Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna do another one
Speaker 1: of our movie episodes. We're trying to do one of
Speaker 1: these roughly every month or so. Sometimes we skip a month,
Speaker 1: and of course when Halloween comes around, there's liable to
Speaker 1: be a little bit more movie centric conversation as we
Speaker 1: use fictional properties as a way to sort of springboard
Speaker 1: onto scientific discussions, to discuss topics we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: past in a slightly different light, or to explore topics
Speaker 1: that you know, we might not otherwise get into in
Speaker 1: a full blown episode. I noticed you just said discussed.
Speaker 1: And today's episode will involve a different spelling of disgust. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because we're going to be talking about David Cronenberg's remake
Speaker 1: of The Fly. Now, this this is a movie I
Speaker 1: I re watched it a couple of years ago, as
Speaker 1: I recall, and you rewatched it last night, and I
Speaker 1: think it's fitting that we're we're doing this. We're recording
Speaker 1: this shortly before Valentine's Day, and it is coming out
Speaker 1: in the week following Valentine's Day. Here you go, everybody,
Speaker 1: This is essentially our Valentine's episode for the year. The
Speaker 1: worst State movie of all time. Yeah, it is not.
Speaker 1: It has romance in it, I guess some splashes of romance,
Speaker 1: but it is ultimately a tragic film. Uh, an ikey film,
Speaker 1: a monstrous film. Uh. It is a film that is
Speaker 1: not about making you feel good about yourself per se.
Speaker 1: It's a thorough I mean, I love the movie too.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a great horror movie, but it is
Speaker 1: just a deeply grimy experience at every level. It has
Speaker 1: like it has like like physical textural sliminess, but it
Speaker 1: also has really slimy behavior by certain characters. It is
Speaker 1: a thorough going exploration of slime. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: both hands into the slime bucket up to the elbows,
Speaker 1: just rooting around in there. Yeah. This film and other
Speaker 1: films from David Cronenberg are often referred to very loosely
Speaker 1: as body horror, and I tend to sort of recoil
Speaker 1: from things that are labeled body hard because sometimes, at
Speaker 1: least in my experience, uh, that label is sometimes given
Speaker 1: to work that is maybe a little a little bit
Speaker 1: more crude for crude's sake, or it's all about more focus,
Speaker 1: you know, or it's about shock value, or you know,
Speaker 1: it's very um melt movies. Yeah, I then, you know,
Speaker 1: I like a good melt movie. But but I do
Speaker 1: have to say, like this, this film, and I think
Speaker 1: that the other films of Cronenberg that fall under this,
Speaker 1: uh this categorization, they tend to be films that are
Speaker 1: not just about like the visual exploit of of body
Speaker 1: and horror, but they get into the metaphorical domain of
Speaker 1: body horror. Yeah. A lot of Cronenberg's work, whereas most
Speaker 1: horror would be about uh, you know, threats to your life,
Speaker 1: like something wants to harm you and it's chasing you
Speaker 1: and you have to get away from it, most of
Speaker 1: his horror is about the threat of having your identity corrupted.
Speaker 1: It's the threat of being transformed into something that is
Speaker 1: no longer you. Yeah, and of course this film has
Speaker 1: it in spades. So before we we jump into further discussion,
Speaker 1: let's uh, well, first of all, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: say yes, we will be talking about this film with spoilers.
Speaker 1: So if you have not seen David Cronenberg film The Fly,
Speaker 1: and you would like to do so unspoiled. Now is
Speaker 1: a good time to pass the podcast and go out
Speaker 1: and do that. But for the rest of you, yes,
Speaker 1: we will be discussing full spoilers for this film, so
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to hear just a taste
Speaker 1: from the original trailer. There is a limit even to
Speaker 1: the imagination human teleportation, molecular decimation, breakdown and reformation is
Speaker 1: inherently perching where our greatest creations met and deep as
Speaker 1: fears when you went through something went wrong, you are
Speaker 1: about to go beyond that limit. You know. There's another
Speaker 1: original and remake pair that I often think about, alongside
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties Fly with Vincent Price and then the
Speaker 1: has it been Surprised? Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, and the
Speaker 1: and and the Cronenberg remake is the Thing. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very similar thing like Howard hawks the Thing
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. It has one kind of vibe
Speaker 1: and it is substantially reimagined by the time Carpenter does
Speaker 1: it in nineteen eighty or whatever it was. And in
Speaker 1: both cases you see the remake reimagining it to the
Speaker 1: degree that the remakes become like the the the The
Speaker 1: the standing examples of the work. But they're they're both
Speaker 1: stories about transformation, though the in both cases, the later
Speaker 1: versions made the transformation much more disgusting. Yes, so so
Speaker 1: let's yeah, let's let's back up a little bit about
Speaker 1: just the origin and the Fly, because it also parallels
Speaker 1: the Thing in that, just as the Thing, the original
Speaker 1: motion picture was based on a pre existing uh work
Speaker 1: of fiction. The same is true of The Fly. The
Speaker 1: night film The Fly, which was directed by Kurt Newman
Speaker 1: with a screenplay by future best selling author James Clavell
Speaker 1: of Showgun Fame. This was based on a short story
Speaker 1: by George Langoln George Langeliers, Yeah Boy, if you Like,
Speaker 1: which was published in a June seven issue of Playboy magazine,
Speaker 1: and I had to look it up. I was curious, like, what, like,
Speaker 1: what is the presentation like in the original issue of
Speaker 1: Playboy magazine? And it indeed, it's pretty impressive because you
Speaker 1: have on on one side, on one page, you have
Speaker 1: just the text of the Fly, no illustrations, and then
Speaker 1: on the other page it's all white except for it
Speaker 1: just like a blank page, except in the top left
Speaker 1: hand corner there's a single fly on the page, like
Speaker 1: to scale, a real size lie. Yeah, where whereas you know,
Speaker 1: when you look at a picture revenue, you could easily
Speaker 1: assume that there's just a fly on that particular Playboy magazine.
Speaker 1: It's a nice touch. Now, as you mentioned, the film
Speaker 1: starred Vincent Price as the inventor of a matter transporter
Speaker 1: device called the disintegrator integrator, which is not as catchy
Speaker 1: as telepod. H So, but and so he's you know,
Speaker 1: he's working on this device, and of course he tested out.
Speaker 1: Things go horribly wrong when a fly ventures into the
Speaker 1: transporter with him, and he emerges with as two different creatures,
Speaker 1: a human with the head and arm of a fly
Speaker 1: and a fly with the head and arm of a human. Now,
Speaker 1: in the original movie, I'd say the most iconic scene
Speaker 1: is when the smaller version, the fly sized body with
Speaker 1: the tiny Vincent Price head on it, gets stuck in
Speaker 1: the spider's web and started screaming, help me, help me.
Speaker 1: But I remember thinking when I saw this original movie, like, okay,
Speaker 1: so he's got a human head, but like it's to scale,
Speaker 1: it's a fly size human head. That wouldn't possibly work.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't be able to fiddle the like human neurons
Speaker 1: into the brain of that size, his brain wouldn't work anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: as we'll continue to discuss with Cronenberg's version, the computer
Speaker 1: that is power and teleportation is really advanced. This is
Speaker 1: a godlike machine and it likes to roll the dice.
Speaker 1: So anyway, in the original, much like the remake, UM,
Speaker 1: the creature has to struggle to maintain its humanity, ultimately
Speaker 1: fails and then their tragic results. Now, this David Cronenberg's
Speaker 1: remake is going to be the main thing we're talking
Speaker 1: about here his treatment of it. Cronenberg was of course
Speaker 1: coming off of success with Videodrome and also an adaptation
Speaker 1: of Stephen King of the Dead Zone Scanners to write, uh, well,
Speaker 1: scanners have been before that, but these two had come
Speaker 1: out the same year, a couple of years prior. But yeah,
Speaker 1: scanners what was out. By that point, he had established
Speaker 1: himself as this Um, this new and signature voice in horror,
Speaker 1: the King of Bad Feelings. The screenplay was by Cronenberg
Speaker 1: and an individual by the name of Charles Edward Pogue.
Speaker 1: It famously stars Jeff gold Bloom as Dr Seth Brundle,
Speaker 1: a tour de force. So yes, like maximum gold blooming
Speaker 1: in this, but also gold blooming to just a perfect degree,
Speaker 1: like he plays to all his strengths as a performer. Also,
Speaker 1: Gina Davis stars in it as Veronica Quaif and then
Speaker 1: John Gets places character named Status Bronze, who is the
Speaker 1: ultimate sleeves bag in a film full of people that
Speaker 1: are that are oftentimes, if not exclusively, sleezy, the sleeves
Speaker 1: on him in this movie is so thick. I remember
Speaker 1: after this was like the first movie I saw with
Speaker 1: John Gets in it, and when I saw like Blood
Speaker 1: Simple in other movies he was in after this, like
Speaker 1: the stank wouldn't come off of him, like it's stuck
Speaker 1: on the actor. Oh yeah, I often forget that he
Speaker 1: was in Blood Simple. Which which character did you play
Speaker 1: in that he's like the main dude in it? Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: often about him he kind of like Francis mcdorman's boyfriend.
Speaker 1: There you go. Okay, I do need to watch Blood
Speaker 1: Simple again. That is a great film. I know it's
Speaker 1: not fair. I should not hold this this character's flaws
Speaker 1: against the actor and John Guess is great, but that's
Speaker 1: that's the sign of a great performance. When you you
Speaker 1: just kind of dislike the the actor as well because
Speaker 1: of what their their their character did or how their
Speaker 1: character came off. So the basic plot in the eight
Speaker 1: six re make is the same. Um. Uh. This time
Speaker 1: it's Dr Seth Brundle. He's working on these telepods and uh,
Speaker 1: he of course ends up experimenting with it. He had
Speaker 1: decides to just screw it. I'm gonna get in the pod.
Speaker 1: I'm going to perform a little self experimentation here, and
Speaker 1: a fly ventures into the pod with him. Biology is scrambled. Uh, humanity,
Speaker 1: humanity has lost. Things end up tragically for monsters and
Speaker 1: men alike. But then there are a lot of key
Speaker 1: differences in this adaptation. We've touched on some of them already,
Speaker 1: like the idea that it's it's less about the monster
Speaker 1: you become, but the journey towards monstrosity, the change the
Speaker 1: monstrous change as opposed to the monster its destination. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the film spends a decent amount of time stuck
Speaker 1: in the middle, with Jeff Goblum's character gradually becoming more
Speaker 1: and more less human and more fly uh and and
Speaker 1: being able to like having metacognition on this like realizing
Speaker 1: what is happening to him and being able to react
Speaker 1: to it still as partially the man he once was. Right.
Speaker 1: And then of course, when he first emerges from the telepod,
Speaker 1: not only does he feel whole and intact, but he
Speaker 1: feels improved. He feels, you know, more alive than he
Speaker 1: did previously, starts doing gymnastics and stuff. But he also
Speaker 1: becomes a jerk, like when he gets out of the
Speaker 1: thing that I can't get out of my head is
Speaker 1: when he gets out of the telepod, he's like somebody
Speaker 1: on cocaine, you know, Like he's like, I'm a god,
Speaker 1: I'm amazing. Yeah, and and hey, you've got to try
Speaker 1: this too. Let's try it right now together. Let's do this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the great things about
Speaker 1: the transformation in this film is that you can you
Speaker 1: can apply it to so many other real life changes,
Speaker 1: Like you can easily take this model and compare it to, say, uh,
Speaker 1: the impact of drug addiction, like like we just mentioned later,
Speaker 1: as he begins to transform physically, you could compare that
Speaker 1: to various the ravages of various diseases. Um uh, you
Speaker 1: could even compare to just the you know, the wear
Speaker 1: and tear of age. There there's so many different things
Speaker 1: you could compare it to, uh, and it it opens
Speaker 1: itself up to those comparisons. I'm not saying it's meant
Speaker 1: as a direct allegory, but you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think drugs are very good comparison because, like, because it
Speaker 1: starts off with this euphoria and this sense that things
Speaker 1: have never been better. I'm better than I've ever been,
Speaker 1: life is better than it's ever been, and then there's
Speaker 1: the decline. It catches up with him. There's a denial
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So, like you said, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of psychological change, a lot of meta analysis
Speaker 1: of like what's going on in him trying to understand
Speaker 1: what's happening to himself because at first he has no
Speaker 1: idea that that a fly has been merged with his
Speaker 1: his being at like the most basic level. And then
Speaker 1: another another I think one of the most horrifying changes
Speaker 1: in a film that is full of horrors. They're not
Speaker 1: even touching on some of the minor things they're thrown in,
Speaker 1: like inside out baboons and whatnot. But towards the end,
Speaker 1: as he's almost completely monster, he relates to Veronica that
Speaker 1: he has a solution in mind, and that is that
Speaker 1: she and her unborn child and and and him the
Speaker 1: bundle fly, should climb into the telepods together and then
Speaker 1: merge themselves into a single perfect being. Right, he decides, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm wasting away because there's too much fly in me.
Speaker 1: Like I went in just me and fly, and now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be fifty fifty when this process finishes. And
Speaker 1: he's like, if I get some more humans and then
Speaker 1: merge me with them, then I can be something like,
Speaker 1: you know, sevent human and that's just enough fly. Right,
Speaker 1: And of course this is the predominantly fly brain thinking.
Speaker 1: This is the you know he talks about like the
Speaker 1: absence of politics and in insect culture and so forth.
Speaker 1: But it's it's such a horrifying solution because it makes sense.
Speaker 1: He's making sense, but you it's it's just unspeakable horror
Speaker 1: to imagine what this final form would be if he's
Speaker 1: able to carry this out. And unlike the case with
Speaker 1: him merging with the fly, this would be presumably merging
Speaker 1: too conscious sentient people. I don't know what is what
Speaker 1: is being assumed about, Like if you tried to like
Speaker 1: fuse two humans together, what the resulting brain or mind
Speaker 1: state would be like, Well, it's it's one of these
Speaker 1: things that it depending on how you would look at
Speaker 1: that basic concept. It's either horrifying and it's the it's
Speaker 1: the destruction of self, it's the invasion of self. But
Speaker 1: it also you could look at it as beautiful, right,
Speaker 1: because this is what we often talk about love in
Speaker 1: this case, right, two people becoming one. Yes, he tries
Speaker 1: to talk about it in those terms, and obviously Geina
Speaker 1: Davis does not see it that way quite understandable reasons.
Speaker 1: But of course she hasn't been through the through the
Speaker 1: plasma pool, so she doesn't she how could she understand? Right?
Speaker 1: I know this is one of your favorite things about
Speaker 1: the movie. Is this the plasma pool rant? Right? It's
Speaker 1: in one of the cocaine style scenes where Jeff Goldblum
Speaker 1: is It's it's in the early days after he's been
Speaker 1: through the pod. He thinks, he thinks I'm not wasting away.
Speaker 1: He thinks I'm a god, I'm amazing, I can do anything.
Speaker 1: And he's lashing out at anybody who doesn't want to
Speaker 1: get in the pod and try it for themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets very vindictive about it, especially with with Veronica.
Speaker 1: Like one of the quotes from that that lengthy diatribe
Speaker 1: is you're afraid to dive into the plasma pool, aren't
Speaker 1: You're afraid to be destroyed and recreated, aren't you, which
Speaker 1: again ties into this the whole theme of the film,
Speaker 1: this idea of transformation is it is something we all
Speaker 1: want but but at the same time of the reality
Speaker 1: of it can be can be horrifying, can be scary,
Speaker 1: it can be frightening or horrifying. Alright, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will start we'll start throwing a little
Speaker 1: bit of science at this thing. Thank alright, we're back now.
Speaker 1: I would say the ultimate, uh, the premise of the movie.
Speaker 1: This is not hard sci fi. This is not something
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, maybe plausible. We just don't have
Speaker 1: the technology yet. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Right.
Speaker 1: And as we as we talk about this aspect of
Speaker 1: the film and sort of like nitpick the you know,
Speaker 1: the various aspects of teleportation, please understand that we were
Speaker 1: not criticizing the film. We are we are using the
Speaker 1: film to to explore some topics and we thank the
Speaker 1: film for being able to uh uh you know, to
Speaker 1: inspire us. So sure, it's a horror science fantasy, it's there.
Speaker 1: It's there to uh, to to raise certain ideas about humankind,
Speaker 1: not to critique the specific capabilities of real technology. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not really apparable about teleportation. Right. Of course.
Speaker 1: The big mishap that occurs in all this is that
Speaker 1: the fly managers to zip into the telepod with Brundle,
Speaker 1: and the computer, not anticipating an additional organism, incorporates that
Speaker 1: organism into Brundle at the molecular genetic level. That's what
Speaker 1: it says. Yeah, he's he says, uh, he's like, in
Speaker 1: my rush to create a telepod, I accidentally created a
Speaker 1: gene splicer as well. A very good one, it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's extremely good. Again. Just the computer powering this
Speaker 1: thing is as incredible as it is inept Even in
Speaker 1: its ineptitude, it manages to achieve, you know, really godlike effects.
Speaker 1: But one of the funny things that I remember thinking
Speaker 1: watching this movie is wait a minute, okay, so it's
Speaker 1: saying human goes in, fly goes in, thing comes out
Speaker 1: that will be fifty fifty human and fly. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna work on that basis, if you're just like comparing, well,
Speaker 1: what kind of genomes are in here, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of other stuff in there that's not human either. I mean,
Speaker 1: did he sterilize the inside of the telepod before he
Speaker 1: went in? I should hope so, because of a baboon
Speaker 1: exploded in it. Right, Yeah, So of course there's gonna
Speaker 1: be stuff on the you know, walls inside the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's life everywhere. But then more than that,
Speaker 1: there's also going to be stuff that he can't sterilize
Speaker 1: because it's gonna be in him and on him. That's right.
Speaker 1: And this should come as no surprise to regular listeners
Speaker 1: at the show because we've discussed the microbiome quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Because there's a there were there would have been a
Speaker 1: lot more than two life forms in there um because
Speaker 1: none of us are human, not by a long shot,
Speaker 1: because we contain vast populations of bacteria, are, chia, and
Speaker 1: fungi that are collectively known as the microbiome. In fact,
Speaker 1: the average human has roughly thirty trillion micro organisms living
Speaker 1: on and within them, enough to wagh and this is
Speaker 1: this is amazing to think about roughly a half pound
Speaker 1: of non human life. So just just imagine this scenario.
Speaker 1: If you were to step into telepod A and then
Speaker 1: telepod and then then you were gonna you know, zip
Speaker 1: into telepod B and C with human emerging from C,
Speaker 1: and then all your microbiome just left in a pile
Speaker 1: in Pod B. That would be a half pound of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean roughly yes, but yeah, and what like it
Speaker 1: just by cell count it's gonna be we don't know exactly,
Speaker 1: but the estimate is something like equal numbers of cells
Speaker 1: or maybe a two to one or something. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: staggering when you look at some some of these numbers. Um.
Speaker 1: These numbers that I'm reading here, by the way, come
Speaker 1: from a January uh Simon's Foundation article titled You're Not
Speaker 1: All Human The Wonder of Gut Microbes. They also point
Speaker 1: out that we're talking an average of a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty different species of bacteria alone within the average person,
Speaker 1: and that's out of six thousand possible species worldwide. The
Speaker 1: human genome contains twenty thousand genes, while your microbiome contains
Speaker 1: three million genes. So I got another wrinkled Okay, So
Speaker 1: wouldn't just be your microbiome and the fly, but it
Speaker 1: would also be the flies microbiome. Yeah, I mean we didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get figures for that. They're also there
Speaker 1: are parasites that live on in pray on flies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got those as well. That's assuming that Brundle himself
Speaker 1: does not have some sort of parasite. And we don't
Speaker 1: know what he had for dinner. He might have had
Speaker 1: a bad uh you know, pork sandwich or something. Oh no,
Speaker 1: you go in there with trick gnosis and then it
Speaker 1: fuses you with the worms. Yeah, because I mean he's
Speaker 1: I mean, he's certainly living a bit foul up in
Speaker 1: that that loft later on, but it's not exactly pristine either.
Speaker 1: It's like the work abode of, you know, of an
Speaker 1: obsessed scientist. Right. Sorry, I was just looking up the
Speaker 1: names of some fly parasites. There's some great ones. One
Speaker 1: that I was seeing referenced in a lot of research
Speaker 1: is called Spellingia CAMEROONI Perkins, Perkins, Perkins, the Perkins parasite.
Speaker 1: So you get a bit of that in there too.
Speaker 1: All right, So you have all this stuff, but potentially
Speaker 1: in the telepod with brundle with this even this fly
Speaker 1: thrown in the mix as well. And the computer that
Speaker 1: is managing this this transport of of the individual and
Speaker 1: the individuals across the room to the other telepod or
Speaker 1: the other telepods. Uh, you know, it's having to handle
Speaker 1: all of this information on top of just like the
Speaker 1: basic atom, something like a trillion trillion atoms or more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is another thing that I mean, if we want
Speaker 1: to get serious about teleportation for a second, I would
Speaker 1: argue that it is essentially impossible. Right. First of all,
Speaker 1: the amount of energy that it would take to disassemble
Speaker 1: your body and then reassemble it in another place is
Speaker 1: just unfathomable. Um. But also like how would the information
Speaker 1: be managed? It's too much information to sample and keep
Speaker 1: track of. I think teleportation, I'm sorry to say, it's
Speaker 1: just not a technologically feasible proposition, even in the distant future. Right.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you watch enough science fiction about it,
Speaker 1: you probably feel pretty okay about that, because because teleporter mishaps, uh,
Speaker 1: they kind of compose one of my favorite like subgenres
Speaker 1: or subsub genres of science fiction. Like I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of Stephen King's The Jaunt, which is a different
Speaker 1: and maybe in some ways more possible. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a different take on it. For sure that we
Speaker 1: would require a different episode to break down the science off.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't spoil that one, but that that is a
Speaker 1: great horrifying short story. Yeah. Uh. The other one I
Speaker 1: think of is in Spaceballs, when the guy gets his
Speaker 1: his butt on his front, it gets the bottom half
Speaker 1: of his body backwards. Oh man, I haven't seen Spaceballs
Speaker 1: in a very long time, so I forgot all about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there you find example Star Trek. Of course
Speaker 1: you had had regular use of teleportation technology and occasionally
Speaker 1: would explore mishaps in interesting ways. But even if it's
Speaker 1: not malfunctioning, I mean, I think something that is at
Speaker 1: some point explored on Star Trek. I don't I've heard
Speaker 1: they get there at some point of people contemplating the
Speaker 1: fact that what's really happening every time you are teleported
Speaker 1: is that you die and a new version of you
Speaker 1: is created. So it's like your consciousness does not survive
Speaker 1: the process. You are disintegrated, and then there's just a
Speaker 1: copy of you, and that that copy if you goes
Speaker 1: on with your business. Yeah, if I remember correctly, there's
Speaker 1: an episode of the like nineties reboot of The Outer
Speaker 1: Limits that explores this as well. Um, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a whole other side to it too. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: that every time you teleport, you die. But then I
Speaker 1: guess again, on the other hand, every time you teleport
Speaker 1: you were reborn. Uh sure, well it might be great
Speaker 1: for the version of you that's reborn, but that's not
Speaker 1: that doesn't get to be you. You're done. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well but you know he was annihilated down to the
Speaker 1: flast atom, so you know, he was completely recycled. So anyway,
Speaker 1: just just contemplating like the sheer number of life forms
Speaker 1: that would have been in that telepod. I think it's
Speaker 1: just a fun um, you know, intellectual exercise, and also
Speaker 1: creates all sorts of new horrible scenarios, like, indeed, what
Speaker 1: if you weren't just merging a fly in a human
Speaker 1: together into one being. What if it was all of
Speaker 1: those things? What if it was just cut the fly out,
Speaker 1: the flies shoot out of the pod before it goes off.
Speaker 1: What if it's just Brundle and his micro I am
Speaker 1: all the occupants of the microbiome being fused into one
Speaker 1: life form Brundle hyphen E cole I. Yeah, yeah, plus
Speaker 1: it's us everything else, it's it's it's crazy again. I
Speaker 1: love just trying to imagine what that consists of. Now
Speaker 1: here's another question that I think comes up. There's, of course,
Speaker 1: when when he's trying to figure out what happened in
Speaker 1: the movie, he's asking the computer in that wonderful way
Speaker 1: that like, uh, nineteen eighties computers functioned in science fiction
Speaker 1: where you could just have conversations with them. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just a natural language input and response system. You know
Speaker 1: what movie also does that? The thing? Do you remember
Speaker 1: in the remake of the Thing, when Wilfred Brimley is
Speaker 1: like asking questions and here he's like how long before
Speaker 1: all humans on Earth are infected? And it's like it
Speaker 1: gives him a time frame and then he gets the idea.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, we're not getting out of here. That
Speaker 1: was used in Alien as well. Remember was it mother
Speaker 1: that they would have conversations with? That's right, yes, see,
Speaker 1: this is what I want to see come back in
Speaker 1: science fiction. I want to see computers like that where
Speaker 1: people type in questions and they're given answers right there
Speaker 1: on the screen, but the answers are a little stilted,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not it's not perfect, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: natural language for some reason. So when when he asked
Speaker 1: about what happening, looks into it he sees, okay, there
Speaker 1: was a fly in there, and then he asked, was
Speaker 1: the fly absorbed by Brundle And then the computer says no, uh,
Speaker 1: they were merged for some confusion, something to that effect.
Speaker 1: But it makes me wonder, Okay, what if you had
Speaker 1: Brundle get into the telepod and he goes from telepod
Speaker 1: A to Telepod B and in the process maybe I
Speaker 1: guess the microbiome wasn't factored into the equation. And what
Speaker 1: if the microbiome is annihilated, shot over to another pod,
Speaker 1: or somehow absorbed in a way that makes it completely
Speaker 1: go away, and you just have Brundle human coming out
Speaker 1: on the other end. What would that be like? Well,
Speaker 1: he would not be the only organism that's ever been
Speaker 1: through this. In fact, this is a condition that's sometimes
Speaker 1: used in the lab to study the effects of the microbiome.
Speaker 1: I think we've talked on the show before about research using,
Speaker 1: for example, germ free mice. This is sometimes called nobiosis
Speaker 1: or nobiotic conditions, where it just means like when you
Speaker 1: have control and knowledge of all of the life forms
Speaker 1: living within one larger life form, and often control and
Speaker 1: knowledge of that would mean that there are none in there. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you can create germ free mice that have
Speaker 1: no microbiome. They're sterile, they're just mice. There's no bacteria,
Speaker 1: there's no archaea living in or on them, and this
Speaker 1: has some very strange effects. I think we actually talked
Speaker 1: about one study looking at this in our episode on
Speaker 1: the Tingler when we were talking about indo parasites and fear,
Speaker 1: and I guess I don't know if it would make
Speaker 1: sense to talk about the the internal microbiome is a parasite,
Speaker 1: but whatever, you know, the symbiosis and and fear. Well,
Speaker 1: sometimes the line between parasite and symbiosis is less easy
Speaker 1: to define anyway, and sometimes there is there's change over
Speaker 1: time in that relationship. That's an extremely good point. I'll
Speaker 1: come back to that in just a second. But the
Speaker 1: example from the Tinkler episode was that it turns out
Speaker 1: that for some reason, in mice that are germ free,
Speaker 1: if they don't have a functioning microbiome like a normal
Speaker 1: mouse would they have inhibited fear response. They have trouble
Speaker 1: associating specific memories with the fear response, so they do
Speaker 1: not generate fear of things the same way normal mice do.
Speaker 1: Isn't that strange? Why would the why would the gut
Speaker 1: flora have anything to say about you being able to
Speaker 1: learn to be afraid of things? Yeah? I mean this
Speaker 1: this really gets down to, like what is so important
Speaker 1: and exciting about the microbiome research is that you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about this a little before we came
Speaker 1: in here. Um, it's been pointed out there, like the
Speaker 1: real importance of the microbiome, right, placing it on the
Speaker 1: same level as like an organ, seems to come online
Speaker 1: more in like the late nineties, Um, after this film certainly.
Speaker 1: But the idea that that the micro organisms were important
Speaker 1: to life that predates that I saw like a quote
Speaker 1: from Louis Pasture for example. It's pointing this out that,
Speaker 1: like it's that that micro organisms are vital for human life. Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I think is worth pointing out.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're all kinds of things that are are
Speaker 1: microbiotic do for us. One thing is related to you
Speaker 1: talking about the line between parasitism and just an endosymbiosis.
Speaker 1: Our immune systems are trained by constantly being an interaction
Speaker 1: with the microbiome. Uh. And so there are tons of
Speaker 1: you know, micro organisms in and on our body that
Speaker 1: are not harmful to us, but they live in a
Speaker 1: kind of uneasy alliance within the immune system that they
Speaker 1: are managed buy And that's a lot of what our
Speaker 1: immune system does. Our immune system is not just you know,
Speaker 1: fighting the flu when you get infected. It's also managing
Speaker 1: the body's relationship with its microbiota. Yeah, so it's not
Speaker 1: it's not just say, you know, the Roman allegiance and
Speaker 1: out to conquer territory or to fight an adversary. It
Speaker 1: is the it is a like a police force. So
Speaker 1: looking around a little bit about this, obviously, the scenario
Speaker 1: of all your microbiome being teleported out of you is
Speaker 1: not realistic. No, and you would not want that to happen.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder like, is that something that would
Speaker 1: just pretty much be immediate death? I mean, is it
Speaker 1: something you could survive? Well, you know, I was looking
Speaker 1: at an article that deals this a little bit, uh,
Speaker 1: titled life in a World without Microbes by Gilbert and Newfeld,
Speaker 1: published in Plos Biology, and uh, the authors are mainly
Speaker 1: dealing with really and even you know, you know, larger scenario.
Speaker 1: They're looking at, what if all the you know, um
Speaker 1: micro biological life, all all the bacteria on Earth were
Speaker 1: to just perish. What would happen? That would not be good?
Speaker 1: That it would it would not be good. But they
Speaker 1: write that it would quote be false to claim that
Speaker 1: macroscopic life cannot exist without microbes. However, although life would
Speaker 1: persist in the absence of micro robes, both the quantity
Speaker 1: and quality of life would be reduced dramatically. So they
Speaker 1: write that humans could get by fine without microbes. Certainly
Speaker 1: for a few days. We probably wouldn't even notice it,
Speaker 1: and you know, we can would continue to be able
Speaker 1: to eat and digest food, they point out. But uh,
Speaker 1: their main focus of course on this is the idea
Speaker 1: that all the you know, the the the the microbiotic
Speaker 1: population of the world would be wiped out. And if
Speaker 1: that were to take place, they think it would lead
Speaker 1: to societal collapse in about a year, with pockets of
Speaker 1: humans surviving for perhaps centuries after that. So, you know,
Speaker 1: generations of humans would continue to live on but that
Speaker 1: ultimately they would probably die out as well. Every single
Speaker 1: natural ecosystem depends on microbes, and without their activities, every
Speaker 1: ecosystem would begin to break down. Now, as for the
Speaker 1: individual brundle, the what the the nobiotic brundle um, it's
Speaker 1: it seems like he would he would probably be fine,
Speaker 1: He might even feel pretty good but at first, but
Speaker 1: he would he would almost certainly need to repopulate his
Speaker 1: body with with microbiota, uh, you know, And we see examples,
Speaker 1: of course, cases where people say I have part of
Speaker 1: their gut floor wiped out by antibiotics, um or some
Speaker 1: other condition, they're able to to, you know, to use
Speaker 1: something like a fecal transplant, for example, to reintroduce the
Speaker 1: necessary uh microbes into the gut. And of course there
Speaker 1: are other you know, like probiotic techniques as well. So
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think his condition would be hopeless
Speaker 1: or anything. Uh probably would not make an interesting movie.
Speaker 1: Would not be healthy to stay that way again, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would probably have some drastically negative effects on the
Speaker 1: immune response. Right. So certainly if he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel great, and I'm you know, I'm glad I
Speaker 1: got all those microbes out of my body, and then
Speaker 1: he were to, like say, do it on a weekly basis,
Speaker 1: that would not be good. All Right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another break. But when we come back
Speaker 1: to discuss a little bit. We've been a lot of
Speaker 1: time already talking about what could go wrong with teleportation,
Speaker 1: and certainly that is kind of the the central exploration
Speaker 1: of the film itself. But after the break, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about what could potentially go right, Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right. So we were talking about how in the
Speaker 1: Fly remake, when Seth Brundel Jeff Goldblum first comes out
Speaker 1: of the telepod the first time he teleports himself, he
Speaker 1: thinks that it has done something wonderful for him. We
Speaker 1: we compared him to somebody on cocaine, just like thinking
Speaker 1: I am a golden god. That's right. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: just completely renewed, full of optimism. He's just he's just
Speaker 1: on fire. He's also though, I mean, it makes him aggressive, unreasonable, manic,
Speaker 1: and increasingly so with time. Yeah. But but at first
Speaker 1: he's convinced that this has been I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: kind of a plasma pool baptism. He's been reborn and
Speaker 1: you know when he's again, when he starts accusing Ronnie
Speaker 1: of of not being you know, into the idea. You know,
Speaker 1: he's saying, Oh, you're afraid of the plasma pool. You're
Speaker 1: afraid to be destroyed and remade in it, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh and in this kind of you know, echoing you know,
Speaker 1: religious concepts of rebirth, of death and rebirth and renewal. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's gonna it would be interesting
Speaker 1: to discuss this a little bit, like how how could
Speaker 1: a teleportation scenario like this potentially leave you feeling like
Speaker 1: you're a new person or a renewed person. I think
Speaker 1: one of the other things to look at is Okay, certainly,
Speaker 1: I think the most likely scenario, again, assuming the teleportation
Speaker 1: goes off flawlessly, no fly parts, no merging your body
Speaker 1: with any coli or anything like that, you just emerge
Speaker 1: what you were before, except you feel different, You feel renewed.
Speaker 1: And uh and I think you know this is the
Speaker 1: case where clearly Brundle need not actually be any different
Speaker 1: to feel differently. You know, just look two examples of
Speaker 1: religious rights of baptism and faith healing. For example, the
Speaker 1: telepod experience might work absolutely perfectly, which means you're no
Speaker 1: different than you know, when you emerge on the other
Speaker 1: side than when you'd uh you know, first climbed in.
Speaker 1: And the same could be said when you were, say,
Speaker 1: baptized at a church, or when you're touched by a
Speaker 1: faith healer like a televangelist or something you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, outside of you know, obviously you could be
Speaker 1: introduced to some new microbes in either of those cases,
Speaker 1: in any of these cases, but other than that, you're
Speaker 1: still going to be pretty much the same. But you
Speaker 1: could feel elated. You could even feel like your pain
Speaker 1: has been relieved or your body has been healed because
Speaker 1: you know, naturally, as humans, we encounter physical illnesses, and
Speaker 1: we encounter you know, psychological barriers of varying form, origin,
Speaker 1: and resiliency, and depending on what the issue is, we
Speaker 1: have a great number of science based treatments and cures. Uh.
Speaker 1: We have powerful psychological tools as well, but we also
Speaker 1: readily engage in practices that rest on, you know, many
Speaker 1: times very shaky scientific ground or they just fall just
Speaker 1: flat into the domain of ritual, written religion and superstition
Speaker 1: and UH and a lot of us do this, uh.
Speaker 1: Their varying stats on this, I think, but one once
Speaker 1: that I was looking at came from a two thousand
Speaker 1: sixteen Baylor University epidemiology study. They found that nearly nine
Speaker 1: out of ten Americans have relied upon healing prayer at
Speaker 1: some point in their lives. Now, most of these individuals
Speaker 1: do so alongside actual medical care UM, and I've seen
Speaker 1: cases where embracing both has been argued to help push
Speaker 1: medical care and say, highly religious places UM. But this
Speaker 1: particular study didn't tackle the perceived success of of healing prayer.
Speaker 1: Though a lot of studies have weighed in on this question,
Speaker 1: some quite controversially. Some some critics in the scientific community
Speaker 1: have have urged the end of clinical trials for quote,
Speaker 1: highly implausible treatments UM, because you know, well you can
Speaker 1: argue that there there there may be room for some
Speaker 1: alternative medical treatments to actually work reasons that we don't
Speaker 1: quite understand yet scientifically. You know, be a some sort
Speaker 1: of you know rare um HERB that's used traditionally somewhere,
Speaker 1: and maybe scientists just haven't explored it enough to see
Speaker 1: it actually has some sort of of an effect. UM.
Speaker 1: And you can argue that some rituals have psychological virtue
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons, such perhaps you know, perhaps
Speaker 1: they have elements of mindfulness to them and that that's useful.
Speaker 1: But a lot of this stuff ultimately ends up working
Speaker 1: to some degree because of the placebo effect. Sure, and
Speaker 1: that's one thing where I think even if you believe, say,
Speaker 1: in some cases prayer works like intercessory prayer changes outcomes,
Speaker 1: you would you would have to still acknowledge that in
Speaker 1: some cases it's also going to be due to placebo effect,
Speaker 1: and you aren't always going to know which is which,
Speaker 1: Like we know the placebo effect happens either way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then the weird thing about placebo effect is you
Speaker 1: also have to kind of you have to believe in
Speaker 1: it for it to work, um or you have to
Speaker 1: believe in the thing that is working via the placebo effect.
Speaker 1: You I just I mean, I don't know, I get
Speaker 1: if you could just believe in the placebo effect and
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, mighty placebo effect, heal my my
Speaker 1: body pains. But anyway, well, I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: things that I would say, are they're gonna have placebo
Speaker 1: like implications that transcend just your your personal cognitive beliefs
Speaker 1: are awareness. Like, uh, one example I would use is
Speaker 1: that you talk about faith healing scenarios and how sometimes
Speaker 1: people go to a faith healer get hands laid on
Speaker 1: them and they actually feel better. They're like, my pain
Speaker 1: went away. Oftentimes it returns soon thereafter, but it does
Speaker 1: really seem to go away for a short time. And
Speaker 1: I would say something that's probably going on in a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases is a high is a powerful
Speaker 1: social effect. You're you're in a group with a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and you are feeling profoundly socially included for
Speaker 1: a moment, all these different people paying attention to you
Speaker 1: and caring about your problem. That that is a profound
Speaker 1: and somewhat rare situation to be in. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: in in some of those cases, to people are going
Speaker 1: to tell you it's going to be okay, even if
Speaker 1: it's probably maybe not going to be okay. But sometimes
Speaker 1: nothing helps in the short term like a soothing voice
Speaker 1: telling you that right right. Um, I mean I bet
Speaker 1: almost everybody listening has had the feeling of like you're
Speaker 1: worried about something something in your body, and you go
Speaker 1: to the doctor and it's just like as soon as
Speaker 1: the doctor tells you it's okay, your complaint just vanishes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've had that experience where and then later someone says,
Speaker 1: well what did they say, and they're like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I kind of stopped listening after they said everything was
Speaker 1: all right, you know, or like it. It didn't like
Speaker 1: I was so wrapped up in just the initial explanation
Speaker 1: that I didn't so call the information in so at
Speaker 1: any rate, we're not going to go into excessive detail
Speaker 1: in the placebo effect. We've discussed it um in more
Speaker 1: depth in the past. But uh, for this episode, I
Speaker 1: was looking at great expectations the evolutionary psychology of faith
Speaker 1: healing in the placebo effect by one Nicholas Humphreys, and
Speaker 1: I thought he made for one thing, he made some
Speaker 1: concise points about this entirely inward experience. Uh. He also
Speaker 1: shared a wonderful quote from Plato at the beginning that
Speaker 1: can be applied to our understanding of the placebo effect.
Speaker 1: Plato wrote, I said that the cure itself is a
Speaker 1: certain leaf, but in addition to the drug, there is
Speaker 1: a certain charm, which is someone chance when he makes
Speaker 1: use of it. The medicine altogether restores him to health.
Speaker 1: But without the charm, there is no profit from the leaf. Well,
Speaker 1: that would be a very good point. It would not
Speaker 1: be helpful to slip somebody placebo pills. In order for
Speaker 1: a placebo medication to be effective, the person needs to
Speaker 1: be aware that it's being prescribed and to take it.
Speaker 1: You can't do the thing you do to the dog,
Speaker 1: where you like stick the tick pill and a bunch
Speaker 1: of peanut butter or something exactly. Yeah, Humphries stresses. For
Speaker 1: the placebo effect to work, the patient has to be
Speaker 1: aware of the tree. Meant, they have to believe in
Speaker 1: the treatment due to experience or reputation. They have to
Speaker 1: expect improvements afterwards. And then these experiences, these expectations influence
Speaker 1: the patient's capacity for self cure. So um, you know.
Speaker 1: To bring it back to Brundle, uh, you know, Brundle
Speaker 1: can't just be slipped through the telepod in his sleep.
Speaker 1: He's knowingly going through it. He knows what is going
Speaker 1: to happen, that his body is going to be taken
Speaker 1: down and then reassembled. And then you know, either you know,
Speaker 1: proactively or retroactively begins to uh as sign certain um
Speaker 1: you know, ideas of of rebirth to that equation, where
Speaker 1: does all that language come from? When he starts ranting,
Speaker 1: it's as if he I mean, he's ranting quickly about
Speaker 1: the plasma pool and everything. It's like he's already had
Speaker 1: these phrases kicking around in his head. Right. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: been thinking about it, he just hasn't been ranting about
Speaker 1: it to his um uh, to his girlfriend now. In
Speaker 1: this paper, Humphreys ultimately explores the idea that was proposed
Speaker 1: by others that the cebo effect we we see today,
Speaker 1: uh you know, are seeming tendency to experience it and
Speaker 1: its use in traditional healing rights throughout history means that
Speaker 1: the placebo effect and may have been subject to strong
Speaker 1: pressure from natural selection. Humphreys contends that the placebo effect
Speaker 1: is probably not inherently adaptive because sometimes it is also maladaptive,
Speaker 1: but that evolution may well have helped shape a talent
Speaker 1: in humans for quote, a tradition of self deception and delusion,
Speaker 1: because he points out that if you're feeling back pain
Speaker 1: and then you take some snake oil and you feel
Speaker 1: better afterwards, without you know, obviously, without actually healing the
Speaker 1: underlying condition, you're missing the importance of the pain because quote,
Speaker 1: your back pain was designed by natural selection to protect you.
Speaker 1: It's warning you something is wrong and like, don't keep
Speaker 1: putting pressure onto on that foot or something. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I thought that was an interesting and point, and it was.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to think about, um, you know, the role
Speaker 1: of natural selection to what extent it might have played
Speaker 1: in the placebo effect and in our ability to self
Speaker 1: deceive about about the curative properties of various non curative methods. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously our brains have evolved to to be easily deceived
Speaker 1: in certain scenarios, and it's interesting to study what those
Speaker 1: scenarios are and try to figure out what evolutionary pressures
Speaker 1: would have driven that. So obviously one way they work
Speaker 1: is sometimes we can generate a kind of confidence that
Speaker 1: overcomes negative physiological feedback. Uh, And there there must I mean,
Speaker 1: you can imagine scenarios where that's also adaptive. Obviously, you
Speaker 1: don't want to just be ignoring pain because pains useful information.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you want the body to
Speaker 1: have some kind of override mechanism. For said, when maybe
Speaker 1: maybe your foot's in pain, you shouldn't be putting pressure
Speaker 1: on it. But there's a tiger and you've got to
Speaker 1: run right now. Obviously, it would not be advantageous for
Speaker 1: the body to just in cyst on you staying put
Speaker 1: even in that scenario. And there might be other scenarios
Speaker 1: other than like immediate physical danger. There might be cases
Speaker 1: where there are social signals, social cues that override our
Speaker 1: natural physiological feedback mechanisms. Absolutely so, I think again, coming
Speaker 1: back to the bundle scenario, you can well imagine someone
Speaker 1: going through a telepod uh situation, teleporting their body being
Speaker 1: destroyed and remade, and then feeling renewed about it even
Speaker 1: if nothing has changed. They're still the same baseline person
Speaker 1: they were before. Like I'm wondering, like, surely this idea
Speaker 1: has been explored in science fiction before, Like maybe even
Speaker 1: in Star Trek fiction, Like does someone get obsessed with
Speaker 1: using the teleporter They're like I'm feeling a little down,
Speaker 1: I'm going through the teleporter. We're just gonna gonna reset
Speaker 1: for the day, Like that's better than a quick shower
Speaker 1: or a power nap, right, But for the rest of
Speaker 1: the episode, I thought we might explore just a few
Speaker 1: you know, relatively briefly. I think, um, how going through
Speaker 1: the teleporter could potentially actually change you actually uh you
Speaker 1: know alter say, your your mind and your mood. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's made some kind of physical change to the
Speaker 1: body and and now you are now brundle fly is different. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think one way to look at, of course,
Speaker 1: is neurological because again like the complexities of teleportation or
Speaker 1: again just fantastic and uh and and and not really
Speaker 1: realistic compared to you know, our understanding of science. But like,
Speaker 1: how do you imagine just the moving of one mind
Speaker 1: state from from here to there, from my brain, uh
Speaker 1: to the other teleporter? Well it uh, teleportation naturally invites
Speaker 1: questions about the connection between the mind and the physical
Speaker 1: brain because again, you know, we were talking earlier about
Speaker 1: the idea that teleportation would almost certainly kill you if
Speaker 1: it could actually be done, and probably can't even be done.
Speaker 1: But imagine you could be destroyed down to you know,
Speaker 1: every last atom, disassembled and then rebuilt as a perfect
Speaker 1: copy somewhere else. What reason do you have to believe
Speaker 1: that your consciousness would be continued there instead of it's
Speaker 1: just you know, lights out. This gets into the whole
Speaker 1: ship of THESEUS situation, right, is the is the copy
Speaker 1: of the original, etcetera. Yeah, when we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in previous episodes with like the Donald Davidson Swampman thought experiment,
Speaker 1: where you know your imagine you are struck by lightning
Speaker 1: and a swamp and atomized, and then nearby a a
Speaker 1: tree gets struck by lightning that rearranges its atoms in
Speaker 1: a way that just happens to be an exact copy
Speaker 1: of you down to including all of your memories and everything.
Speaker 1: Davidson's question was, is that still you even if it
Speaker 1: goes and recognizes all your friends and all that, but
Speaker 1: that those atoms that body has never actually met your
Speaker 1: friends before. It's just a coincidence. And I guess another
Speaker 1: question to add on I don't think Davidson addresses this
Speaker 1: is is there any reason to think that your consciousness
Speaker 1: would continue and that other thing? And I don't know
Speaker 1: if we have any reason to say it would. Yeah. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up the lightning because because this
Speaker 1: brings brings me to the next point I wanted to
Speaker 1: make is that assuming you're the same person in Telepod
Speaker 1: B that you were in Telepod A, and assuming that
Speaker 1: for the most part, there are no changes, one way
Speaker 1: that you could see like an alteration in mood or
Speaker 1: personality is if there was some imperfection in the copy,
Speaker 1: saying it essentially damaged your brain and some uh in
Speaker 1: some fashion in reproducing you on the other side. And
Speaker 1: uh and we have you know, plenty of examples of
Speaker 1: of this in science. We've discussed numerous cases on the
Speaker 1: show before where brain injuries and alterations to the brain
Speaker 1: can impact mood. And one of my favorite uh and
Speaker 1: and also I think it's great because it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's essentially a positive tale of this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: UH is the case of Dr Tony Csuria, an orthopedic
Speaker 1: surgeon who was electrocuted in a lightning strike and then
Speaker 1: afterwards began to hear music in his head and developed
Speaker 1: what has been described as an insatiable desire to learn
Speaker 1: to put up to learn listen to the piano, and
Speaker 1: learned to play the piano, and then he eventually became
Speaker 1: a composer and a performer. But did he die? Did
Speaker 1: he die in these No? No, he's he's very much alive. Still. Wait,
Speaker 1: I have a u I'm gonna be using this word wrong.
Speaker 1: Does electrocuted necessarily mean you died? Oh? Now this is
Speaker 1: good question. Perhaps I'm using the word wrong. Oh, perhaps
Speaker 1: I've been using it wrong. I don't know. I always
Speaker 1: assumed electrocuted means dead, but well, just in case to
Speaker 1: be sure, he was. He suffered an electric shock via
Speaker 1: lightning strike, did not die, but afterwards, Yeah, he heard
Speaker 1: music in his head. He wanted to play the piano.
Speaker 1: He learned to play the piano. He became a composer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and he's cool. Yeah, he's written books. I understand.
Speaker 1: He's what's sometimes referred to as an acquired savant, someone
Speaker 1: who exhibits extraordinary abilities after sustaining central nervous system damage
Speaker 1: or disease. Now, of course, this is not the only
Speaker 1: case of somebody going through a large electrical stimulation of
Speaker 1: the nervous system and coming out of it feeling better.
Speaker 1: This is actually a trick. I know. Electroshock therapy gets
Speaker 1: a bad reputation and fiction and stuff, but for some
Speaker 1: people it is actually a very helpful intervention for say,
Speaker 1: depression that resists other treatments. Uh. You know, sometimes there
Speaker 1: are brain states that are very negative where electro convulsive
Speaker 1: therapy applying an electric current to the brain causes some
Speaker 1: kind of internal reset that gets people out of negative
Speaker 1: mental scenarios. Well, yeah, so you could you could imagine
Speaker 1: and as long as we're imagining teleportation, you know, you
Speaker 1: can imagine a situation where in recreating the brain, or
Speaker 1: in the process of the brain coming back online in
Speaker 1: pod b uh that you essentially have it's like an
Speaker 1: electro shock to the brain. Uh. And then of course
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other examples of people whose moods, personalities,
Speaker 1: and cognitive abilities have been impacted, in any cases negatively
Speaker 1: impacted by changes or injuries to to the So say,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of room for that scenario
Speaker 1: to to take place again if if you actually had
Speaker 1: teleportation technology uh. And then to come back to the microbiome,
Speaker 1: I think that's another place to consider. So, assuming that
Speaker 1: you don't have your entire microbiome uh fused with your
Speaker 1: genetic code, assuming that your microbiome is not dumped out
Speaker 1: into another telepod left to just sort of melt on
Speaker 1: the floor and have to be scrubbed up by the
Speaker 1: telepod scrabber. Um, what a job? Imagine? Like, what else
Speaker 1: could happen? Right? Like, what if it just readjusted your
Speaker 1: your microbiome to a certain degree because we know we're
Speaker 1: still learning more about this, but we know that the
Speaker 1: microbiome has has an impact on our on our personality,
Speaker 1: on our moods, on our cognitive ability like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's roots run deep. Yes, and there are ways to
Speaker 1: have a healthier or less healthy microbiome. Uh. I mean again,
Speaker 1: we already referenced fegal transplants, and this is an actual
Speaker 1: cure for some diseases. Yeah, so you could potentially you
Speaker 1: could have a situation where okay, the teleporter didn't quite
Speaker 1: know how to how to handle the entire microbiome. Some
Speaker 1: things maybe through, some things were left out. I don't
Speaker 1: want to even explore the possibility of some individual microorganisms
Speaker 1: being fused into all new micro organisms, because the Lord
Speaker 1: knows what that would consist of. But um, but you
Speaker 1: could imagine where you might emerge with maybe an improved
Speaker 1: microbiome by pure accident, in the same way that not
Speaker 1: everyone that is struck by lightning turns into a piano virtuoso,
Speaker 1: you know. But you could have a situation where you
Speaker 1: clearly have a situation where at least one person was
Speaker 1: and you could, I guess consumably have a situation where
Speaker 1: one person survived a teleportation and came out on the
Speaker 1: other end with improved microbiome and maybe a you know,
Speaker 1: improved health or even mental health due to it. You know,
Speaker 1: I know I've read in uh, looking at the downsides
Speaker 1: of when he comes out, So he comes out feeling
Speaker 1: very purified, but he's also a jerk, you know, He's like,
Speaker 1: he comes out being aggressive and mannic and stuff. And
Speaker 1: I know I've read about imbalances in the gut microbiome
Speaker 1: of dogs possibly leading to aggression and dogs. Interesting. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I was looking around a little bit about like other
Speaker 1: things that can adjust your microbiome. Like one that's of
Speaker 1: course being studied is how space travel can change your microbiome.
Speaker 1: And the most obvious factor, of course is radiation. But
Speaker 1: one of the studies I was looking at was was
Speaker 1: was saying, Okay, well, radiation accounts for some of what
Speaker 1: we're seeing, but we think it like micro gravity is
Speaker 1: playing a role as well, so uh, and then other
Speaker 1: environmental conditions that they're still you know, figuring out. So
Speaker 1: it's just such an amazing revelation to again just to
Speaker 1: come back to the power of the microbiome and just
Speaker 1: how how close it is to us how it is
Speaker 1: essentially like an organ. You are a person, but you're
Speaker 1: also a world. You're an environment. Your body is a wonderland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's in the plasma. Fool. All right, Well, hopefully
Speaker 1: we gave everybody some some additional food for thought on
Speaker 1: the Fly and on teleportation, and we didn't even get
Speaker 1: into some of the things people were probably expecting, like
Speaker 1: discussion of fly anatomy and feeding by vomiting up acid
Speaker 1: on things. But who knows, maybe we could come back
Speaker 1: and do that in the future. We also didn't talk
Speaker 1: about the Simpsons episode Fly Versus Fly. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes to great places. I love it when Homer
Speaker 1: drags one of the telepods in front of the toilet
Speaker 1: and tries to think avoid climbing the stairs. Y. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of reckless use of the telepod, which I enjoy.
Speaker 1: All right, so let us know what you think. Are
Speaker 1: you a big fan of the original Fly, You're a
Speaker 1: fan of Cronenberg's Fly? Are you like me disappointed that
Speaker 1: Cronenberg has not gotten to make his sequel to The Fly?
Speaker 1: He apparently wrote a screenplay and everything. Really yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: well wait, there was the Fly too, I've never seen it. Well,
Speaker 1: the Fly two is is a gross monster movie. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not certainly not as contemplative as Cronenberg's original. But
Speaker 1: if you go into it just expecting kind of a
Speaker 1: big monster movie, UM, with some teleportation Shenanigan's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's entertaining in its own right. But Cronenberg has,
Speaker 1: at least in past years he's mentioned a script that
Speaker 1: he wrote that and he's kind of kg about it,
Speaker 1: like it's it seems like it's maybe not a direct
Speaker 1: sequel to the Fly, but it is very much about teleportation.
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent, like you know, merging
Speaker 1: of of you know, genomes comes into it, there's any
Speaker 1: kind of you know, chimera in it at all. And
Speaker 1: and maybe it's ultimately more exciting about, you know, the
Speaker 1: possibility that maybe it doesn't have have that. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: more about some of these ideas we've been discussing here
Speaker 1: in this episode about teleportation. What if it's from the
Speaker 1: flies perspective and it's about the horrors of becoming part human,
Speaker 1: that would be interesting. I would I would watch that.
Speaker 1: So I still hold out hope that one day we'll
Speaker 1: see I mean, I would love to see Cronenberg returned
Speaker 1: to direct at all. I don't think he's directed in
Speaker 1: several years, but I would love to see his his
Speaker 1: vision for a Fly sequel come to life. Failing that,
Speaker 1: Gina Davis could write and direct. Yeah, sure, uh really.
Speaker 1: Ultimately the end of the day, I'm just I just
Speaker 1: want more teleportation movies. That's that's all I want, all right.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
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Speaker 1: are the things that help us out huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Sethan Nicholis Johnson. If
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Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com.
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