Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. Julie your
Speaker 1: Halloween costume that you're wearing for this podcast. Um, I
Speaker 1: noticed that your hair is really tall and you have
Speaker 1: a really impressive white stream coming down the side. Yes,
Speaker 1: are you the bride of Frankenstein's Monster? No, I'm Marge
Speaker 1: Simpson in her later years. Oh well, well sorry, but
Speaker 1: it looks like the bride of Frankenstein. What are you saying? See,
Speaker 1: I never get my costumes right. But what about you?
Speaker 1: What's what's going on over there? Well, as you can
Speaker 1: tell by my by the burns on my body as
Speaker 1: well as the reek of burnt urine that surrounds me.
Speaker 1: Who's going to say something about that? Yeah? I am,
Speaker 1: of course an alchemist, busy applying my trade in my laboratory,
Speaker 1: trying to discover the secrets of life to turn to
Speaker 1: transmute nettles into gold and uh, and turn one type
Speaker 1: of animal into another and you'urn into gold. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm totally about the gold, and urine is kind of
Speaker 1: gold looking, So there's gotta be a way to turn
Speaker 1: into go. Yeah, you know, I appreciate your commitment to
Speaker 1: the illusion. By the way, Uh, podcast room is really
Speaker 1: small and enclosed. Well, you know, I'm hungent right now.
Speaker 1: I'm committed to the idea I go all the way,
Speaker 1: been burning here and all night. So both of these
Speaker 1: play into what we're gonna talk about today, which is,
Speaker 1: of course Frankenstein's Monster or Frank's monsters as you like
Speaker 1: to call yeah, yeah, or some people just call the
Speaker 1: monster Frankenstein. And and that's technically incorrect, but it's it's
Speaker 1: been used to such an extent it's it's almost to
Speaker 1: the point where it's okay to call the Frankenstein's Monster Frankenstein. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think it's actually quite reasonable given that it
Speaker 1: was this, this creature and made in Frankenstein's image sort
Speaker 1: of burned man's image. Yeah yeah, and he never actually
Speaker 1: names it. I mean it's uh, you know, the demon,
Speaker 1: the creature and occasionally some more wordy to descriptions that
Speaker 1: because it's a it's a rather poetic novel. The original
Speaker 1: the original book Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary
Speaker 1: Shelley eighteen. It's never been out of print, and uh,
Speaker 1: if you haven't read it. If you have not read
Speaker 1: this book, I I highly recommend you giving it a read.
Speaker 1: It can be a little wordy at times, but it's
Speaker 1: it's just really great. Uh that like Frankenstein, the Man
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, it's very philosophical about everything, and
Speaker 1: he's putting a lot of thought into this in the
Speaker 1: in the monster is very intelligent as well, and it
Speaker 1: engages in a lot of a lot of deep ponderings
Speaker 1: about his own life and his purpose and what has
Speaker 1: happened to him and all this misery that has has
Speaker 1: befallen him in the state of mankind. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an intelligent novel. Well the ways that the
Speaker 1: movies really rarely are able to capture. Well, the movies
Speaker 1: are more like fire fire scared, right, and and this
Speaker 1: is more like, hey, let me tell you about my
Speaker 1: existincial angst as a creature that was abandoned. Yeah, was
Speaker 1: created by a man and by an imperfect man, and
Speaker 1: abandoned on an imperfect world. And over the past month
Speaker 1: I was asked by How Stuff Works to write an
Speaker 1: article how Frankenstein's Monster works. And I set out to
Speaker 1: write it, and uh, you know, I could have just
Speaker 1: written a whole regigitation of the normal. Hey, there was
Speaker 1: this lady Mary Shelley and she got scared in a
Speaker 1: lightning storm and was in a story writing contest, and
Speaker 1: then she wrote this, and then these people played Frankenstein
Speaker 1: in the movie. And that's all well and good. All
Speaker 1: the I mean, the the story of the novel and
Speaker 1: the and the the pop culture significance of the of
Speaker 1: the book and the idea is really cool and uh
Speaker 1: and I can read it all day, and there are
Speaker 1: plenty places on the internet already to read about it
Speaker 1: all day. But I was really more interested in the
Speaker 1: idea of Frankenstein's monster in our culture is this idea
Speaker 1: that we can create life, that we can we can
Speaker 1: take and not just create life in the way that
Speaker 1: humans create life every day through approcreation, but the idea
Speaker 1: that I can use my wisdom and my intelligence and
Speaker 1: with one hand sort of flip off God and with
Speaker 1: the other one make a little man that will walk
Speaker 1: around and do what I tell it to. Well, in
Speaker 1: this idea, too, that we perhaps just haven't discovered the
Speaker 1: right element or the right thing, or the right piece
Speaker 1: of knowledge to transcend our own humanness right into to
Speaker 1: make a better version of ourselves. Yeah. And this the
Speaker 1: idea too, has been around forever. I mean it. I
Speaker 1: mean it goes back to just our basic like cognitive abilities. Uh,
Speaker 1: to look at an object and imagine it alive. The
Speaker 1: idea to anthropomorphize things and to and to personify even
Speaker 1: like aspects of nature. You know, you have like the
Speaker 1: Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculpture that is awakened by
Speaker 1: the god Venus and turned into an actual lady and uh.
Speaker 1: And you also have one of my favorite ideas, the
Speaker 1: golem or and I found this interesting that you can
Speaker 1: also since this is a Jewish idea, it can be
Speaker 1: pronounced golm um, which is, I guess more in keeping
Speaker 1: with the Hebrew. And the most famous version of this
Speaker 1: was the Golem of of Prague, which is it is
Speaker 1: a medieval myth and it eventually found its way into
Speaker 1: new life in the ninet novel Drek Golem. In this
Speaker 1: particular story, you have this guy, Rabbi Judah Low bin Besabel,
Speaker 1: and he's an expert in the use of the magical
Speaker 1: use of letters to create various magical effects. And these
Speaker 1: are almost like incantations, right, I mean you could say
Speaker 1: there are prayers, yeah, and then it gets into the
Speaker 1: soul like there's a whole lot of stuff in in
Speaker 1: Judaism and incamalo, the importance of the importance of names,
Speaker 1: the importance of letters, and the importance of the name
Speaker 1: of God, right and uh and so I mean you
Speaker 1: have things like the Sefer Yasarrah. The Book of Creation,
Speaker 1: which is often referred to as a guide to magical
Speaker 1: usage by some Western European Jews in the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: and in some of the involved various directions for creating
Speaker 1: a goal, on some of which it involved taking the
Speaker 1: name of God and rearranging the letters and putting them
Speaker 1: on things and and bringing them to life. But in
Speaker 1: the most of the tellings of this particular story of
Speaker 1: the Golm of Prague, Besabel creates this clay humanoid because
Speaker 1: gold basically means clot of earth, and he activates it
Speaker 1: by placing um. He writes the word a meth meaning
Speaker 1: that's a m E t h meaning truth and reality
Speaker 1: on a shim tablet, and he places that under the
Speaker 1: thing's tongue. Then it comes to life. Then he starts
Speaker 1: using this golm to ring the bell at the synagogue.
Speaker 1: But the only thing is you have to take the
Speaker 1: tablet out of its mouth and turn it off, because
Speaker 1: all it knows how to do is ring bells, apparently,
Speaker 1: and he forgets to take it out of the creature's mouth,
Speaker 1: and then it just runs wild one night, presumably, ringing
Speaker 1: everything in sight like it's a bell. He's harassing people
Speaker 1: are getting around. Yeah, it's like when the roomba escapes
Speaker 1: from the living room that you want to vacuum and
Speaker 1: you catch it in the bathroom eating the rug. That
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um. The rabbi has to hunt it down,
Speaker 1: and when he finally gets there, he pulls the little
Speaker 1: tablet out from under its tongue, and the word a
Speaker 1: myth a m e t t h, which means you know,
Speaker 1: life and all uh becomes the word meth m e
Speaker 1: t h which means death and the and the golden
Speaker 1: falls into dust. Um. And then the other tales as well.
Speaker 1: There's this one story of a rabbi and the name
Speaker 1: of JF and Prussia and he um. He has a
Speaker 1: golem like like the candles in the synagogue, but the
Speaker 1: golem can't really tell what's a candle. H. And what
Speaker 1: a non candle is like it it basically thinks everything
Speaker 1: is a candle, so it lights everything inside on fire.
Speaker 1: So it's the programming doesn't work all that well. And
Speaker 1: then there were apparently some stories to where there were
Speaker 1: some ethical debates on the use of golems not only
Speaker 1: for the use of you know, tasks and chores around
Speaker 1: the synagogue, but the use of golems for the purposes
Speaker 1: of of making the required number for the minya, and
Speaker 1: which is the the qorum of a ten Jewish adults
Speaker 1: required for certain religious observations, which indeed, I would feel
Speaker 1: it would be like, all right, you need to tend
Speaker 1: people to make this decision, and you're telling me three
Speaker 1: of them were made out of clay. That yeah, especially
Speaker 1: since we know that the column doesn't really have the
Speaker 1: ability of speech, right right. That's what I thought was
Speaker 1: interesting met this is that the it's predicated on this
Speaker 1: notion that only holy men could create this golem, and
Speaker 1: yet uh, the golm was going to be completely imperfect
Speaker 1: in the shadow of man because the golm was not
Speaker 1: created by God, right, And just there's an aside too.
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that they are taking symbols rearranging
Speaker 1: them to create artificial beings, which has a nice parallel
Speaker 1: with modern programming and uh an artificial intelligence. Oh yeah, yeh.
Speaker 1: We'll get into a little later. I haven't thought about that,
Speaker 1: but this ties in well with the The idea of
Speaker 1: Frankenstein is the modern Prometheus. I mean, that's right up front,
Speaker 1: that's the subtitle for the book. Prometheus, of course, being
Speaker 1: the titan that retrieves the fire. Uh, takes the fire
Speaker 1: from the gods and gives it to humans and is
Speaker 1: then punished by what being lashed to a stone so
Speaker 1: that the birds can come in. Yeah, because the ego
Speaker 1: that comes and eats the liver, and then unfortunately the
Speaker 1: liver grows back. And then this is it's like groundhog Day.
Speaker 1: Every day the same thing happens, just an endless groundhog
Speaker 1: day of the liver doomed to have your liver eating everything.
Speaker 1: But he took something that was the gods, the domain
Speaker 1: of the gods, the fire, and he gave it to man.
Speaker 1: And then now man has the ability to use this
Speaker 1: fire and build up his civilization with it, and with fire,
Speaker 1: of course, achieve great goods such as staying warm at night,
Speaker 1: and great evil like burning cities to the ground, right right.
Speaker 1: And I think it's so interesting to that Greek mythology
Speaker 1: would would focus on this because you really mean, this
Speaker 1: was such the turning point for man, right, the discovery
Speaker 1: of fire and the power that it had and the
Speaker 1: sustenance that it had. Um that you know, they had
Speaker 1: to come up with this uh myth about it that
Speaker 1: that uh celebrated it and then also said, uh, but
Speaker 1: with this comes great responsibility, right right, which is another
Speaker 1: sort of theme that we see in Frankenstein. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and of course you think of like the way fire
Speaker 1: changed everything and how it powered and destroyed, I mean
Speaker 1: the ability to to murder and create, to uh, to
Speaker 1: steal from ts Eliott Uh and uh and one can't
Speaker 1: help me be reminded of trees and centuries I mean
Speaker 1: thousands of years later. Uh. The importance of electricity as well,
Speaker 1: which is suddenly this Promethean fire that comes to us
Speaker 1: through technological advancement that has all these great abilities. I mean,
Speaker 1: electricity surrounds us today as the it's it's everywhere, it
Speaker 1: is part of our civilization, is it's it's hard first
Speaker 1: to imagine our modern lives without it. Oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't I can't can't see of a life divorced from electricity, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, so much of the technology that we
Speaker 1: enjoyed today wouldn't even exist. But during Mary Shelley's time,
Speaker 1: electricity had really captured the imagination of people, and yet
Speaker 1: it was quite feared because it wasn't truly understood, right.
Speaker 1: It was a mysterious property. And I remember seeing reading
Speaker 1: accounts to where people were really judgmental about the idea
Speaker 1: of using them for electric chairs, because pretty early on
Speaker 1: people were like, like Edison was like, Hey, this electricity
Speaker 1: is great. Watched me fry this elephant, you know, topsy
Speaker 1: things of that nature, and they were like, we could
Speaker 1: totally fry prisoners with this. And there were some people
Speaker 1: were like, how can you take this holy gift of electricity,
Speaker 1: I mean it's too and use it for something horrible
Speaker 1: like that, you're really debasing this wonderful thing. Well, what's
Speaker 1: interesting about that too, is that Edison was in competition.
Speaker 1: He had a C right, and it was a volta
Speaker 1: that had d C the DC current, and so it
Speaker 1: was Edison who was going around saying, Ah, don't fear
Speaker 1: my a C current. It's not as dangerous as the
Speaker 1: DC and I believe they are using the d C current.
Speaker 1: I could have it switched around, but I believe they
Speaker 1: are using a d C current on prisoners. And that
Speaker 1: was sort of a scare tactic on his part to
Speaker 1: be like to say to companies, you should really adopt
Speaker 1: my my electrical currency rather than this other one. Just
Speaker 1: as a side note, but the you know, in the
Speaker 1: previous podcast, we were talking about the way, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're shocked by heaven forbid coming into contact with
Speaker 1: a live wire, you fly away from the outlet or
Speaker 1: the source of electricity because your muscles are spasming. Well,
Speaker 1: this is exactly the response that various scientists at the
Speaker 1: day and Mary Sheelow's day, we're looking into the effects
Speaker 1: of electricity on dead tissue. Yeah, and it actually became
Speaker 1: sort of a sideshow. Really, this frog's dead, but watchford
Speaker 1: happens when I stick alive fire to it? Right right?
Speaker 1: Or this prisoner is dead, Look what happened? The prisoners
Speaker 1: decapitated By the way they were doing this that I
Speaker 1: think they were thinking about like science festivals, showing the
Speaker 1: public this ability to reanimate a corpse. Yeah, it's like, look,
Speaker 1: first we reanimate the frog legs and then they become
Speaker 1: delicious all through electricity, right, right, And so people were
Speaker 1: of course even more frightened, and they started to think
Speaker 1: that electricity had the ability to to reanimate their loved ones,
Speaker 1: and they were totally weirded out because they were like,
Speaker 1: he's right, these frog legs are delicious and they can move. Um.
Speaker 1: So Mary Shelley actually knew all about this, by the way,
Speaker 1: because it's referenced in the book of Victor Frankenstein. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's told like a lot of these older novels. It's
Speaker 1: a one character talking about conversations with others, and Victor
Speaker 1: doesn't share the details of how he creates life because
Speaker 1: it's a horrible secret that destroyed his life and and
Speaker 1: led to the dead of of everyone he holds dear
Speaker 1: in life. So he's not going to burden anyone else
Speaker 1: with the secret recipe. But he does mention in passing
Speaker 1: a few different influences, one of which are these studies
Speaker 1: into electricity. Yeah, and I mean, just everybody knows to
Speaker 1: Marie Shelley's father was actually friends with the leading authorities
Speaker 1: of the day on electrical research. So this was these
Speaker 1: were conversations that she was privy to. And also, I
Speaker 1: mean she's nineteen years old, so amazing that she had
Speaker 1: amassed this amount of knowledge and was able to put
Speaker 1: this together and this pastiche of of a story of
Speaker 1: this monster. But there you go. I mean, there's the
Speaker 1: basis for this idea that we could bring back life.
Speaker 1: And in a moment, we're actually going to talk about homunculous.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, we're gonna get into alchemy, one of my favorites, alchemy,
Speaker 1: making a tiny little person and what it has to
Speaker 1: do with cow guts. Right. Yeah. This podcast is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark
Speaker 1: which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
Speaker 1: explore the answers to life's questions. All right, so we're
Speaker 1: back alchemy. Now this is another we're talking about the
Speaker 1: the influences that Victor Frankenstein cites in the book, and
Speaker 1: he he starts off really into alchemy and and studying
Speaker 1: the writings of various alchemists. Then he gets into the
Speaker 1: modern sciences and sort of goes off in that direction.
Speaker 1: So it's eventual creation of this monster of this artificial
Speaker 1: being is kind of a synthesis of modern science and
Speaker 1: alchemical ideas. Now, alchemy, if you go back through eighteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: this is essentially a mix of early chemistry and occultism,
Speaker 1: So you're crossing empirical research with mystical philosophy. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of Alchemy is kind of a big tent
Speaker 1: when you get when you really start analyzing it, because
Speaker 1: they're on one hand, people interested in transmitting metals um.
Speaker 1: Right there there are people who are just prospecting essentially
Speaker 1: from gold. So some people were citing more on the
Speaker 1: get rich quick kind of aspects of alchemy. Some people
Speaker 1: were really more into the occultists or philosophical aspects of it.
Speaker 1: And some people were basically chemist in a day when
Speaker 1: there's not really there's no chemistry yet. So if you
Speaker 1: are interested in chemical properties, alchemy is where you are.
Speaker 1: It's the only game in town for the most part,
Speaker 1: at least in much of the world. Uh And and
Speaker 1: certainly there's some actual scientific achievements that came out of this.
Speaker 1: I mentioned reeking of burning urine, which which some of
Speaker 1: these uh, these alchemists did because there was a great
Speaker 1: deal of interest in urine and in the possibility of
Speaker 1: turning it into gold. And seventeenth century German alchemists Hinnig
Speaker 1: Brount distilled countless buckets of urine uh in attempt to
Speaker 1: turn turn it into gold, and as you might expect,
Speaker 1: the experiment failed to produce results, but it did allow
Speaker 1: them to discover the element phosphorus. So you have situations
Speaker 1: like that where even in alchemy, in this study of chemistry,
Speaker 1: people are actually making real discoveries, and as you point
Speaker 1: out before, without the aid of the scientific method, right,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, which obviously would have farreted out
Speaker 1: a lot of what was wrong with alchemy, but at
Speaker 1: the time it was a great way to try to
Speaker 1: interrogate the physical world around you. Right of course, where
Speaker 1: does this get involved with? Like why alchemy and Victor
Speaker 1: Frankenstein And a lot of this comes down to the
Speaker 1: idea of the homunculous or homunculi and that's the plural.
Speaker 1: And this is an idea that's fascinated me for ages,
Speaker 1: just because on one level, what's so grotesque and steeped
Speaker 1: in medieval um nonsense that you know, I can't help
Speaker 1: but just fall in love with it. So I was
Speaker 1: researching this, researching how to create a homunculous and yes
Speaker 1: for myself. Um and and not just in the old
Speaker 1: fashioned way of just screwing up your compost heap until
Speaker 1: it comes alive. M though that's also involved in this.
Speaker 1: You know, the early idea that when material rots, it
Speaker 1: turns an insect like that's a basic misunderstanding of how
Speaker 1: organic works. And so a lot of these alchemical ideas
Speaker 1: of how to create life stem from misunderstandings of how
Speaker 1: it works. And this idea that that we basically that
Speaker 1: it was within our reach, even in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: to understand it and control it. So the idea of
Speaker 1: the homunculus is basically basically comes down to I can
Speaker 1: grow a little person, not just like an animal. I
Speaker 1: can not only make an animal, because they're also alchemical
Speaker 1: um recipes for say, turning a headless cow into a
Speaker 1: swarm of beast, which I think I'm going to share
Speaker 1: that one on the blogs soon. But but I was.
Speaker 1: But but the idea of the monthless is also that
Speaker 1: it is a reasoning creature that you're making. It's not
Speaker 1: it's maybe not quite a human, but it is like
Speaker 1: a little human, like a tesque little humanoid, right, grotesque
Speaker 1: little humor, which I think is fascinating because I can
Speaker 1: kind of inhabit that perspective at that time to think like, okay,
Speaker 1: this would be possible. Maybe I can't make a full
Speaker 1: grown human, but I can make it in miniature, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like my sea monkeys over here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know it's it's lost, you know, in these
Speaker 1: false concepts of spontaneous generation, like we said, magical tomfoolery,
Speaker 1: but they're basically pondering the possibility of creating an artificial
Speaker 1: quote rational animal unquote through uh learned manipulation of organic tissue. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what is that organic tissue? Because that's that's where
Speaker 1: it becomes a little cringe worthy. Okay, Well, I have
Speaker 1: to read part of the recipe because and this comes
Speaker 1: from the Book of the Cow, which is which the
Speaker 1: what I guess this is French is the Liberva I
Speaker 1: think it might be Latin Latin. I'm sorry, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's the Book of the Cow because the cow factors
Speaker 1: prominently into these, uh these recipes. And so I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read a little here until Julie stops me. Um.
Speaker 1: But it goes a little something like this, and and
Speaker 1: this is from Mike vander Luke's abdominal mixtures the Libertvaca
Speaker 1: in the Medieval West, or the Dangers and Attractions of
Speaker 1: Natural Magic, he writes, then describing the recipe in the book.
Speaker 1: With the mixture of sperm and sunstone, the magician inseminates
Speaker 1: a cow, or are you. He then carefully plugs up
Speaker 1: its vagina with the sunstone and smears its genitals with
Speaker 1: the blood of the animal that was not chosen for insemination.
Speaker 1: Then the cow that you must be placed in a
Speaker 1: dark house in which the sun never shines. Its food
Speaker 1: must be mixed with the blood of other animals. While
Speaker 1: awaiting the moment of birth, the magician prepares a powder
Speaker 1: made of the ground sunstone, sulfur, magnet, and green tutilla
Speaker 1: stirred with the sap of the white willow. The unformed
Speaker 1: substance to which the you or the cow gives birth
Speaker 1: must be placed in this powder, whereupon it will instantly
Speaker 1: grow a human skin. The newborn homoculous must be kept
Speaker 1: in a large glass or lead vessel for three days
Speaker 1: until it is very hungry. Then it is fed on
Speaker 1: its decapitated mother's blood for seven days until it is
Speaker 1: developed into a complete animal, it can henceforth be used
Speaker 1: to perform certain feats. Um. All right, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: go and stop a whole another paragraph of just because
Speaker 1: it gets down. Once you've created it, you like put
Speaker 1: it into this this other vat and you grow it
Speaker 1: a little more, and then you can you can kill
Speaker 1: it and like spirits guts on your shoes and you
Speaker 1: can walk on water. But the crazy thing is here
Speaker 1: is aside I think being the original recipe for hagus.
Speaker 1: It completely reminds me of of when we've talked about
Speaker 1: growing tissue before and scaffolding um tissue. I mean that's
Speaker 1: not to say that you know this, this modern day
Speaker 1: technology is based on alchemy, but it's interesting that that
Speaker 1: idea it's very similar to what we are now doing
Speaker 1: because we have the technology, right. Yeah, all of this
Speaker 1: was based in the idea of the humans could mimic
Speaker 1: and manipulate natural reproductive processes. I mean, especially they were
Speaker 1: really confident about insects. They were like, insects, that's easy,
Speaker 1: I can I can make bees all day and uh
Speaker 1: and and and then that the greater idea was that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we've kind of got this snack. We can make
Speaker 1: some momuncula and then let I'm loose, which you know
Speaker 1: again today, Hey, we can grow an ear from this tissue.
Speaker 1: We have to scaffold it and bake it for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In in reading these just detailed grotesque recipes for how
Speaker 1: to make a monculie too. For some reason, I was
Speaker 1: reminded of various Cypress Hill songs where be Real just
Speaker 1: basically raps about like how to grow like a detailed
Speaker 1: um recipe for growing marijuana or for smoking it. And
Speaker 1: I was I was like, wouldn't it be awesome if
Speaker 1: there is a Cypress Hill song where they're just laying
Speaker 1: out how to make a homunculi? That would be or
Speaker 1: like the Anarchist's Guide to Homunculi. Yeah, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: But I mean the other side of this, too, is
Speaker 1: that this represents like such a dangerous idea, and this
Speaker 1: was something that like people who were afraid, Like, it's
Speaker 1: very unlikely that too many people wasted their time trying
Speaker 1: to actually do this, but a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: wasted their time, uh freaking out about the idea that
Speaker 1: people were doing this. They were like, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: they are these alchemists, and they're they're they're doing this
Speaker 1: and they and if this works, they have such power
Speaker 1: they have they have power over nature. They have power
Speaker 1: that rivals that of God, all through their their magic
Speaker 1: and their science and their art. Well, the Book of
Speaker 1: Caw actually probably was the undoing of alchemy if you
Speaker 1: think about it, because it wasn't this the first cohesive
Speaker 1: effort to put all of this sort of science and
Speaker 1: occult these recipes together and try to make sense of it.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, we're alchemists. These are the things
Speaker 1: that we sort of believed in. And then people were
Speaker 1: like look at it and they're like, wow, we this
Speaker 1: is really what we've been doing. Yeah. Yeah, like taken
Speaker 1: all together, this just really seems like it's not working.
Speaker 1: That being said the most learned of the day. That's
Speaker 1: that was a hot tone to have on your bookshelf right,
Speaker 1: And also it was some people thought it was absolutely
Speaker 1: putrid and abomination against nature to even be talking about
Speaker 1: it was good reading in another way. Yeah, But of
Speaker 1: course alchemy would eventually see its day. Chemistry would rise,
Speaker 1: even though in some critics actually argue that alchemy prevented
Speaker 1: chemistry from really going for a long time because it
Speaker 1: was such a I mean, it was also a kind
Speaker 1: of a taboo area, you know. But eventually alchemy dies off.
Speaker 1: And uh. There's another area where we really see this
Speaker 1: idea of of mimicking the human form, cre eating the
Speaker 1: human body, and that is in the field of robotics,
Speaker 1: specifically in the field of the creation of automatons, which
Speaker 1: of course are like you know, mechanical men. Uh that
Speaker 1: they're not really robots. They don't actually uh take in
Speaker 1: sense data and uh in in in process the sense
Speaker 1: data and then make a decision about what action they're
Speaker 1: gonna take. There's no computation, but they're like wind up men,
Speaker 1: wind up ladies, dolls that dance. But we've discussed the
Speaker 1: pooping duck, of course. But as I say, some of
Speaker 1: them mimic actual human biology. And again here we have
Speaker 1: this idea of trying to clone the human experience, whether
Speaker 1: you know it's artificially or physically um in these and
Speaker 1: we've talked about the pooping duck quite a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Vodka Song is actually the French engineer from the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century eighteenth century dream of these up. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: was he was fascinated according to some historians, because he
Speaker 1: was fascinated with digestion and defecation, uh the way, because
Speaker 1: he had rather troubled bowels himself. Um. And then automatons
Speaker 1: also date back to the day like Leonardo da Vinci
Speaker 1: or even even further back into the past. Leonardo DaVinci
Speaker 1: was a course fascinated with biomechanics. How does the body move,
Speaker 1: how do muscles work? And so he had plans for
Speaker 1: this and apparently even built this mechanical night that that
Speaker 1: while you know, don't get too excited, it probably was
Speaker 1: not walking around doing chores around the house, but on
Speaker 1: some level mimicked the movements of the human body. You know,
Speaker 1: he was, he was fascinating. It's like, this is how
Speaker 1: the the mechanics of the body work. And I reproduced
Speaker 1: these with wood and string and and hinges. It was
Speaker 1: a vast pulley system. And I believe that he would
Speaker 1: have dinner parties and roll out the robotic nitis. He
Speaker 1: was like, you know, cocktail thing to chat about that
Speaker 1: never survived? Is that correct? Is that? Is that the
Speaker 1: instance in which the church decided that it was abomination
Speaker 1: as well, and the church was a lot of people
Speaker 1: would get kind of freaked out. Autumatono, we destroy them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Albertus Magnus supposedly had some sort of a they called
Speaker 1: an android in some cases, but you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of artificial man, and and uh, his his own pupil
Speaker 1: freaked out about that and destroyed it, according to again
Speaker 1: according to stories. But yeah, the idea here is that
Speaker 1: that people were looking at humans, looking at them as machines,
Speaker 1: and then trying to replicate a machine. And I have
Speaker 1: this a really interesting idea emerges, a really just one
Speaker 1: of the big you know, existential ponderings and part of
Speaker 1: part of the horror of the Frankenstein story, both in uh,
Speaker 1: in the original novel and in our modern interaction with it,
Speaker 1: and that is, if a machine can mimic the human body,
Speaker 1: then is the human body nothing more than a biochemical machine?
Speaker 1: If I can make it, then what does that say
Speaker 1: about me? Like? If I'm if Frankenstein makes this monster,
Speaker 1: this human monster, why is it a monster? Does you know?
Speaker 1: Does it have a soul? Is it? Am I equal
Speaker 1: to it? If it is something special? Then am I less?
Speaker 1: The problem of consciousness? Right? Yeah, you get into like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think therefore I am French philosopher Reneatic
Speaker 1: Carts of you nature is primarily mechanical, but he avoided
Speaker 1: the messier existential complimications by describing the human soul as
Speaker 1: an independent force. The Carts critic Gilbert Ryle would the
Speaker 1: later described as the ghost in the machine, the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 1: our bodies are machines, but our our soul, that's something different,
Speaker 1: that's something separate, and that ties right into the cognitive
Speaker 1: blindness that we all have. The brain cannot perceive itself.
Speaker 1: We exist in our own blind spot right well, and
Speaker 1: and still we are trying to find that blind spot,
Speaker 1: you know. So scoot forward to today when we have
Speaker 1: the Blue Brain Project, and we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but that's the attempt to reverse engineer the brain by
Speaker 1: building a detailed, realistic computer model of the human brain.
Speaker 1: And it's one hundred trillion synapses, more specifically modeling components
Speaker 1: of the mammalion brain in precise cellular detail and simulating
Speaker 1: neuronal activity in three D. So the person that is
Speaker 1: doing in this is is actually sort of wondering if
Speaker 1: once he's able to successfully reverse engineer the human brain,
Speaker 1: if we'll be able to see that that seat of consciousness,
Speaker 1: this bubble, this of perception that we see everything through.
Speaker 1: Could we map it, could be point to it? Um
Speaker 1: does that change our understanding of our humanness? But to
Speaker 1: me it also brings into question that the same question
Speaker 1: that Mary Shelley was um exploring, is what happens when
Speaker 1: you do create this version of yourself that assuming you know,
Speaker 1: you can reverse engineer your own brain and then you
Speaker 1: um could map it to uh computer program has uh
Speaker 1: say an emotional database, your own an emotional database. Uh
Speaker 1: that sort of corresponds with it, let's say with questionnaires
Speaker 1: that you've filled out. Okay, so now this brain could
Speaker 1: operate on its own and essentially be you just you know,
Speaker 1: in this database. What what happens with that? What's what
Speaker 1: sort of responsibility we have for creating a version of
Speaker 1: ourselves that might actually have a seat of consciousness? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does it happen? We don't know, But yeah, does it
Speaker 1: have rights? Does it get to be a citizen? I
Speaker 1: mean you get into all this weird day which is
Speaker 1: something else encounter with the with the contemplation of ais. Yes,
Speaker 1: at what point does I mean is an artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: on par with human intelligence? I mean you get into
Speaker 1: the whole idea of the technological singularity and the idea
Speaker 1: that that a computer intelligence would even supersede the human
Speaker 1: intelligence and the and and exceed our our capabilities. And
Speaker 1: this isn't too crazy of a conversation considering that we've
Speaker 1: talked to, you know, Dr Ronald ark And over at
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech about the the ability to try to create
Speaker 1: nuanced emotions in a machine, which is what they're trying
Speaker 1: to teach. It's very rudimentary right now, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that, uh, you know, a computer model or a
Speaker 1: machine might begin to react in the ways that we do.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, uh, I don't know. Is
Speaker 1: it weird? Do you have this version of yourself out
Speaker 1: there that you abandon that you just get tired of
Speaker 1: looking at your own brain that you've created. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and elsewhere in the science is too. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: creating synthetic bacteria in the lab where we continue to
Speaker 1: break apart DNA and map map the genomes of various
Speaker 1: species we um. I mean. And then as far as
Speaker 1: physics go, I mean, we're colliding particles. We're trying to
Speaker 1: unlock the mystery of the universe. Itself, like gravity exists,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's a there's a lot of potential in
Speaker 1: these two if not create an actual Frankenstein's monster, but
Speaker 1: to create the Frankenstein's monster as the I mean, the
Speaker 1: idea of the Frankensteience monster creates something that really forces
Speaker 1: us to reevaluate who and what we are and what's
Speaker 1: and where we have, where we have risen to with science,
Speaker 1: and then how how they they change in scientific illumination, um,
Speaker 1: you know, how it changes our own our understanding of ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why I think it's so interesting that Dr
Speaker 1: Arkin focuses on ethics so much, um, in terms of
Speaker 1: robotics and what means fifty years from now, hundred years
Speaker 1: from now, back to just the idea of the like
Speaker 1: the hormon idea of the monster itself. What's what's your
Speaker 1: favorite film adaptation of Frankenstein. Well, I really like the
Speaker 1: one with Robert de Niro in it, simply because, well,
Speaker 1: for two reasons, one good and one bad. Uh. The
Speaker 1: good reason is that I think that it's pretty faithful
Speaker 1: to the actual text and that you know, you've got
Speaker 1: a Frankenstein monster that is very intelligent, um, has very
Speaker 1: deep thoughts and is trying to express those. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, you've got Robert de Niro, a fine actor, wonderful,
Speaker 1: but I don't know about de Niro as Frankenstein because
Speaker 1: he's got a little bit of a New York accent
Speaker 1: trying to say, well, did this happen to me? And
Speaker 1: there's no way they could have been using New York
Speaker 1: parts because they're having to import most of that exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be made out of like cockney parts. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm conflicted about that. Yeah, and I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that de Niro isn't a wonderful actor. He is,
Speaker 1: but just not has been. I don't of he is anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying Frankenstein probably wasn't is a greatest role
Speaker 1: of his life. You you, I actually have a roof.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this one in years, but I remember
Speaker 1: there was a TV movie where he had Patrick Bergen
Speaker 1: I believe is his name, as as as Victor and
Speaker 1: then Randy Quaid played the monster. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: Is it a comedy? No, No, Randy was playing it straight.
Speaker 1: I mean Randy was slapp is a very talented actor. Um,
Speaker 1: it was just mainly remembered for his stuff, his more
Speaker 1: comedic roles. But but yeah, I remember him as being
Speaker 1: really good as the monster. It was a pretty like
Speaker 1: like the version you're talking about with Kenneth Brawna. It was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty accurate. I mean, it was pretty faithful
Speaker 1: to the text. You know, began and ended in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: and I remember just being really captivated by it when
Speaker 1: I watched it as a kid, Right, I would I
Speaker 1: would be very interested to know what your favorite adaptation is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like Karloff the fire Fire one, because I mean there's
Speaker 1: my It's what that one too? Yeah? Or you're more
Speaker 1: of a hammerman. Do you prefer to the like the
Speaker 1: monster from Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell which looks
Speaker 1: like the big like Harry gorilla man with stitches on
Speaker 1: its head. I mean, there's just so many cool, cool
Speaker 1: variations that have popped up over the years. All right, well, um,
Speaker 1: Matt is telling us we have to stop. I had
Speaker 1: more to share. I had so much more to tell
Speaker 1: you about the alchemy. But but when that's being shut down,
Speaker 1: you'll have to write in and complain about it. If
Speaker 1: you want to share non complaints with us, you can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Twitter. We are Below the
Speaker 1: Mind on both of those, and you can always find
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