to a matter of where really the rubber meets
Speaker 1: the road and in the actual surgical bits that are
Speaker 1: put onto it. And in order to really look at that,
Speaker 1: you have to look at um. A professor in plastic
Speaker 1: and reconstructive surgeon, Samuel Poor, who took on the idea
Speaker 1: of surgical wings yeah, from the Division of Plastic and
Speaker 1: Reconstructive Surgery at the University of Wisconsin. And he actually
Speaker 1: published an article about this idea, about the the actual
Speaker 1: possible details of transforming normal human into winged humans. And
Speaker 1: he did this after Rosen had made lots of waves
Speaker 1: with his discussions. So it's it was a response to
Speaker 1: Rosen's work where he says, okay, well, that's assuming that
Speaker 1: this is something we want to do and and and
Speaker 1: and actually there's someone out there who wants it. What
Speaker 1: would this consist of? How would we go about it
Speaker 1: as a thought experiment and as a plastic surgeon? What
Speaker 1: can I do? What could I do to the human
Speaker 1: body to give that body wings? And I love this
Speaker 1: because he really did respond to it, not just in
Speaker 1: the philosophical sense, but like really one of the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts to make this happen if you're going to
Speaker 1: take this thought experiment one step further. Because Rosen's ideas
Speaker 1: are amazing and it's great to sort of get caught
Speaker 1: up in them, but a lot of times he's kind
Speaker 1: of spitball in though, or at least I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: not in his own mind, but in terms of just
Speaker 1: how he's commenting to other people. He's not necessarily laying
Speaker 1: out a you know, a five step plan to make
Speaker 1: it happen, but not outside of his own mind anyway. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: he knows all that, you know, he's he's pretty well
Speaker 1: informed about all the different fields that would take to
Speaker 1: make this happen. But you're right, he's not going to
Speaker 1: sit there and say it's here step one. Yeah, though,
Speaker 1: I pretty much have no doubt that he has it
Speaker 1: in his mind. Absolutely he sat down to say, like,
Speaker 1: how would you actually do this? But that's why I
Speaker 1: think it's so interesting that Samuel Pour took this on,
Speaker 1: because it does give you a sense of what the
Speaker 1: limitations are and what the possibilities are as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in this article, he asked, okay, well, all right,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna have wings, what what are the aspects
Speaker 1: of a bird wing that we would want, And in
Speaker 1: this article he does deal exclusively with bird wings. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I didn't think that much about
Speaker 1: bat wings. We'll talk about that a little a little more.
Speaker 1: But he's talking about bird wings. So evidently he, as
Speaker 1: far as art goes, he is into the idea of
Speaker 1: of of an angelic figure with the big, lofty, feathery wings,
Speaker 1: which is beautiful. I'm totally into. That's like archangel from
Speaker 1: from X Men. Yeah, like like like that character from
Speaker 1: from x Men or or any you know, painting scene
Speaker 1: of an angel. But but then, of course, the other
Speaker 1: side is we have plenty of images of fallen angels
Speaker 1: uh and and their kin creatures with bat like wings,
Speaker 1: which some might find hideous, uh, some might find kind
Speaker 1: of appealing. Of the pictures I had on my wall
Speaker 1: in high school had anything, uh, you know, to do
Speaker 1: with that. But but but certainly he decides to focus
Speaker 1: just on wings with feathers. Sure, and why not, because
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really the the example from nature
Speaker 1: that we draw from the most. Yeah, so what does
Speaker 1: a bird wing have? First of all, it has those
Speaker 1: feathers for lift and insulation. It has a highly derived
Speaker 1: shoulder and a distinct thorax. Okay, so what else do
Speaker 1: we have to take into into account here? Then we
Speaker 1: have to we have to look at the human body.
Speaker 1: What do we have? Well, we have these arms, right,
Speaker 1: and when you look at a bird, what does it?
Speaker 1: Does a bird have arms? No bird has wings. So
Speaker 1: obviously we're getting getting to the point here we have
Speaker 1: to realize if you're going to use plastic surgery to
Speaker 1: make what we have into something similar to what birds have,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be a matter of strapping wings
Speaker 1: on them on the back and turning us into six
Speaker 1: limbed creatures. We're going to remain four limbed creatures. That
Speaker 1: we're going to have to transform our arms into wings,
Speaker 1: which is something you don't see as often in our
Speaker 1: fantastic visions of winged humans. We tend to imagine that
Speaker 1: we still get to keep our arms and that we
Speaker 1: just have wings springing out of our backs. But the
Speaker 1: plastic surgeons of the world are here to say, actually, guys,
Speaker 1: if you really want those wings, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: part with the arms. Yeah, and you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: a big, fluffy white feather is just probably gonna be
Speaker 1: more like a turkey culture. Yes, well, well I say that,
Speaker 1: but Professor Samuel Poor does say that in order for
Speaker 1: us to really get the right structure, we can't necessarily
Speaker 1: look at modern birds as the example. Um, we would
Speaker 1: be better off to look at something called the arch
Speaker 1: o optics And this is a bird that existed one
Speaker 1: and fifty million years ago. Yeah, because the archaeopter X
Speaker 1: has a very primitive wing structure. It's a very early model, okay,
Speaker 1: versus birds. Modern birds would have a very high, very
Speaker 1: highly evolved, very advanced model of the of the wing.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to using the plastic surgery techniques
Speaker 1: that we have today, if you were going to transform
Speaker 1: our arms into wings, you really want to fit with
Speaker 1: go after something a lot simpler, because that's going to
Speaker 1: be something that we can actually achieve potentially arguably as
Speaker 1: opposed to a really advanced structure. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you're adding onto your house, right you have to
Speaker 1: take into account the existing architecture, the existing structure, what
Speaker 1: is going to work structurally as a part of the
Speaker 1: new house, What is gonna work stylistically as part of
Speaker 1: the new house, And uh, you know, it's just not
Speaker 1: always in the cards to take say a medieval castle,
Speaker 1: and then build a highly modern structure on top of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just you have to take into account
Speaker 1: of the original form. So our arms are great arms,
Speaker 1: but they're really crappy wings, like the crappiest wing possible,
Speaker 1: because they don't do anything, you know, so to to
Speaker 1: actually change them into wings for essentially having to backtrack
Speaker 1: on evolution and go think back to how wings really
Speaker 1: begin to evolve and and take form in organisms, which
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, because you do, as you say, have
Speaker 1: to go back to the more primitive version if you're
Speaker 1: trying to make this, you know, from soup to nuts
Speaker 1: on a human being. It's a little bit ironic though
Speaker 1: that you'd have to go back a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million years in order to get some sort of futuristic
Speaker 1: um structure for human wings because the archaeopter X it
Speaker 1: had it was it was feathered, it was flying, but
Speaker 1: it had a far less complex wrist and shoulder, which
Speaker 1: is key because this is what really places it within
Speaker 1: surgical reach for us. Okay, so in this article, Poor
Speaker 1: lays out some possible steps to transform the arm into
Speaker 1: a wing. He talks about forming a distal of carpal
Speaker 1: bones and marta carpal's in our existing arm into a
Speaker 1: carpo metacarpass, which is essentially a buffalo wing. Delicious. Yeah uh,
Speaker 1: And a single fuse bone between the wrist and knuckle.
Speaker 1: So if you look if you look at at a
Speaker 1: picture of a human arm, and you see a picture
Speaker 1: of the of the wing of a of a bird
Speaker 1: or or in this case a flying dinosaur, then you
Speaker 1: see that. All right, we have the humorous, the upper
Speaker 1: bone in the arm, both of that. But then when
Speaker 1: you're looking at at the lower portion of the arm,
Speaker 1: the lower bones, that's where you're talking about needing to
Speaker 1: fuse things together. Because do you ever see a bird
Speaker 1: using like a smartphone or typing on a keyboard? No,
Speaker 1: they don't need the digits right, and the wrist knuckles
Speaker 1: all ving one piece makes sense to write because they're
Speaker 1: not sort of waving their hands back and forth. Um.
Speaker 1: You'd also have to fuse the small finger, the ring
Speaker 1: finger in the index finger, although your thumb would remain free. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's good news. Yeah, so some video games are still possi.
Speaker 1: The hand and elbow would have to be fixed to
Speaker 1: prevent a too broad a range of movement. But but
Speaker 1: there's not any need for bone bony fixation in the elbow.
Speaker 1: You need movement, um, so you make use of existing
Speaker 1: muscle and skin there, you redirect the bicep intendant of insertion. Uh,
Speaker 1: you use a tissue expansion techniques to cover all of
Speaker 1: this because you need skin over and then for non
Speaker 1: functional cosmetic wings. This is this is a really good
Speaker 1: stopping point, right because this is what you need in
Speaker 1: order just to support them around town. Right. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we're not even talking about the possibility of of sticking
Speaker 1: feathers in these things. That would be a whole separate
Speaker 1: thing to worry about, because what are you going to
Speaker 1: try and grow feathers? A You're gonna try to manipulate
Speaker 1: the body to produce feathers. Um, that's a whole kettle
Speaker 1: efficient and not itself. But just to transform your fleshy
Speaker 1: arms into fleshy bat wings, you could parade around talent
Speaker 1: in this is where you would you would stop. And
Speaker 1: we know we can grow tissue, right, so in order
Speaker 1: to actually grow the skin, that's not a problem. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, of course we're talking about pretty advanced technologies here,
Speaker 1: so I don't really see you just going into your
Speaker 1: local clinic and getting your your wings all done up.
Speaker 1: But again, in this idea of twenty to fifty years out,
Speaker 1: let's say you can get these wings um constructed for
Speaker 1: you and you really want to take flight, Well, then
Speaker 1: you need to flap them. You need to flap those
Speaker 1: wings in order to even try to fly. And if
Speaker 1: you want to do that, you're gonna need high velocity
Speaker 1: rotation in the shoulder. So you're gonna need some pretty
Speaker 1: extensive shoulder reconstruction to make that possible. And of course
Speaker 1: you are going to need feathers. Now, this is particularly
Speaker 1: problematic because feathers are so specific to the species of subspecies.
Speaker 1: It's um something that has evolved for you know, billions
Speaker 1: of years, and it's not an easy thing to just say,
Speaker 1: off here, let's stick some turkey feathers and you'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Feathers are are a very complex and really amazing um
Speaker 1: adaptation of flowing organisms. Now, some critics of Poor's article,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say critics, let's just say
Speaker 1: people having a lively discussion with him about this. They
Speaker 1: point out, we'll bats don't have feathers, so why should
Speaker 1: we feel limited to on on this whole feather argument.
Speaker 1: Why would that be a sticking point? Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: can talk more about bats, but for sure, this would
Speaker 1: this is a good model to go after. I think
Speaker 1: it's not just birds because I really actually feel like
Speaker 1: bats have more potential in this arena. And it would
Speaker 1: be so cool to wrap yourself up in that wing
Speaker 1: and hang outside downs. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Can when we come back more about
Speaker 1: surgical wings? All right, and we're back, so I can.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of already imagining, uh, like, super rich individuals
Speaker 1: in the future surrounding themselves with beautiful men and women
Speaker 1: that they have they have had surgically adapted into winged creatures.
Speaker 1: So they're just kind of like they're not flying, but
Speaker 1: they're just walking around the dinner party like, well, they
Speaker 1: couldn't really hold a tray of drinks. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. I guess they're just walking around looking
Speaker 1: pretty and bird like. Well see, and why not keep
Speaker 1: your own arms and then just do a separate wing
Speaker 1: structure too. Yeah, well that would just this that would
Speaker 1: be even that would be higher hanging fruit. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the flight issue because it's not
Speaker 1: just the feathers and the ability to to actually figure
Speaker 1: out in your dermos how to grow the feathers that
Speaker 1: you need or to genetically game your body into doing it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's also the wing loading ratio. We would need really
Speaker 1: really large wings to support say a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: pound body. Yeah, and you know, I mean, look at
Speaker 1: the size of of flying animals and the size of
Speaker 1: their wings. Look at the albatross. Albatross is a pretty
Speaker 1: large creature and and uh and kind of a clumsy
Speaker 1: bird as well. You know it, flight is not the
Speaker 1: most graceful thing for this this creature. So it's win
Speaker 1: but it wings have to be pretty big. And so
Speaker 1: you know, when you're looking at the at the wing
Speaker 1: ratio in an organism, and you're looking at the possibility
Speaker 1: of creating wings on a human from that humans existing flesh,
Speaker 1: sculpting their existing body into this Because again, you have
Speaker 1: a blump of clay and you're gonna sculpt that lump
Speaker 1: of clay into a vase. That vase better have equivalent
Speaker 1: mass to that lump of clay. That's just the basic
Speaker 1: limits of of what you're working with. So if you're
Speaker 1: going to try and build wings big enough for the human.
Speaker 1: For a human to fly, there's not enough material to
Speaker 1: go around. I don't care how much like butt flesh
Speaker 1: and extra bones, you're not going to build proper fliable wings. Now.
Speaker 1: Poor did say that four hundred seventy pound body you
Speaker 1: would need about twenty ft of wingspan, which you know,
Speaker 1: then becomes sort of impractical, especially if you're taking mass transit.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine trying to get on mortar with those
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could get like donor flesh.
Speaker 1: That would be about the only way you could really
Speaker 1: start looking at that. But then you're having to like
Speaker 1: scrap you could get, you know, flesh from a corpse,
Speaker 1: I guess, and and use that in the process. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not impossib but it's something to think about,
Speaker 1: you that you just you can't completely just reshape the
Speaker 1: existing form into the flying form. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of other considerations to make. The blog Human Enhancement and
Speaker 1: Biopolitics takes on some of these issues, and in that
Speaker 1: blog they're talking about the larger problem, which is muscle,
Speaker 1: because birds, bats, and pterosaurs have really large peck muscles,
Speaker 1: and they're so large that they actually take up about
Speaker 1: thirty of their body mass. So that would mean that
Speaker 1: humans would then have to grow these bionic peck muscles
Speaker 1: that somehow where you know, maybe nano materials were used
Speaker 1: somehow lighter than actual muscles in order to really power yourself. Um.
Speaker 1: So again that's an issue of actually trying to take
Speaker 1: flight because we were pretty undeveloped, underdeveloped in our chest
Speaker 1: areas because obviously we don't fly and we don't need
Speaker 1: those those muscles. Yeah, I mean you get into a
Speaker 1: situation where the classic idea of just in sort of
Speaker 1: the art idea of angels with wings on their backs,
Speaker 1: that kind of think it's it's just more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: You can't just you can't just add something of another
Speaker 1: species to this animal and it to and expected to
Speaker 1: be a seamless transition. There are a lot of complex
Speaker 1: questions that come with that. Well, if you're gonna have
Speaker 1: those wings again, you're gonna need the pecks the power
Speaker 1: of where are you gonna put those um because if
Speaker 1: you're if you're doing the model where the wings are
Speaker 1: on the back, then where the muscles the wings. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of like in that article that we
Speaker 1: are discussed in the Center episode where you had a
Speaker 1: German surgeon who is looking at the at at the
Speaker 1: Center as a mythological creature and saying, how would that
Speaker 1: actually work? And when you get down into the the
Speaker 1: theoretic bio theoretical biology of that, they are all these
Speaker 1: different complications you wouldn't even possibly think of. Of course,
Speaker 1: the thing I remember was where do you put the
Speaker 1: penis front of back? I mean, you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways it's the same thing with wings all the obviously
Speaker 1: there's no penis, but you have some of the same
Speaker 1: engineering problems. Um. Of course Poor did say that in
Speaker 1: micro gravity zero gravity, um, it could be helpful to
Speaker 1: have wings, which which brings us back to the werewolf
Speaker 1: principle and the idea that should can and can we
Speaker 1: adapt the human body to make it better suited to
Speaker 1: life on say a long space flight to somewhere, to
Speaker 1: life in orbit, to life on another world if it.
Speaker 1: If it one ended up making the argument that yes,
Speaker 1: small wings would be highly effective and navigating this environment,
Speaker 1: then maybe that's something we have to consider well. And
Speaker 1: again go back to bats right, because as we've discussed
Speaker 1: before in our podcasts or episodes about bats, they are
Speaker 1: governed their their wing structure by a rogue finger gene.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the structure of a bat wing,
Speaker 1: it's really just a modified a million arm and it's
Speaker 1: got these why you should call them fingers. They don't
Speaker 1: actually call them fingers, But if you think about their
Speaker 1: wings as sort of these fingers, like the spokes of
Speaker 1: an umbrella, that's how they get the structure. So why
Speaker 1: not tinker with our own genetics to game our um
Speaker 1: You know, jeans in the arm bud that begin to
Speaker 1: produce that the sort of hand that we have and
Speaker 1: have it spread out and you can take flight much
Speaker 1: easier because, as we know, with bats, they get their
Speaker 1: their lift by basically free falling from an upside down
Speaker 1: position and then catching the wind with their wings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not every flying creature, obviously, is a humming bird capable
Speaker 1: of just amazing quick spirited flight. You know, they can
Speaker 1: go from zero to a to a hundred, can take
Speaker 1: off vertically without any any problems. I mean some of
Speaker 1: these larger animals they have to fall off of something
Speaker 1: to achieve flight. Yeah, Plus it would be kind of
Speaker 1: cool to take flight that way, I think, just free
Speaker 1: fall upside down um of couch. Now Poor in his
Speaker 1: his paper did say, look this is just sort of well,
Speaker 1: he didn't say, hey, look this is just an idea,
Speaker 1: but he did conclude by saying, despite advances in surgical
Speaker 1: techniques that could theoretically lead to the ability to construct
Speaker 1: wings from arms, it is evident that human should remain human,
Speaker 1: staying on the ground, pondering and studying the intricacies of flight,
Speaker 1: while letting birds be birds and angels be angels. He
Speaker 1: had me till the let angels be angels. That then
Speaker 1: he was just really cross. Now. I obviously Rosen would
Speaker 1: strongly disagree with this man's He would probably see um
Speaker 1: see Poor as as someone with a limited um limited
Speaker 1: vision for humanity, whereas Poor as it is certainly staying
Speaker 1: more on the cautious realism side of it. Well, Poor
Speaker 1: also doesn't really address genetic tinkering as well. He's just
Speaker 1: short of saying, what would we do right now with
Speaker 1: the materials that we have? UM, So some of the
Speaker 1: some of his discussion is limited by that. But there
Speaker 1: is this idea that is in the article doctor did
Speaker 1: alias um, and it is an idea put forth by
Speaker 1: Mary Douglas. She wrote in her anthropological study Purity and danger,
Speaker 1: that human beings have a natural aversion to crossing categories,
Speaker 1: and that when we do, we transgress, or when we
Speaker 1: do transgress it, we see it as deeply dirty, so
Speaker 1: that there's idea, this idea of like, well, if this
Speaker 1: is not human, it's separate from us, there's a danger
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, which I think it comes back to
Speaker 1: the wing thing or even the centier thing. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to have, like, oh, the top is a is
Speaker 1: a topless lady in the bottom of a fish? Like that?
Speaker 1: Doesn't this maybe okay, at least to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: because there's this firm line. There's a distinction between the
Speaker 1: part that is animal and the part that is human.
Speaker 1: And when you get into you know, we've talked before
Speaker 1: about monsters. The idea of any kind of a monster
Speaker 1: is that it embodies an idea, especially any kind of
Speaker 1: monster that is half human half beast. It's ultimately about
Speaker 1: the competing higher and lower natures of our being, the
Speaker 1: part of us that thinks that we're above and being
Speaker 1: an animal, and the part of us that it is
Speaker 1: inevitably an animal. And we but we like seeing that division,
Speaker 1: even in our monsters. Imagined creations. But when there is crossover,
Speaker 1: more crossover than we anticipated, that's where they getting that
Speaker 1: polluted area. When you get into models of the center
Speaker 1: that as a penis in the front, uh, and or
Speaker 1: in the back. When you get into examples of oh,
Speaker 1: this person has wings, but it also means they have
Speaker 1: to have grotesque pectoral muscles to power it, then the
Speaker 1: line becomes smudged and uh, and we begin to go
Speaker 1: a little a little. I was thinking about this in
Speaker 1: the context of bio gerontology and and and our bearded
Speaker 1: friend Aubrey de Gray and in his quest to tinker
Speaker 1: with people at a cellular level in order to have
Speaker 1: them live upwards to five years a thousand years old.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, well, how does that How does
Speaker 1: all of this sort of jibe with post humanism, because
Speaker 1: surely that will be the thing to do when you
Speaker 1: reach two hundred years old, Like you just get bored
Speaker 1: and you say, why don't I go ahead and get
Speaker 1: those surgical wings I've always wanted. You know, what does
Speaker 1: what does that world look like? Um? You know, do
Speaker 1: we have this possibility of of you know, very elderly
Speaker 1: people zooming around with their new wings with sort of
Speaker 1: angel faces pass to match when you just ultimately you're
Speaker 1: you know, talking about completely just casting aside any expectations
Speaker 1: about what a human is or should be in a
Speaker 1: physical level, and then to to draw from Rosen's idea
Speaker 1: of plastic surgery, it also means that there are no
Speaker 1: constraints on the soul on who you are. This is
Speaker 1: one of those things that I really wish I could
Speaker 1: flash floor floorward. This is one of these things that
Speaker 1: I really wish that I could flash forward with two
Speaker 1: years from now and see if this is an antiquated
Speaker 1: conversation or if humans sort of you know, tow the
Speaker 1: line and continue to be as human as we are now.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And then it comes out of the
Speaker 1: question when you're talking about the long term survival of
Speaker 1: the human race, is it just something we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to get over in order to achieve that if we're
Speaker 1: going to eventually be a creature that leaves, that lives
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the in the universe, Um, are we going
Speaker 1: to have to to get past our arguably limited idea
Speaker 1: of what we are? Well, I think with wings, so
Speaker 1: it becomes an easy sell, all right, So there you go,
Speaker 1: surgical wings and the people who make them dream about them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Fascinating topic that that've been meaning to get to for
Speaker 1: a while. So let's call the the robot over here
Speaker 1: and just do a little bit of a listener mail
Speaker 1: real quick, all right, This one comes to us from Peter.
Speaker 1: Peter is a regular listener and UH and also interacts
Speaker 1: with us on the Facebook account. He also is involved
Speaker 1: a number of cool projects. He uh has the King
Speaker 1: Luxe record label UM out of Canada and associated with
Speaker 1: that the project which is really cool. It's about finding
Speaker 1: musicians and finding artists and having them both create an
Speaker 1: imaginative take on what the year might consist of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Peter is very much part of the stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind think tank. Yeah. So Peter rights and says
Speaker 1: um and he's responding tour multitasking our addition, and he says,
Speaker 1: uh uh ha, I was definitely doing other things while
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast. As usual, I pause one or
Speaker 1: the other when there's something I need to think about
Speaker 1: in details. But I agree for the most for the
Speaker 1: most part, that it's best if one can use full concentration. However,
Speaker 1: this has me thinking about harmony, I mean, being really
Speaker 1: focused on one task is actually a multitude of highly
Speaker 1: organized brain functions that harmonize to a beautiful degree. What
Speaker 1: I propose is that while doing separate task is counterproductive,
Speaker 1: sometimes they lift each other up, as with listening to
Speaker 1: all tech or while writing, which is an example I've
Speaker 1: used before and UH, and I imagine Peter does the
Speaker 1: same exact combination. Uh. They now become the same task
Speaker 1: as long as they're not like both visual or something
Speaker 1: as you guys mentioned. But I believe the reason I
Speaker 1: have become good at research is because I can multitask
Speaker 1: certain types of differing activities and the use and use
Speaker 1: one to inspire new lines of thought in the other.
Speaker 1: And I try to become better at refocusing more attention
Speaker 1: as required. That said, these were good episodes considered ways
Speaker 1: in which I'm not really closing loops, wasting energy and
Speaker 1: so on. One other thing that I was wondering about, though,
Speaker 1: is if it's really that much easier to focus in
Speaker 1: the evenings. I can definitely see that in my own life. Uh.
Speaker 1: I do sometimes have less distractions in those hours. However,
Speaker 1: decision fatigue makes it so my attention to my single
Speaker 1: task is limited. In the mornings, I may have more
Speaker 1: to do, but I've organized, well, then I can do
Speaker 1: it at break next speed in comparison. All right, some
Speaker 1: interesting thoughts on complimentary multitasking. I guess should call it yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think that's the the ultimate take home from
Speaker 1: from those episodes and multitasking is that it's not that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't do it or shouldn't try and shouldn't juggle
Speaker 1: tasks because we're going to do it. But the more
Speaker 1: we're aware of how we're doing it, the limits of
Speaker 1: doing it, then we can we can really plan our
Speaker 1: days and and tackle our responsibilities in a more thoughtful manner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how to multi task? Right way? I suppose. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from everyone if you have
Speaker 1: anything to add about multitasking, that would be great. But
Speaker 1: more importantly and centric to this episode, let us know
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on surgical wings. What do you
Speaker 1: think about the about some of the mechanics of actually
Speaker 1: changing the human form to have wings? And more importantly,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the idea should we be
Speaker 1: limited to the sort of store bought vision of humanity
Speaker 1: or should we be willing to tinker? Should we uh
Speaker 1: have this do it yourself mentality? Should we ultimately adapt
Speaker 1: the human form to survive beyond the planet and beyond
Speaker 1: the age of the homosapien, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter, uh, and you can find us on Tumbler.
Speaker 1: We're stuff to blow your Mind on Tumbler and Facebook,
Speaker 1: and we are blow the Mind on Twitter. And you
Speaker 1: can always drop us a line at blew the Mind
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com