Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and Robert. Do you remember just about seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago how disappointing it was that the year two
Speaker 1: thousand one was not like the year two thousand one
Speaker 1: in the movie two thousand one Space Odyssey. Well, certainly
Speaker 1: it did not resemble the night film two thousand one
Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey. It did not resemble that that vision
Speaker 1: of the future, not exactly. We were not uh, we
Speaker 1: were not traveling. We did not have a moon base.
Speaker 1: I want my milk carton of corn to suck to
Speaker 1: a straw well that can be arranged if that's if
Speaker 1: that's the definite uh, you know, futuristic experience you're looking for.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is this is a classic science fiction film,
Speaker 1: perhaps the classic science fiction film. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: you can certainly make a case for other pivotal works
Speaker 1: of sci fi cinema, But Stanley Kubrick and Arthously Clark's
Speaker 1: two thousand and one is a film that has stood
Speaker 1: the test of time inspired just countless other sci fi
Speaker 1: visions and uh and yeah, that definitely gave us this
Speaker 1: this sort of benchmark to look for in the future.
Speaker 1: So the reason we're talking about two thousand one of
Speaker 1: Space Odyssey is because this year that movie is actually
Speaker 1: fifty years old. It's hard to believe it half a
Speaker 1: century old. It was released in April of nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: and so because of the fiftieth anniversary, because the movie
Speaker 1: is so endlessly fascinating to talk about, we thought we
Speaker 1: would devote today to a discussion of two thousand one,
Speaker 1: the film itself, it's ideas, and its legacy. Robert, how
Speaker 1: old were you when you first saw two thousand one? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know, I saw it when I was pretty young,
Speaker 1: so I don't have a very um concrete memory of it.
Speaker 1: I think my dad he either he had had a
Speaker 1: VHS copy of it playing or it was on TV.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but i'd say, oh, maybe I was
Speaker 1: eight or something. I'm not sure, but I remember it
Speaker 1: being a very interesting film to watch because it was
Speaker 1: it has this dreamlike quality to it that is there
Speaker 1: no matter what level of of awareness you're approaching it
Speaker 1: with as a viewer, you know, whether you understand the
Speaker 1: more complicated, uh, science, fictional or philosophical aspects of its message.
Speaker 1: There's still this this hypnotic quality to the film that
Speaker 1: draws you in. I have a weird question about it.
Speaker 1: I wonder if a kid for whom the plot pretty
Speaker 1: much goes over their head actually understands the movie better
Speaker 1: than an adult who can grasp more of the content
Speaker 1: of the plot. Do you think about that? I mean,
Speaker 1: because the movie is in many ways it's almost like
Speaker 1: a more like a painting or like a you know,
Speaker 1: a work of art that is radically open to interpretation,
Speaker 1: where the stuff that the characters do, I'm not so
Speaker 1: sure that it matters as much as more than kind
Speaker 1: of like visual themes established and the questions raised by
Speaker 1: you know, the spectacle before your eyes. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: spectacle is is a huge part of it. I I
Speaker 1: actually was tempted. I thought, well, should I let my
Speaker 1: six year old see at least part of two thousand
Speaker 1: and one and just see what his take is on it?
Speaker 1: And I did not quite get around to performing any
Speaker 1: a test of that sort um, but I have a
Speaker 1: feeling he would be drawn in by the visuals for sure.
Speaker 1: Just thinking about the visuals alone, it's hard to believe
Speaker 1: this movie is half a century old, Like we were
Speaker 1: saying a minute ago, it still feels so weird and
Speaker 1: so fresh and so intellectually adventurous. Apparently, you know. When
Speaker 1: it premiered. One of the things about the movie is
Speaker 1: that it's mostly silent. There are only actually very limb
Speaker 1: They did parts of it where characters are speaking to
Speaker 1: each other, and according to the stories about the premier,
Speaker 1: the first audience, it's just hating. Not everybody. There were
Speaker 1: some people who saw, Okay, this is revolutionary, something very
Speaker 1: different and new and original is happening here. But a
Speaker 1: lot of the Hollywood hot shots who were in attendance
Speaker 1: just hated it. There were tons of people walking out
Speaker 1: of the theater. Allegedly, Rock Hudson walked out saying out loud,
Speaker 1: will someone tell me what the hell this is about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it is a film in which a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff does not happen, a lot happens. It's
Speaker 1: a film that that that kind of sums up the
Speaker 1: ascent of humanity and where humanity might go beyond beyond
Speaker 1: our planet. But at the same time, every time something
Speaker 1: seems to be happening, but we kind of get a cut,
Speaker 1: you know, the scenes where characters are having pivotal discussions
Speaker 1: about what's happening. It's becomes just sort of a staple
Speaker 1: of so many other films. Like most films are missing
Speaker 1: the murder that occurs to in the film is not
Speaker 1: actually seen, so it when you're watching two thousand one
Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey, there is almost this sense that someone
Speaker 1: is messing with you by removing these key bits of
Speaker 1: information that should tell you what you're supposed to think about. Well,
Speaker 1: I can understand people hating it at first because it is,
Speaker 1: in a way an intentionally challenging film. It's it goes
Speaker 1: against narrative conventions in a very deliberate way. Another thing
Speaker 1: about it is just I'm not usually a person to
Speaker 1: call out special effects first as a thing to love
Speaker 1: about the movie, but the visual effects in this movie
Speaker 1: are just unparalleled in so many ways. They look astonishingly realistic.
Speaker 1: For for you know, a time in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: when we hadn't even been to the moon yet when
Speaker 1: this movie was made, we had not been to the
Speaker 1: moon or space. Photography was very limited, so it's amazing
Speaker 1: they could get something looking as accurate to the experience
Speaker 1: of outer space as as they did. But then at
Speaker 1: the same time it's so derealized, it's so unreal, and
Speaker 1: uh it has almost kind of a Dario Argento kind
Speaker 1: of quality, though of course it predates Argento, but I mean,
Speaker 1: like the you know, the strange lights and the way
Speaker 1: the colors color our moods. It's so good. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad Argento did not direct it. By the way, it
Speaker 1: would have been a very different film. Yeah, then the Monk,
Speaker 1: the the the the Dawn of Man sequence might have
Speaker 1: been similar. But uh, yeah, the special effects in this
Speaker 1: film are just so breathtaking. I feel like, if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is wondering, what is it like to watch
Speaker 1: two thousand and one A Space Obessey with Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: it's like, every five minutes may sang aloud, why can't
Speaker 1: we make why don't we make movies that look like this? Now?
Speaker 1: You know, why can't why can't why don't spaceships look
Speaker 1: like this anymore? In films? And basically they don't look
Speaker 1: this good in anything else. For instance, nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: Silent Running, another one of my favorite sci fi films,
Speaker 1: was directed by Douglas Trumbull. Who worked on two thousand
Speaker 1: one worked on the effects, and Silent Running looks fabulous,
Speaker 1: but it's not as pressed pristine as two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: And obviously you can point to a lot of different
Speaker 1: reasons for that. But then there's you know, you can
Speaker 1: you can say, well, these other films were not directed
Speaker 1: by Kubrick. They maybe they did not have the budget,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the right key artistic people in place. Uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of perfect storm of creativity and intent. But
Speaker 1: but but you end up with this film that you
Speaker 1: just looks so unlike anything else. And every single frame
Speaker 1: of this film I feel like you could you could
Speaker 1: print out and you could put on the wall and
Speaker 1: and no one would question the choice. It's also, somehow
Speaker 1: a movie that many people I think have tried to
Speaker 1: copy and been unable to. It's a movie the style
Speaker 1: of which is uncopyable. Uh My, I've talked about this
Speaker 1: a good bit with with my friend Dave. He he
Speaker 1: often points out that you have the sequel to the
Speaker 1: film two thousand intent, which which did not did not direct,
Speaker 1: came out in the eights. Oh, who was the guy
Speaker 1: who directed two thousand ten? Oh, he's the same amount
Speaker 1: gentleman and directed Outland as alcohol Peter Hyams, and not
Speaker 1: just Outland. He made Time Cop. The guy who made
Speaker 1: two thousand ten made Time Cop. Well, it's interesting just
Speaker 1: if you just look at the trailers um between the
Speaker 1: two and you see just this stark difference because on one,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you have the again that the pristine
Speaker 1: white um, you know, almost hermetically sealed edible, uh, seeming
Speaker 1: like you feel like you could just bite into the
Speaker 1: white chocolate goodness of the spaceships in two thousand and
Speaker 1: one of Space Odyssey, and then by two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten everything is industrial and grimy, and not just the
Speaker 1: says the order of the day it was, but but
Speaker 1: not only the sets but also the character interactions, because
Speaker 1: suddenly it's not this this very subdued performance, limited uh interaction,
Speaker 1: limited discussions between characters. No, you have Roy Scheider run
Speaker 1: and center, mayor not Mayor of Amity from Jaws, Chief
Speaker 1: of Police, Chief Brody. Yeah, Chief Brody is just right
Speaker 1: up front getting into you know, loud discussions with all
Speaker 1: available characters. We're gonna need a bigger spacecraft before we
Speaker 1: keep going. Let's let's actually just listen to an excerpt
Speaker 1: from the original theatrical trailer for two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: millions of years ago, before the human race existed, an
Speaker 1: adventure began, an adventure that ultimately leads man to confront
Speaker 1: his own destiny in anticy of exploration. Sounds great even
Speaker 1: without those impressive visuals. I feel like you still get
Speaker 1: you still hear that, and you just sucked in. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the music is a big part of the movie. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're their segments of the movie where the screen is
Speaker 1: black and it's just music, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: very important part of the experience. It's as well. Uh so,
Speaker 1: if you've never seen the movie and you don't want
Speaker 1: it spoiled, I don't know if that really makes sense
Speaker 1: with this movie, you might want to pause this and
Speaker 1: go watch it. Now. We're about to talk about what
Speaker 1: happens in the plot. But I would say this is
Speaker 1: not a movie that is that is really going to
Speaker 1: be spoiled by you knowing what happens in advance. That's
Speaker 1: not really the point. Yeah, because again, at leaves so
Speaker 1: much for interpretation and it's so visual. I would urge
Speaker 1: you definitely, if you have the ability, you get the
Speaker 1: blu ray on this one, because this is a film
Speaker 1: where the higher definition available the better. So the movie
Speaker 1: is basically broken into four parts. Would you say that's fair?
Speaker 1: Would you say three or four? Um? I would say
Speaker 1: it's broken into four parts, kind of three separate movies
Speaker 1: that are and it will feel like that. You're like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess we're done with this section. Now, Uh, let's
Speaker 1: follow this character. So the first section you get a
Speaker 1: title card it says the Dawn of Man, and you've
Speaker 1: got this group of early hominids. I think it's suggested,
Speaker 1: well not, I think it is definitely suggested that these
Speaker 1: are our ancestors. That you go back some number of
Speaker 1: millions of years and they are these sort of desert
Speaker 1: savannah dwelling ape like creatures, and they are hanging around
Speaker 1: eating plants, hiding from a leopard that attacks them, and
Speaker 1: fighting with another band of apelike creatures over access to
Speaker 1: a puddle of water. And then one day they wake
Speaker 1: up and find this great black rectangle, this rectangular box
Speaker 1: that's known in the in the stories the monolith, this
Speaker 1: slab of matter that is unlike anything in their natural habitat.
Speaker 1: It's not only unlike anything they've seen, it embodies interesting
Speaker 1: mathematical characteristics, like the dimension ratios are one, four and nine,
Speaker 1: so it's nine units high, four units wide, and one
Speaker 1: unit deep. Of course, one four and nine are the
Speaker 1: squares of the first three integers one, two, and three.
Speaker 1: And so, after first being frightened by the monolith and
Speaker 1: they kind of scream at it and do territorial displays,
Speaker 1: one of them gets the courage to go up and
Speaker 1: touch it, and then they all begin to touch it,
Speaker 1: and the encounter some how triggers something in human evolution,
Speaker 1: and the mechanism is not explained, But something happens to
Speaker 1: these ape like creatures, right they they this amazing sequence.
Speaker 1: They be one of them, in particular, I believe this
Speaker 1: is Moon gazer Uh as he's referred to in the book,
Speaker 1: picks up the bone of one of these taper creatures
Speaker 1: that they're living among and realizes that he can wield
Speaker 1: it as a tool and wield it as a weapon. Right,
Speaker 1: Grabbing the femur of one of these tapers gives you leverage,
Speaker 1: and that extra leverage makes all the difference in the
Speaker 1: world for these creatures, who now suddenly have the ability
Speaker 1: to kill the tapers and eat the meat and to
Speaker 1: fight off the predators right exactly, to fight off the leopard,
Speaker 1: to defend, to win in territorial disputes with the other
Speaker 1: with the other ape like creatures over the water puddle,
Speaker 1: and so in victory, then one of the ape like
Speaker 1: creatures throws this bone up in the air, and then
Speaker 1: we get one of the most fantastic cuts in all
Speaker 1: of movie history, where the bone immediately cuts to a
Speaker 1: spacecraft above the Earth. It's like a five million year
Speaker 1: smash cut. It's also the reason that in Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand, the satellite of Love looks like a bone.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, they have They said that explicitly, Joel
Speaker 1: Joel Hodgson says that explicitly. But it's shaped like a
Speaker 1: cartoon bone. It's like the two little lobes on each side,
Speaker 1: or like a dog chew toy bone. And then of
Speaker 1: course after this we're in the age of space exploration,
Speaker 1: which is where the rest of the movie takes place.
Speaker 1: So you've got this middle section that is not given
Speaker 1: a title card, so it doesn't let you know explicitly
Speaker 1: this is a different part of the story. But a
Speaker 1: character named Heywood Floyd is flying around in space travels
Speaker 1: to a space station and then to the Moon to
Speaker 1: investigate an anomaly that's been discovered on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Moon, where researchers on a moon base have discovered
Speaker 1: an underground object generating a strong magnetic field. So they
Speaker 1: dig it up and it's another monolith, right. I should
Speaker 1: also add that it's only in this sequence that we
Speaker 1: get any dialogue. We go and what feels like an
Speaker 1: astounding amount of time in the film without any characters
Speaker 1: speaking to anyone, no narrow ration, nothing, and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's just hypnotic. Uh, the scenes of the of the
Speaker 1: Taurus space station rotating there with the classical music playing
Speaker 1: behind it. Absolutely and that that the whole thing about
Speaker 1: space stations in the sequence is a really interesting and
Speaker 1: deliberate filmmaking choice on Kubrick's part. I think um because
Speaker 1: very often what you want to show in in sci
Speaker 1: fi of the time. You know, if you had the
Speaker 1: sci fi of the fifties, sixties, Flash Gordon type stuff,
Speaker 1: you you would have wanted to show spaceships as an exciting,
Speaker 1: fast moving, powerful thing. But instead spacecraft in this movie
Speaker 1: are are presented as a thing as a kind of
Speaker 1: like slow moving, very careful behemoth technology. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I also love how the station itself that we
Speaker 1: see is unfinished. Yeah. So there's not this sense of
Speaker 1: this pristine sense of all right, humans have done it,
Speaker 1: They're in space now, they've got it all worked out. No,
Speaker 1: there's the sense that even though this this technological world
Speaker 1: is so advanced compared to what we had then and
Speaker 1: also what we have now in many respects, yet um
Speaker 1: it is still on finish. It is still work in progress.
Speaker 1: We will definitely come back and talk more about the
Speaker 1: about the technological reality of the space travel sequence later.
Speaker 1: But um, so what happens in the plus so they
Speaker 1: find this monolith on the Moon. It emits a powerful
Speaker 1: radio signal when sunlight touches it, and it seems to
Speaker 1: indicate that there's something else for them to find an
Speaker 1: orbit around Jupiter. You know, I thought we rewatching it
Speaker 1: for this episode. This was the first time I realized
Speaker 1: that without that sequence, Um, the Ark of the Covenant
Speaker 1: in Raiders at the Lost Ark would have been very different,
Speaker 1: because clearly that's where Steven Spielberg got the inspiration for
Speaker 1: the way the arc is presented. You mean the opening
Speaker 1: scene at the end of the movie. Yes, yeah, don't
Speaker 1: look at it, yes, exactly. You know, that scene I
Speaker 1: think takes a page from two thousand one in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: There's the sort of staging of the scene which is
Speaker 1: clearly aesthetically derived from two thousand one. But I think
Speaker 1: also the mystery of the scene, how it's not really
Speaker 1: fully explained, how Indie no is not to look at it,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, I agree, interesting bit of Hollywood
Speaker 1: gossip trivia. But during the filming of Raiders, uh, the
Speaker 1: Arc and the Monolith we're actually dating. Not many people
Speaker 1: know that it should have known better than to trust
Speaker 1: an ARC and ar ARC will break your heart every time.
Speaker 1: So then we go to the next sequence, the third
Speaker 1: sequence of the movie, which is a crude mission to
Speaker 1: Jupiter in a spacecraft called Discovery one. So you've got
Speaker 1: several crew members who were in hibernation, and then you've
Speaker 1: got two astronauts named David Bowman and Frank Poole who
Speaker 1: are awake, and the Discovery One, we find out, is
Speaker 1: controlled by an onboard artificial intelligence called HOW nine thousand.
Speaker 1: It's always been fun to point out, especially years ago
Speaker 1: when I was wrestling with the sluggish IBM for eight six,
Speaker 1: that of course, How as an acronym is just one
Speaker 1: letter removed from IBM H A L. I actually never
Speaker 1: put that together before. I don't know if that was intentional,
Speaker 1: like assume it was. But How advertises the fact that he,
Speaker 1: you know, he's an artificial intelligence. He has conversations with people.
Speaker 1: He sort of presents himself as in many ways a person.
Speaker 1: He straight up says that he has consciousness, kind of
Speaker 1: off handedly, but uh. And he also advertises that he
Speaker 1: is perfect and that he is incapable of error. And
Speaker 1: of course, when Hal begins to appear to malfunction, Bowman
Speaker 1: and Pool are really troubled by this, so they secretly
Speaker 1: decide to take How offline and complete the mission under
Speaker 1: human control without the artificially intelligent computer. How becomes aware
Speaker 1: of their plans and tries to kill them. Uh. He
Speaker 1: believes that if he's deactivated, it'll put the mission in jeopardy,
Speaker 1: So How kills Frank Pool during a spacewalk and then
Speaker 1: tries to kill David Bowman. But Bowman manages to get
Speaker 1: inside the ship and deactivate the computer. And as he's
Speaker 1: doing this, there's this long, strange sequence where Hal begs
Speaker 1: for his life and I forgot how how unnerving that
Speaker 1: whole sequence is, while where the com pewter is begging
Speaker 1: not to be killed, while the while the astronaut is
Speaker 1: taking out its memory. Yeah, yeah, just the what are
Speaker 1: you doing day? We tend to I feel like I
Speaker 1: tend to remember just a little bit of it, but
Speaker 1: it does. It goes on for a while as he's
Speaker 1: slowly removing he well, first as he's gaining access to
Speaker 1: the chamber, and then slowly removing each of those cards.
Speaker 1: And then in the final sequence of the movie, Bowman
Speaker 1: reaches the destination on Jupiter and discovers another monolith there
Speaker 1: in orbit around Jupiter, and this monolith, unlike the others,
Speaker 1: which were just solid objects, appears to be some kind
Speaker 1: of doorway or gateway, which begins this surreal sequence that
Speaker 1: ends the movie, where Bowman is apparently taken across vast
Speaker 1: distances and shown incomprehensible sights. We it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: know exactly how literally to take the things that he
Speaker 1: appears to be seeing. We're shown a lot of things,
Speaker 1: apparently from his perspective, that are just colors and hard
Speaker 1: to understand. Yeah, there's this sense that is definitely an
Speaker 1: acid trip vibe to it. I mean some of the
Speaker 1: visuals so where we see these sort of cosmic explosions
Speaker 1: taking place like those are are are films of like
Speaker 1: oil uh that are very similar to some of those,
Speaker 1: like those oil projection patterns that you see in like
Speaker 1: sixties musical performances, whether you know, projected on the on
Speaker 1: the screen or on the band itself. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of like stand brackage movies like if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: a Dog, Starman or anything like that, experimental films that
Speaker 1: have a lot of things like close ups of liquids
Speaker 1: being pressed between pains and glasts and stuff. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So you're you're left wondering, is this
Speaker 1: is this the gateway that were as we're seeing it,
Speaker 1: Is this just like the the crazy um psychedelic experience
Speaker 1: that is that is happening to Bowman as he's kind
Speaker 1: of like squeeze through the fabric of reality and you know,
Speaker 1: with space and time warping all around him. Is this
Speaker 1: essentially Stephen King's the jaunt is because he looks like
Speaker 1: he's jaunting and some of those skills that we see, Yes,
Speaker 1: so like his visions seem to be or cut with
Speaker 1: these stills of his face being blurred and warped and
Speaker 1: like he's losing his mind. And then Bowman finally ends
Speaker 1: up in a strange room that has like a glowing
Speaker 1: floor and neo classical furniture and decorations, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people have argued over what this scene means, but
Speaker 1: he essentially sees himself other versions of himself and then
Speaker 1: becomes them as an older and older version of himself.
Speaker 1: It seems to sort of suggest that many years passed
Speaker 1: with him living in this room, but it's not exactly clear.
Speaker 1: And then finally he's laying in bed, apparently near death,
Speaker 1: and another monolith stands at the foot of his bed,
Speaker 1: and he appears transformed into some kind of glowing newborn
Speaker 1: baby with these creepy adult eyes. Adult eyes on a
Speaker 1: baby is just the most horrifying side, but it's this
Speaker 1: new form of humanity shown. And then he has finally
Speaker 1: shown hovering back over Earth, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: have argued, what does this mean? Has he come back
Speaker 1: to Earth to what has he been transfer warmed? Is
Speaker 1: he back here to share some kind of knowledge with us?
Speaker 1: Is he back here to do something to observe us
Speaker 1: to destroy Earth. Yeah, or indeed, I mean it's also
Speaker 1: up a new interpretation. Really, like, how literally should I
Speaker 1: take this is? I mean, how much of the later
Speaker 1: portions of the film are just purely uh, you know, metaphoric.
Speaker 1: Am I supposed to really think about him becoming a
Speaker 1: giant star child and orbiting the planet um? And certainly
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence of support that you are.
Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, I always feel like
Speaker 1: any kind interpretation is always an equal opportunity game. I
Speaker 1: feel like you can equally say, well, this is this
Speaker 1: is all happening within the head of Bowman, or this
Speaker 1: is just kind of this is kind of pointing the
Speaker 1: direction for the future evolution of of human civilization now
Speaker 1: that they have essentially made contact with this higher power.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love about two thousand one
Speaker 1: is that I think it is a movie that is
Speaker 1: deliberately made to have extremely uh compeling symbolic significance, but
Speaker 1: symbolic in the in the original true sense of the
Speaker 1: word symbolic, meaning something that is not just a sign
Speaker 1: pointing to one correct interpretation, but an intentional and valid
Speaker 1: way accused to lots of different themes like that there
Speaker 1: are there are many I think legitimate differend interpretations of
Speaker 1: two thousand one. Yeah, Like when I watch it now,
Speaker 1: I definitely get a sense of like he becomes a
Speaker 1: baby at the end, so as an adult and as
Speaker 1: an adult with with a child, it's like, I see
Speaker 1: this is a new beginning, like this is all you know,
Speaker 1: a new possibility for Bowman and or the human race.
Speaker 1: But when I think, I do remember watching it as
Speaker 1: a child, and that last section of the film was
Speaker 1: like just you know, super confusing as one would imagine.
Speaker 1: It was just dreamlike but also hypnotic. Like I said,
Speaker 1: but when he becomes a baby, watching it as a child,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, oh, he's he's dead. You know,
Speaker 1: this is this is a reduction. You know, It's like
Speaker 1: he was this a capable, an up astronaut hero dude,
Speaker 1: and now he's a star baby. We've taught a horrible thing.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that before, like why is it that
Speaker 1: when you're a child, the greatest insult is to call
Speaker 1: something a baby. You know, like that that seems like
Speaker 1: a really horrible thing when you're a kid. But now,
Speaker 1: of course there's adults you'd like, no, wait, I want
Speaker 1: another life. Yeah, let me go back. Yeah. And plus
Speaker 1: you know he's in he's orbiting in space, and and uh,
Speaker 1: and the some of the the sequel material and the
Speaker 1: literary material accompting a demonstrate he has powers beyond, well
Speaker 1: beyond that of a normal child. But but that's outside
Speaker 1: of the movie itself, and we're largely just talking about
Speaker 1: the film. There is one thing that has always stood
Speaker 1: out to me about the movie in a way that
Speaker 1: makes it almost completely unique among stories I can think of,
Speaker 1: and that is that the human characters are dull. I
Speaker 1: mean dull, and it's great anyway. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: it's great because they're dull. And let me try to
Speaker 1: explain what I mean. Uh, No human character really says
Speaker 1: almost anything of interest in the movie. Most of the
Speaker 1: movie is without dialogue, and when the characters do talk,
Speaker 1: almost everything they say is banal. And so I want
Speaker 1: to say something about the movie that I would scoff
Speaker 1: at in pretty much any other context. And so I
Speaker 1: think the characters are boring on purpose, and it works
Speaker 1: now normally, if a movie had boring characters and somebody
Speaker 1: who liked the movie tried to defend it by saying, oh,
Speaker 1: but it's that way on purpose. I'd be like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, if you've been in a
Speaker 1: creative writing class, you've heard that kind of excuse. Somebody's like,
Speaker 1: your story doesn't make any sense, right, it's not supposed
Speaker 1: to make any sense. It's like, well, congratulations, good job.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of the time that's just excuse making
Speaker 1: for a failure of somebody to, you know, create something
Speaker 1: in a compelling way. Um, but two thousand one is
Speaker 1: a big exception. I think the human characters are boring.
Speaker 1: I think it's that way on purpose because judging from
Speaker 1: kuber sothern movies, we know he could create characters that
Speaker 1: were interesting, and somehow the movie is better because they're boring.
Speaker 1: It makes us feel the movie's themes in an even
Speaker 1: more powerful way. And I think the reason is that
Speaker 1: this is a movie where the individual characters are not
Speaker 1: the protagonists. The protagonist is somehow the meta organism of
Speaker 1: the evolving intelligence of the human species. Uh. It's like
Speaker 1: the abstract entity of human civilization and human potential. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell a story like that and make
Speaker 1: it interesting without sort of anchoring it within some character
Speaker 1: who symbolizes everything you're talking about. But Clarke and Kubrick,
Speaker 1: I think did it here, Like in the face of
Speaker 1: the cosmos, each individual human is vanishingly insignificant and banal,
Speaker 1: but the potential of an intelligent civilization is vast and unimaginable.
Speaker 1: That's a good read. I like that. Um. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: these cars, so they're they're sort of two levels to
Speaker 1: my interpretation on it. On one, I can't help but
Speaker 1: look at it now and certainly as a night as
Speaker 1: a film from the nineteen sixties, and this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is a predominantly white male movie. Uh. These are
Speaker 1: some waspy characters and and they are they are dull
Speaker 1: to your point. So it's it's interesting to watch it
Speaker 1: and kind of tear that apart because on one level
Speaker 1: you're thinking, oh, well, this this just speaking to the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist at the time. And then how much of it
Speaker 1: is this intentional process? Uh? And and I do agree
Speaker 1: with you, I think it is intentional. We have those scenes, um,
Speaker 1: where the crew members are interacting with How, and How
Speaker 1: is so much more interesting than He's the more human character,
Speaker 1: Like I know How far more than I know Bowman. Um. Likewise,
Speaker 1: I know a moon gazer more than I know most
Speaker 1: of the characters in the film that we we see
Speaker 1: that that ape in particular like struggling through stuff, figuring
Speaker 1: stuff out, and you get arguably you get more of
Speaker 1: a sense of of of his values as opposed to
Speaker 1: the values of Bowman. A moon Gazer is definitely a
Speaker 1: more interesting character than Heywood Floyd. Um. I want to
Speaker 1: say one more thing about the just the pace of
Speaker 1: the film, and uh, this film is it is a
Speaker 1: rarity compared to so many other films because it does
Speaker 1: have this lethargic Well, I wouldn't say lethargic. I would
Speaker 1: say quo ludic of pace where everything is is hypnotic
Speaker 1: and chill, but also just really drawn out or at
Speaker 1: least as far as my movie going experience goes. I
Speaker 1: I don't do not become impatient with it. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's it's having those spaces, having room to breathe in
Speaker 1: the film that allows you to think more about what's
Speaker 1: going on, to contemplate the symbols. And I think there
Speaker 1: is also something to be said for the spaces that
Speaker 1: are afforded by the absence of you know, a bunch
Speaker 1: of of of arguably unnecessary conversation among the characters, or
Speaker 1: character development or emotional read sentence with these characters. By
Speaker 1: by keeping them so slim and kind of abstract, I'm
Speaker 1: forced to think more about them like this is I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons that I'm so drawn to
Speaker 1: terrible science fiction films as well are just bad or
Speaker 1: mediocre ones, because in those films, you know, they may
Speaker 1: have the same frenzied pace of any other action movie.
Speaker 1: They might, you know, and they might not even have
Speaker 1: that much intelligent content to them, but the spaces are
Speaker 1: there in the quality of the film. Uh, And I'm
Speaker 1: for and you know, they don't give me enough to
Speaker 1: play with as far as characters go or plot. But
Speaker 1: I'm but I can set there and just think about
Speaker 1: something interesting on the set. I So you and I've
Speaker 1: had this conversation before, and it's definitely true that this
Speaker 1: is part of what draws me to bad movies as well.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I find a lot of bad movies
Speaker 1: thought provoking in the way that a lot of competent
Speaker 1: movies are not. Because a competent movie will get you
Speaker 1: sucked into the plot more than a bad movie will.
Speaker 1: And when you're sucked into a plot, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of leisures in that as well. Like I enjoy
Speaker 1: being sucked into the plot of a movie. It it
Speaker 1: gets you into that flow state. You sort of like
Speaker 1: forget yourself and you just become awareness of this other narrative.
Speaker 1: That's all great and great fun, but there's a different
Speaker 1: kind of great fun and stimulation to be had and
Speaker 1: the way you watch a story or a movie that
Speaker 1: does not arrest you in constant plot developments and and
Speaker 1: the character's emotions, and two thousand one does that in
Speaker 1: a in a very different way than a bad movie does.
Speaker 1: Two thousand one is a movie full of breathing room.
Speaker 1: Like you're saying it. It's constantly allowing you to think
Speaker 1: about what you're seeing rather than just being pulled along
Speaker 1: by it. The late Roger Ebert has an essay about
Speaker 1: two thousand one from his Great Film Series where he
Speaker 1: talks about the the appeal of the movie and one
Speaker 1: of the things he says, I just wanted to quote.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, Only a few films are transcendent and
Speaker 1: work upon our minds and imaginations, like music or prayer
Speaker 1: or a vast belittling landscape. Most movies are about charac
Speaker 1: or with a goal in mind who obtained it after difficulties,
Speaker 1: either comic or dramatic. Two thousand one of Space Odyssey
Speaker 1: is not about a goal, but about a quest, a need.
Speaker 1: It does not hook its effects on specific plot points,
Speaker 1: nor does it ask us to identify with Dave Bowman
Speaker 1: or any other character. It says to us, we became
Speaker 1: men when we learned to think. Our minds have given
Speaker 1: us the tools to understand what we live and who
Speaker 1: we are. Now it is time to move on to
Speaker 1: the next step, to know that we live not on
Speaker 1: a planet but among the stars, and that we are
Speaker 1: not flesh but intelligence. Oh that's good. I think that
Speaker 1: says a lot of what I feel about the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases where I definitely agree
Speaker 1: with Ebert. I find that I either completely agree with
Speaker 1: what he said had to say about a film where
Speaker 1: I strongly disagree. Oh yeah, well, I mean, the best
Speaker 1: kind of critic is the critic who you like reading
Speaker 1: even when you fully disagree. Absolutely. All right, Well, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk some more about
Speaker 1: two thousand and one of Space Odyssey, about how it
Speaker 1: came to be and many of the fabulous sci fi
Speaker 1: but thoroughly stuff to blow your mind ideas that are
Speaker 1: utilized in the film Thank You, Thank Alright, We're back.
Speaker 1: So Supposedly, two thousand one of Space Odyssey was developed
Speaker 1: by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark on the basis of
Speaker 1: an idea from an earlier story by Clark, Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: a story known as The Sentinel, also known as The
Speaker 1: Sentinel of Eternity. Uh. This was published in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: and basically it's a story about an alien artifact in
Speaker 1: the form of a mineral pyramid buried on the Moon,
Speaker 1: and Clark has apparently complained that the story contains so
Speaker 1: little of what's in two thousand one that it really
Speaker 1: shouldn't be said that two thousand one is based on it.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I mean, it seems like it's there.
Speaker 1: There's a monolith on the Moon. It might not be
Speaker 1: shaped the same way, but that's already a compelling idea. Right.
Speaker 1: We go to the Moon and we find something they're
Speaker 1: waiting for us. Though there's an interesting all alternate tay
Speaker 1: on what the function of that object on the Moon
Speaker 1: could be. There's the idea that what if aliens left
Speaker 1: behind some kind of technological intelligence detector alarm that recognizes
Speaker 1: a certain point of technological development in the human species
Speaker 1: and then sends a signal back home saying like, oh, now,
Speaker 1: watch out, these guys are coming. Well that yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a yeah, cosmic security alarm. Yeah, I've also
Speaker 1: read that there there's at least one earlier Clark's story
Speaker 1: that closely resembles the Dawn of Man segment. And one
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind here is, of course, that
Speaker 1: the Clark was a was a prolific writer. He wrote
Speaker 1: a number of sci fi stories. By the time two
Speaker 1: thousand and one came into production, he had established himself
Speaker 1: as a major sci fi writer and also experienced success
Speaker 1: as a science writer, often dealing with topics related to
Speaker 1: futurism computer space travel. Uh So he he already had
Speaker 1: a career in which he had gotten to explore so
Speaker 1: many of these concepts, So it makes sense that two
Speaker 1: thousand one would be a further refinement of those ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Clark was known as a as a writer of
Speaker 1: what it might be a silly word, but what's often
Speaker 1: known as hard science fiction, not not like space pirates
Speaker 1: and uh, space fantasy, but science fiction that's based on
Speaker 1: some reasonable appreciation of the laws of nature. And uh.
Speaker 1: There is a novel, two thousand and one, but it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that he wrote it concurrently with the film,
Speaker 1: so the film is not based upon two thousand and
Speaker 1: one of Space Oudsy the book, but they both emerge
Speaker 1: from the same process, and the book is worth checking out.
Speaker 1: I especially enjoyed the Dawn of Man portion of the
Speaker 1: book because you do get to spend more time with
Speaker 1: those apes and they have names. They have names, yeah,
Speaker 1: such as moon Gazer. Yeah. Now, of course, Stanley Kubrick
Speaker 1: was well established as a respected filmmaker by the time
Speaker 1: he made two thousand one. Right, His previous film, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, prior to this was Dr Strange Love from
Speaker 1: sixty four. He directed the excellent Spartacus in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven Paths of Glory, but nothing, nothing prior to two
Speaker 1: thousand one. I would say, really, you know, points towards
Speaker 1: this as like the next logical evolution of Kubrick's uh
Speaker 1: uh filmography. I mean, Kubrick experts may discrew with me
Speaker 1: on that there, and maybe you can you can you
Speaker 1: can point to examples to that but for the most part,
Speaker 1: like this is this is suddenly a sci fi epic,
Speaker 1: a space epic. Uh, from someone who has not really
Speaker 1: dipped their toes in any kind of genre material previously. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it makes sense that his career
Speaker 1: would take a turn like this at this time. This
Speaker 1: is nineteen sixty eight. I mean this, this is a
Speaker 1: year of change for the modern world. It's often recognized
Speaker 1: as this, this pivotal turning point where you know, modernity
Speaker 1: becomes whatever the world is now that there's some kind
Speaker 1: of upheaval, changing of culture, chang aging of values, a
Speaker 1: rebellion against the old ways. And and two thousand one
Speaker 1: is definitely that in terms of many aspects of filmmaking. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's almost as if in sixty eight
Speaker 1: a crazy space break came and we all touched it, right. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we we know from Kubrick's later films, you
Speaker 1: know he would he would definitely explore more, you know,
Speaker 1: genre territory, weirder territory with works like seventy ones a Clockwork,
Speaker 1: Orange nineteen eighties, The Shining Um. But but those are
Speaker 1: still far more narrative and traditional films compared with two
Speaker 1: thousand one. Two thousand one stands out even in a
Speaker 1: filmography such as Kubricks. And of course we also have
Speaker 1: to recognize Doulas Douglas Trumbull, who I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: visual effects wizard, largely responsible for the many amazing lasting
Speaker 1: effects in the film. He also went on to work
Speaker 1: on Blade Runner, another great looking movie. Yeah, um star
Speaker 1: Trek the motion picture. And also he was at least
Speaker 1: in an advisory capacity on a Tree of Life. I
Speaker 1: never saw it yet, Oh it's good. Yeah, uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And of course, as I mentioned, he directed one of
Speaker 1: my favorite sci fi films of the era, nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two Silent Running starring Bruce Dern. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've asked this before, but which came first, Silent Running
Speaker 1: or the low As. Oh, well, let's see, Laura is
Speaker 1: one in influence on the other. Well, I'm not sure enough. Han,
Speaker 1: I'd have to ask you to look up when when
Speaker 1: the Laura emerged from his stump. The Lax was published
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, one year before Silent Running. Maybe
Speaker 1: they kind of emerged from the same stump. I mean
Speaker 1: they're both emerging from. Again, we we have to, like
Speaker 1: you pointed out in sixty eight, we have to think
Speaker 1: about this, uh, the various changes that were occurring there,
Speaker 1: the various revolutions that were occurring in uh in in
Speaker 1: the in the zeitgeist, in the way people were in
Speaker 1: interacting with their world, and certainly the environmental movement was
Speaker 1: one of those. Uh. And both the low ax and
Speaker 1: the silent running, you know, echo those sentiments. Well, Robert,
Speaker 1: are you ready to drill down and focus on some
Speaker 1: individual elements of the movie. Let's do it. So we
Speaker 1: wanted to just look at some aspects of different parts
Speaker 1: of the film, ideas explored there. What's interesting or what's
Speaker 1: scientifically accurate, what's not um And so I guess it
Speaker 1: would make sense to first start with the Dawn of
Speaker 1: Man segment, the the segment with the ape like creatures
Speaker 1: that are exposed to the monolith and somehow learned to
Speaker 1: use tools, which are, by the way, some of the
Speaker 1: best looking ape suits you will find in any motion picture.
Speaker 1: I mean, Hollywood history is replete with ape suits great,
Speaker 1: great and small, and and good and bad. And man,
Speaker 1: I love a bad ape suit like I love the
Speaker 1: movie Robot Monster or the aliens that invade Earth or
Speaker 1: like it's a guerrilla suit with a fish bowl on
Speaker 1: the head. But but yeah, these are some good suits,
Speaker 1: good suits and great performances to you had a very
Speaker 1: physical mime performances that brought these to life based on
Speaker 1: the movements of actual primates. And then of course we
Speaker 1: have actual primates and scenes as well, because you have
Speaker 1: actual chimp uh, like young chimps standing in as the
Speaker 1: young members of this tribe. And the Gord thing is,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily even think about it when you're watching it,
Speaker 1: Like everything works so well in that scene, you're not thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: we have people in ape costumes and actual apes. That's
Speaker 1: a good point. So I was wondering, you know, is
Speaker 1: there any way of looking at this and saying how
Speaker 1: how realistic is this? I mean, obviously we don't know
Speaker 1: everything about our ancestors from this period, and that that
Speaker 1: part of the movie does not say exactly how long
Speaker 1: ago it is, though in the middle part Heywood Floyd
Speaker 1: says that the monolith on the Moon is four million
Speaker 1: years old, so if they're all roughly the same age
Speaker 1: they were put there at the same time, that might
Speaker 1: put this scene on Earth around four million years ago.
Speaker 1: So I was wondering what were our ancestors like then?
Speaker 1: And supposedly the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
Speaker 1: lived sometime between about ten and about four million years ago,
Speaker 1: and the hominids depicted in this scene appeared to be
Speaker 1: would you say, semi bipedle like, not standing upright, but
Speaker 1: often perched in a crouch on two legs and uh
Speaker 1: able to stand up, but often sort of hunkered near
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, I would definitely say that. But then,
Speaker 1: of course, when the one hominid gains the use of
Speaker 1: a bone tool, this one finally begins to stand upright
Speaker 1: in a full fighting posture. And as best I can tell,
Speaker 1: there's still vigorous debate in the scientific community about the
Speaker 1: origins of human bipedalism. This is not a settled question.
Speaker 1: Used to be commonly assumed that human ancestors began to
Speaker 1: walk upright on two legs when they moved down from
Speaker 1: the trees, down from an arboreal environment onto the grasslands
Speaker 1: and the savannah, and so they stood up, you know,
Speaker 1: The classic explanation was stood up to see over the grass,
Speaker 1: but for whatever reason, down on the savannah, that that's
Speaker 1: when we started going by petal, and this was still
Speaker 1: a dominant explanation in the nineteen sixties when two thousand
Speaker 1: one was made. But this idea, I think is has
Speaker 1: largely fallen out of favor in the past couple of
Speaker 1: decades for several reasons, one of which is evidence that
Speaker 1: seems to show that humans were still primary tree dwellers,
Speaker 1: or at least highly adapted to climbing and living in
Speaker 1: trees after they became bipedal. So that's a strange kind
Speaker 1: of upset of the picture a lot of people have
Speaker 1: of human evolution, But there's evidence, say from from ancient
Speaker 1: hominid skeletons like Australi epithesnes, that at the same time
Speaker 1: our legs seem to show that we had upright posture,
Speaker 1: we also still had shoulder blades and hands adapted for
Speaker 1: living in a tree environment. So the picture of this
Speaker 1: movie paints was probably more uh was more a feature
Speaker 1: of the dominant theories of the time, and wouldn't be
Speaker 1: quite so accurate today. But the picture it paints of
Speaker 1: the the origin of tool use, I think has always
Speaker 1: been a really fascinating thing. Earlier, I mentioned that essay
Speaker 1: by Roger Ebert about the movie in his great movie
Speaker 1: series and And he says this. Also, he says, quote
Speaker 1: in the in the first movement of the film, quote,
Speaker 1: prehistoric apes confronted by a mysterious black monolith, teach themselves
Speaker 1: that bones can be used as weapons and thus discover
Speaker 1: the first tools. I have always el that the smooth
Speaker 1: artificial surfaces and right angles of the monolith, which was
Speaker 1: obviously made by intelligent beings, triggered the realization in the
Speaker 1: ape brain that intelligence could be used to shape the
Speaker 1: objects of the world. I think that is fascinating because
Speaker 1: so he's saying that it's not necessarily even something magic
Speaker 1: about the monolith, you know, that it did something physical
Speaker 1: to their brains maybe, but that it literally could have
Speaker 1: just been a form, like a form that they observed
Speaker 1: that they had never seen before, and by simply seeing
Speaker 1: this form it triggered something in them, just kind of
Speaker 1: like mere inspiration to say, oh, shapes like that are possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, I mean, I do wonder if something
Speaker 1: like that is but not so much that aliens put
Speaker 1: a thing on the earth. But I mean you always
Speaker 1: have to wonder about those moments, like we don't know
Speaker 1: the answer of what triggered the evolution of hominid intelligence
Speaker 1: millions of years ago, which eventually led to language and
Speaker 1: tool use in human civilization and all that. But one
Speaker 1: is tempted to imagine individual on the ground scenarios like, obviously,
Speaker 1: we've got an intellectual capacity to make and use tools,
Speaker 1: but to some extent there had to be moments of
Speaker 1: proto cultural and technological transition, right, a moment when an
Speaker 1: ancient Homini had suddenly understood that an inanimate object like
Speaker 1: a stick or a bone could be used as a
Speaker 1: tool to do something, or could be used in a
Speaker 1: different way than it had been used before. And it's
Speaker 1: just amazing to wonder what did that moment look like?
Speaker 1: What did she see or hear or feel that allowed
Speaker 1: that jump across the chasm of how an object can
Speaker 1: be manipulated and used. Yeah, and indeed it was probably
Speaker 1: not so cinematic, right, you know. I it's easy to imagine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an individual making a discovery like that and
Speaker 1: then either not utilizing it, uh and treating it as
Speaker 1: a curio or dying before they can pass it on.
Speaker 1: And then someone else, another individual has to make the
Speaker 1: same discovery years later, and maybe that one picks up.
Speaker 1: Maybe it doesn't um, but certainly it works. I feel
Speaker 1: like that the scene itself in the film works as
Speaker 1: a great illustration of this overall movement. I almost feel
Speaker 1: like this is something that, you know, I want evolutionary
Speaker 1: anthropologists to to think about, like, is is there a
Speaker 1: site that could have been seen somehow away, a way
Speaker 1: of mimicking something seen in the environment that could produce
Speaker 1: the inspiration for tool use. But we'll have to we
Speaker 1: have to maybe look into this because two use among
Speaker 1: animals is always a fascinating topic and it's something we
Speaker 1: continue to learn more and more about, particularly thinking about
Speaker 1: the I believe they're largely German experiments taking place with
Speaker 1: with the tool using birds and observing how into what
Speaker 1: degree they'll use h you know, sticks on various tasks. Oh,
Speaker 1: we've done We've done whole episodes on bird intelligence, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's extensive tool used by birds. Crows and corvids show
Speaker 1: really startling kinds of tool use, you know, on the
Speaker 1: level of what you'd you'd expect to see from an ape, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what what did it look like though? The
Speaker 1: first the first crow to to actually pick up a
Speaker 1: twig and use it as a tool. What might that
Speaker 1: have looked like if we've had kind of a like
Speaker 1: a god's eye view of the whole process. All right,
Speaker 1: let's throw this bone in the into the air, Joe
Speaker 1: and move on to the age of space travel. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the best things I think about the technological
Speaker 1: accuracy of the movie is that they don't have magical
Speaker 1: gravity plating on the floors. And this was standard in
Speaker 1: the science fiction of the time, that you know, you'd
Speaker 1: have a spaceship and people just walk around in it
Speaker 1: because why not. Oh, and it's and it's largely standard afterwards,
Speaker 1: like you find some pretty you'll you'll find some some
Speaker 1: sci fi that it's pretty serious about its science. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to gravity on the ship, they just
Speaker 1: they just go ahead and just assume there's magic gravity.
Speaker 1: It's like, ultimately easier to just go ahead and chalk
Speaker 1: that one up to magic so we can talk about
Speaker 1: other things, um it. I Mean, it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that I really like the Expanse the television series
Speaker 1: book series as well. And they don't cheat, they don't
Speaker 1: cheat on the gravity. I mean, there may be some
Speaker 1: case to be made for some level of cheating, but
Speaker 1: for the most part they take the gravity seriously and
Speaker 1: it's a part of the plotting as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so all of the artificial gravity in two thousand one
Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey is created by real forces by by
Speaker 1: rotating force. So, just like we've talked about in our
Speaker 1: artificial gravity episode, you've got a space station that's a
Speaker 1: rotating wheel. This uses the angular momentum of the rotation
Speaker 1: to create a downward pressure on the floor inside the
Speaker 1: wheel where people can walk around. Uh. And even in
Speaker 1: the spaceship in the Discovery One, there's like a big
Speaker 1: spherical kind of command area that has a segment of
Speaker 1: it with artificial gravity in it. Uh. That's create added
Speaker 1: by rotating a sort of ring around the middle. Now,
Speaker 1: I have read some analysis that says one problem with
Speaker 1: the Discovery one artificial gravity is that, given what we're
Speaker 1: looking at in the movie, it is not big enough
Speaker 1: and would have to spin too fast to create a
Speaker 1: realistic artificial gravity environment because there would be excess Coriolis forces. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe we went into this a little bit on
Speaker 1: our artificial gravity episode. Yeah, yeah, you would. You would
Speaker 1: probably need a bigger wheel. Yeah, you probably would. So
Speaker 1: the brief refresher. The Coriolis forces is basically just uh,
Speaker 1: strange counterintuitive movements that happen when you're within a rotating
Speaker 1: frame of reference. So if you imagine uh, people sitting
Speaker 1: on a merry go round like horses going around, and
Speaker 1: one of them tries to throw a ball to the other,
Speaker 1: one is not going to be so easy, right, because
Speaker 1: it's rotating. It's not moving in a straight line. So
Speaker 1: you try to throw a ball to somebody, and you
Speaker 1: are maybe throwing the ball to where they would be
Speaker 1: if they were moving in a straight line, but they're rotating,
Speaker 1: so the ball appears a curve off path. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to make any sense. Before we move on, I
Speaker 1: should also point out the other big obvious um aspect
Speaker 1: of the presentation of space travel in this uh, in
Speaker 1: this movie, and that is that there is there is
Speaker 1: no sound in space. And they adhere to this in
Speaker 1: a way that virtually no other film does, like even
Speaker 1: pretty smart film, even films and properties that will go
Speaker 1: ahead and try and be realistic with gravity. They're like, Nope,
Speaker 1: if we're having a space battle, nobody's gonna watch it
Speaker 1: unless they're explosion noises, right, uh, And but there there
Speaker 1: are noises for the astronauts, but they're internal noises. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Like when the astronauts go out for e v A,
Speaker 1: there is this almost deafening hiss of life support systems
Speaker 1: within their suits. And I was reading a little bit
Speaker 1: about what astronauts do actually here when they're on their spacewalks. Uh,
Speaker 1: and apparently, yeah, they mainly hear their own life support systems.
Speaker 1: They hear like pumping and fans and stuff like that
Speaker 1: within their suits. But it's kind of creepy to imagine
Speaker 1: because imagine trying to do mechanical work with tools when
Speaker 1: you can't hear anything you're doing. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a different reality than we're used to dealing with.
Speaker 1: You Normally, you should be able to to hear your tools,
Speaker 1: and even if you're not, you're not consciously thinking about it.
Speaker 1: It's part of your your your sensory experience of the
Speaker 1: of of of the activity. Yeah, I mean, I imagine
Speaker 1: to be deeply unsettling to go and loosen a bolt
Speaker 1: and I just hear nothing. It's completely silent. But they
Speaker 1: have to. Astronauts on spacewalks have to do things like that.
Speaker 1: That's why you gotta have those explosive bolts joke, because
Speaker 1: just push the button and you're done. No, no sitting
Speaker 1: there cranking them around. Oh there's some good explosive bolts
Speaker 1: in the movie too. Uh. And there was one part
Speaker 1: where I thought I caught a mistake in the movie.
Speaker 1: I thought I caught a gravity mistake where there's a
Speaker 1: scene where they're flying in a moon shuttle to a
Speaker 1: thing on the surface of the Moon. And we just
Speaker 1: did an episode about coffee and space. Heywood Floyd and
Speaker 1: his buddies. They're pouring out a caraff of coffee to
Speaker 1: pour coffee into cups, and I was like, hey, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. But then I realized, oh, wait a minute. Now,
Speaker 1: this shuttle is presumably not actually in a zero G environment.
Speaker 1: It's flying over the surface of the moon, right, so
Speaker 1: it would be something more like imagining being in an airplane.
Speaker 1: But then again I thought. I came back on that
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, but an airplane wouldn't work
Speaker 1: on the Moon because airplanes have to generate lift by
Speaker 1: creating a differential flow of air under the wings, you know,
Speaker 1: so you can generate forward thrust and then there's a
Speaker 1: differential pressure of of flow of air above the wing
Speaker 1: and below the wing, or the aerofoil, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and then that lifts the plane up on the moon
Speaker 1: where there's no atmosphere. You couldn't do that, So how
Speaker 1: would you even have air travel on the moon. Well,
Speaker 1: as far as the coffee aspect of this problem goes,
Speaker 1: they do. Uh. The cooper does make the fabulous choice
Speaker 1: of simply cutting away before we see coffee actually poured,
Speaker 1: so we we end up having a lengthy discussions later
Speaker 1: on about how that coffee might have worked, but the
Speaker 1: magician doesn't reveal his trick. Well, but there's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of attention paid in general in the movie too,
Speaker 1: allowing life to continue in microgravity or zero gravity environment. Food,
Speaker 1: for instance, either being sucked through the straw or scraped
Speaker 1: off of that trade that wonderfully appetizing green paste. It
Speaker 1: looks like like the worst possible store bought guacamole. You
Speaker 1: get a thing like the not the cool kind of
Speaker 1: guacamole we can get now, the kind of store bought
Speaker 1: guacamole that you could only either you've got in like
Speaker 1: that the nineties, I would say all the food now
Speaker 1: you're talking about the scene on the Discovery one, but
Speaker 1: that's in a simulated gravity environment, right, but it's still disgusting.
Speaker 1: It is disgusting. Yeah, they it looks like to me,
Speaker 1: it looks like what they're eating is different colored versions
Speaker 1: of the I don't know whatever that stuff is on
Speaker 1: the top of a lemon bar, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, Like that just kind of gelatinous consistency stuff.
Speaker 1: It just kind of scraping it off with that with
Speaker 1: the device. It kind of looks like the thing that
Speaker 1: the Romans used to scrape their skin in the bat
Speaker 1: in the baths, except I guess it's you know, this
Speaker 1: is like corn beef flavored lemon bar. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: so you've got the space travel scenes in in the
Speaker 1: zero G space shuttles in the middle section of the
Speaker 1: movie where they're eating and drinking out of like corn cartons.
Speaker 1: I guess liquid corn liquid carrot seems kind of gross.
Speaker 1: The the flight attendants have these grip shoes that allow
Speaker 1: them to walk around by gripping the floor. I guess
Speaker 1: it's some kind of velcro like thing. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: have missed it in the film because they only spend
Speaker 1: like a half hour establishing this technology. But I say
Speaker 1: that it's not a not a not a second of
Speaker 1: it's boring, but they do firmly establish how they're walking around.
Speaker 1: An amazing comic relief moment is the moment where Haywood
Speaker 1: Floyd is on the flight. I think he's just been
Speaker 1: sucking up some some corn carton, you know, like a
Speaker 1: corn through a straw, and then the next thing we
Speaker 1: see is him staring at the instructions for zero gravity toilet.
Speaker 1: It says like passengers are advised to read instructions before use.
Speaker 1: And then there's this massive call him of text. He's
Speaker 1: like biting his knuckle. But that does also play on
Speaker 1: on some real space issues, like you've talked about before
Speaker 1: with the the emergencies of of bladder control in zero gravity.
Speaker 1: Oh certainly, yeah, that how how the bladder doesn't fill
Speaker 1: up from top to bottom but from all sides in
Speaker 1: and then suddenly it's the last second and you've got
Speaker 1: to go potty. Um. Yeah. A tremendous amount of research
Speaker 1: and development has gone into creating a better bathroom experience
Speaker 1: in space, and for for a great reason. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a basic aspect of how the human body works.
Speaker 1: And when you absolutely need to maintain hygienic control off
Speaker 1: in a microgravity environment. Do you know how the early
Speaker 1: space command design did not take that into account, Like
Speaker 1: in his first orbital flight, Alan Shephard, Well, actually I
Speaker 1: think not. While he was in flight, I believe is
Speaker 1: before liftoff he had to he had to pee in
Speaker 1: his space suit, and he was They did not give
Speaker 1: him any anything to deal with this. They just figured,
Speaker 1: you of, the flight would be so short that he
Speaker 1: could hold it. But then there were launch delays and
Speaker 1: so he's there in his suit for hours and hours
Speaker 1: and he's got a pee. So he just went and
Speaker 1: it shorted out some of his sensors and equipment. It's
Speaker 1: kind of an embarrassing story that they were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we don't need to worry about that. Isn't this scene
Speaker 1: presented in the right stuff the motion picture? I don't
Speaker 1: it is okay, unless that's a false memory. I seem
Speaker 1: to recall this this scene taking place. Well, if it does,
Speaker 1: apparently that's a true story. But but more about the
Speaker 1: way the movie deals with space travel, space communication, all
Speaker 1: that beyond just the toilets. Uh So, one thing that
Speaker 1: it does correctly acknowledges the the time delay between signals
Speaker 1: received and transmitted between say a ship en route to
Speaker 1: Jupiter and the Earth. Like there's a part where the
Speaker 1: astronauts on the Discovery one going to Jupiter they do
Speaker 1: an interview with the BBC and the BBC guys like
Speaker 1: we had to edit out the seven minute delays between
Speaker 1: questions and answers. But also once they actually do the interview,
Speaker 1: it when you're thinking about that, it seems kind of like,
Speaker 1: what because there are parts where the interviewer asks such
Speaker 1: dumb questions. If you're not going to get an answer
Speaker 1: for seven minutes, it seems like he should have been
Speaker 1: more concise. Yeah, you think you would think so. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing the movie demonstrates that that I think we
Speaker 1: have not yet figured out from a scientific perspective is
Speaker 1: the idea of hibernation. Human hibernation on board spacecraft. So
Speaker 1: on the Discovery one, you've got two astronauts who are
Speaker 1: awake and sort of minding the store, and then you've
Speaker 1: got a whole other crew of astronauts who are in
Speaker 1: hibernation and it's sarcophagus looking devices that it's very creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like some of the like I think I can't
Speaker 1: remember if it's Pool or Bowman, but one of them
Speaker 1: is drawing them while they're in hybernation, and how is
Speaker 1: is commenting as it looks very good days. I've really
Speaker 1: been working on your your skill. That's great. But they
Speaker 1: say the hibernation is like sleep. They breathe once a minute,
Speaker 1: the heart beats three times a minute, and body temperature
Speaker 1: is three degrees in integrade. And as far as I
Speaker 1: know that, they don't explain in the movie really how
Speaker 1: this works. And as far as I know, this is
Speaker 1: not possible, right, I mean, certainly hibernation continues to be
Speaker 1: of key interest to researchers for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: Should have said not possible yet, right, yes, but but
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons that we keep looking at
Speaker 1: hibernation hibernation in actual organisms because I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a number of different health potential health benefits there, but
Speaker 1: also the ability to use this for long term space
Speaker 1: travel is is very attractive. Now. The explanation in two
Speaker 1: thousand one is that it's not so much of a
Speaker 1: stasis situation, so they're not traveling between stars or anything,
Speaker 1: but rather it's about raining in consumption of air, water,
Speaker 1: and food for the travel portion of the mission. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't need the doctor until you get there, or
Speaker 1: you know, an astrophysicists or whatever the specialists are. You
Speaker 1: don't need them on the way, So why feed them
Speaker 1: and water them and give them uh, you know, fine
Speaker 1: night portions of the atmosphere rations until you get there,
Speaker 1: right right, And hibernation would seem to be the biological
Speaker 1: process to look to here, because I mean it's uh,
Speaker 1: we've seen examples of in true hibernators of greatly decreased
Speaker 1: metabolic activity, ability to withstand extreme cold and uh, and
Speaker 1: resistance to muscle atrophy while they're under uh. That's that's
Speaker 1: one of the amazing things about like uh, any hybernating species.
Speaker 1: But if you're gonna look at something even it's like
Speaker 1: a hibernation light arguably like like various bears, the fact
Speaker 1: that they can essentially be a mobile for such a
Speaker 1: long period of time and get out and all their
Speaker 1: muscles still work. You know, it's it's it's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: the human perspective, muscle atrophy is a problem even from
Speaker 1: the point of view of active astronauts and unproduced gravity.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're on the space station. You've got
Speaker 1: to exercise vigorously, uh, to try to maintain some of
Speaker 1: your your bone density and muscle strength, because what you
Speaker 1: don't have a floor to push against. Yeah. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing I sort of take is you with and again
Speaker 1: this I'm I'm not nick nitpicking here too much, but
Speaker 1: it said that the hibernation is like sleep. But I've
Speaker 1: read accounts that sleep, the sleep like aspects here might
Speaker 1: not match up with with reality all that much. I've
Speaker 1: seen the hibernation of Arctic ground squirrels compared to a
Speaker 1: kind of awful insomnia where the where the creatures actually
Speaker 1: have to extend a fair amount of energy to heat
Speaker 1: back up so that they can sleep. That sleep is
Speaker 1: perhaps something that is um, it's not possible why you're
Speaker 1: truly hibernating, which which which is fascinating to think about.
Speaker 1: So it also does remind me of of another science
Speaker 1: fiction work of Orson, Scott card is Um. He had
Speaker 1: an older novel titled Hot Sleep, and the idea here
Speaker 1: was that that suspended animation was kind of like an
Speaker 1: awful boiling insomnia. It was that one experienced while they
Speaker 1: were in transit to another place. That sounds bad. But
Speaker 1: I always think of that when I read about this
Speaker 1: idea that hibernation is not sleep, It maybe more like
Speaker 1: hot sleep. Now we're back to the jaunt. Yes, yeah, there, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's another one. I feel like Stephen King's The John
Speaker 1: might not have been possible without two thousand and one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder. But well, speaking of sleep, there's another thing
Speaker 1: that I thought was worth mentioning maybe is there's a
Speaker 1: scene on the Discovery one where it appears that the
Speaker 1: astronaut Frank pool Is. I could be mistaking what's going
Speaker 1: on in the scene, but he appears to be doing
Speaker 1: some kind of light bathing, like he's in his underwear
Speaker 1: and he's laying on a slab under a bunch of
Speaker 1: lights um And you know, I wondered, is that supposed
Speaker 1: to be what's going on there? And it would make
Speaker 1: sense because light regimes matter to astronauts. What kind of
Speaker 1: light you're exposed to does have an effect on your body,
Speaker 1: on your Cicadian rhythms, on everything. I mean, I've read
Speaker 1: about reports of astronauts sometimes having trouble both sleeping on
Speaker 1: space stations and the different kinds of light and exposure
Speaker 1: to different kinds of light at different times could help
Speaker 1: alleviate that problem. Like, if you're exposed to a fluorescent
Speaker 1: light that's putting out blue frequencies, this could lead to
Speaker 1: trouble getting to sleep, and you might need to turn
Speaker 1: on an LED some kind of different kind of light
Speaker 1: if you want to maintain your daily cycles correctly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the circadian rhythm interpretation of that scene. Otherwise
Speaker 1: he's just bored and decided to strip down and hang out,
Speaker 1: you know, totally unrelated to what we're just saying. Well,
Speaker 1: actually no sort of related to sleeping in space. One
Speaker 1: thing I love it predicts is that there are hotel
Speaker 1: chains on the space station. So I love Heywood Floyd
Speaker 1: gets up to the space station on the ring module,
Speaker 1: you know, with the artificial gravity, and he's walking around
Speaker 1: and we see like a Howard Johnson's and a Hilton.
Speaker 1: It's such a that whole station. It's just so stylish.
Speaker 1: Just I just I just want to be there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if I was there, I could just check into
Speaker 1: the hotel and it'd be good to go. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think that's all that implausible. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wonder about commercial hotel chains getting into someday, uh, space stations.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've already seen at least I can think
Speaker 1: of at least one company working on space station habitats,
Speaker 1: like a big low Aerospace which has been working on
Speaker 1: orbital habitats. I think the guy behind that company was
Speaker 1: like a like a hotel or motel chain guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we will get to the point where there
Speaker 1: will be there will be orbital hotels. Now, will they
Speaker 1: have bed bugs? I don't know, it depends what will
Speaker 1: the well, will you know, cosmic radiation and occasional solar
Speaker 1: radiation swells due to those bed bugs, Maybe they'll become
Speaker 1: a giant mutants rampaging through the the the orbital wheels.
Speaker 1: The answer is yes. But what is a space holiday
Speaker 1: in without some mutants? That's true, I would hope that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're basically doing all the legwork here for
Speaker 1: future sci fi riders. Take note, helliday in in space
Speaker 1: that'll be that'll be the franchise. All right, Should we
Speaker 1: take another break and then come back talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how an AI and we should Alright, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna be right back. Than alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So before we get into talking about how I do
Speaker 1: need to point out that we do see some scenes
Speaker 1: where it looks like the the the crew members of
Speaker 1: the Discovery are using iPads. They have these wonderful flat
Speaker 1: screen devices, and that's just one of those those moments
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, man, this film totally got it right.
Speaker 1: I mean, they missed iPads. Uh, you know, they were
Speaker 1: a little early on the on the prediction, but there
Speaker 1: it is. So maybe everything else in the film, it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of time. Like most other things, though,
Speaker 1: I think they did not correctly predict miniaturization, so everything
Speaker 1: is very big. So obviously, as we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: one of the huge themes dealt with in this movie
Speaker 1: is the concept of artificial intelligence, especially if you consider
Speaker 1: it a story about intelligence itself, you know, biological intelligence
Speaker 1: and then machine intelligence. This is this is one of
Speaker 1: the key features of the story. And as we said before,
Speaker 1: how nine thousand the computer is somehow the most interesting
Speaker 1: character in the movie, Like, it has much more interesting
Speaker 1: things to say than the people do. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: feel far more for him when he essentially dies than
Speaker 1: the actual human characters who die, only one of whom
Speaker 1: we didn't get to know at all, and then very
Speaker 1: barely and I've probably feel more about How's death than
Speaker 1: I do about you know, the nameless, nameless eight that's
Speaker 1: beaten to death. You know, I wonder if exactly what
Speaker 1: you're feeling their empathy for a computer more so than
Speaker 1: your felly human being is uh. I have to wonder
Speaker 1: if maybe that's intentional to and supposed to make us
Speaker 1: a little worried. Well, like I said earlier, we do
Speaker 1: not even see that one human death. We see the
Speaker 1: the HOW controlled e V A pod moving towards him,
Speaker 1: and then the next shot is are the are the
Speaker 1: pod and the human and that the corpse just tumbling
Speaker 1: through the void. Well, I mean even the characters say
Speaker 1: in the movie Pool, the character who gets killed by
Speaker 1: How says at one point in this BBC interview from
Speaker 1: the spacecraft, he says, he's just like a sixth member
Speaker 1: of the crew. You very quickly get adjusted to the
Speaker 1: idea that he talks, and you think of him really
Speaker 1: just as another person. And I think that that is
Speaker 1: in a sense quite literal, that there is this risk
Speaker 1: that we think of machines as people, and research is
Speaker 1: born that out. I mean, there have been tests that
Speaker 1: if a machine talks, if it uses language, if it
Speaker 1: uses social conventions, do people start to treat it like
Speaker 1: a person. And I haven't read this research in a while,
Speaker 1: but last time I checked in on it, I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like the consensus was, yes, we very easily,
Speaker 1: quite readily start attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects if
Speaker 1: they just talk and stuff like that, if they look
Speaker 1: like an animal or a person smiley face on it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you begin to feel bad. If somebody give it
Speaker 1: a kick, yeah, that's personnel. I mean to think about, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you ever watched those Boston Dynamics videos where there
Speaker 1: are these four legged robots that walk around in the
Speaker 1: parking lot and stuff, and so when they have the
Speaker 1: guy coming tested by kicking it, Yeah, somebody kicks it
Speaker 1: to see if it can keep its balance because they're
Speaker 1: they're testing its locomotor capabilities, like can it stay on
Speaker 1: its feet if somebody tries to throw it off? But
Speaker 1: when I see that, I'm like, what a mean person?
Speaker 1: How could you kick that animal like that? And it's
Speaker 1: a robot. This is a huge blind spot for the
Speaker 1: human mind. And it could be that they were anticipating
Speaker 1: this kind of research, I mean before it was really
Speaker 1: even out that that Kubrick and Clark may have been
Speaker 1: trying to make a point that, like, we very easily,
Speaker 1: uh fall victim to thinking of machines as people if
Speaker 1: they even resemble people in the barest sense, such as
Speaker 1: speaking like a human, or or seeming to think like
Speaker 1: a human, or just having that one focal point, that
Speaker 1: red light that seems to be an eye, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: giving it the eye. If it didn't have the red
Speaker 1: light and just talked, I wonder how if we would
Speaker 1: feel the same way. Another thing about how that that's
Speaker 1: kind of disturbing is that How describes itself himself, however
Speaker 1: you characterize him. I don't know. I think he sort
Speaker 1: of presents himself as male gendered. I guess How says
Speaker 1: that he is quote, by any practical definition of the
Speaker 1: words fool proof and incapable of error. That seems like
Speaker 1: a bad impression to give an AI. You know, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't teach him to think that way. When people think
Speaker 1: that way, or express themselves that way, or tweet that way,
Speaker 1: we we instantly say there's something wrong with that person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you would think that any good computer program,
Speaker 1: especially one as complex and difficult to understand as a
Speaker 1: conversational AI module should have debugging features like it should
Speaker 1: be aware of the fact that it can malfunction, and
Speaker 1: should have built in processes for rooting out malfunction and
Speaker 1: fixing it. Yes, I mean the only other scenario I
Speaker 1: can think of is that if IT is important, as
Speaker 1: it is on this discovery mission, where it's in charge
Speaker 1: of looking after everyone's life, then perhaps it it is
Speaker 1: advantageous to lean into sort of the godlike qualities of
Speaker 1: how that How. Of course HOW didn't make mistakes because
Speaker 1: of how it makes a mistake, then we're all dead.
Speaker 1: But I think HOW is actually a very good early
Speaker 1: vision of AI. I mean that this again, this was
Speaker 1: back in the sixties and computers were not like they
Speaker 1: are today. It might have been harder to imagine they
Speaker 1: would ever get there. But there's a lot that's smart
Speaker 1: about the way HOW is characterized as an AI that
Speaker 1: goes an AI that goes off the rails and becomes
Speaker 1: murderous because they don't go the terminator direction. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, I've got to I've got to eliminate humanity.
Speaker 1: HOW is just trying to do its job. But we're
Speaker 1: also and we're also not privy to like all the
Speaker 1: really like how didn't set there and saying, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: I killed him, but this is why I killed him,
Speaker 1: This is why I killed all these these individuals as well,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's left for us to try and guess
Speaker 1: at what the what the full uh you know, rationale
Speaker 1: there is in the computers thinking or at least and
Speaker 1: that's the thing that kids explored more in the book.
Speaker 1: But but but I love how it isn't in the
Speaker 1: film because there is this this sense of like we
Speaker 1: can we can try and imagine what it is, what
Speaker 1: is going on in How's mind, but then ultimately to
Speaker 1: what extent does that match up with the computer process
Speaker 1: that's that's taking place the actual computer. Well, this is
Speaker 1: a great question, the question of AI psychology, because normally,
Speaker 1: in order to understand a computer program, what you would
Speaker 1: do is you'd want to go and look at its
Speaker 1: code and see what its code is doing. But obviously
Speaker 1: a program as complex as a conversational artificial intelligence is not.
Speaker 1: You can't really analyze it that way, right because it's
Speaker 1: probably been I mean, I don't know if they knew
Speaker 1: this at the time, but based on the way that
Speaker 1: we train machines like this today, they go through like
Speaker 1: machine learning, through say like deep neural networks, which produce
Speaker 1: rules that generate out comes that match the outcomes you
Speaker 1: try to train them toward. But eventually these the rules
Speaker 1: they generate are kind of opaque to us, like it's
Speaker 1: hard for us to understand why they're doing what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They can train themselves to produce the kind of output
Speaker 1: we want, but it, you know, there's sort of a
Speaker 1: black box to us, just like other minds are in
Speaker 1: a way, like you can't see inside somebody else's mind
Speaker 1: and understand what's happening. You can only judge by their
Speaker 1: external behavior. And so we have processes like psychology where
Speaker 1: we try to understand people's motivations. And at some point
Speaker 1: you've got to wonder if the best way of understanding
Speaker 1: and artificial intelligence will not be through looking at its
Speaker 1: code and what it's doing, because it's just too complex
Speaker 1: for us to understand and we don't get what the
Speaker 1: rules are. Instead, you'll have to make inferences based on
Speaker 1: machine psychology. I'm sure there's some wonderful examples of this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put this out to our sci fi readers
Speaker 1: out there, but I wonder has there been is there
Speaker 1: are there are there fictional like AI psychologists that pop
Speaker 1: up in sci fi? Oh? Absolutely, uh and I robot
Speaker 1: Oh of course, how could I forget all of them,
Speaker 1: all of the Asimov's robot stors. What's her name, Susan Calvin?
Speaker 1: Is that right? I think she's a robot psychologist. Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember I read all of these when I was
Speaker 1: in junior high and I was was one of these
Speaker 1: times where like now, I don't do this, but at
Speaker 1: the time, I always would make a distinctive choice in
Speaker 1: which actor I was casting as Uh as a given part,
Speaker 1: and so I always chose to cast her as Sigourney Weavers.
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: it also shows my limitations of casting out uh stories
Speaker 1: in your mind when you've only seen, you know, so
Speaker 1: many different sci fi films as a kid. Well, I
Speaker 1: think she would make a great doctor Susan Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah it is Susan Calvin, that's her name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's a robot psychologist. So no, this has absolutely
Speaker 1: been explored in science fiction before. I mean I wonder
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if this will literally be at some point
Speaker 1: the best way we have of understanding what an AI
Speaker 1: is doing, because it'll be too complex and too opay
Speaker 1: to try to understand it a mechanistic level. We have
Speaker 1: to understand it like get the get the gestalt, in
Speaker 1: the same way that a psychologist would from interviewing a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess what I'm trying to imagine here, And
Speaker 1: again this is perhaps something that does exist in a
Speaker 1: sci fi story somewhere. Would you have a situation where
Speaker 1: you have a lengthy space flight and you have on
Speaker 1: one hand the AI that is managing the people and
Speaker 1: looking for psychosis or any other kind of mental problems
Speaker 1: in the humans. But then you also have to have
Speaker 1: a human or a portion of the human population whose
Speaker 1: whole job is to just watch the AI to make
Speaker 1: sure the I AI isn't my malfunctioning. And so you
Speaker 1: end up having to have this careful balance of both
Speaker 1: sides looking for signs of essentially mental illness. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you can imagine a kind of like a talk
Speaker 1: therapy regime for an AI, just to make sure that
Speaker 1: it's emotionally stable, that it's you know, that it's experiencing
Speaker 1: the mental health to recognize signs and symptoms of I
Speaker 1: don't know what you would call it in AI, but
Speaker 1: the AI equivalent of delusion or hallucinations or anything else
Speaker 1: that could be worrying. Quick fun fact here, it's it's
Speaker 1: mentioned in the film that How became operational in nineteen
Speaker 1: nine two, which which I love that because that that
Speaker 1: makes everything even feel feel even more um like, that's
Speaker 1: the date that makes me sad as opposed to two
Speaker 1: thousand one. Cinematically, nineteen two, I would say is the
Speaker 1: first year of the nineteen nineties, because in a in
Speaker 1: a cinematic time scale, nineteen ninety nine one, we're still
Speaker 1: the eighties. Yeah, and ninety two I was looking this
Speaker 1: up sort of a terrible year in actual science fiction,
Speaker 1: as it gave us such let's say, challenging to love
Speaker 1: films as Alien three, and Alien three is the best
Speaker 1: film I'm gonna list here because it also this is
Speaker 1: also the year that gave us Universal Soldier, Free Jack,
Speaker 1: the lawnmower Man Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: John Carpenter joint It's not a good one. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it at the time, but I was like a child. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then a solar crisis. I don't know it oh,
Speaker 1: very problematic production history. Also split second, don't know this
Speaker 1: one second it's uh, Rudgar Howard running around in sewers
Speaker 1: with monsters. It's actually it's kind on board. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: put me in that sewer. There were no certainly no
Speaker 1: contenders for the crown of two thousand one of Space
Speaker 1: Odyssey in but speaking of Alien three, I mean I
Speaker 1: would say Alien is another franchise where you do absolutely
Speaker 1: see echoes of two thousand Space Odyssey, you see. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a very different kind of story, but you absolutely
Speaker 1: see the legacy of the way it changed our vision
Speaker 1: of space travel and space exploration and uh and kind
Speaker 1: of the deep, the mystery of of the world beyond.
Speaker 1: So one more question about how How claims to be conscious?
Speaker 1: Do you believe him? Robert? Is he conscious? I in
Speaker 1: watching the film, I was definitely thinking about this, uh
Speaker 1: when he when How brought it up? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in a large part due to our recent topics about
Speaker 1: conscious this, I keep coming back to the eye, the
Speaker 1: eye of how. You know, we spent a lot of
Speaker 1: times zooming in on it. Uh. There's an implied focus
Speaker 1: of attention there is how is watching things, observing things,
Speaker 1: watching the two crew members UH speak, reading their lips
Speaker 1: as they're essentially plotting against him. How has enormous computing
Speaker 1: power obviously, but does seem capable of folks focusing his
Speaker 1: attention on given problems people in situations. So if you
Speaker 1: lean towards an explanation of a human consciousness that is
Speaker 1: more about focused attention attention schema theory, and you know
Speaker 1: the use of limited cognitive um mechanisms to to to
Speaker 1: tackle any given problem or scenario, then then I buy
Speaker 1: the idea that How is conscious. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if it's he's conscious by
Speaker 1: necessity or by design, if you're looking at it in
Speaker 1: this light, though, I very much am persuaded by the
Speaker 1: idea that consciousness has something deep to do with attention,
Speaker 1: uh from a from a brain structure standpoint. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I don't know if focus and attention
Speaker 1: is enough for consciousness because you can imagine just making
Speaker 1: an automated security camera that tracks things across so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't assume that that thing was conscious. So it seems
Speaker 1: very true to me that consciousness in humans definitely has
Speaker 1: something strong to do with attention, But I don't know
Speaker 1: if just the ability to focus and give attention to
Speaker 1: things creates consciousness. It's true now, But but then you know,
Speaker 1: another thing that comes up in all of this is
Speaker 1: just the question I believe this is the question that
Speaker 1: I I asked Max tech Mark in in my interview
Speaker 1: with him from previous episode. Uh, is it possible? Would
Speaker 1: you would you be able to have a super intelligent machine?
Speaker 1: Would you be able to have a How nine thousand
Speaker 1: that wasn't conscious or his consciousness essential to the to
Speaker 1: to its function? That's a great question. Obviously that's not
Speaker 1: something we know the answer to, but it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: to wonder if, yeah, if there could be such a
Speaker 1: thing as great intelligence without consciousness? Is How quote unquote
Speaker 1: conscious because How has to be conscious to do what
Speaker 1: he does? Or is it all about making the humans comfortable,
Speaker 1: giving the humans something that they can relate to and
Speaker 1: have a conversation with. Yeah, so it would be a
Speaker 1: great irony if the designers of How made him act
Speaker 1: like he is conscious to make the crew members more
Speaker 1: comfortable around him, make him seem more like a person
Speaker 1: that they can get along with. But in fact, the
Speaker 1: irony is that when David Bowman has to go kill How.
Speaker 1: How begs for his life because he simulates consciousness. He says,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that's such a heartbreaking moment. Yeah, because he
Speaker 1: says that towards the very end. Yeah, and he says
Speaker 1: it over and over again, and it kind of makes
Speaker 1: me hate David Bowman a little bit, Like, I know,
Speaker 1: I know How just killed about people, but I'm still
Speaker 1: kind of like, ah, Bowman, you have no chill where
Speaker 1: you're You're falling for those sli machine appeals getting under
Speaker 1: your skin. They were they were. I mean, in many ways,
Speaker 1: How is like a child, and you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: a very He's a different type of child. He has
Speaker 1: a capable there's a calmness and a reason to him
Speaker 1: that you generally do not find in a child that
Speaker 1: is far more emotional. But but yeah, there's the there
Speaker 1: is this childlike element. So it's like Bowman is killing
Speaker 1: a child, especially towards the end when he is he's
Speaker 1: singing Daisy. Yeah, he's singing a song. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's incredibly unerving. Uh. And that scene is mostly remembered
Speaker 1: when people make jokes about it. Now, like that's the
Speaker 1: primary context in which that scene comes up. But if
Speaker 1: you watch it in the context of the movie, it
Speaker 1: is a deeply disturbing, weird, uh surreal scene. It kind
Speaker 1: of makes it takes you out of your body in
Speaker 1: a way. Yeah, alright, so we're beginning to run out
Speaker 1: of time here. We should probably talk You should probably
Speaker 1: talk about those aliens that the entire movement of the plot. So,
Speaker 1: of course there's the huge question of of what is
Speaker 1: happening the end of the movie after David Bowman goes
Speaker 1: through the stargate. Uh, and he's in that room with
Speaker 1: the weird you know, neoclassical furniture and the paintings and
Speaker 1: he and he turns into the star child. What is
Speaker 1: happening there? Uh? On one hand, I can definitely see
Speaker 1: that the creators try to resist explaining literally what's happening there.
Speaker 1: It might be that they don't have a literal answer.
Speaker 1: There is one audio clip that is supposedly of Kubrick,
Speaker 1: but I think it's unconfirmed whether it's Kubrick or not,
Speaker 1: but it's been alleged, well it was. I think it
Speaker 1: was a recording supposedly made by a filmmaker who was
Speaker 1: doing a documentary and interviewed and and claimed to have
Speaker 1: interviewed Kubrick. It was released many years later, but if
Speaker 1: this clip of Cooper talking is actually genuine, he explains,
Speaker 1: you know, he says, like I've been resistant to explaining
Speaker 1: the ending, but if you must know, basically what's happening
Speaker 1: is that Bowman has been put into a kind of
Speaker 1: cosmic zoo. Uh. It's a place where he can be
Speaker 1: observed of by these creatures from you know, galactic civilization,
Speaker 1: and the zoo is it has this sort of like
Speaker 1: inaccurate historical furniture. They've tried to create an environment that
Speaker 1: he would think was pretty like simulating his natural environment.
Speaker 1: So they have this like French you know, kind of
Speaker 1: furniture and stuff like that. And uh, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of in the same way that like a human zoo
Speaker 1: might put a tiger in a cage with something kind
Speaker 1: of roughly approximating its natural environment, but not in a
Speaker 1: very not in a very accurate way. I like, I
Speaker 1: like this explanation, and mean, of course, it was inevitably
Speaker 1: reminds me of Billy Pilgrim and slaughter House five. Very
Speaker 1: different type of zoo, very different, very different story entirely,
Speaker 1: but but ultimately the same scenario, let's just put him
Speaker 1: in here and uh watch him go. And then of course,
Speaker 1: the the alleged Kubrick in this recording says that after
Speaker 1: they're sort of finished with him, after after they've finished
Speaker 1: observing him, they transform him into some kind of god,
Speaker 1: into some kind of super being and send him back
Speaker 1: to Earth. Uh, and that that he you know that
Speaker 1: Kuber says, this is something that happens in a lot
Speaker 1: of myths, which is very true, you know, like the
Speaker 1: human gets the apotheosis kind of narrative, human gets transformed
Speaker 1: into a star heavenly being or god or demi god,
Speaker 1: and look at what they can do now. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I know that this idea is more born out in
Speaker 1: the literature and in Clark's writings. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I I can't watch the final portions of the film
Speaker 1: without thinking of it and contemplating it more as a
Speaker 1: almost kind of a riddle of the Sphinx kind of moment,
Speaker 1: like having this encounter with this deadly potentially deadly at
Speaker 1: least powerful uh in human force, and in doing so
Speaker 1: you are contemplating you're just forced to contemplate the nature
Speaker 1: of man because there is this sense of it is
Speaker 1: kind of like the Rible of the Sphinx, where you're
Speaker 1: seeing Bowman progressively age and go through at least the
Speaker 1: remaining phases of few in existence and then well and
Speaker 1: then if you count the baby and kind of coming
Speaker 1: back around to the first model. Well, I like so
Speaker 1: the model of change that I like in that scene
Speaker 1: is sort of similar to what we were talking about
Speaker 1: with Ebert's interpretation of what happens with the monolith and
Speaker 1: the ape like creatures. So the ape like creatures see
Speaker 1: the monolith, and it's not even necessarily that it does
Speaker 1: something to their brains physically to change them into smarter
Speaker 1: organisms or something. It's just seeing it. It's just the inspiration,
Speaker 1: the experience of what that shape is like that inspires
Speaker 1: them to pick up the bone. I like that interpretation,
Speaker 1: And so what if at the end, it's it's you
Speaker 1: know that to the millionth power, it's that David Bowman
Speaker 1: has seen such things, he's been he's experienced such a
Speaker 1: different reality than he thought was possible in the presence
Speaker 1: of these aliens with all their technological power, that he
Speaker 1: is in a sense transformed the same way that the
Speaker 1: ape like creatures transformed, but just by what they've seen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he probably saw colors that don't exist in
Speaker 1: the real world world for like a thousand years there
Speaker 1: in that segment. So yeah, I like that in interpretation
Speaker 1: as well. But there is a sense of transformation. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously he does become something else or the thing that
Speaker 1: was Bowman becomes this new entity in a sense when
Speaker 1: he comes back and looks over the earth, what is that?
Speaker 1: Is he there in a benevolent way, in a malevolent way?
Speaker 1: What's he gonna do? I think that was this kind
Speaker 1: of a great riddle to uh to close out the
Speaker 1: episode on like what what is he going to do? What?
Speaker 1: What is the what is this next phase and human
Speaker 1: evolution going to produce? You know, what will the the
Speaker 1: higher human form be? Like? What will it be? Uh?
Speaker 1: Would be as dangerous and self destructive? Is what we
Speaker 1: have now? Or you know, in which case the Bowman
Speaker 1: starchild is is a destroyer returning to his birth world
Speaker 1: or is it is human as humanity going to becomes
Speaker 1: something nobler in which case he is returning as a savior,
Speaker 1: or is it going to transcend our physical forms altogether?
Speaker 1: Is our future of future of information alone? Do we
Speaker 1: become intelligence in some way rather than becoming a biological species.
Speaker 1: These are all great questions, and one of the great
Speaker 1: things about two thousand one what makes it a great
Speaker 1: movie is that it forces us to ask these kinds
Speaker 1: of questions. Yeah. Absolutely, so it's one for the ages man.
Speaker 1: All right. As we close up, I will say, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a little bit I wanted to discuss about
Speaker 1: the idea of an alien civilization storing a monolith on
Speaker 1: the other side of the moon, but I think we
Speaker 1: talked about it a little bit in our Ancient Aliens episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there was some some some earlier writings from Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan where he actually referenced um Um Clark and said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is actually a pretty good idea of how an
Speaker 1: alien civilization might have left a sentinel for us to
Speaker 1: encounter should we reach a certain level of technological advancement. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have come across no such artifacts. No, we have not,
Speaker 1: but we do have two thousand and one, which is
Speaker 1: a really good movie. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: we might want to leave on the dark side of
Speaker 1: of of of of a lunar body for another civilization
Speaker 1: to discover. All right, So if you want to listen
Speaker 1: to more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Head
Speaker 1: on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all of the episodes, including that
Speaker 1: ancient Aliens episode that we mentioned there uh and all
Speaker 1: these episodes that have dealt with consciousness, AI, space travel,
Speaker 1: micro gravity, you name it. Uh. And you also find
Speaker 1: links out there very social media accounts such as Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter and Instagram. And as always, if you want
Speaker 1: to support the show, the best thing you can do
Speaker 1: is rate and review us wherever you have the ability
Speaker 1: to do so. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful
Speaker 1: audio producers Alex Williams and Terry Harrison. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly with feedback about
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, with the suggestions for a
Speaker 1: future topic, or just to say hi, let us know
Speaker 1: where you listen from, you can email us at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. The Bigges