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Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, of course, we're

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Speaker 1: going to be doing a movie episode. That's right. We've

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Speaker 1: been trying to do one of these a month just

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Speaker 1: because there's so many, so many films we love, and

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Speaker 1: so many films that either have wonderful tie ins to

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Speaker 1: scientific and cultural topics that we've discussed on the show,

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Speaker 1: um or you know, they allow us to discuss new

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Speaker 1: things and new angles. It wouldn't necessarily necessitate an entire

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Speaker 1: episode on their own. Alright, So what's on the docket today, Well,

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Speaker 1: this month we're looking at really one of my I

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Speaker 1: have to say, it's one of my favorite films. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, in terms of thinking about films you saw

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Speaker 1: at a definite point in your life that had an

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Speaker 1: impact on your your your outlook. Uh. And the film

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Speaker 1: is ninety two is Silent Running. I saw it for

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Speaker 1: the first time this weekend. Yeah, I've never seen it before.

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Speaker 1: I'd seen like stills from it. I think I've seen

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Speaker 1: stills of the robots because it's a very robot heavy film,

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Speaker 1: despite being one obsessed with nature and environmental themes of

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Speaker 1: the robots getting awful lot of screen time they do. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think if you're having trouble picturing the film, if

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Speaker 1: we just mentioned like Judesic Gnomes in space with with

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Speaker 1: forests and them Bruce Dern and then three domain diminutive

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Speaker 1: robots that kind of shamble around, that's that's silent running

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Speaker 1: in a nutshell. Now. This was directed by Douglas Trumbull, right,

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Speaker 1: who was like a visual effects guy for many years. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he he provided special photographic effects for such classic sci

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Speaker 1: fi films as two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,

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Speaker 1: one of the best close encounters of the third kind,

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Speaker 1: Star Trek, the motion picture Blade Runner, and then later

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Speaker 1: on The Tree of Life. Uh. And then it was

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Speaker 1: in the family too, because his father was a special

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Speaker 1: effects pioneer who worked on ninety nine The Whiz of Oz.

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Speaker 1: You can really feel the spirit of the sixties in

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Speaker 1: this movie from seventy two, but maybe you can also

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Speaker 1: feel the despair of the seventies, and it is both

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Speaker 1: of those spirits come crashing together in Silent Running. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I thought about I've been thinking about this a lot recently,

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Speaker 1: in part because we're researching episodes about psychedelics and about

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Speaker 1: psychedelic research, and then the the decades in which actual

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Speaker 1: medical research regarding psychedelics just completely languished. And it always

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Speaker 1: makes me think of Hunter S. Thompson's commentary about the

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Speaker 1: the the wave of the of the nineteen sixties crashing

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Speaker 1: and falling back. Uh and and once again, I think

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Speaker 1: you know that ties into to this film as well.

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Speaker 1: Before we continue, though, let's let's have just a quick

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Speaker 1: audio sample from the original trailer for Silent Running, just

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Speaker 1: to remind everybody a little bit about what we're talking

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Speaker 1: about here. A space convoy on a strange voyage carrying

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Speaker 1: a rare cargo. The forests, the plants, the growing things

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Speaker 1: doomed to extinction on Earth. We have count received orders

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Speaker 1: to abandon that nupler, destruct all the forests, and returned

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Speaker 1: our ships to commercial So we're going you blow up discourse.

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Speaker 1: Thank you now more. Volga Silent Running characlysm in outer space,

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Speaker 1: every moment bringing its own danger as man explores the

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Speaker 1: mysteries of an unknown and limitless universe. Valiport volliport, little wrong,

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Speaker 1: You will be out, you're accelerating. I got a premature,

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Speaker 1: so I think we have a taste in that that trailer.

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Speaker 1: This is a very ranty film, oh man. A lot

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Speaker 1: of the movie also, and besides the scenes with robots

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Speaker 1: just kind of hanging out and not really executing much

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Speaker 1: uh much having to do with furtherance of the plot,

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Speaker 1: just moving around and doing things, there's also a lot

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Speaker 1: of Bruce Dern chastising the camera and giving sermons to

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Speaker 1: other characters about their lack of appreciation for nature. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it's it's a very it's a very weird movie

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Speaker 1: in that regard, and you know that, thinking of you

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Speaker 1: talked about how you watched it for the first time

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Speaker 1: just the other day. I watched it for the first time,

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Speaker 1: probably like in a Sunday afternoon on cable TV in

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Speaker 1: the nineties when I was like in junior high. I guess,

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Speaker 1: uh and and you know air on a any just

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Speaker 1: like matinee showing of it, and I just like turned

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Speaker 1: over to it and was just sucked in by this

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Speaker 1: film that doesn't have much in the way of action.

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Speaker 1: There's there are a few key action scenes, but it

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Speaker 1: is not an action film. It is a it is

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Speaker 1: an environmental science fiction film. I mean I'd also say

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Speaker 1: it's not even really a very plot heavy film. There's

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Speaker 1: basically a situation and that situation comes about and then

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Speaker 1: that's about it. I mean, the huge swaths of the

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Speaker 1: runtime are just characters kind of hanging out. Yeah, and uh,

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Speaker 1: it benefits I think from three major factors. You know,

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Speaker 1: if we're just sort of pull these out and then

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Speaker 1: realized it's complicated when you try and like pull the

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Speaker 1: key elements out of a picture when everything needs to

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Speaker 1: essentially be a cohesive hole. And then I think in

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Speaker 1: this picture is but you have Bruce Dern's performance, which

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Speaker 1: is fabulous. I mean, Bruce Dern is was and is

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Speaker 1: an acting treasure. I mean, often relegated to the villain

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Speaker 1: rolls for sure, but capable of much more. And I

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Speaker 1: think we see, uh, we see a little bit of

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Speaker 1: that in this film. And then the other key aspects

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Speaker 1: of this are they the sets look fabulous, Um, the

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Speaker 1: models look fabulous, The effects are all wonderful. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: you have you have some wonderful music in the film too.

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Speaker 1: So again, this this film is a product of the

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Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties spilling over into the early nineteen seventies, uh,

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Speaker 1: and and it is it's for several reasons for stars.

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Speaker 1: The studio apparently decided to give more first time directors

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Speaker 1: a shot after the success of nineteen sixty nine is

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Speaker 1: Easy Rider, which is directed by Dennis Hopper, said Dennis

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Speaker 1: Hopper's first director red directorial feature and uh. In anyway,

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Speaker 1: the films to come in the wake of that included

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Speaker 1: Silent Running. Also the music, so Joan Bayaz uh submitted

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Speaker 1: like to two songs for this film, Silent Running and

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Speaker 1: Rejoice in the Sun, both of which are prominently featured.

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Speaker 1: And for anyone not familiar with Joan Bayazz, first of all,

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Speaker 1: go look up Joan Bayazz and and these songs in

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Speaker 1: particular are currently on streaming services. But she was a

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Speaker 1: major social and political musical force of the nineteen sixties

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Speaker 1: and beyond playing at the original Woodstock. And she's always

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Speaker 1: advocated civil rights, environmentalism, and human rights including l g P,

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Speaker 1: d q I A plus rights. Um. So I mean,

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Speaker 1: all these elements I think really give it a feel

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Speaker 1: that that sets it apart from everything else. Like so,

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Speaker 1: if you were watching looking around for any kind of

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Speaker 1: science fiction on TV in the in the late nineties

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Speaker 1: like this stood out. This was a different type of

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Speaker 1: space and robots film. It's from another dimension. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's got it really does have this feeling of the

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Speaker 1: sixties and seventies culture coming together. But also it's a

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Speaker 1: very weird combination of elements. It's got these robots, but

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Speaker 1: the environmental themes. It's got these great special effects and

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Speaker 1: like practical miniature effects, you know, which watching movies like

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Speaker 1: this really just makes me simmer with rage at the

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Speaker 1: c g I age. You know, I'm so sick of

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Speaker 1: all the c g I space ships. I wish they'd

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Speaker 1: bring back the miniature models and you know in the

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Speaker 1: backdrops and the painted sets and everything. Oh yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean yeah, they were so good, and those skills still exist. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they're just not being employed for the most part with

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Speaker 1: motion pictures. Yeah, but then you've got that, and so

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Speaker 1: those like sci fi special effects are clashing with just

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Speaker 1: really in your face Joan Baya's musical numbers. Uh. It's

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Speaker 1: it's a strange, unique kind of movie. I don't I

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Speaker 1: can't think of another thing I've seen like it. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk to just a little bit about the plot,

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Speaker 1: just to remind everybody who's seen it before and refresh

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Speaker 1: everyone else. We're gonna I guess I think we're gonna

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Speaker 1: avoid any real spoilers here in terms of the end

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Speaker 1: of the film. But you know, if you want to

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Speaker 1: go into the film spoiler free, pause this, uh this podcast,

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Speaker 1: go watch it and then come back. So the basic synopsis,

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Speaker 1: it's the future. The planet Earth is essentially dying. A

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Speaker 1: great dying has ravage botanical life on our planet, and

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Speaker 1: the remaining shreds of botanical life and some animal life

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Speaker 1: now thrive solely within a series of geodesic domes that

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Speaker 1: are affixed to a spaceship called the Valley Forge, and

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Speaker 1: the Valley Forges orbiting just outside the orbit of Saturn,

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Speaker 1: and here a four person crew tends to things. That

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Speaker 1: includes botanist Freeman Lowell, who's our our main character, played

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Speaker 1: by Bruce Den, and three helper robots named Huey, Dewey

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Speaker 1: and Louie Well. Originally, no, originally they have robot names.

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Speaker 1: They're called like Drone number one, that's Drone number two,

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Speaker 1: and then Bruce Den, in a in a moment of

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Speaker 1: sort of magical thinking, names them. And it said that

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Speaker 1: moment that they seem to acquire personalities that they don't

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Speaker 1: seem to have had before. Yeah, the end this occurs

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Speaker 1: later when it's when it's just a durn. So how

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Speaker 1: does it just become a situation of only Bruce Den's

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Speaker 1: character in Three Robots. Well, basically, one day an order

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Speaker 1: comes down, uh that all the forest have to be

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Speaker 1: jettisoned and detonated with new clear ball with nuclear weapons. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and then the and the rest of the crew just

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Speaker 1: take this and stride. They're like, all right, it's time

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Speaker 1: to go home. Time to ditch these uh these forests

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Speaker 1: and head back. But Lowell is very upset by this

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Speaker 1: and finally breaks and betrays his fellow crew members to

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Speaker 1: save one of the save the Last Forest pod and

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Speaker 1: uh he ends up faking a malfunction and then takes

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Speaker 1: off through Saturn's rings with the World's Last forest and uh.

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Speaker 1: You know what follows is a story of of survival loneliness,

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Speaker 1: thus the naming of the robots and the bonding with

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Speaker 1: the robots. But then also you know this this environmental message. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's clear that the orientation of the film is

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Speaker 1: a pro environmentalist one, though it's not quite clear exactly

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Speaker 1: how much we're supposed to agree with everything Durn says.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Durn's character gives these monologues where he excoriates

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Speaker 1: his crew members for being satisfied with this horrible synthetic

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Speaker 1: existence that they're living where you know, they only eat

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Speaker 1: this pre package freeze dried junk, that that they got

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Speaker 1: his rations from Earth. Whereas he picks you know, living

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Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables from the forest, he picks cantle opes

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Speaker 1: and he sits there eating cantle open and just like

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Speaker 1: attacking them for putting that garbage in their mouths uh,

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Speaker 1: and and talking about how they don't care about the

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Speaker 1: trees and they don't care about the forest, and they

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Speaker 1: really they don't seem to care. They're just not bothered

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Speaker 1: by the fact that Earth doesn't have any forests anymore.

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Speaker 1: They just want to get home, and seemingly, uh, you

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Speaker 1: are led to believe that they would be happy with

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Speaker 1: the life of sort of bland synthetic consumer existence and

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Speaker 1: entirely artificial environments with no exposure to plants their animals.

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Speaker 1: So in a sense, it's it's like Bruce Tern's character

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Speaker 1: is the spirit of the nineteen sixties speaking to these

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Speaker 1: denizens of the nineteen seventies and saying like how can

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Speaker 1: how can you do this? Like how can you abandon

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Speaker 1: these principles? Um? And uh? And in doing so? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Bruce Tern's character, his performance is very abrasive at times.

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Speaker 1: You know, he comes off as a real curmudgeon. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And uh, you know they're also an idealist and it's

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Speaker 1: it is kind of an interesting experience experiment to sort

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Speaker 1: of take that apart and figure out, well, what's why

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Speaker 1: is he so abrasive? He is, he's supposed to be

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Speaker 1: so abrasive. How are we supposed to feel about him? Um?

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Speaker 1: Is part of this just what happens when you cast

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Speaker 1: a character actor like Bruce Dern in this role. Bruce Dern,

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Speaker 1: who had just come off this was just on the

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Speaker 1: heels of the film The Cowboys, in which he killed

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Speaker 1: John Wayne's character by shooting him in the back. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's like the ultimate dishonorable scumbag move in

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Speaker 1: the Western genre. Yeah, except maybe cheating by drinking clean water. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: He played a real real villain in that picture. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And interestingly enough, I was looking around at reviews from

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Speaker 1: when this came out, and Dern's casting is it seems

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Speaker 1: to be a divisive aspect of the film, so some

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Speaker 1: critics thought he was great. Like critics who maybe were

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Speaker 1: a little lukewarm on other aspects of the film were like, well,

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Speaker 1: Bruce Dern's terrific and though while others said, hey, it's

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Speaker 1: really difficult to empathize with this character. Uh, and that ultimately,

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Speaker 1: perhaps during his performance ends up hurting the message of

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Speaker 1: the film. I don't. I don't think I would go

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Speaker 1: that far. But you know, obviously he's an actor who

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Speaker 1: already had a career based on playing at times dislikable

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Speaker 1: characters and uh, and he's still going strong in that

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Speaker 1: department today at age a D three. I wonder what

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Speaker 1: the equivalent of this casting would be today, Like, who's

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Speaker 1: somebody that you would cast in this role where they

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be like this divine messenger of environmental hope but

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Speaker 1: would come off maybe a bit abrace it. I would

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Speaker 1: like to see a movie that's got an environmental conservation

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Speaker 1: message where the champion of the environment is Michael Ironside,

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Speaker 1: and that's even more difficult to picture. You can't destroy

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Speaker 1: these forests. Ironside is clearly an actor that was made

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Speaker 1: to play the sort of character who gets who gets

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Speaker 1: Jettis and a board and the forest and exploded, not

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Speaker 1: so much the savior of the of the Pods. But

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Speaker 1: they're different types of villain actors, right, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: feel like Michael Ironside is the classic heavy He's the hinchman,

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Speaker 1: the tough guy, the tough bad guy. Bruce Dearn is

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Speaker 1: more kind of the scumbag. Yeah he played. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: did play a lot of like like sniveling scumbag characters

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Speaker 1: in his in his life, in his life. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is something that I still don't have a firm

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Speaker 1: answer for, like how how I feel about his performance.

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Speaker 1: But I feel like one of the reasons I connected

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Speaker 1: with the film so much as a kid is that like,

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Speaker 1: here's this guy who he is a loner, you know,

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Speaker 1: and and like here I am, you know, as a

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Speaker 1: junior high kid who's you know, hasn't seems to have

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Speaker 1: nothing in common with anybody else in my school, and

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Speaker 1: and you know, I can, I can connect with him

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Speaker 1: on some level. And his only friends their robots. I

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Speaker 1: would love to have had robots as friends, you know,

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Speaker 1: at the time, and and so you know that kind

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Speaker 1: of that that spoke to me as well, and of course,

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Speaker 1: he's an idealist. He's trying to he's doing this thing

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Speaker 1: that is that that he sees as very heroic, and

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Speaker 1: I feel like everybody at that age especially connects with that,

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Speaker 1: and uh yeah. And then as as as you grow older,

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Speaker 1: I think a role like this you keep coming back to,

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Speaker 1: and maybe you end up being more forgiving of of

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Speaker 1: of the character's faults because you're like, you agree with

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Speaker 1: the basic idea. Maybe you don't agree with his use

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Speaker 1: of murder, right, but still you're you you agree with

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Speaker 1: his his basic ideology here that you know, the forests

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Speaker 1: are worth saying, that nature is worth saying, that that

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Speaker 1: connection is is vital and human. Well, it really does

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Speaker 1: ask you to think about something that that becomes more

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Speaker 1: profound the more you think about it. What is the

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Speaker 1: inherent value of nature? And this is something we'll come

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Speaker 1: back to as we discuss more about the movie later

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Speaker 1: on in the episode, But we often today think about

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Speaker 1: environmental conservation in terms of the material benefits to humans

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Speaker 1: provided by the by environmental conservation, you you don't want

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Speaker 1: to destroy natural habitats, you don't want to deforce the

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Speaker 1: landscape and all that kind of stuff, because it does

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Speaker 1: lots of bad things when you know they're they're cascading

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Speaker 1: negative effects throughout the world when you do that. Um.

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Speaker 1: But there there's also a deeper questions, like what if

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Speaker 1: there was just one forest left and a dome out

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Speaker 1: in space and it wouldn't affect anybody on Earth, whether

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Speaker 1: or not that dome state alive, would you fight to

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Speaker 1: save that forest? Does the forest have value in itself? Anyway?

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Speaker 1: We can return to that. So I thought maybe we

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Speaker 1: should explore the sort of pure scientific question of growing

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Speaker 1: plants in space. Could you grow a forest in space

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Speaker 1: inside the geodesic dome on a space ship? If so,

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Speaker 1: how would you do it? And do scientists who think

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Speaker 1: about space colonization take this idea seriously? What kind of

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Speaker 1: challenges do they expect? So, just because it's a recent

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Speaker 1: example that I read about, I want to talk for

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Speaker 1: a minute about the the Chinese moon lander. I hope

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Speaker 1: I want to pronounce this right. I think it's the

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Speaker 1: chung U for yes, this is named for the goddess

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Speaker 1: who who resides on the moon, uh, the the wife

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Speaker 1: of the great Archer. Right. So, the the archer Ye

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Speaker 1: shoots down the nine surplus sons, leaving just the one son.

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Speaker 1: As a result, he gets the elixir of immortality and

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Speaker 1: his wife, Chunga is I think there are different versions

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Speaker 1: of the story about how she drinks it, but she

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Speaker 1: ends up drinking it and then goes to the Moon

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Speaker 1: to live there. Um And so of course that's that's

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Speaker 1: a good name for a lunar lander, right, And there

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Speaker 1: have been four of these, now, these these four different

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Speaker 1: lunar missions from the Chinese Space Program. This is the

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Speaker 1: fourth in the series, and in January of twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 1: the Changa four lander set down on the far side

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Speaker 1: of the Moon, at the side that always faces away

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Speaker 1: from the Earth, of course, because the Moon is tidally locked.

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Speaker 1: So it landed in this massive impact basin on the

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Speaker 1: far side of the Moon called the South Pole Aitken Basin,

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Speaker 1: specifically within a crater called Von Carmen. And one of

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Speaker 1: the experiments brought along on the Chongo four mission was

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Speaker 1: a biological payload of cotton seeds inside a tiny biosphere

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Speaker 1: which was supplied with soil, water, a small contained atmosphere chamber,

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Speaker 1: and a heater, and after the spacecraft landed, the seeds hatched,

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Speaker 1: and the Chinese Space Program even published a little photo

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Speaker 1: from the inside of the chamber with green sprouts on

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Speaker 1: the far side of the moon. And it's pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: I've got a picture here for you to look at, Robert.

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Speaker 1: It looks like a little jungle of spinach underneath the

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Speaker 1: plastic net. Yeah, and then the plastic net kind of

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Speaker 1: looks like one of the domes from the from Silent

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Speaker 1: Running Clear Bias. But of course it was not to be.

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Speaker 1: It would not last very long. The heater in the

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Speaker 1: little biosphere did not hold out, and so when the

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Speaker 1: night set in on the far side of the moon.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the moon has you know, longer days and

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Speaker 1: night cycles because of its tidal locking with the Earth.

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Speaker 1: When the nights set in on the far side of

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Speaker 1: the moon, local temperatures reached about negative fifty two degrees

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Speaker 1: celsius from negative sixty two degrees fahrenheit, and the cotton

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Speaker 1: sprouts froze and died about a week after or the

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Speaker 1: experiment began. And furthermore, the Chinese media reported that the

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Speaker 1: cotton seeds were not the only species within the biosphere

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Speaker 1: which also contained rape seed potato A rabbidopsis, which is

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Speaker 1: a brassica plant that is often deployed in space missions

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Speaker 1: and uh experiments with growing plants beyond Earth, as well

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Speaker 1: as fruit flies and yeast, and apparently nothing except the

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Speaker 1: cotton registered any growth. So it can be hard to

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Speaker 1: grow life in space. And and this was in a

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Speaker 1: sealed container on the relatively nearby Moon. Like, wouldn't the

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Speaker 1: problem get even harder if you're talking about trying to

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Speaker 1: grow a whole ecosystem, an entire forest in a ship

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Speaker 1: in deep space. It seems like an almost impossible problem,

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Speaker 1: right right, Yeah. And of course in silent running like

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Speaker 1: we begin with the forest being situated further away from

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Speaker 1: the planet, and then developments in the plot just lead

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Speaker 1: it to greater distances exactly. So the Chung of four

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Speaker 1: experiment was by no means the first attempt to grow

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Speaker 1: plants beyond Earth. I think it was the first attempt

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Speaker 1: to grow them on the Moon. There have been many

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Speaker 1: experiments over the decades with growing plants in space. Lots

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Speaker 1: of early space missions involved simply carrying seeds into space

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Speaker 1: and then bringing them back to Earth to see if

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Speaker 1: they would grow normally. I think there was concern about

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Speaker 1: how primarily radiation, but perhaps other space conditions, maybe micro

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Speaker 1: gravity and so forth, how these would affect the seeds,

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Speaker 1: you know, would they grow normally if you just brought

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Speaker 1: them back and planted them. And in general, the seeds

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Speaker 1: taken into space seem completely unaffected. You bring them home

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Speaker 1: and they're fine. In fact, all throughout the United States

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Speaker 1: you can visit so called moon trees. These are trees

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Speaker 1: planted in public spaces from seeds that were taken into

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Speaker 1: orbit around the Moon by the Apollo fourteen command module,

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Speaker 1: and they grew fine. You can actually like look up

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Speaker 1: lists of these and see if you can visit a

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Speaker 1: moon tree near you. But the first plants actually grown

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Speaker 1: from seeds in space were of the species A rabbit

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Speaker 1: Opsis thaliana, which is one of the same plants that

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Speaker 1: Chinese lander brought this year, but which did not sprout.

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Speaker 1: And this was aboard the Russian space station the Salute

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Speaker 1: in nineteen two, and since then lots of plant experiments

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Speaker 1: have been conducted, and astronauts regularly experiment with cultivating plants

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Speaker 1: on the I S S. So I guess the question

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Speaker 1: is what have we learned from all these experiments? What's

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Speaker 1: it like to grow plants in space? So a few

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Speaker 1: takeaways as noted by Dr Anna Lisa Paul, an investigator

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Speaker 1: on the Advanced Plant Experiment or APEX experiment UH number one.

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Speaker 1: Of course, seeds taken into space and then return to

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Speaker 1: Earth consistently grow and don't show any changes. But if

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Speaker 1: you let the seeds germinate in space, there are differences

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Speaker 1: in how they grow. At first, we expected, like the

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Speaker 1: trophic patterns, that the growth patterns in plant development to

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Speaker 1: be different because of gravity. Right, you would think that

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Speaker 1: the well gravity pulls the roots down and that's how

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Speaker 1: they know to grow downward. But actually that's not entirely

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Speaker 1: what we find. Some experiments have found that that some

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Speaker 1: plant are extremely sensitive to even very very tiny amounts

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Speaker 1: of gravity and can detect very very weak gravitational fields

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Speaker 1: and be manipulated by them. But also plants tend to

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Speaker 1: just grow toward light, with their roots generally growing in

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Speaker 1: the opposite direction from the light, but with individual patterns

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Speaker 1: determined by their genes. Also, the directionality of light is

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Speaker 1: very important and determining growth patterns for plants in space.

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Speaker 1: If there's a clear light source from one direction, like

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Speaker 1: the sun would be on Earth, the plants tend to

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Speaker 1: grow toward that. But if the light sources diffuse, like

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Speaker 1: the sort of lighting the you know, the soft lighting

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Speaker 1: you would get in a closed room. Then their growth

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Speaker 1: patterns are often very different and can be altered from

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Speaker 1: what you would normally see on Earth. Now, despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that we've discovered that healthy plants can grow in

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Speaker 1: the absence of gravity, the lack of gravity and a

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Speaker 1: space station environment can still present a lot of problems

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Speaker 1: for growing plants. If you just stop and think about

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Speaker 1: it for a second, you can probably imagine what some

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Speaker 1: of them are. Like. Think about this. You couldn't have

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Speaker 1: a regular forest with a soil floor in micro gravity

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Speaker 1: because the soil would float off everywhere, the water wouldn't

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Speaker 1: sink into the soil when it was applied correctly. You'd

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Speaker 1: have to have some kind of like you know, controlled

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Speaker 1: surface or like sometimes when astronauts grow plants on the

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Speaker 1: I s s, they grow them out of these sort

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Speaker 1: of packets of soil that it's almost like a package.

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Speaker 1: You see this that's closed, but it's got something inside

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Speaker 1: of It's like cat litter that's got fertilizer in it. Um.

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Speaker 1: So you could maybe do something like that, but you

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Speaker 1: couldn't have a totally natural forest type environment in the

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Speaker 1: absence of gravity. So in order to have something like

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Speaker 1: depicted in Silent Running. You would absolutely have to have

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Speaker 1: artificial gravity, and you know from our previous discussions no

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Speaker 1: magic fixes allowed here. Right as far as we know now,

429
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:55,040
Speaker 1: you would have to simulate gravity through acceleration. And you

430
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:57,360
Speaker 1: can go back to our artificial gravity episode for more

431
00:23:57,400 --> 00:23:59,879
Speaker 1: on how that might work. But I'll just say, short story,

432
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:02,600
Speaker 1: your best bet would probably seem to be some kind

433
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:07,680
Speaker 1: of huge rotating cylinder with the forests inside it. On

434
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 1: the other hand, that does present additional problems for energy. Right.

435
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:14,479
Speaker 1: Forests need sunlight to grow, and if you can't simply

436
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 1: angle them towards the sun, because you know they'd have

437
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:19,680
Speaker 1: to be on the inside of the cylinder to benefit

438
00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:22,400
Speaker 1: from the effects of gravity, then you need an appropriate

439
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:25,280
Speaker 1: artificial light source, or at least some sort of complex

440
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 1: reflective system like something that would that would would give

441
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: them the cost of sunlight they need. Right. However, if

442
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: you don't care about simulating a full natural environment with

443
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 1: a whole equal ecosystem and a soil floor and all that,

444
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 1: your options really do expand to include hydroponic containers and

445
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: packet contained soil beds with growth via exposure to artificial

446
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 1: grow lights and all that, but then again, also some

447
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 1: of the benefits might be reduced by some of those limitations.

448
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,160
Speaker 1: And this is useful for a lot of reasons. Researching

449
00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 1: plants in space is not just sort of a lark.

450
00:24:57,359 --> 00:25:01,119
Speaker 1: I mean, it's useful for one thing, because knowledge about

451
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: how plants growing space can actually be useful for agriculture

452
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: back on Earth. You can isolate variables in space that

453
00:25:07,640 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 1: you can't isolate on Earth. But it's also useful for

454
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:15,200
Speaker 1: long term space mission planning because, as Silent Running argues,

455
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 1: we really can't live without plants. Like any truly long

456
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:23,399
Speaker 1: term space colonization efforts, if they're ever going to be

457
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 1: realized there, it's it's gonna be really hard to do

458
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,880
Speaker 1: them entirely in metal boxes with prepacked rations. Those things

459
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 1: eventually expire. Rehydratable or radiated or thermostabilized. Shrimp cocktail is

460
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:39,440
Speaker 1: only going to take them so far. At the very least.

461
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 1: Long term astronauts or Mars colonists need to be able

462
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 1: to grow their own food. And that's just food. That's

463
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: not even talking about uh, you know, holy ecosystems, in

464
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 1: the environmental benefits they bring beyond growing crops. This is

465
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:56,560
Speaker 1: just about what potatoes am I going to eat tonight? Uh?

466
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:58,919
Speaker 1: And I was reading a twenty nineteen article by Marina

467
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: Corrin in The atlant Antic. Uh And I don't think

468
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,479
Speaker 1: I knew this fact before. Astronauts actually have been allowed

469
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: to eat plants that they grew on space station. Apparently

470
00:26:08,160 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 1: the Russian cosmonauts have been eating stuff on space stations

471
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: for a long time, since around two thousand three. I

472
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:17,159
Speaker 1: think they've been allowed to eat half the crops they

473
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: grew in their experiments, including early crops of a type

474
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:23,240
Speaker 1: of lettuce called missouna, which is I think a type

475
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: of Japanese mustard greens. They've been allowed to eat peas

476
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: they grew there. I think they tried to grow tomatoes

477
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,760
Speaker 1: but the crop failed. Um and and there have been

478
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 1: others since then. In twenty fifteen, I believe it was yeah, yeah,

479
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 1: to read from Marina's article quote, astronauts have already made

480
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: a space salad. In astronauts on the space station were

481
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: allowed to try the leaves of a red romaine lettuce

482
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:49,919
Speaker 1: that was cultivated in NASA's first fresh food growth chamber.

483
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:52,640
Speaker 1: They added a little balsamic dressing and took a bite.

484
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 1: That's awesome. The NASA astronaut KELLN Lyndagrin said, then tastes good. Uh,

485
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: And I love red romaine. It's my favorite for salads

486
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: at home. So that's a good choice there. Yeah. Well,

487
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: a lot of the foods that we we gravitate towards,

488
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:10,720
Speaker 1: like the artificial ones. Uh. You know, the argument is that,

489
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: like a potato chip is so satisfying because you know,

490
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: it's fatty, it's salty and all this, but it also

491
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 1: has a Christmas to it, as if we have discovered

492
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:23,959
Speaker 1: in the potato chip bag a crisp vegetable like lettuce

493
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 1: that is ready for our consumption. Well, one of the

494
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: things when you look up these pictures of like the

495
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:32,640
Speaker 1: lettuce screens growing on the I S s, they look

496
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: like really high quality to me. Maybe maybe I'm just

497
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 1: hungry while I'm looking at the picture or something, but

498
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,240
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I want to eat that. They don't

499
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:42,439
Speaker 1: look like, you know, limp and sad produce, the kind

500
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: of limp and sad produce you sometimes find at the

501
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 1: grocery store when it's already been picked over. Uh. They

502
00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:50,160
Speaker 1: look like really good, like the best stuff you could

503
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: find in a really good farmer's market. Now, in mentioning

504
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 1: the I want to go back to gravity for just

505
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:56,879
Speaker 1: a second, because I want to make it clear that

506
00:27:57,560 --> 00:27:59,880
Speaker 1: what we see in silent running what is depicted there.

507
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 1: There's no attempt to depict any kind of rotation or

508
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:08,439
Speaker 1: acceleration basis. It's just magic gravity. And ultimately, in science

509
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: fiction we're off. We were often very forgiving of that.

510
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately sure, this picture is based in the

511
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 1: sort of the more the metaphorical scenario here of here

512
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: is a portion of the world's dead forests sustained within

513
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,159
Speaker 1: an artificial environment. They're just kind of attached to the

514
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,920
Speaker 1: sides of the valley forge. Yeah, in many ways, a

515
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 1: science fiction film can, even a good one, can be

516
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:33,680
Speaker 1: kind of like a science experiment. You know, they isolate

517
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:36,879
Speaker 1: variables that they're not always gonna spend a lot of

518
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: time getting every detail accurate. They're more like focusing on

519
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:43,040
Speaker 1: some key themes and they want you to contemplate a

520
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: scenario to you know, have you see what you think

521
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: about it? Uh, sci fi films, I think are often

522
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 1: like they're they're like the thought experiments that people do

523
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 1: in philosophy classes. You know, when when you ask about

524
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 1: the philosophy class like, wait, why was Donald Davidson walking

525
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: in the swamp when he got turned into the you know,

526
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 1: by the lightning strike turned into the swampman. Well, that

527
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: detail is not important. Just ignore that. And I think

528
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: the gravity and silent running is kind of like that.

529
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: It's just like a detail that they don't want to

530
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: be bothered with. Uh they you know, some some audiences

531
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: do get bothered by those things. Even so, and we're

532
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: gonna bring up Carl Sagan in a minute, and that

533
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: will be uh, that'll be a point that sticks with him,

534
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: I think. But anyway to sum up about growing plants

535
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: in space, so I would say that summary is learning

536
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: how to grow plants in space is very important for

537
00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 1: the future of space travel and uh and even just

538
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: for knowledge that we can apply in the present day

539
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: on Earth. Plants do seem to grow just fine in

540
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 1: microgravity conditions, but they sometimes need a lot of special

541
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: care because of those conditions. Uh, special growing habitats, plenty

542
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: of the right kind of artificial light, special applications of

543
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 1: water and nutrients, atmospheric management because of course they need

544
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: access to c O two to grow their bodies. Uh.

545
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: And never forget you know that this is sort of

546
00:29:56,600 --> 00:30:00,040
Speaker 1: a tangent, but you when you breathe out the you

547
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: two in your breath is later taken in by a

548
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:05,960
Speaker 1: plant and made into leaves and wood plants are made

549
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: of your breath. And we'll get back to that a

550
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: little later as well. But also, you know, growing entire

551
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 1: ecosystems that simulate Earth ecosystems, like a full forest. It's

552
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: not I would say, I don't know of any facts

553
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 1: that make it impossible in principle, but you would encounter

554
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: a lot more challenges related to energy and gravity and

555
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: environmental chemistry and the atmosphere and all that. And finally,

556
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: just to point out, a lot of the future of

557
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial botany research is probably going to be focused on

558
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 1: how to grow plants on Mars given those specific local conditions,

559
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: rather than in microgravity. Because if you're going to Mars

560
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 1: and you want to grow plants there, you can just

561
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: like freeze seeds and take them with you. You don't

562
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: have to be growing plants all the way there, right,

563
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, based on you know, some of

564
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: the recent discussions that I've I've been been been privy

565
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: to regarding like traveling to Mars, like it's we we

566
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: could pack enough. I mean, it's kind of a you know,

567
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: that's a there's a lot of thought that goes into

568
00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: exactly how much you would need to bring and then

569
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: how you're going to sustain yourself when you when you

570
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: when once you get there. But the trip to Mars

571
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 1: is the sort of trip in which we yes, you

572
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 1: could surround yourself with the plant, with the food and

573
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: water that you would need, and actually surrounding yourself with

574
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: the food and water would help protect you from potentially

575
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 1: protect you from radiation. That's right, a hazard suit made

576
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 1: out of sandwiches, yeah, made out of shrimp cocktail essentially, Yeah,

577
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: or made out of water, I guess. And and the

578
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: food's got a lot of water and yeah, yeah, but

579
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: basically have food, food and water is protecting you. So

580
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: don't eat too much of it, don't. All right, we

581
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: should take a quick break and then we come back.

582
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: We'll we'll talk about Carl Sagan in Silent, Silent Running. Alright,

583
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 1: we're back. Yeah. So one of the benefits of this

584
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 1: being a major science fiction film that came out in

585
00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies is that Carl Sagan around to

586
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: see it himself and to comment on it. Yeah, and

587
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 1: he he mentions it in an article that was published

588
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: in The New York Times on May nineteen seventy eight

589
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: called growing Up with Science Fiction. Now, this article isn't

590
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: focused on Silent Running, but he devotes a paragraph to

591
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: it in the article, and more generally he talks about, uh,

592
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 1: science fiction. And it's a great article, I think. Yeah.

593
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: It's collected in Broca's Brain, Reflections on the Romance of Science,

594
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:28,680
Speaker 1: which was published in nineteen seventy nine, still very very available.

595
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: I picked up a copy of this in the last

596
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: couple of years and read it. The whole book is

597
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 1: an excellent read. And yeah, this particular chapter, this particular

598
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:40,480
Speaker 1: paper discuss his works that he both admires and criticizes.

599
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's not only a great read in and

600
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 1: of itself, but I would say it's also a wonderful

601
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:49,000
Speaker 1: place to get some fresh reading ideas, fresh in terms

602
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 1: that they haven't been updated since the late nineteen seventies.

603
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 1: But still he mentions a number of important works of

604
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 1: science fiction. Uh, you know, stuff that he grew up

605
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: on as a kid, stuff that he learned about later,

606
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: stuff that he thinks what he thought was really solid,

607
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 1: and stuff that you know, he had other, you know,

608
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: decent things to say about it, like I I have

609
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,440
Speaker 1: at times thought what we really need like a Sagan

610
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 1: sci fi book club in which we just used this

611
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: particular um chapter in the book as a guideline. Uh

612
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: and just read everything that Sagan's discussing here, including the

613
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: stuff that he was critical off. He recommends Doon by

614
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: the way there uh so say yeah. Sagan tells the

615
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: story of how he fell in love with science fiction

616
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:36,400
Speaker 1: at the age of ten, and how his adolescent adoration

617
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 1: for science fiction actually in the end led him to

618
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 1: real science. Like he tells stories of how there were

619
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:46,480
Speaker 1: these sci fi stories with unanswered questions and inconsistencies that

620
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: he wanted resolved because they were intriguing, and found real

621
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: science is basically is a way to get to the

622
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: bottom of them, to get real answers to the questions

623
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 1: posed by science fiction. But he also talks about his

624
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: frustration with science fiction stories where characters don't know scientific

625
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:06,840
Speaker 1: facts that it makes no sense for them to be

626
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 1: unaware of. And one example he gives his silent running

627
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: so yeah and to to to drive home what he's

628
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: talking about here, though the lower character in Silent Running

629
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 1: played by Bruce Dern is supposed to be a botanist

630
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:22,280
Speaker 1: and an ecologist. Yes he's Yeah, so he's a space botanist.

631
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:25,960
Speaker 1: He's space low Ax. Uh. I don't know if anybody's

632
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 1: called him that. Space low Axtleax and Dr Seuss Lotleax

633
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: is also you know, he speaks for the trees in

634
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,359
Speaker 1: the environment and is perceived as being abrasive and obnoxious

635
00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: and in the way of of you know, of the

636
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: the advancement of the corporate world. Right. Uh so, So

637
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: Dern is a botanist who takes these plants out and

638
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: he's flying them out into deep space farther and farther

639
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:52,080
Speaker 1: away from the sun. Uh, And the forests are dying

640
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know why, and he's trying to figure

641
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:56,720
Speaker 1: it out. And I guess this is a semi spoiler,

642
00:34:56,800 --> 00:35:00,160
Speaker 1: but it's a moving from the seventies. Eventually it's revealed that, oh,

643
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: the problem was they need sunlight and they weren't getting

644
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,319
Speaker 1: enough sunlight because he, I guess, flew them too far

645
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: away from the sun. Right. Even forgiving the character a

646
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: little bit and thinking, well, he's recovering from an injury,

647
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: he's super lonely and maybe you know, there's some mental

648
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: health issues that are arising out of that, and perhaps

649
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 1: he's being bombarded with with cosmic rays. Still, that's a

650
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: big one to miss as a botanist. Yeah, I would

651
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:30,560
Speaker 1: say so, and and uh Sagan thinks that too. So.

652
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: Quote in Douglas Trumbull's technically proficient science fiction film Silent Running,

653
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,799
Speaker 1: the trees are dying in vast space born closed ecological

654
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: systems on the way to Saturn. After weeks of painstaking

655
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:47,320
Speaker 1: study and agonizing searches through botany texts, the solution is

656
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:51,839
Speaker 1: found plants. It turns out needs sunlight. Trumbull's characters are

657
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:55,280
Speaker 1: able to build interplanetary cities, but have forgotten the inverse

658
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,800
Speaker 1: square law, and that refers to the fact of radiation

659
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:01,279
Speaker 1: becoming exponentially we acre as he gets farther away from

660
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: the source um and that has to do with the

661
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 1: three dimensional nature of space. But also, he continues, I

662
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:10,800
Speaker 1: was willing to overlook the portrayal of the rings of

663
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: Saturn as pastel colored gases, but not this. Uh So,

664
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: he's really bothered by the fact that that the Dern's

665
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: character would not have been aware of this. It just

666
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: he can buy a lot, but he can't buy that,

667
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: you know. And I suspect that I was reading about

668
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:30,320
Speaker 1: the origins of the story for Silent Running, and I

669
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 1: think part of this might have to do with the

670
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:35,359
Speaker 1: fact that the the the original story like starting off

671
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: early versions of the screenplay apparently didn't have the protagonist

672
00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: as a botanist, and he he basically like broke free

673
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: and ran off with the forest, not because he cared

674
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:47,480
Speaker 1: about the forest, but because he just want to be

675
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: left alone. He didn't want to go back to Earth,

676
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound nearly as interesting. But I wonder if

677
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 1: this is a case where you know, the story evolves,

678
00:36:56,280 --> 00:37:01,480
Speaker 1: and as it evolves, it doesn't you know, completely um removed,

679
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 1: or it creates some problems that might not have been

680
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: there originally, such as this, like you have to have

681
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:10,759
Speaker 1: this character run away from the run further away from

682
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 1: the Sun and then encounter problems, but it's complicated by

683
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:17,839
Speaker 1: the fact that now you've made him a botanist. I mean,

684
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 1: I would think that by the time you're at the

685
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: orbit of Saturn, you're already sufficiently far away from the

686
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 1: Sun for those uh, those solar rays to really not

687
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: be helping your your forests like they should. So it's

688
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: from Sagan especially, this is a this is a solid

689
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,240
Speaker 1: criticism of the film. I do also think it's always

690
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 1: interesting just as a little thing about each individual person's personality.

691
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: What's the breaking point for you in a suspension of

692
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: disbelief scenario. You're you're engaging with fictional narrative and you're

693
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 1: okay with this, but not with that, And everybody's got

694
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 1: those little things that they're not okay with. What is

695
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 1: it about about the character lacking this important piece of

696
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,839
Speaker 1: knowledge that's the breaking point for Sagan, whereas these other things,

697
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 1: the fake artificial gravity and all that aren't. Yeah, I

698
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: mean part of it is like there are certain things

699
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,800
Speaker 1: that are just so universally broken in our science fiction

700
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:11,520
Speaker 1: that we just don't think about it, Like they're being

701
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: sound in space, like just open sound in space, or

702
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:20,399
Speaker 1: or or certainly the magical gravity scenario like those that's

703
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: just all over the place and you just you just

704
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 1: come to expect it um. But with this, yeah, maybe

705
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:28,200
Speaker 1: it's just a part of it just being more crude

706
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,359
Speaker 1: central to the plot. Now, certainly this is not something

707
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: I thought about when I watched it in junior high

708
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: and uh and and and I'm very forgiving of the

709
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: film I think overall, but in retrospect it does seem

710
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: like a major blunder. Just a couple other notes from

711
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 1: Sagan's article, just because I thought they were interesting and

712
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention them. One fact he points out

713
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: is that science fiction authors are often quicker to adapt

714
00:38:56,080 --> 00:39:01,759
Speaker 1: to new scientific knowledge than supposedly true accounts of space are. Uh.

715
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: I just want to read a quote here. It is

716
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: satisfyingly rare to find a science fiction story written today

717
00:39:08,160 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 1: that posits algae farms on the surface of Venus. Incidentally,

718
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: the UFO contact mythologizers are slower to change, and we

719
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: can still find accounts of flying saucers from a Venus

720
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:22,239
Speaker 1: which is populated by beautiful human beings in long white

721
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:25,920
Speaker 1: robes inhabiting a kind of Cytherian garden of Eden. The

722
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:29,319
Speaker 1: nine degree fahrenheit temperatures of Venus give us one way

723
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: of checking such stories. I do think that's kind of interesting.

724
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: People intentionally weaving clearly fake narratives that are meant to

725
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: be fiction are often quicker to adapt to new information

726
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: about the planets and stuff than people trying to tell

727
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: supposedly true stories are I wonder if if this is

728
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: part of the reason that the John Carter movie Um

729
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,120
Speaker 1: didn't do so well at the box office. Did you

730
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:54,959
Speaker 1: ever see this when it came out? No? I didn't.

731
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:58,080
Speaker 1: You know it's it's based on the work of Ed

732
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: Grice Burrows was a to say Williams, which has been

733
00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 1: very been a very different film, but it's it's an

734
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 1: entertaining film, but it is bit is based on this,

735
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: this older, pulpy sci fi vision of Mars. And indeed

736
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:18,799
Speaker 1: it's based on books that Sagan discusses um in Uh

737
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 1: in the paper that we're discussing here. Sean loved them

738
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: when he loved him when he was a kid, and

739
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: he he mentions how he came back to them later

740
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 1: and he was like, oh, this just is not working

741
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:31,560
Speaker 1: its magic on me anymore. But he still makes the

742
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:34,520
Speaker 1: case for the for the usefulness of science fiction, and

743
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:37,759
Speaker 1: not just in wedding the appetites of young people for

744
00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: education about real science. That that is part of it.

745
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 1: I want to read a couple of quotes here quote

746
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:47,359
Speaker 1: the greatest human significance of science fiction maybe as thought experiments,

747
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 1: as attempts to minimize future shock as contemplations of alternative destinies.

748
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 1: This is part of the reason that science fiction has

749
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: so wide an appeal among young people. It is they

750
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: who will of in the future. No society on Earth

751
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: today is well adapted to the earth of a hundred

752
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: or two hundred years for from now, if we are

753
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,840
Speaker 1: wise enough or lucky enough to survive that long, we

754
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: desperately need an exploration of alternative futures, both experimental and conceptual.

755
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: And later he says, quote, I think it is not

756
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 1: an exaggeration to say that if we survive, science fiction

757
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 1: will have made a vital contribution to the continuation and

758
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:30,399
Speaker 1: benign evolution of our civilization. I love that. I want

759
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: to touch briefly on the concept of future shock. We

760
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: have a couple of older episodes of Stuff to Blow

761
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 1: your Mind that dealt with this that I recorded with

762
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,840
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas back in the day. But this is referring

763
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 1: to the book, the nine seventy book Future Shock by

764
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 1: Alvin and Heidi toffler Um. I think Alvin alone had

765
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 1: credited on the original publication, but his wife wrote it

766
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:54,320
Speaker 1: with him, and they had co author status on subsequent books.

767
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:57,359
Speaker 1: But it was a very influential book that is talking

768
00:41:57,480 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 1: was talking about just the idea that technology was a

769
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 1: dancing and is advancing, you know, so swiftly that it

770
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 1: it kind of reduces one to a state of shock,

771
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's a little more nuanced than that,

772
00:42:10,120 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 1: but that's the basic idea. There's also they're also also

773
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: a wonderful TV documentary version of it, narated by Orson Welles. Uh,

774
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: that is tremendously entertaining in its in its own right,

775
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 1: but also kind of you know, hypes everything up a

776
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:27,799
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh, this is funny from the nineties seventies, right,

777
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 1: you know, from our perspective, it seems like technology is

778
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:34,120
Speaker 1: only accelerated since then, you know, especially in the realms

779
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:38,280
Speaker 1: of consumer technology. You know how much our individual lives

780
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 1: have been changed by especially communications technology. Yeah, but I

781
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:47,719
Speaker 1: mean the concept of future shock, I think, you know,

782
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: a few years ago, like basically when I recorded that

783
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,160
Speaker 1: episode with Julie about it, I I kind of viewed

784
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:56,279
Speaker 1: it more as something that was archaic or something that

785
00:42:56,440 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: was maybe maybe didn't match up with modern reality. But

786
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 1: now years later, uh, now that I'm I'm forty years old,

787
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: I I feel future shock a lot more yeah, like

788
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 1: there's a there's enough advancement going on that I'm like,

789
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: WHOA hold on a little bit. I think sometimes I

790
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: feel like things are moving a bit too fast. Not

791
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: to criticize technology in the right of technology, but I

792
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,720
Speaker 1: wonder you have future shock to whatever extent it exists.

793
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: Also depends on just how how long you've been in

794
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:27,840
Speaker 1: the stream of time. You know, in what level of

795
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: technology you kind of grew uh comfortable with. Well, one

796
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,760
Speaker 1: thing that I do think is interesting about Silent Running

797
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: is that it in this main character. We've got a

798
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: character who is a fierce sort of prophet of the woods.

799
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: He is a priest to the forest and an advocate

800
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 1: of the pure, undisrupted environment and and ecology. But at

801
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:53,120
Speaker 1: the same time he's not technophobic at least not like

802
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: he he enjoys the company of the robots, even you

803
00:43:55,960 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: can see him being technologically proficient, like he reprogramm ms

804
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 1: the robots himself and messes around with them. And I

805
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: feel like in a lot of nineteen seventies visions of

806
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:09,440
Speaker 1: the future, I think you would probably see these two

807
00:44:09,600 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: tendencies paired against each other. You would have the people

808
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 1: who have an affinity for technology and the people who

809
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: have an affinity for nature and that that's what's in opposition.

810
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: But the movie actually identifies a different kind of opposition.

811
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 1: It's just it's just the preservation of the environment versus

812
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:30,919
Speaker 1: the destruction of the environment. And that's that's not really

813
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:34,279
Speaker 1: related to whether you also like technology or not. Like,

814
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: can't you easily imagine the Horrible remake of this in

815
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: which the humans have to protect the forest from the

816
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: robots who have the program to destroy the forest, right,

817
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't want to be controversial, And I mean

818
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 1: i'd see it probably chopped chopping mall meets silent running

819
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 1: um in space, of course, but but i'd watch the

820
00:44:56,360 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 1: Terrible in its own right. Well, that does set way

821
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 1: into another thing that I want to talk about with

822
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,280
Speaker 1: regards to this movie, which is the way that environmental

823
00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:09,880
Speaker 1: conservation and preservation is presented as a public issue in

824
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:14,759
Speaker 1: a public debate. So I think one maybe quibble I

825
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 1: would have with this movie is that it seems to

826
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: embrace a narrative um that I think unwittingly, But it

827
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:25,800
Speaker 1: does sort of fall into this common narrative, especially of

828
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: past decades, that says human economic prosperity on the one hand,

829
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: and the preservation of the natural environment on the other hand,

830
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 1: are goals at odds with one another. And Dern's crewmates

831
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 1: are fine with the world without forests. And they say

832
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: why they're fine with it. They basically say, because industry.

833
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:50,280
Speaker 1: You know, the industrialization of the world has made resources

834
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:54,320
Speaker 1: plentiful for everybody, and everybody has a job, and and

835
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 1: you've got everything you need, right, So there's like economic

836
00:45:57,360 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 1: prosperity on the one hand, but then you've got the

837
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 1: preserve vation of the forests as this thing in conflict

838
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:06,840
Speaker 1: with that, And Dern resists it. He takes a qualitative

839
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:11,240
Speaker 1: view that defends nature for its own sake and revels

840
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:15,440
Speaker 1: in the aesthetic qualities of nature over the synthetic landscapes.

841
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:17,840
Speaker 1: You know, it's all these qualitative judgments. How do you

842
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:19,880
Speaker 1: put that crap in your body? You know, when you

843
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: eat that, you want to go back to that, You know,

844
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: landscape where you never see a tree. It's all qualitative,

845
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: it's all aesthetic. And I don't think this classic narrative

846
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: about environmental conservation versus economic flourishing is actually a very

847
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: accurate diagnosis of what the what the risks and benefits

848
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 1: of environmental destruction are now obviously there are cases where

849
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: you can say, increase the efficiency of a business by

850
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,239
Speaker 1: dumping waste into a river rather than paying more to

851
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:53,839
Speaker 1: dispose of it, you know, in an environmentally friendly way.

852
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: But these tradeoffs are they're almost always I think temporary.

853
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:02,800
Speaker 1: They're like temporary individual ways to leverage destruction of the

854
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: natural environment for personal gain. I don't think that overall

855
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:11,279
Speaker 1: destruction of the natural environment leads to widespread long term

856
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,320
Speaker 1: economic flourishing in general. It's more just sort of a

857
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: temporary way for you to cheat, right, And I mean

858
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: it basically comes down to a question of how far

859
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: down the road are you kicking the cane is are

860
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: you are you going? Is it going to be like,

861
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:27,760
Speaker 1: you know, five years, ten years, is it one generation?

862
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: Is it two or three generations? Yeah? What is the

863
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: what's the cost? Yeah? And and so this is because

864
00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: destruction of the natural environment, of course, as we talked

865
00:47:37,239 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 1: about on the show all the time, at least all

866
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,400
Speaker 1: kinds of costs and losses that are unpredictable and that

867
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: everybody has to bear. Just to to go back to

868
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 1: the example of you know, dumping industrial waste in the river,

869
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 1: imagine every factory upstream says, Okay, we can increase profits

870
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: if we don't have to dispose of this stuff properly.

871
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 1: We just dump it in the river. They dump it

872
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:00,440
Speaker 1: in the river. But now the farmers downstream can't use

873
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:02,800
Speaker 1: the river water to irrigate their crops, so they have

874
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:04,760
Speaker 1: to get their water in a way that's more costly

875
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 1: and inefficient, or maybe they can't grow their crops at

876
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: all or something. And here is a net maybe a

877
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:14,239
Speaker 1: net economic loss actually from this, even disregarding all of

878
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 1: the environmental devastation, this is just a loss to what

879
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:21,400
Speaker 1: what kind of wealth people are able to produce? Uh.

880
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 1: And So for the specific example of deforestation used in

881
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: the movie, because in the nineteen seventies, I think this

882
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:29,799
Speaker 1: was sort of the big environmental issue, right that people

883
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:32,320
Speaker 1: talked about the most. It was the destruction of the forests,

884
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 1: and that's why the forest geodesic domes or what the

885
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:37,839
Speaker 1: movie is all about. Luckily, we've got that all taken

886
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 1: care of. There's no more forestation. No, it certainly is

887
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 1: still a problem, but for some reason, it's not like

888
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: the main problem that comes to mind when people think

889
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:49,440
Speaker 1: about environmental problems. Now. I think it's probably been supplanted

890
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: by the global issue of climate change, I guess. But

891
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:54,520
Speaker 1: any of this is also part of the problem, right,

892
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:57,360
Speaker 1: because because they're related, Yeah, they're related. But also the

893
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 1: messaging of the forest is so so much easier because

894
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 1: there's an emotional connection to a definite physical location. You

895
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: can basically say, hey, you like going to the forest,

896
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 1: don't you You like it? Even if you don't want

897
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 1: to go in it, you're probably like looking out the

898
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 1: window at it. Well, imagine if all that went away

899
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 1: like that is a mucher. That's far easier for us

900
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: to wrap our hands it heads around, versus the realities

901
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:23,040
Speaker 1: of climate change. That as though some of the the

902
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 1: the the ramifications of climate change you know down the road,

903
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:29,839
Speaker 1: I mean when they are described, when you're talking about uh,

904
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 1: you know, rising ocean waters, I think that still creates

905
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 1: some scenarios that definitely should have an emotional um uh

906
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:40,880
Speaker 1: you know impact on anyone who hears them. Yeah, But

907
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:43,319
Speaker 1: the forest, I mean you can talk about today. It's

908
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: a thing you have now. I mean people people feel

909
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,920
Speaker 1: losses more than they feel the loss of potential gains. Right,

910
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:54,359
Speaker 1: that's a psychological problem. And if you if you say, uh,

911
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:58,279
Speaker 1: sometime in the future there could be economic opportunities that

912
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 1: would be lost because of you know, things about climate

913
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: change is harder to picture. You can say, if you're

914
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 1: in a forest right now, imagine this forest is gone.

915
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,240
Speaker 1: Like that's that's immediate, it's visceral. I think it reaches

916
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 1: people in another way though, I mean, yeah, I think

917
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: you could make the same argument, like you're saying about

918
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 1: about sea level increase if you're in a coastal area

919
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 1: or something. Um. But yeah, just giving the example of deforestation, Uh,

920
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: this is something that of course I would say. You know,

921
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,719
Speaker 1: there are sort of like maybe aesthetic and even people

922
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 1: might call them spiritual reasons to value nature for its

923
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: own sake. But imagine you don't and you're just you're

924
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:38,280
Speaker 1: like a Dern's crewmates who only care about economic flourishing.

925
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 1: They just want there to be resources for everybody, and

926
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:44,760
Speaker 1: everybody has a job and all that. I mean, even then, deforestation,

927
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 1: I think reeks devastating effects on those kinds of things.

928
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:52,799
Speaker 1: So deforestation leads to soil erosion. Roots you know, they

929
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,759
Speaker 1: hold soil in place, and then if you have deforestation,

930
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: you get all these exposed surfaces everywhere without plant life

931
00:50:59,239 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: to hold the soil in place, the soil of roads

932
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: during exposure to weather and water, and that soil run

933
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 1: off drains into waterways and clogs them and you know,

934
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: washes away the good soil that you could be using

935
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:14,440
Speaker 1: for agriculture. And um, it's just so there's a lot

936
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: of economic catastrophe right there. There's disruption of the water

937
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 1: table that happens through deforestation. There's like deforestation can lead

938
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 1: to widespread flooding. You know, economic catastrophes from flooding, destruction

939
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:29,320
Speaker 1: of habitats and extinctions of course, which can lead to

940
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 1: downstream effects like the you know rise of new zoonotic

941
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:36,560
Speaker 1: diseases and things like that. Oh yeah, increasing like boosting

942
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 1: the diseases that we're gonna have in the future, while

943
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:42,400
Speaker 1: at the same time removing various biological agents from the

944
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: world that you know, which we could find potential cures

945
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 1: and new antibiotics to help us battle those very diseases. Yeah.

946
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 1: And then of course, not to mention the way that

947
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 1: the big thing, the way forests can help contribute to

948
00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:58,960
Speaker 1: atmospheric dynamics. Of course, deforestation contributes to climate change, global warming.

949
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:03,320
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's it is not accurate to frame.

950
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:06,760
Speaker 1: Deforestation is an issue of like, well, you've got wealth

951
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 1: gains on the one hand, and you've got protecting the

952
00:52:10,560 --> 00:52:13,320
Speaker 1: environment on the other hand. Like protecting the environment is

953
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,400
Speaker 1: a is a crucial investment in the future of human

954
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 1: kind and economic investment. You destroy those forests and there

955
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 1: will be so much lost wealth and economic potential from that. Yeah, exactly.

956
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:29,319
Speaker 1: But then again, I don't want to discount the of course,

957
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:31,600
Speaker 1: the you know, the inherent value of nature for its

958
00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: own sake. Now, to place this film in the context

959
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: of US environmental history, uh, which I think is is interesting. Uh.

960
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:44,800
Speaker 1: President Richard Nixon had only just created the US Environmental

961
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,920
Speaker 1: Protection Agency, the e p A in Nino and Uh

962
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: it's interesting too. I was reading a little bit about this.

963
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:55,040
Speaker 1: I was looking at there was an Atlantic mini article.

964
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 1: Actually it's a gallery why Nixon created the e p A,

965
00:52:57,880 --> 00:52:59,879
Speaker 1: which is the interesting read. And in the Science History

966
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:03,320
Speaker 1: out Org has Richard Nixon in the rise of American environmentalism,

967
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: because we tend not Nixon comes up a lot recently.

968
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:09,880
Speaker 1: There are a lot of parallels being made today between

969
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 1: our current in a political um uh situation and UH

970
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 1: and Watergate and Nixon etcetera. So we tend not to

971
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: think about environmentalism and Nixon. But but it is interesting

972
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 1: to look at this time because, you know, given how

973
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 1: tragically politicized climate change has become in the United States,

974
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 1: it's almost staggering to realize that the the National Environmental

975
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:37,880
Speaker 1: Policy Act enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support, uh, you know, and

976
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:40,960
Speaker 1: and politicians were responding to a very real pressing and

977
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:44,040
Speaker 1: environmental danger at the local and national level level, or

978
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 1: dangers I should say. Was it in nineteen sixty nine

979
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:49,600
Speaker 1: that the Cuyahoga River river caught fire? Yes? Yeah, there

980
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 1: was actually heard a piece on NPR just this morning

981
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 1: talking about that. And then of course you're talking about

982
00:53:55,560 --> 00:53:58,759
Speaker 1: how that falls into this this whole situation with the

983
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:01,560
Speaker 1: creation of the e p A. Yeah, it's also interesting

984
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:04,360
Speaker 1: if you go back and look at exactly what was

985
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:07,839
Speaker 1: being said, even by Nixon himself and speeches and so forth,

986
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:10,800
Speaker 1: and there was there was kind of this holy reverence

987
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:13,880
Speaker 1: there for nature, even at times in Nixon's own words.

988
00:54:14,160 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: Not to say that Nixon himself actually felt any of this, uh,

989
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 1: you know, he was very much and he and his

990
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:22,239
Speaker 1: people were very much responded just for the zecheist of

991
00:54:22,280 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 1: the time and something that was again a bipartisan um issue.

992
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:30,320
Speaker 1: But at times Nixon cast such environmentalism as being in

993
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: the tradition of Republican Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah. Well, I mean

994
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 1: I think it was, yeah, and I mean the Republican Party,

995
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:40,439
Speaker 1: I think has changed changed a lot between the time

996
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:44,040
Speaker 1: of Teddy Roosevelt in the nineteen seventies. Yeah. Absolutely, But

997
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: but I think it is you know, it is I

998
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 1: think helpful to to realize that environmentalism and environmental concerns, um,

999
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,760
Speaker 1: you know, have at plenty of times in our country's

1000
00:54:55,800 --> 00:54:59,319
Speaker 1: history been a bipartisan issue and something that we can

1001
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:02,560
Speaker 1: all agree on, is something that matters. And I think

1002
00:55:02,600 --> 00:55:04,359
Speaker 1: there's a huge case to be made that that's that's

1003
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: a part of of the American dream, you know, that

1004
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 1: is a part of some of the best of America,

1005
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:16,800
Speaker 1: is what America has done, uh to sustain bits of

1006
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:20,400
Speaker 1: our natural environments, such as with the National Park UH services.

1007
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:23,000
Speaker 1: It would be amazing if someone could figure out a

1008
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:29,359
Speaker 1: vast sort of psychological program to just de politicize environmental issues. UM.

1009
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:33,440
Speaker 1: It's really tragic the way they've taken on a partisan

1010
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:36,640
Speaker 1: cast and of course that you know, that leads to

1011
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: these bit just obvious solutions to environmental problems becoming these

1012
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:46,880
Speaker 1: impossible political battles. You know, one of the interesting things

1013
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:50,319
Speaker 1: about Silent Running is that they don't spend a tremendous

1014
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: amount of time describing what life is like on Earth.

1015
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:57,759
Speaker 1: Now they allude to it, you certainly never really see it.

1016
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:02,080
Speaker 1: And uh and it's I think that's tantalizing, and it

1017
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:05,359
Speaker 1: makes this wonder what this world is like? What does

1018
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:08,000
Speaker 1: this world become? Uh? And I think that the film

1019
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 1: is at least in part, you know, they're pushing the

1020
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:13,360
Speaker 1: notion that humanity separated from nature is inherently sickened and

1021
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 1: it is lessened by that separation. And the other crew

1022
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 1: members don't mind eating tasteless feud cubes and nuking the

1023
00:56:19,120 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: world's less forest because they have no connection to nature anymore. Um.

1024
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: You know, per a discussion we had earlier over email,

1025
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a lot more focus in

1026
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: modern environmental discourses on you know, framing the production of

1027
00:56:33,120 --> 00:56:36,799
Speaker 1: the environment in terms of its material benefit to humans, which,

1028
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:40,040
Speaker 1: as we were just talking about, I mean, environmental conservation

1029
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 1: is not without material benefits to humans. But you notice

1030
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:46,960
Speaker 1: that that's what people who advocate environmental conservation tend to

1031
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: talk about these days. They're thinking, like, no, it's in

1032
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:53,359
Speaker 1: your interests to protect the environment. This was a different time.

1033
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: I mean, the film presents a very inherent case for nature.

1034
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,320
Speaker 1: It's this like that the forest in itself is a

1035
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:05,440
Speaker 1: holy and beautiful thing that must be protected for its

1036
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:08,279
Speaker 1: own sake. Yeah. The film, though, is is kind of

1037
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,080
Speaker 1: pushing this more of a spiritual connection with it um

1038
00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:15,359
Speaker 1: which made me think of the microbiome in some ways.

1039
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: The micro microbiome and the effect you know, getting into

1040
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 1: the microbes that live inside us and their connection to

1041
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 1: the outside world. The interplay between us and our natural

1042
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: environment and it's microbiome. You know, a lot of this

1043
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:32,480
Speaker 1: can feel kind of spiritual and kind of magic at times.

1044
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: So I was reading about this a little bit, and

1045
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 1: we've certainly covered this on the show but in the past.

1046
00:57:37,520 --> 00:57:40,880
Speaker 1: But you know, with our growing understanding of the microbiome,

1047
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: you know, we realize that there's this interplay between our

1048
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:47,240
Speaker 1: internal microbial legions, uh, and our exposure to the natural

1049
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,760
Speaker 1: world for us and fields if we can get them,

1050
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 1: but even access to a pet animal that has access

1051
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 1: to the outside can provide some level of this natural connection.

1052
00:57:57,720 --> 00:57:59,439
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things we often talk about

1053
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:01,880
Speaker 1: with Charlie at home is that he brings us dirts

1054
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: your yeah, your dog, Charlie. Yeah. And that's something that's

1055
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:08,880
Speaker 1: touched on in the book Never Home Alone by Rob Dunn,

1056
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:11,800
Speaker 1: a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University.

1057
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:14,440
Speaker 1: In that book, he points out that, you know, we

1058
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 1: still have a lot to learn, but it seems as

1059
00:58:16,520 --> 00:58:20,120
Speaker 1: if families and urban environments with dogs tend to have

1060
00:58:20,320 --> 00:58:23,520
Speaker 1: kids who are less prone to allergy and asthma because

1061
00:58:23,560 --> 00:58:26,480
Speaker 1: the dogs may actually be serving as this kind of vehicle,

1062
00:58:26,640 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 1: this kind of connection for the natural world, microbes that

1063
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 1: the humans used to live in. So you know, we're

1064
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: not getting out as natures into nature as much as

1065
00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:39,400
Speaker 1: we should. But if we're letting the dog do it,

1066
00:58:39,480 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 1: if the dog's really getting its nose into nature, then

1067
00:58:42,360 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: it's kind of rubbing some of that that that natural world,

1068
00:58:45,120 --> 00:58:47,880
Speaker 1: some of that microbiome off on us. Good reason to

1069
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:50,280
Speaker 1: let the dog in the bed, right and you know,

1070
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: naturally there are microbes in the natural world to do

1071
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: his harm, others that are beneficial or at least seem

1072
00:58:55,480 --> 00:58:57,760
Speaker 1: kind of benign and the grand grand balance of things,

1073
00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:00,960
Speaker 1: And that's something we've discussed in the show before as well.

1074
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:04,200
Speaker 1: You know, our bodies are, our beings are a vast

1075
00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:09,480
Speaker 1: multi cellular system inhabited by microbial legions. And you can

1076
00:59:09,560 --> 00:59:12,960
Speaker 1: even make the argument that we are those microbial legions

1077
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: and they're us. Yeah, we might not share the same

1078
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: d n A as them, but they are in a

1079
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 1: sense part of us, right and they play into the

1080
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 1: like our our emotions and our our wants and needs.

1081
00:59:24,120 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 1: Like this, this manifestation of self that we you know,

1082
00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:30,040
Speaker 1: have wrapped up an ego and think of as being

1083
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 1: separate from the world and separate from nature is all

1084
00:59:32,680 --> 00:59:36,760
Speaker 1: a product of of this interplay um in our artificial

1085
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 1: environment's mess with that balance, and and that's today here

1086
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 1: on Earth. So imagine a world such as the Earth

1087
00:59:43,440 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 1: of Silent running with with an even more severely damaged ecosystem,

1088
00:59:48,040 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 1: you know, one in which vegetation has been pretty much eradicated.

1089
00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:54,640
Speaker 1: And now imagine that world spacecraft. Because even if Lowell

1090
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: and the Box continually track in dirt, and even as

1091
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:01,760
Speaker 1: they they distribute plants around on the place and thrust

1092
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: melons at the other crew members. You know, it's uh,

1093
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's still you know, a very artificial

1094
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 1: world outside of the uh, the the farm, outside of

1095
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 1: the forest that they've sustained there. Well, I mean, I

1096
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 1: don't think this was envisioned by the filmmakers, But one

1097
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:19,360
Speaker 1: thing you could say to interpret the film is it's

1098
01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:21,960
Speaker 1: long been a question of how would our microbiome be

1099
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 1: messed up by space travel? Uh and by being confined

1100
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:29,520
Speaker 1: to environments in space or on other planets. Even if

1101
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 1: we bring along a lot of our soil and plants

1102
01:00:32,160 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: with us, you know, there might just be some ways

1103
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: in which the gravity environment, maybe the atmospheric difference, whatever,

1104
01:00:38,200 --> 01:00:42,440
Speaker 1: the the different artificial environments somehow changes the microbial loads

1105
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:45,320
Speaker 1: that were exposed to and that we take into our bodies.

1106
01:00:45,640 --> 01:00:48,680
Speaker 1: And this could this could change us. It could change

1107
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:50,880
Speaker 1: who we are. It could make us sick, It could

1108
01:00:51,200 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 1: affect our mental health, It could do all kinds of

1109
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:56,400
Speaker 1: things that we can't anticipate fully yet. And so I

1110
01:00:56,440 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: wonder if maybe that's getting to Durn's character a little bit,

1111
01:00:59,000 --> 01:01:02,440
Speaker 1: like Durn's yelling people about a cantaloupe because he's even

1112
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:04,680
Speaker 1: though he's the one out there in the forest. The

1113
01:01:04,760 --> 01:01:07,160
Speaker 1: forest and the dome in space doesn't have exactly the

1114
01:01:07,200 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 1: same kind of microbes that would back on Earth, and

1115
01:01:09,440 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: his his microbial his microbiome is off and he's he's

1116
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:15,400
Speaker 1: getting a little antcy. Oh wow. So this is it's

1117
01:01:15,400 --> 01:01:18,800
Speaker 1: almost like the idea of say a people who once

1118
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 1: had you know, an actual uh you know, visual or

1119
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:26,480
Speaker 1: audible connection with God and then when that goes away,

1120
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:31,800
Speaker 1: that you have to sustain faith and faith alone because

1121
01:01:31,880 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: there is no direct, visible sign of the Almighty and

1122
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:37,520
Speaker 1: that could that's kind of what he's doing. He is

1123
01:01:37,560 --> 01:01:40,600
Speaker 1: a profit of the natural world that that via the

1124
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: loss of the biome, the microbiome, uh, microbiome, biomedic connection Uh,

1125
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 1: must now rely on faith. He has faith in the fruit,

1126
01:01:49,400 --> 01:01:53,440
Speaker 1: faith in the cantaloupe, but that actual connection to nature

1127
01:01:53,640 --> 01:01:55,600
Speaker 1: is gone. All right, we need to take one more break,

1128
01:01:55,680 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back to finish up the discussion.

1129
01:01:58,560 --> 01:02:02,760
Speaker 1: Than alright, we're back. Uh. You know, this film also

1130
01:02:02,800 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 1: made me think a lot about you know, Wilson's biophilia hypothesis. Uh. This,

1131
01:02:07,480 --> 01:02:10,360
Speaker 1: we did an entire episode on this in the last

1132
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:13,440
Speaker 1: couple of years. But this is basically the idea is that,

1133
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: you know, we we have this innate tendency to focus

1134
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: on life and lifelike processes and uh in in the

1135
01:02:21,440 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 1: more extreme versions of the hypothesis, there might even be

1136
01:02:24,480 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: a genetic component to that. Yeah. So he basically says, like,

1137
01:02:28,680 --> 01:02:31,800
Speaker 1: we're wired to want to be in and around nature

1138
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:36,480
Speaker 1: and living things that completely synthetic environments are not are

1139
01:02:36,600 --> 01:02:40,080
Speaker 1: not what our minds crave. That there's an inherent predisposition

1140
01:02:40,120 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: against that, and it's not just cultural. Right. So if

1141
01:02:44,560 --> 01:02:47,919
Speaker 1: if biophilia hypothesis is true, and I think it would

1142
01:02:47,920 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: be great if it were, and and EO. Wilson is

1143
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 1: and and and has been one of the I think

1144
01:02:54,200 --> 01:02:58,400
Speaker 1: the greatest minds writing and communicating about our connection with

1145
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,560
Speaker 1: the natural world. But but if that we're not. You

1146
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:03,439
Speaker 1: can see that in the way he shoves his hand

1147
01:03:03,560 --> 01:03:06,920
Speaker 1: into a mound of fire, ants, yeah, look at them

1148
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: biting me. Yeah. And also an unlike Lowell in the film,

1149
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 1: like he's he's very believed, like you, you're like, yes,

1150
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:16,000
Speaker 1: this this guy is not abrasive about it, like you

1151
01:03:16,080 --> 01:03:21,200
Speaker 1: just totally bindo everything he's saying. But if bio philiate

1152
01:03:21,280 --> 01:03:25,360
Speaker 1: hypothesis is true, it's difficult to imagine a species with

1153
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:29,160
Speaker 1: such an innate connection to nature reaching such a fall

1154
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:32,040
Speaker 1: in place as you see the world in Silent Running.

1155
01:03:32,120 --> 01:03:35,720
Speaker 1: You know, because most of the characters that with most

1156
01:03:35,760 --> 01:03:37,960
Speaker 1: of the humans we meet in the movie, and then

1157
01:03:38,200 --> 01:03:41,240
Speaker 1: presumably most of the humans on Earth are totally okay

1158
01:03:41,320 --> 01:03:44,000
Speaker 1: with this, or they've become totally okay with this disconnection

1159
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:47,640
Speaker 1: from nature. Now, another way you could argue it is

1160
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:50,880
Speaker 1: that Again, I don't think this was necessarily intended by

1161
01:03:50,920 --> 01:03:54,560
Speaker 1: the filmmakers, but you could also argue that Lowell's crewmates

1162
01:03:55,160 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: maybe are only they're they're only so happy to disregard

1163
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:03,160
Speaker 1: nature because cause they are the few humans that are

1164
01:04:03,320 --> 01:04:06,720
Speaker 1: exposed to it, Like they're the fact that they can

1165
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 1: be walking through these forests or actually they generally tend

1166
01:04:09,880 --> 01:04:12,560
Speaker 1: to drive through them on little go karts, but that

1167
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: they can drive through these forests and be exposed to nature,

1168
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:19,080
Speaker 1: that is what makes them feel like they don't need it,

1169
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: you know, because you don't appreciate what you've already got,

1170
01:04:22,680 --> 01:04:25,520
Speaker 1: and that maybe all the people back on Earth are miserable.

1171
01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 1: We don't hear from them, We don't know what life

1172
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:30,960
Speaker 1: is like from from their point of view. But perhaps

1173
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:33,560
Speaker 1: these other crewmates are just like there and and not

1174
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:36,120
Speaker 1: appreciating the how lucky they are to be one of

1175
01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: the like five humans who gets to walk among the trees,

1176
01:04:39,840 --> 01:04:41,760
Speaker 1: you know. And this this brings us to another question

1177
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:45,000
Speaker 1: that I had in thinking about the films, something I

1178
01:04:45,040 --> 01:04:47,080
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about much in the past with past

1179
01:04:47,160 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 1: viewings of it. But I started wondering, like this, this

1180
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:53,920
Speaker 1: earth that we're told about, an earth where like the

1181
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:57,240
Speaker 1: vast majority of or if not all, botanical life it

1182
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:01,680
Speaker 1: is over Like what would that even? Like? Uh? You

1183
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:05,360
Speaker 1: know what? Because as we've discussed the connection between the

1184
01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 1: botanical world and and the human world and the world

1185
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:13,480
Speaker 1: of animals, uh is essential. How would a planet exist

1186
01:05:13,600 --> 01:05:16,280
Speaker 1: without that? What would a world without plants be? Right?

1187
01:05:16,800 --> 01:05:19,360
Speaker 1: And I ran across a couple of sources on this.

1188
01:05:19,520 --> 01:05:23,040
Speaker 1: There's an article from New Scientists from two thousand seven

1189
01:05:23,720 --> 01:05:26,800
Speaker 1: titled I have all the oxygen producing plants disappeared suddenly?

1190
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:28,560
Speaker 1: How long would it take for us to die? And

1191
01:05:28,600 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 1: then I also found a really good source on the

1192
01:05:30,200 --> 01:05:35,440
Speaker 1: website for the university. You see Santa Barbara at U, C. S. B.

1193
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:39,480
Speaker 1: Dot E d U and Uh. Both of them get

1194
01:05:39,520 --> 01:05:41,800
Speaker 1: into it. They start breaking down the numbers and there's

1195
01:05:41,840 --> 01:05:43,840
Speaker 1: no like definitive answer for this because you end up

1196
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:46,880
Speaker 1: having to You're talking about an entire planet's worth of atmosphere,

1197
01:05:47,080 --> 01:05:49,760
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and then the the interplay between

1198
01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:52,560
Speaker 1: the entire botanical world and the entire animal world and

1199
01:05:52,760 --> 01:05:56,760
Speaker 1: and other factors as well. Um, basically, the big take

1200
01:05:56,800 --> 01:06:01,320
Speaker 1: home is that of course, ultimately we would die, all die.

1201
01:06:01,560 --> 01:06:04,840
Speaker 1: It would be it would be a catastrophic That's that

1202
01:06:04,960 --> 01:06:07,520
Speaker 1: much is for certain. I mean, the basic school grade

1203
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 1: explanation still applies. Animals breathe oxygen and excel c O two.

1204
01:06:11,440 --> 01:06:14,040
Speaker 1: Plants need the C O two and produce oxygen. We're

1205
01:06:14,080 --> 01:06:16,240
Speaker 1: in balance all of us and humans do not have

1206
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:20,240
Speaker 1: a private privileged status in all of this. According to UCSB,

1207
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 1: if all the plants went away, just like magically they're gone, um,

1208
01:06:26,800 --> 01:06:29,160
Speaker 1: you know, it wouldn't be an end to oxygen on Earth.

1209
01:06:29,800 --> 01:06:32,760
Speaker 1: We'd still have an atmosphere's worth of oxygen. And that's

1210
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:38,920
Speaker 1: roughly two quintillion pounds of oxygen remaining. It sounds like

1211
01:06:38,960 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 1: plenty of right, But of course it's not just us, right,

1212
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:43,960
Speaker 1: there are all these animals that need it to So

1213
01:06:44,080 --> 01:06:46,120
Speaker 1: to simplify it, okay, let's go ahead and go off

1214
01:06:46,160 --> 01:06:49,840
Speaker 1: all the animals, because it's not expressly stated in Silent Running,

1215
01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:51,920
Speaker 1: but we might well imagine that most of not all

1216
01:06:51,920 --> 01:06:54,560
Speaker 1: of the animals are gone as well. Why Okay, so

1217
01:06:54,720 --> 01:06:56,520
Speaker 1: if all the animals were gone as well, that would

1218
01:06:56,600 --> 01:07:00,439
Speaker 1: leave the human species with one thousand and four year's

1219
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:03,920
Speaker 1: worth of oxygen. Okay, that's one take on it. But

1220
01:07:04,120 --> 01:07:06,080
Speaker 1: they also break it down so that we might be

1221
01:07:06,200 --> 01:07:09,720
Speaker 1: looking at more like one thousand, two hundred years of

1222
01:07:09,760 --> 01:07:12,680
Speaker 1: breathable oxygen. But then the increase in C O two

1223
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:16,640
Speaker 1: would elevate global temperatures and other concerns would also probably

1224
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:19,680
Speaker 1: bring this down even further, and we'd be talking more

1225
01:07:19,840 --> 01:07:23,919
Speaker 1: like one to four centuries of breathable oxygen. Now, another

1226
01:07:23,960 --> 01:07:26,160
Speaker 1: take is that we have several thousands of years worth

1227
01:07:26,840 --> 01:07:29,520
Speaker 1: of breathable oxygen because of the vast pools of oxygen

1228
01:07:29,560 --> 01:07:32,720
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, the origins of which stem from microorganisms

1229
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:35,840
Speaker 1: to begin with. Plus, there would be reserves of oxygen

1230
01:07:36,000 --> 01:07:38,760
Speaker 1: locked up in H two O and in carbon dioxide

1231
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:42,920
Speaker 1: that we can conceivably, you know, breakdown using our technology.

1232
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 1: Certainly we have the technology to send for us into orbit.

1233
01:07:45,840 --> 01:07:48,360
Speaker 1: Then maybe they also have the technology, uh, you know,

1234
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:51,640
Speaker 1: to do some widespread breaking down of ocean waters into

1235
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:56,960
Speaker 1: breathable atmosphere. But another huge issue, a huge issue, is

1236
01:07:57,040 --> 01:08:00,880
Speaker 1: that without plants, the entire food pyramid essentially collapses. Right,

1237
01:08:00,960 --> 01:08:04,000
Speaker 1: What would anything eat? Yeah, so I would. I would

1238
01:08:04,040 --> 01:08:06,680
Speaker 1: sure hope that those disgusting food food cubes that the

1239
01:08:06,760 --> 01:08:09,520
Speaker 1: crew members are eating on the valley forge are tasty

1240
01:08:09,640 --> 01:08:12,360
Speaker 1: and that they don't require plants or animal life. I

1241
01:08:12,400 --> 01:08:14,440
Speaker 1: don't know what they'd be made of. I guess they

1242
01:08:14,480 --> 01:08:17,800
Speaker 1: could be made from what nutrients gained from microbial mats

1243
01:08:17,920 --> 01:08:21,240
Speaker 1: or Sanda bacterias like that. But but otherwise there's a

1244
01:08:21,320 --> 01:08:23,320
Speaker 1: there's a very strong argument to be made that we

1245
01:08:23,400 --> 01:08:27,720
Speaker 1: would starve before we ran out of oxygen um. Now,

1246
01:08:28,120 --> 01:08:32,479
Speaker 1: other uh and estimates really kind of vary. James Lovelock,

1247
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:36,559
Speaker 1: for instance, originator of gaia hypothesis, estimated we'd be looking

1248
01:08:36,640 --> 01:08:40,320
Speaker 1: at half a million years UM And then that New

1249
01:08:40,400 --> 01:08:42,639
Speaker 1: Scientist article I mentioned, they threw out a few different

1250
01:08:42,760 --> 01:08:46,080
Speaker 1: estimates by different folks, ranging from a few hundred years

1251
01:08:46,120 --> 01:08:49,280
Speaker 1: to a few thousand years. Again with the food concerns

1252
01:08:49,439 --> 01:08:52,960
Speaker 1: and possible poisoned air concerns as well, Right, because we'd

1253
01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:55,360
Speaker 1: also be breathing out c O two and pumping CO

1254
01:08:55,600 --> 01:08:57,920
Speaker 1: two into the atmosphere of VR machines that would be

1255
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: not getting processed. But and of course all of this

1256
01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:04,479
Speaker 1: again is is just very broad and big, big picture

1257
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:06,840
Speaker 1: and not getting into all the other challenges that would

1258
01:09:06,840 --> 01:09:10,960
Speaker 1: occur if all the plants died. How does this square

1259
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:13,000
Speaker 1: with the sci fi Earth that is alluded to in

1260
01:09:13,080 --> 01:09:16,040
Speaker 1: Silent Running? You know, could the leaders of such a world,

1261
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:20,160
Speaker 1: could the people and the institutions actually allow uh, such

1262
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:24,040
Speaker 1: a cataclysm to come to pass and then scuttle the

1263
01:09:24,200 --> 01:09:26,880
Speaker 1: key plan to correct it? Surely not. People would never

1264
01:09:27,040 --> 01:09:30,640
Speaker 1: let anything like that happen. Yeah, I will, that's the thing,

1265
01:09:30,760 --> 01:09:32,960
Speaker 1: you know, you would, You would hope not certainly. And

1266
01:09:33,040 --> 01:09:34,920
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid thinking, well, you know, at

1267
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:36,960
Speaker 1: some level, like, surely they wouldn't do that. Why would

1268
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:40,559
Speaker 1: they do this, because there's never a real great reason given, right,

1269
01:09:40,600 --> 01:09:42,240
Speaker 1: They're just like, oh, well, we've got to put these

1270
01:09:42,360 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 1: uh the spaceship back into commercial use, So we're just

1271
01:09:45,320 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 1: jettisoning all these forests, even though presumably they're up there

1272
01:09:49,640 --> 01:09:53,599
Speaker 1: because they want to bring botanical life back to Earth

1273
01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:58,280
Speaker 1: in the future. So um, yeah, details of how we

1274
01:09:58,479 --> 01:10:01,759
Speaker 1: managed to destroy all botanical whole life on Earth side.

1275
01:10:02,080 --> 01:10:04,919
Speaker 1: In this stuff film, I think we can well imagine

1276
01:10:05,000 --> 01:10:09,360
Speaker 1: us as a people, as a species, continuing on, satisfied

1277
01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:13,080
Speaker 1: with assurances from the more optimistic estimates that give us

1278
01:10:13,160 --> 01:10:15,280
Speaker 1: you know, many centuries or even you know, thousands of

1279
01:10:15,400 --> 01:10:17,840
Speaker 1: years to correct the problem. They'll fix it down, they'll

1280
01:10:17,840 --> 01:10:20,080
Speaker 1: fix it down the road. Look at these new technologies

1281
01:10:20,120 --> 01:10:22,519
Speaker 1: are talking about. You know, essentially, we just kicked the

1282
01:10:22,560 --> 01:10:24,680
Speaker 1: can down that that road for our children, for our

1283
01:10:24,720 --> 01:10:28,320
Speaker 1: grandchildren to solve. We take comfort in the pending technologies

1284
01:10:28,439 --> 01:10:32,240
Speaker 1: of orbital for us and life on other world's oxygen

1285
01:10:32,320 --> 01:10:35,760
Speaker 1: extraction and whatever you know process produces those mucky little

1286
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:39,040
Speaker 1: food cubes. You know. We so we'd grow complacent, we'd

1287
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:43,000
Speaker 1: refuse to change, and one day someone might be in

1288
01:10:43,080 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 1: a position to say, you know, these space for us

1289
01:10:45,560 --> 01:10:49,200
Speaker 1: are incredibly expensive. Why are we we dealing with this? Uh,

1290
01:10:49,360 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 1: let's just get rid of them. And I think all

1291
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:54,200
Speaker 1: of that line falls in line with how we have

1292
01:10:54,520 --> 01:10:57,400
Speaker 1: been thinking about our environment, just despite you know a

1293
01:10:57,520 --> 01:11:02,360
Speaker 1: lot of tremendous environmental progress. Uh, you know, certainly just

1294
01:11:02,800 --> 01:11:05,760
Speaker 1: since you know, the since the nineteen seventy uh and

1295
01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:10,920
Speaker 1: despite all the you know, the very passionate voices and environmentalism. Uh,

1296
01:11:11,040 --> 01:11:15,719
Speaker 1: you know, I think, you know, collectively, we can still

1297
01:11:16,080 --> 01:11:19,439
Speaker 1: make these kinds of errors. You know, the world of

1298
01:11:19,520 --> 01:11:23,160
Speaker 1: silent running, which is presented as a cautionary tale. It's

1299
01:11:23,200 --> 01:11:25,360
Speaker 1: not a it's not presented as a hey, what would

1300
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:27,400
Speaker 1: happen of all the forest died? Uh sort of thing.

1301
01:11:27,479 --> 01:11:29,439
Speaker 1: It's like saying, here is what we do not want,

1302
01:11:29,840 --> 01:11:32,200
Speaker 1: but here is a here is a you know, an

1303
01:11:32,240 --> 01:11:36,200
Speaker 1: exaggerated circumstance that is in many ways very much in

1304
01:11:36,360 --> 01:11:39,840
Speaker 1: keeping with how humans think about the environment, or can

1305
01:11:40,000 --> 01:11:43,880
Speaker 1: think about the environment if they don't listen to the

1306
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:48,679
Speaker 1: lolls of the world. I mean, we're obviously facing problems

1307
01:11:48,800 --> 01:11:52,120
Speaker 1: like this right now. I mean, the most pressing global

1308
01:11:52,240 --> 01:11:55,360
Speaker 1: environmental problem now being climate change. And like it's one

1309
01:11:55,400 --> 01:11:58,080
Speaker 1: of those cases where it's it's pretty clear what steps

1310
01:11:58,160 --> 01:12:00,560
Speaker 1: we need to be taking right now, or you know,

1311
01:12:00,720 --> 01:12:03,559
Speaker 1: really need to be taking yesterday, what we absolutely need

1312
01:12:03,640 --> 01:12:07,160
Speaker 1: to be taking right now, and people that people just

1313
01:12:07,200 --> 01:12:09,280
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with it. They just rather I mean,

1314
01:12:09,400 --> 01:12:13,200
Speaker 1: you've got some people, I think, who managed to delude

1315
01:12:13,240 --> 01:12:16,719
Speaker 1: themselves into thinking nas you know, it's all a hoax

1316
01:12:16,840 --> 01:12:20,040
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's Chinese hoax or it's whatever. It's just

1317
01:12:20,640 --> 01:12:23,160
Speaker 1: a bunch of alarmism. And then I think you've got

1318
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:25,600
Speaker 1: a lot of other people who they don't really know

1319
01:12:25,680 --> 01:12:27,600
Speaker 1: of any reason to disagree with the science. They just

1320
01:12:27,760 --> 01:12:29,800
Speaker 1: rather not think about it, you know, they just rather

1321
01:12:29,920 --> 01:12:34,280
Speaker 1: kicked the can. And the day is a kick in

1322
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:39,360
Speaker 1: the can, even as a as an opportunity grow mighty short. Exactly. Yeah,

1323
01:12:39,400 --> 01:12:41,519
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I think it was. It was actually

1324
01:12:41,560 --> 01:12:46,880
Speaker 1: Alan watts Um, the Canadian science fiction author who you

1325
01:12:46,960 --> 01:12:49,760
Speaker 1: know who, who pointed especially to the nineteen seventies as

1326
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:51,960
Speaker 1: being like the time when you know, we should have

1327
01:12:52,040 --> 01:12:55,840
Speaker 1: gotten really serious about environmentalism, and if we had gotten

1328
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:59,880
Speaker 1: really serious about environmentalism, we could have avoided the even

1329
01:13:00,200 --> 01:13:05,320
Speaker 1: tensor scenario we find ourselves in today. Um, but here

1330
01:13:05,360 --> 01:13:10,120
Speaker 1: we are, but like the scenario in Silent Running, all

1331
01:13:10,240 --> 01:13:14,200
Speaker 1: the forests have not been jettisoned into space. Yet. We're

1332
01:13:14,280 --> 01:13:17,280
Speaker 1: we're we're we're nowhere near there. Just yet we need

1333
01:13:17,360 --> 01:13:19,840
Speaker 1: a Joan Bias song to get everybody on the same

1334
01:13:19,920 --> 01:13:22,000
Speaker 1: page here. I know, I wish we could actually play

1335
01:13:22,040 --> 01:13:24,280
Speaker 1: one of those Joan Bias songs on the podcast, But

1336
01:13:24,920 --> 01:13:28,200
Speaker 1: I think that would be problematic. I found some some

1337
01:13:28,600 --> 01:13:31,280
Speaker 1: some music that has subtracts a similar vibe that perhaps

1338
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:32,920
Speaker 1: we can lead out with here at the end of

1339
01:13:32,920 --> 01:13:34,920
Speaker 1: the episode. So often we want to play a song

1340
01:13:35,040 --> 01:13:37,599
Speaker 1: on the podcast, but it all lies behind the door

1341
01:13:37,760 --> 01:13:41,360
Speaker 1: of the the intellectual property jail that we cannot free.

1342
01:13:41,680 --> 01:13:43,320
Speaker 1: The only place we would be able to play it

1343
01:13:43,360 --> 01:13:46,920
Speaker 1: would be in orbit bord. No, actually, probably not, because

1344
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:50,000
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these these uh, the legal

1345
01:13:50,080 --> 01:13:53,719
Speaker 1: documentations for I P like they talk about the entire universe.

1346
01:13:54,120 --> 01:13:55,640
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I saw that. I'm like,

1347
01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:59,120
Speaker 1: really with the entire universe, Like I would go to

1348
01:13:59,280 --> 01:14:02,760
Speaker 1: Mars and I still couldn't play this Joan Baez song. Um.

1349
01:14:02,920 --> 01:14:04,800
Speaker 1: You know, even if Joan Bayez gave me the thumbs

1350
01:14:04,880 --> 01:14:06,920
Speaker 1: up like a record company would be, would would just

1351
01:14:06,960 --> 01:14:09,719
Speaker 1: say no, I'm sorry. The label says the entire universe.

1352
01:14:10,120 --> 01:14:13,760
Speaker 1: So unless send a robotic probe to serve you, you

1353
01:14:13,800 --> 01:14:16,720
Speaker 1: would have to extend into an alternate universe in which

1354
01:14:16,760 --> 01:14:21,880
Speaker 1: the rights were different. Commander Lamb, you've been served, all right.

1355
01:14:22,360 --> 01:14:25,280
Speaker 1: Well there you have it. A silent running uh still

1356
01:14:25,360 --> 01:14:28,400
Speaker 1: one of my favorite films, very influential at this without

1357
01:14:28,479 --> 01:14:30,920
Speaker 1: this film. We wouldn't have Mystery Science Theater three thousand either,

1358
01:14:31,040 --> 01:14:34,519
Speaker 1: because clearly modeled on ye. Joe Hodgson is is very

1359
01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:36,920
Speaker 1: up and forward about that that like he saw it

1360
01:14:37,040 --> 01:14:39,559
Speaker 1: in college and it was a huge inspiration to him.

1361
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:41,840
Speaker 1: And uh, and that's how we ended up with a

1362
01:14:41,960 --> 01:14:45,439
Speaker 1: human and three robots in space watching terrible movies instead

1363
01:14:45,479 --> 01:14:47,880
Speaker 1: of tending to forest. The film is a yeah, films

1364
01:14:47,880 --> 01:14:50,559
Speaker 1: out there. It's available wherever you get your movies. Uh

1365
01:14:50,680 --> 01:14:52,439
Speaker 1: and uh, you know we're gonna go ahead and call

1366
01:14:52,560 --> 01:14:54,800
Speaker 1: this episode, but again, we're trying to do one of

1367
01:14:54,840 --> 01:14:58,519
Speaker 1: these a month. We've had some wonderful suggestions from listeners

1368
01:14:58,560 --> 01:15:01,439
Speaker 1: already about what films we should consider covering in the future,

1369
01:15:01,800 --> 01:15:03,600
Speaker 1: but we want to continue to hear from you. And

1370
01:15:03,760 --> 01:15:06,280
Speaker 1: also if you have thoughts about Silent Running, did you

1371
01:15:06,360 --> 01:15:08,680
Speaker 1: love it? Did you hate it? Uh? Did it? What

1372
01:15:09,000 --> 01:15:12,080
Speaker 1: role did it have in your your own upbringing? Uh?

1373
01:15:12,400 --> 01:15:14,479
Speaker 1: Share your thoughts with us. Did you see in the

1374
01:15:14,600 --> 01:15:16,599
Speaker 1: theater when it came out? I would love to hear

1375
01:15:16,720 --> 01:15:20,240
Speaker 1: about that experience as well. In the meantime, heading over

1376
01:15:20,320 --> 01:15:22,439
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, Uh, that

1377
01:15:22,640 --> 01:15:26,200
Speaker 1: is that's the Valley Forge of our operations here. That's

1378
01:15:26,240 --> 01:15:29,439
Speaker 1: our mothership UM. It has links out to our very

1379
01:15:29,520 --> 01:15:31,560
Speaker 1: social media accounts, and it also has a module on

1380
01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:33,759
Speaker 1: it that, instead of being a forest, is our discussion

1381
01:15:33,840 --> 01:15:37,599
Speaker 1: module UM on Facebook. That's just just a discussion group

1382
01:15:37,640 --> 01:15:39,479
Speaker 1: where a lot of folks hang out and discuss the show.

1383
01:15:39,880 --> 01:15:43,679
Speaker 1: It's the one lovely green place on Facebook. It is. Yeah, long,

1384
01:15:43,760 --> 01:15:46,439
Speaker 1: may it not be jettisoned into the black avoid of

1385
01:15:47,000 --> 01:15:51,040
Speaker 1: social media emptiness. But anyway, those are all wonderful things

1386
01:15:51,080 --> 01:15:52,680
Speaker 1: to to check out. If you want to support the show,

1387
01:15:52,800 --> 01:15:54,479
Speaker 1: just make sure you rate and review us wherever you

1388
01:15:54,560 --> 01:15:56,759
Speaker 1: have the power to do so. Leave us some stars,

1389
01:15:56,960 --> 01:16:00,439
Speaker 1: leave a nice comment. It really helps out the helps

1390
01:16:00,439 --> 01:16:03,160
Speaker 1: out the show when it comes to the almighty algorithms

1391
01:16:03,240 --> 01:16:06,080
Speaker 1: that rule our world. Huge thanks as always to our

1392
01:16:06,160 --> 01:16:09,720
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer, Tori Harrison. If you'd like to get

1393
01:16:09,760 --> 01:16:11,960
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1394
01:16:11,960 --> 01:16:14,360
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just

1395
01:16:14,520 --> 01:16:17,960
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at

1396
01:16:18,080 --> 01:16:29,639
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow

1397
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:32,000
Speaker 1: Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.

1398
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:34,320
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

1399
01:16:34,400 --> 01:16:37,040
Speaker 1: Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1400
01:16:37,040 --> 01:16:37,679
Speaker 1: favorite shows.