WEBVTT - From the Vault: Anthology of Horror, Volume 5 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.960 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.320 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:13.600 it's a vault episode. This is another one of our 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.080 older Anthology of Horror episodes. I believe this was volume six, 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:21.320 which originally published on October twenty nine. Wait, or is 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:24.120 it volume five? Honestly I lose track of the volumes. 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.640 It's another one, volume five. I don't know how many 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.000 volumes there are at this point. Yeah, maybe it's five. Okay. 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:31.240 I think we started out doing like one a year, 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.080 and then we did like two in one year. So, um, 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.040 the you know, the numbering system, it becomes less important. 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:39.920 As with any like horror franchise, the long grade goes, 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:46.879 the numbers just become redundant. Right, Welcome to Stuff to 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:56.080 Blow Your Mind? Production of My Heart Radio. Hey are 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:58.560 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.760 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.880 with the second installment this year of our anthology horror series. Uh, 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:08.840 this I guess is going to be the fifth anthology 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.679 episode overall. Yeah, I believest so this should be episode 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:15.400 or yeah, volume five however you want to look at it. Um, Yes, 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.640 last year. If it's a volume you have, it's a volume. Yeah. 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.720 So basically this is just a continuing experiment we've been 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:26.920 doing where we look to the wonderful world of horror 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:31.560 and sci fi UH TV anthologies and UH and cinematic 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:37.080 anthologies and pick out little episodes, little UH audio visual 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.280 short stories. They generally have some horror or sci fi 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:42.679 or some sort of uh in, some sort of weird 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.880 h and perhaps grotesque twist in them, and we use 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.760 that as a focal point for a discussion of science 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:53.560 and culture. Sometimes we're having to really um read into 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:58.280 the episode a lot more than the creators anticipated. Other 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:02.160 times it's just it's really baked into an already intelligent script. Um. 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.440 It just kind of varies from piece to piece. Well, 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.800 I got one to talk about first that is definitely 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.240 baked in some way. Okay, what what have you got 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.000 for us, Joe? Okay, today I wanted to start by 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.520 talking about a classic episode of Are You Afraid of 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.799 the Dark? Rob Did you watch Are You Afraid of 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.120 the Dark? Because I I did. I I can't remember 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:25.280 what channel came on. Maybe it was a Nickelodeon thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.040 I remember catching episodes of it, and I remember it 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.000 as being occasionally like really creepy, like it was effective. 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:34.160 It was not uh, you know, it wasn't. I mean, 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:36.480 it was a kid show, but it could really creepy 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:37.960 out a little bit. It was it was well done, 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.519 is our call. Yeah. A lot of the episodes really 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.480 are and I would say even the bad episodes, going 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:45.960 back and watching them as an adult, it is an 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:51.280 extremely fun, nostalgic rewatch. Uh. A lot of the episodes 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.000 that I found very scary when I was young. You know, 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:55.960 it is a kid's show, so they don't quite have 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.040 the punch they did when I when I was eight 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.560 or whatever, but a few of them are are still 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.480 kind of surprising. And one of my favorite things about 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:08.639 the show is that it is just egregiously adorably Canadian. 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:11.640 One of the fun things about going back and watching 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:16.560 it now is that you frequently encounter child versions of 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.320 Ryan Gosling or Nev Campbell or somebody else you recognize 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:23.440 from later work. And when it comes to the older actors, 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:27.160 they weren't usually people who you'd recognize from big movies 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:29.760 or anything, but a lot of them have this powerful 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.519 energy of like a local character beloved in some town. 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:35.600 Like you often get the sense that when you meet 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.760 Dr Vink or somebody like that, it's like you're you're 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:42.960 looking at the rc Bates of Toronto. Yeah. I think 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.760 the episode I mostly remember from this show is, if 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.520 I if I'm remembering it correctly, is the Tale of 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.000 the dead Man's Float, which has to do with like 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:55.320 a haunted high school swimming pool that remember, I'm I 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:57.840 don't know if I'm remembering correctly. I may be misremembering 0:03:57.840 --> 0:03:59.880 that it's somehow in the in the basement of the school, 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:03.120 but maybe not. Yeah, there's a swimming pool in the 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:05.960 It's like a cursed swimming pool that was on a 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.480 cemetery or something. Yeah. And I think this is the 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.480 one where, like when I when It Follows came out, 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.800 there's a sequence in it it follows swimming pool and 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.320 it it made me think back to this episode. You 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.800 are a thousand percent correct. I I think I made 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.839 that connection at a subconscious level. But the moment you 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.320 said that, you're you're totally right. But the episode I 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.159 want to talk about today is one I don't remember 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.200 actually which season it's from. I should have looked that up. 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.280 But anyway, it's called The Tale of the Super Specs, 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:39.000 and it's notable for being, I think one of the 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:43.160 episodes with some legitimately scary imagery which is achieved via 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.440 very low tech means. It's just it has some very 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:51.280 creepy images of people draped in black cloth. But it also, 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.600 I think, is the episode that introduces the fan favorite 0:04:55.600 --> 0:05:01.360 recurring character Mr. Sardo, who is a en uh sort 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:05.920 of scheming magic and novelty shop owner who gets angry 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.440 when people call him Mr sar Do and he always 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:13.200 says his catchphrase that's sar dough, no Mr accent on 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:17.320 the dough. That seems that seems very particular, like he's 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.360 not an added to calling him sar Do. Right, it's 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:22.280 more than that. Yeah, he's been he's been a little 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:24.640 fussy about this point, I think. I mean, you invite 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.880 these problems when you decide to be a single name guy. Yeah, 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.920 but okay, So the premise of this episode is that 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.200 there's a young man named Weeds who is kind of 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:39.560 a prankster, and he's browsing in Sardo's magic and Novelty shop. 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.560 That's the kind of place that's got masked and fake vomit, 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:47.120 but it's also got apparently legitimate spell books and referenced 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:51.480 homes on the occult, and real magical artifacts and objects. 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:53.320 I'm not sure why they're all crammed together in this 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.839 one shop, but so he's sort of looking around for things, 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.240 and he comes across a bag of magic dust, which 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:04.400 while simultaneously reading a spell out of an ancient tome, 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.800 he accidentally spills this magic dust over some plastic glasses 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:12.160 that are being sold as super Specs, which are supposed 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:14.680 to grant X ray vision. I think I think the 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.200 original understanding is these are just novelty glasses, but they 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.039 get imbued with magic power when he says the spell. 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:25.200 Also there in the magic shop is Weeds, his girlfriend 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.960 Mary Beth, and she decides to try out the super specs, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.400 but when she does, she sees shadowy figures who are 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.880 draped in in black cloth from head to toe, and 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:40.000 they're following her everywhere. And there are multiple occasions, you know, 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:41.760 like they go to school and she puts on the 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.719 glasses again and she sees the figures, and then she 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:46.960 goes home and she puts on the glasses again and 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:51.000 sees them another time. She also sees um elements of 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.240 alternative reality, so like she'll look at her fireplace and 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:56.600 without the glasses there's no fire and it, but with 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.720 the glasses there's there's a fire burning, so it's very 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.400 they live in a way. Now. Eventually, what happens is 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:06.040 that Weeds and Marybeth get convinced that there are invisible 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:10.480 people from another dimension who are stalking them, and they 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.200 consult with Sard to try to figure out how to 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.000 get rid of these shadow people. And I won't spoil 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:17.960 the ending to this one, because I gotta admit the 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:21.320 ending is pretty good, But the basic premise is what 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.600 I wanted to talk about. It's the premise that there 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:27.760 is a realm of life that actually occupies the same 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.800 general space as us, but that we go about our 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.280 lives completely unaware of. And it's it's a take on 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:38.000 the idea popular in some like alien conspiracy theory architecture, 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:42.400 that aliens are somehow already here. They're here on Earth, 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.520 but they're invisible to us for some reason, or they're 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.560 hiding in plain sight. Yeah. I think I think I 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:52.880 recorded an older episode of the show with um Ben 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.880 Belling and that Frederick uh guesting where we talked about 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:01.520 shadow people and uh particular study that linked some of 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:06.320 this phenomenon too disruptions of the body schema. So so 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.680 basically like like a situation where um, you know, neurologically 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.280 your idea of where your body is and what your 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:14.240 body is doing would be skewed in a way that 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:16.480 it would be perceived as some sort of a shadow 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.120 being that was close by. Oh, I see. Not to 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:22.280 say that's a definitive answer for for all of this, 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:23.880 but it was. It was one idea that was put 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.120 forth by some researchers. Well, I mean, I think we 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.720 can be pretty safe in assuming that they are not 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:35.120 actually like people sized organisms that are walking around unnoticed 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:37.240 on Earth and our aliens of some guy. I mean, 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.640 I guess you can't rule it out, but I'm not 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:41.760 aware of any kind of evidence that something like that 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.840 is possible. But I wanted to explore a maybe more plausible, 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.000 still unproven, but more plausible and very interesting sort of 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.920 parallel idea. And the place I want to start here 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:56.520 is I was reading the British astronaut and chemist Helen Sharman. 0:08:56.600 --> 0:09:00.280 It was actually the first British astronaut. Ever, uh, she 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.080 was talking to the observer I think earlier this year 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.360 and saying that, you know, it was her opinion, and 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:08.760 that just given the size of the universe, the number 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.920 of planets out there, the number of opportunities for biochemistry 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.840 to arise, that she's pretty convinced that there must be 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.720 aliens out there somewhere in the universe. And then she adds, quote, 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:20.720 will they be like you and me, made up of 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:24.400 carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It's possible they're here right 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.719 now and we simply can't see them now. I want 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:29.760 to be clear that I'm not aware of any evidence 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.120 whatsoever this is actually the case, and I don't think 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.240 Sharman was suggesting that we have evidence of this being true. 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.680 But it does raise the very intriguing question of how 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:43.200 would we know if aliens, in some sense or some 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:47.480 kind of alternate organism, we're already here, already somehow within 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.160 range of our senses. Well, first, is there any conceivable 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:53.920 way that something like that could be true? And second, 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.280 if it were true, would there be any way to 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:58.720 sort of put on the superspects, any way to figure 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.280 it out? So further investigate this idea. I was reading 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:06.000 a great article from Astrobiology magazine from two thousand six. 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:07.640 So this is a little bit older, and some of 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.959 the science, the underlying science, might have changed somewhat since then, 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:15.160 but I think the basic question still stands as posed. 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:19.240 And this is by the UC Boulder philosophy professor Carol Cleland, 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:23.559 and the article is called a shadow biosphere. Now, by 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:28.120 a shadow biosphere she means a rarely considered form of 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:33.720 alternative life, not aliens from another planet, but aliens from Earth, 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:39.640 an unrecognized alternative biology that may exist parallel to us, 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:43.680 invisibly here on this planet. And she asked the question, 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.520 if something like that existed, what would these alternative biologies 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.840 entail in order to have escaped our notice? So they 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.920 could possibly include alternative forms of information coding, so forms 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:58.160 other than DNA or RNA, or they could include different 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.720 amino acids to build their pro teens, or quote any 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.680 other means by which the chemistry of early Earth could 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.600 have combined to form life we are not familiar with. 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:10.320 And so there are there are a few things we 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.160 can probably rule out from you know, any reasonable question, 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:17.280 The first of which is the superspect you know, the 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:21.959 literal superspect scenario where there are like human sized organisms 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:24.560 that are going unnoticed. She says, probably if these shadow 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:29.040 biological organisms were on the scale of familiar plants or animals, 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.240 we would have already noticed and detected them, right, Yes, 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:34.160 we would. Somebody would have figured it out by now. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.040 So what we're probably talking about, if there were such 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.520 a thing, would be microscopic organisms. But microscopic organisms can 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.720 have big impacts. They do a lot, and so the 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:49.959 impact of a microscopic shadow biosphere could be enormous, and 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.520 it would be very interesting to discover that it had 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:55.319 gone unnoticed this long. You know, I can't help but 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:59.800 be reminded of a a great great end quotation marks 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.800 here uh Saturday Night Live parody commercial from I guess 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.800 back in the nineties. But for the fecal vision glasses. 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.040 Did you ever see this one? No? I didn't. Where 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.600 everybody puts on the fecal vision glasses and then like 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.760 fecal matter glows bright green, and of course they just 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.080 they just show a ridiculous amount of it, Like the 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:22.840 entire room is basically covered in it, there's a baby 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:25.800 covered in it, that sort of thing. Um, But in 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:29.760 a way, you know, seeing the unseen um world of 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.560 life forms around us. I think that's an excellent point 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:35.360 in comparison. Keep keep that, keep that image in mind 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:38.360 as we move on. So one of the first things, 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:40.280 of course, you'd have to consider if you're addressing this 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:42.319 question of could there could there in fact be a 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.719 shadow biosphere is um? What counts is life? You want 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.200 to make sure you're defining your terms properly, because you're 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.840 if your definition of life is overly inclusive, it could 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:53.640 lose all meaning. Right, you don't want to end up 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.480 with the definition of life that includes like volcanoes and 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.160 waterfalls as life. But obviously there are lots of different 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.920 definitions of life that are in competition with each other. 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.280 I was reading an article by an astrobiologist named Samantha Rolf, 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:09.679 and she points out there are probably more than a 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:14.280 hundred legit definitions of what constitutes a life form. Most 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:17.839 of them encounter some potential objections here or they're just 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.000 As one example, she points out that that if you 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.160 zero in on the definition of life that centered on 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.280 the ability to reproduce, you arrive at a strange conclusion 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:29.839 that like a three D printer that can print and 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:33.160 a symbol copies of itself is alive, but a mule 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.000 which is sterile is not alive, and that doesn't quite 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:38.680 seem right. Yeah. I think we've discussed in the show 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:43.200 before some arguments about viruses, but also about fire that 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:46.280 agrees to which fire can be classified up to a 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:50.240 point as a as an organism. It's not an organism, 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:52.960 but but you can make an impassioned argument of your 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.880 feeling argumentative about it totally, or like forms of crystals, 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:59.240 things like that. I mean, you run into a lot 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.760 of difficulty is actually if you're trying to come up 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.480 with the definition of life that rules in everything we 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:06.840 want to think of his life and rules out everything 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:11.000 we don't. So in this two thousand six article, Carol 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.320 Cleveland zeros in on the following distinctions. What what she 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.240 thinks is important is, first quote, the capacity of a 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:21.160 system to maintain itself as a self organized unit against 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:25.880 both internal and external perturbations. So basically that means a 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:30.280 life form has has some type of structural resiliency, It 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:34.080 sort of protects its own integrity and has some form 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:38.720 of resistance against just dissolution by external and internal forces. 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.200 And then the second thing she says, is the ability 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:46.680 to reproduce and transmit to its descendants adaptive heritable modifications. Now, 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:48.760 all the life that we know of on Earth, uh 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:53.440 that meets those two criteria is defined by a common chemistry. 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.760 We know what the primary types of molecules involved are, 0:14:57.240 --> 0:15:01.280 and those molecules are proteins and nucleic gas. Sid's Nucleic acids, 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.640 of course, would include DNA and RNA, and they store 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:09.120 hereditary information and they produce proteins. Proteins then make up 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:11.800 the structure and the machinery of cells and of the 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.160 life form as a whole. And the interface between these 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:19.080 two functions the hereditary function and the structural or mechanical 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.240 function of the of the protein. This is handled by 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.640 a very important structure known as the ribosome, which is 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.320 made of both proteins and RNA, and which translate the 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:33.440 hereditary information stored in nucleic acids into usable proteins. This 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:36.160 is how all the life we know of on Earth works, 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:40.280 and yet Cleveland says, we just don't know how different 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:44.440 life could be. Maybe that's the only chemistry in the 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:48.040 universe capable of producing the functions we usually attribute to life, 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.520 and maybe not she writes, quote Moreover, we can't rule 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:54.760 out the possibility that the most important characteristics of life 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:59.240 have yet to be discovered. The functions traditionally attributed to 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:03.200 life maybe little more than symptoms of more fundamental but 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:07.160 as yet unknown properties. So, for example, at the time 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.960 she was writing this, all life on Earth built its 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:14.000 proteins out of the same twenty amino acids, which which 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:16.320 all of these amino acids in life forms share the 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.640 same chirality. Chirality is something we talked about, I think 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.480 actually in a previous Horror Anthology episode when we were 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.800 talking about to serve Man. Oh, yes, yes we did. 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.960 That was a really fun one about like how would 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:34.720 you the dangers of constructing, say, food for an alien 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.440 being exactly, and and the idea that aliens would want 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:40.720 to eat us. We might be poisonous to them if 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.880 their molecular biology is somewhat different than ours. But just 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.240 as a brief refresher, chirality or the handedness of molecules, 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.320 refers to like which way they're oriented in terms of 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.120 like a mirror image of each other. And Earth life 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.880 uses left handed molecules, but it maybe could use right 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:03.600 handed molecules. A biotic processes, like processes not associated with life, 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:05.680 are known to create all kinds of amino acids that 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.639 are not found in life forms. Cleveland references more than 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.280 a hundred known amino acids that are created by a 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.879 biotic processes. So why does life as we know it 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:19.440 not employ more of these amino acids or different chirality 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.439 of amino acids. Lab experiments show that you can build 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:26.120 proteins out of alternative amino acids and molecules with right 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.080 handed chirality. Likewise, with the exception of RNA viruses, all 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:34.040 life on Earth stores its genetic information in DNA, but 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:38.040 it's possible DNA could use different combinations of bases and 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:41.639 amino acids. So she's sort of asking the question in general, 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:45.920 why all these particulars, Why why all these particularities of 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:47.760 of Earth life that, as far as we can tell, 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.360 are totally contingent. And Cleveland thinks that the best explanation is, well, 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.280 this is just how it happened in the conditions of 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.280 the young Earth when life first arose, and these contingencies 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.440 of molecular biology have been recopied down the ages since then. 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.880 Ever since, these life forms have been reproducing quote. So 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.840 it is unlikely that the ribosomes found in the cells 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:14.560 of familiar life represent the only possibility for translating hereditary 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:18.760 information stored on nucleic acids into proteins, let alone, the 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:23.199 original mechanism utilized by the first protocells. Had circumstances on 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.280 the early Earth been different, familiar life would also have 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:30.600 been different. But this raises a really interesting question if 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:33.520 these features of molecular biology as we know it are 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:37.480 really just contingencies. In other words, if it's just chemically 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.840 how things happen to shake out when the first life 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.440 forms were coming together, how do we know that other 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.359 life forms, other forms of molecular biology did not arise 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:51.359 at different times in places on Earth in the history 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.920 of Earth, with their own contingent chemical quirks, making them 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.840 hard for us to recognize with tools that are honed 0:18:57.880 --> 0:19:01.400 in the search for familiar forms of life, I mean, 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:05.240 in a way, what you can discover is sort of 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.720 determined or bounded by what kind of tools you use 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.399 and what you expect to be looking for. Yeah, I 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:13.920 mean it reminds me a bit of recent discussions we've 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.800 had about um, how you would just how you would 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.359 describe a sense that you have to a being that 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:23.120 is lacking that sense, you know, like it's it's it's 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:25.840 hard to to to to explain that, and like that 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:28.119 works in reverse, like looking for the thing that you 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.639 can't experience. Now, from here, Cleveland goes on to address 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.800 some objections that are usually raised to the idea that 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:38.919 there could be alternative forms of molecular biology on Earth. So, 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.920 first of all, there is the claim that quote, any 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.320 variations in the earliest forms of life would have been 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:48.240 combined by lateral gene transfer into a single form of life. Right, 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:50.439 so that we've talked about horizontal gene transfer on the 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.080 show before, and the idea is that, you know, there 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.640 just would have been like sort of a cross fertilization 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:57.639 of genes that way, and they kind of would have 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:03.080 been absorbed into the dominant biosphere. But she argues against 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.640 this by saying, you know, we can't assume compatibility and 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:11.480 opportunity for lateral gene transfer between our ancestral microbes, the 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:15.600 microbes that became us, and whatever these alternative critters are. 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:19.120 There could be chemical and compatibility, there could be geographic 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:23.520 isolation and so forth. And then there is a second argument, 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:26.840 which is that well, our single celled ancestors would have 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:32.320 wiped out these alternative biological organisms in the competition for resources, 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:36.240 and she argues against this by saying, well, rare microbes 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:39.919 that we know of tend to occupy unique ecological niches, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.959 so they're not necessarily in deadly competition for the same resources. 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.160 They might just kind of have different needs, have established 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:49.920 different niches, and they're just riding it out as as 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:54.639 sort of rare, unique and isolated communities of organisms, or 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:59.280 even within communities of of conventional organisms. And then finally 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:02.440 she talks about the argument that if these things are 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.400 still here, we should have found evidence of them by now, 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:08.840 and so against the we should have found it by now, 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:11.520 she argues that given the tools we possessed at the 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:13.520 time she was writing this, it was very possible to 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:16.720 miss things like, Okay, you can look at microbes under 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.440 a microscope, but that can only take you so far, 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:22.760 because convergent evolution means that a lot of different microbes 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.800 will kind of look superficially similar in structure, like our 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.239 chea kind of look like bacteria. And then we have 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.000 other tools like lab cultures, but lab cultures just might 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.320 fail to grow them. Uh. And then another option we 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.480 have for detecting microbial life that's difficult to culture is 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.480 known as pcr amplification. That stands for polymerase chain reaction. 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:47.400 It's chemical process for multiplying genetic material so that can 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:53.359 be detected. And PCR amplification that relies on ribosomeal rn 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.199 A would not be able to detect a microbe that 0:21:56.280 --> 0:21:59.119 didn't have ribosomes or that had a different form of 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:03.640 ribosomel RNA. So basically Cleland's case here is that our 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.520 best tools for looking for chemical signs of life, at 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:08.159 least at the time she was writing, are kind of 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:11.000 tuned to the kinds of life that we know about, 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:15.000 and they might completely pass over a potential shadow biosphere 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:19.640 if it existed. Now there's another possible objection, which is 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:24.040 that wouldn't we have observed these microbes, the shadow microbes, 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.600 by the effect they have on their environment. Of course, 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.040 we observe the effects of common known microbes on the 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.040 environment all the time. She says, quote life invariably modifies 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:40.520 its environment, extracting energy, building structures, producing waste products. So 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:43.199 you know, all of the oxygen in the atmosphere is 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:47.440 a product of of microscopic life, or at least was originally. 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:51.200