Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, of course, we're
Speaker 1: going to be doing a movie episode. That's right. We've
Speaker 1: been trying to do one of these a month just
Speaker 1: because there's so many, so many films we love, and
Speaker 1: so many films that either have wonderful tie ins to
Speaker 1: scientific and cultural topics that we've discussed on the show,
Speaker 1: um or you know, they allow us to discuss new
Speaker 1: things and new angles. It wouldn't necessarily necessitate an entire
Speaker 1: episode on their own. Alright, So what's on the docket today, Well,
Speaker 1: this month we're looking at really one of my I
Speaker 1: have to say, it's one of my favorite films. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of thinking about films you saw
Speaker 1: at a definite point in your life that had an
Speaker 1: impact on your your your outlook. Uh. And the film
Speaker 1: is ninety two is Silent Running. I saw it for
Speaker 1: the first time this weekend. Yeah, I've never seen it before.
Speaker 1: I'd seen like stills from it. I think I've seen
Speaker 1: stills of the robots because it's a very robot heavy film,
Speaker 1: despite being one obsessed with nature and environmental themes of
Speaker 1: the robots getting awful lot of screen time they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if you're having trouble picturing the film, if
Speaker 1: we just mentioned like Judesic Gnomes in space with with
Speaker 1: forests and them Bruce Dern and then three domain diminutive
Speaker 1: robots that kind of shamble around, that's that's silent running
Speaker 1: in a nutshell. Now. This was directed by Douglas Trumbull, right,
Speaker 1: who was like a visual effects guy for many years. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he provided special photographic effects for such classic sci
Speaker 1: fi films as two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,
Speaker 1: one of the best close encounters of the third kind,
Speaker 1: Star Trek, the motion picture Blade Runner, and then later
Speaker 1: on The Tree of Life. Uh. And then it was
Speaker 1: in the family too, because his father was a special
Speaker 1: effects pioneer who worked on ninety nine The Whiz of Oz.
Speaker 1: You can really feel the spirit of the sixties in
Speaker 1: this movie from seventy two, but maybe you can also
Speaker 1: feel the despair of the seventies, and it is both
Speaker 1: of those spirits come crashing together in Silent Running. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought about I've been thinking about this a lot recently,
Speaker 1: in part because we're researching episodes about psychedelics and about
Speaker 1: psychedelic research, and then the the decades in which actual
Speaker 1: medical research regarding psychedelics just completely languished. And it always
Speaker 1: makes me think of Hunter S. Thompson's commentary about the
Speaker 1: the the wave of the of the nineteen sixties crashing
Speaker 1: and falling back. Uh and and once again, I think
Speaker 1: you know that ties into to this film as well.
Speaker 1: Before we continue, though, let's let's have just a quick
Speaker 1: audio sample from the original trailer for Silent Running, just
Speaker 1: to remind everybody a little bit about what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. A space convoy on a strange voyage carrying
Speaker 1: a rare cargo. The forests, the plants, the growing things
Speaker 1: doomed to extinction on Earth. We have count received orders
Speaker 1: to abandon that nupler, destruct all the forests, and returned
Speaker 1: our ships to commercial So we're going you blow up discourse.
Speaker 1: Thank you now more. Volga Silent Running characlysm in outer space,
Speaker 1: every moment bringing its own danger as man explores the
Speaker 1: mysteries of an unknown and limitless universe. Valiport volliport, little wrong,
Speaker 1: You will be out, you're accelerating. I got a premature,
Speaker 1: so I think we have a taste in that that trailer.
Speaker 1: This is a very ranty film, oh man. A lot
Speaker 1: of the movie also, and besides the scenes with robots
Speaker 1: just kind of hanging out and not really executing much
Speaker 1: uh much having to do with furtherance of the plot,
Speaker 1: just moving around and doing things, there's also a lot
Speaker 1: of Bruce Dern chastising the camera and giving sermons to
Speaker 1: other characters about their lack of appreciation for nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a very it's a very weird movie
Speaker 1: in that regard, and you know that, thinking of you
Speaker 1: talked about how you watched it for the first time
Speaker 1: just the other day. I watched it for the first time,
Speaker 1: probably like in a Sunday afternoon on cable TV in
Speaker 1: the nineties when I was like in junior high. I guess,
Speaker 1: uh and and you know air on a any just
Speaker 1: like matinee showing of it, and I just like turned
Speaker 1: over to it and was just sucked in by this
Speaker 1: film that doesn't have much in the way of action.
Speaker 1: There's there are a few key action scenes, but it
Speaker 1: is not an action film. It is a it is
Speaker 1: an environmental science fiction film. I mean I'd also say
Speaker 1: it's not even really a very plot heavy film. There's
Speaker 1: basically a situation and that situation comes about and then
Speaker 1: that's about it. I mean, the huge swaths of the
Speaker 1: runtime are just characters kind of hanging out. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: it benefits I think from three major factors. You know,
Speaker 1: if we're just sort of pull these out and then
Speaker 1: realized it's complicated when you try and like pull the
Speaker 1: key elements out of a picture when everything needs to
Speaker 1: essentially be a cohesive hole. And then I think in
Speaker 1: this picture is but you have Bruce Dern's performance, which
Speaker 1: is fabulous. I mean, Bruce Dern is was and is
Speaker 1: an acting treasure. I mean, often relegated to the villain
Speaker 1: rolls for sure, but capable of much more. And I
Speaker 1: think we see, uh, we see a little bit of
Speaker 1: that in this film. And then the other key aspects
Speaker 1: of this are they the sets look fabulous, Um, the
Speaker 1: models look fabulous, The effects are all wonderful. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you have you have some wonderful music in the film too.
Speaker 1: So again, this this film is a product of the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties spilling over into the early nineteen seventies, uh,
Speaker 1: and and it is it's for several reasons for stars.
Speaker 1: The studio apparently decided to give more first time directors
Speaker 1: a shot after the success of nineteen sixty nine is
Speaker 1: Easy Rider, which is directed by Dennis Hopper, said Dennis
Speaker 1: Hopper's first director red directorial feature and uh. In anyway,
Speaker 1: the films to come in the wake of that included
Speaker 1: Silent Running. Also the music, so Joan Bayaz uh submitted
Speaker 1: like to two songs for this film, Silent Running and
Speaker 1: Rejoice in the Sun, both of which are prominently featured.
Speaker 1: And for anyone not familiar with Joan Bayazz, first of all,
Speaker 1: go look up Joan Bayazz and and these songs in
Speaker 1: particular are currently on streaming services. But she was a
Speaker 1: major social and political musical force of the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and beyond playing at the original Woodstock. And she's always
Speaker 1: advocated civil rights, environmentalism, and human rights including l g P,
Speaker 1: d q I A plus rights. Um. So I mean,
Speaker 1: all these elements I think really give it a feel
Speaker 1: that that sets it apart from everything else. Like so,
Speaker 1: if you were watching looking around for any kind of
Speaker 1: science fiction on TV in the in the late nineties
Speaker 1: like this stood out. This was a different type of
Speaker 1: space and robots film. It's from another dimension. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's got it really does have this feeling of the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies culture coming together. But also it's a
Speaker 1: very weird combination of elements. It's got these robots, but
Speaker 1: the environmental themes. It's got these great special effects and
Speaker 1: like practical miniature effects, you know, which watching movies like
Speaker 1: this really just makes me simmer with rage at the
Speaker 1: c g I age. You know, I'm so sick of
Speaker 1: all the c g I space ships. I wish they'd
Speaker 1: bring back the miniature models and you know in the
Speaker 1: backdrops and the painted sets and everything. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, they were so good, and those skills still exist. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're just not being employed for the most part with
Speaker 1: motion pictures. Yeah, but then you've got that, and so
Speaker 1: those like sci fi special effects are clashing with just
Speaker 1: really in your face Joan Baya's musical numbers. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's a strange, unique kind of movie. I don't I
Speaker 1: can't think of another thing I've seen like it. So
Speaker 1: let's talk to just a little bit about the plot,
Speaker 1: just to remind everybody who's seen it before and refresh
Speaker 1: everyone else. We're gonna I guess I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: avoid any real spoilers here in terms of the end
Speaker 1: of the film. But you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: go into the film spoiler free, pause this, uh this podcast,
Speaker 1: go watch it and then come back. So the basic synopsis,
Speaker 1: it's the future. The planet Earth is essentially dying. A
Speaker 1: great dying has ravage botanical life on our planet, and
Speaker 1: the remaining shreds of botanical life and some animal life
Speaker 1: now thrive solely within a series of geodesic domes that
Speaker 1: are affixed to a spaceship called the Valley Forge, and
Speaker 1: the Valley Forges orbiting just outside the orbit of Saturn,
Speaker 1: and here a four person crew tends to things. That
Speaker 1: includes botanist Freeman Lowell, who's our our main character, played
Speaker 1: by Bruce Den, and three helper robots named Huey, Dewey
Speaker 1: and Louie Well. Originally, no, originally they have robot names.
Speaker 1: They're called like Drone number one, that's Drone number two,
Speaker 1: and then Bruce Den, in a in a moment of
Speaker 1: sort of magical thinking, names them. And it said that
Speaker 1: moment that they seem to acquire personalities that they don't
Speaker 1: seem to have had before. Yeah, the end this occurs
Speaker 1: later when it's when it's just a durn. So how
Speaker 1: does it just become a situation of only Bruce Den's
Speaker 1: character in Three Robots. Well, basically, one day an order
Speaker 1: comes down, uh that all the forest have to be
Speaker 1: jettisoned and detonated with new clear ball with nuclear weapons. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then the and the rest of the crew just
Speaker 1: take this and stride. They're like, all right, it's time
Speaker 1: to go home. Time to ditch these uh these forests
Speaker 1: and head back. But Lowell is very upset by this
Speaker 1: and finally breaks and betrays his fellow crew members to
Speaker 1: save one of the save the Last Forest pod and
Speaker 1: uh he ends up faking a malfunction and then takes
Speaker 1: off through Saturn's rings with the World's Last forest and uh.
Speaker 1: You know what follows is a story of of survival loneliness,
Speaker 1: thus the naming of the robots and the bonding with
Speaker 1: the robots. But then also you know this this environmental message. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's clear that the orientation of the film is
Speaker 1: a pro environmentalist one, though it's not quite clear exactly
Speaker 1: how much we're supposed to agree with everything Durn says.
Speaker 1: I mean, Durn's character gives these monologues where he excoriates
Speaker 1: his crew members for being satisfied with this horrible synthetic
Speaker 1: existence that they're living where you know, they only eat
Speaker 1: this pre package freeze dried junk, that that they got
Speaker 1: his rations from Earth. Whereas he picks you know, living
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables from the forest, he picks cantle opes
Speaker 1: and he sits there eating cantle open and just like
Speaker 1: attacking them for putting that garbage in their mouths uh,
Speaker 1: and and talking about how they don't care about the
Speaker 1: trees and they don't care about the forest, and they
Speaker 1: really they don't seem to care. They're just not bothered
Speaker 1: by the fact that Earth doesn't have any forests anymore.
Speaker 1: They just want to get home, and seemingly, uh, you
Speaker 1: are led to believe that they would be happy with
Speaker 1: the life of sort of bland synthetic consumer existence and
Speaker 1: entirely artificial environments with no exposure to plants their animals.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, it's it's like Bruce Tern's character
Speaker 1: is the spirit of the nineteen sixties speaking to these
Speaker 1: denizens of the nineteen seventies and saying like how can
Speaker 1: how can you do this? Like how can you abandon
Speaker 1: these principles? Um? And uh? And in doing so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bruce Tern's character, his performance is very abrasive at times.
Speaker 1: You know, he comes off as a real curmudgeon. Uh.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know they're also an idealist and it's
Speaker 1: it is kind of an interesting experience experiment to sort
Speaker 1: of take that apart and figure out, well, what's why
Speaker 1: is he so abrasive? He is, he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: so abrasive. How are we supposed to feel about him? Um?
Speaker 1: Is part of this just what happens when you cast
Speaker 1: a character actor like Bruce Dern in this role. Bruce Dern,
Speaker 1: who had just come off this was just on the
Speaker 1: heels of the film The Cowboys, in which he killed
Speaker 1: John Wayne's character by shooting him in the back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like the ultimate dishonorable scumbag move in
Speaker 1: the Western genre. Yeah, except maybe cheating by drinking clean water. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He played a real real villain in that picture. Uh.
Speaker 1: And interestingly enough, I was looking around at reviews from
Speaker 1: when this came out, and Dern's casting is it seems
Speaker 1: to be a divisive aspect of the film, so some
Speaker 1: critics thought he was great. Like critics who maybe were
Speaker 1: a little lukewarm on other aspects of the film were like, well,
Speaker 1: Bruce Dern's terrific and though while others said, hey, it's
Speaker 1: really difficult to empathize with this character. Uh, and that ultimately,
Speaker 1: perhaps during his performance ends up hurting the message of
Speaker 1: the film. I don't. I don't think I would go
Speaker 1: that far. But you know, obviously he's an actor who
Speaker 1: already had a career based on playing at times dislikable
Speaker 1: characters and uh, and he's still going strong in that
Speaker 1: department today at age a D three. I wonder what
Speaker 1: the equivalent of this casting would be today, Like, who's
Speaker 1: somebody that you would cast in this role where they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like this divine messenger of environmental hope but
Speaker 1: would come off maybe a bit abrace it. I would
Speaker 1: like to see a movie that's got an environmental conservation
Speaker 1: message where the champion of the environment is Michael Ironside,
Speaker 1: and that's even more difficult to picture. You can't destroy
Speaker 1: these forests. Ironside is clearly an actor that was made
Speaker 1: to play the sort of character who gets who gets
Speaker 1: Jettis and a board and the forest and exploded, not
Speaker 1: so much the savior of the of the Pods. But
Speaker 1: they're different types of villain actors, right, I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like Michael Ironside is the classic heavy He's the hinchman,
Speaker 1: the tough guy, the tough bad guy. Bruce Dearn is
Speaker 1: more kind of the scumbag. Yeah he played. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did play a lot of like like sniveling scumbag characters
Speaker 1: in his in his life, in his life. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something that I still don't have a firm
Speaker 1: answer for, like how how I feel about his performance.
Speaker 1: But I feel like one of the reasons I connected
Speaker 1: with the film so much as a kid is that like,
Speaker 1: here's this guy who he is a loner, you know,
Speaker 1: and and like here I am, you know, as a
Speaker 1: junior high kid who's you know, hasn't seems to have
Speaker 1: nothing in common with anybody else in my school, and
Speaker 1: and you know, I can, I can connect with him
Speaker 1: on some level. And his only friends their robots. I
Speaker 1: would love to have had robots as friends, you know,
Speaker 1: at the time, and and so you know that kind
Speaker 1: of that that spoke to me as well, and of course,
Speaker 1: he's an idealist. He's trying to he's doing this thing
Speaker 1: that is that that he sees as very heroic, and
Speaker 1: I feel like everybody at that age especially connects with that,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah. And then as as as you grow older,
Speaker 1: I think a role like this you keep coming back to,
Speaker 1: and maybe you end up being more forgiving of of
Speaker 1: of the character's faults because you're like, you agree with
Speaker 1: the basic idea. Maybe you don't agree with his use
Speaker 1: of murder, right, but still you're you you agree with
Speaker 1: his his basic ideology here that you know, the forests
Speaker 1: are worth saying, that nature is worth saying, that that
Speaker 1: connection is is vital and human. Well, it really does
Speaker 1: ask you to think about something that that becomes more
Speaker 1: profound the more you think about it. What is the
Speaker 1: inherent value of nature? And this is something we'll come
Speaker 1: back to as we discuss more about the movie later
Speaker 1: on in the episode, But we often today think about
Speaker 1: environmental conservation in terms of the material benefits to humans
Speaker 1: provided by the by environmental conservation, you you don't want
Speaker 1: to destroy natural habitats, you don't want to deforce the
Speaker 1: landscape and all that kind of stuff, because it does
Speaker 1: lots of bad things when you know they're they're cascading
Speaker 1: negative effects throughout the world when you do that. Um.
Speaker 1: But there there's also a deeper questions, like what if
Speaker 1: there was just one forest left and a dome out
Speaker 1: in space and it wouldn't affect anybody on Earth, whether
Speaker 1: or not that dome state alive, would you fight to
Speaker 1: save that forest? Does the forest have value in itself? Anyway?
Speaker 1: We can return to that. So I thought maybe we
Speaker 1: should explore the sort of pure scientific question of growing
Speaker 1: plants in space. Could you grow a forest in space
Speaker 1: inside the geodesic dome on a space ship? If so,
Speaker 1: how would you do it? And do scientists who think
Speaker 1: about space colonization take this idea seriously? What kind of
Speaker 1: challenges do they expect? So, just because it's a recent
Speaker 1: example that I read about, I want to talk for
Speaker 1: a minute about the the Chinese moon lander. I hope
Speaker 1: I want to pronounce this right. I think it's the
Speaker 1: chung U for yes, this is named for the goddess
Speaker 1: who who resides on the moon, uh, the the wife
Speaker 1: of the great Archer. Right. So, the the archer Ye
Speaker 1: shoots down the nine surplus sons, leaving just the one son.
Speaker 1: As a result, he gets the elixir of immortality and
Speaker 1: his wife, Chunga is I think there are different versions
Speaker 1: of the story about how she drinks it, but she
Speaker 1: ends up drinking it and then goes to the Moon
Speaker 1: to live there. Um And so of course that's that's
Speaker 1: a good name for a lunar lander, right, And there
Speaker 1: have been four of these, now, these these four different
Speaker 1: lunar missions from the Chinese Space Program. This is the
Speaker 1: fourth in the series, and in January of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: the Changa four lander set down on the far side
Speaker 1: of the Moon, at the side that always faces away
Speaker 1: from the Earth, of course, because the Moon is tidally locked.
Speaker 1: So it landed in this massive impact basin on the
Speaker 1: far side of the Moon called the South Pole Aitken Basin,
Speaker 1: specifically within a crater called Von Carmen. And one of
Speaker 1: the experiments brought along on the Chongo four mission was
Speaker 1: a biological payload of cotton seeds inside a tiny biosphere
Speaker 1: which was supplied with soil, water, a small contained atmosphere chamber,
Speaker 1: and a heater, and after the spacecraft landed, the seeds hatched,
Speaker 1: and the Chinese Space Program even published a little photo
Speaker 1: from the inside of the chamber with green sprouts on
Speaker 1: the far side of the moon. And it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I've got a picture here for you to look at, Robert.
Speaker 1: It looks like a little jungle of spinach underneath the
Speaker 1: plastic net. Yeah, and then the plastic net kind of
Speaker 1: looks like one of the domes from the from Silent
Speaker 1: Running Clear Bias. But of course it was not to be.
Speaker 1: It would not last very long. The heater in the
Speaker 1: little biosphere did not hold out, and so when the
Speaker 1: night set in on the far side of the moon.
Speaker 1: Of course, the moon has you know, longer days and
Speaker 1: night cycles because of its tidal locking with the Earth.
Speaker 1: When the nights set in on the far side of
Speaker 1: the moon, local temperatures reached about negative fifty two degrees
Speaker 1: celsius from negative sixty two degrees fahrenheit, and the cotton
Speaker 1: sprouts froze and died about a week after or the
Speaker 1: experiment began. And furthermore, the Chinese media reported that the
Speaker 1: cotton seeds were not the only species within the biosphere
Speaker 1: which also contained rape seed potato A rabbidopsis, which is
Speaker 1: a brassica plant that is often deployed in space missions
Speaker 1: and uh experiments with growing plants beyond Earth, as well
Speaker 1: as fruit flies and yeast, and apparently nothing except the
Speaker 1: cotton registered any growth. So it can be hard to
Speaker 1: grow life in space. And and this was in a
Speaker 1: sealed container on the relatively nearby Moon. Like, wouldn't the
Speaker 1: problem get even harder if you're talking about trying to
Speaker 1: grow a whole ecosystem, an entire forest in a ship
Speaker 1: in deep space. It seems like an almost impossible problem,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah. And of course in silent running like
Speaker 1: we begin with the forest being situated further away from
Speaker 1: the planet, and then developments in the plot just lead
Speaker 1: it to greater distances exactly. So the Chung of four
Speaker 1: experiment was by no means the first attempt to grow
Speaker 1: plants beyond Earth. I think it was the first attempt
Speaker 1: to grow them on the Moon. There have been many
Speaker 1: experiments over the decades with growing plants in space. Lots
Speaker 1: of early space missions involved simply carrying seeds into space
Speaker 1: and then bringing them back to Earth to see if
Speaker 1: they would grow normally. I think there was concern about
Speaker 1: how primarily radiation, but perhaps other space conditions, maybe micro
Speaker 1: gravity and so forth, how these would affect the seeds,
Speaker 1: you know, would they grow normally if you just brought
Speaker 1: them back and planted them. And in general, the seeds
Speaker 1: taken into space seem completely unaffected. You bring them home
Speaker 1: and they're fine. In fact, all throughout the United States
Speaker 1: you can visit so called moon trees. These are trees
Speaker 1: planted in public spaces from seeds that were taken into
Speaker 1: orbit around the Moon by the Apollo fourteen command module,
Speaker 1: and they grew fine. You can actually like look up
Speaker 1: lists of these and see if you can visit a
Speaker 1: moon tree near you. But the first plants actually grown
Speaker 1: from seeds in space were of the species A rabbit
Speaker 1: Opsis thaliana, which is one of the same plants that
Speaker 1: Chinese lander brought this year, but which did not sprout.
Speaker 1: And this was aboard the Russian space station the Salute
Speaker 1: in nineteen two, and since then lots of plant experiments
Speaker 1: have been conducted, and astronauts regularly experiment with cultivating plants
Speaker 1: on the I S S. So I guess the question
Speaker 1: is what have we learned from all these experiments? What's
Speaker 1: it like to grow plants in space? So a few
Speaker 1: takeaways as noted by Dr Anna Lisa Paul, an investigator
Speaker 1: on the Advanced Plant Experiment or APEX experiment UH number one.
Speaker 1: Of course, seeds taken into space and then return to
Speaker 1: Earth consistently grow and don't show any changes. But if
Speaker 1: you let the seeds germinate in space, there are differences
Speaker 1: in how they grow. At first, we expected, like the
Speaker 1: trophic patterns, that the growth patterns in plant development to
Speaker 1: be different because of gravity. Right, you would think that
Speaker 1: the well gravity pulls the roots down and that's how
Speaker 1: they know to grow downward. But actually that's not entirely
Speaker 1: what we find. Some experiments have found that that some
Speaker 1: plant are extremely sensitive to even very very tiny amounts
Speaker 1: of gravity and can detect very very weak gravitational fields
Speaker 1: and be manipulated by them. But also plants tend to
Speaker 1: just grow toward light, with their roots generally growing in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction from the light, but with individual patterns
Speaker 1: determined by their genes. Also, the directionality of light is
Speaker 1: very important and determining growth patterns for plants in space.
Speaker 1: If there's a clear light source from one direction, like
Speaker 1: the sun would be on Earth, the plants tend to
Speaker 1: grow toward that. But if the light sources diffuse, like
Speaker 1: the sort of lighting the you know, the soft lighting
Speaker 1: you would get in a closed room. Then their growth
Speaker 1: patterns are often very different and can be altered from
Speaker 1: what you would normally see on Earth. Now, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that we've discovered that healthy plants can grow in
Speaker 1: the absence of gravity, the lack of gravity and a
Speaker 1: space station environment can still present a lot of problems
Speaker 1: for growing plants. If you just stop and think about
Speaker 1: it for a second, you can probably imagine what some
Speaker 1: of them are. Like. Think about this. You couldn't have
Speaker 1: a regular forest with a soil floor in micro gravity
Speaker 1: because the soil would float off everywhere, the water wouldn't
Speaker 1: sink into the soil when it was applied correctly. You'd
Speaker 1: have to have some kind of like you know, controlled
Speaker 1: surface or like sometimes when astronauts grow plants on the
Speaker 1: I s s, they grow them out of these sort
Speaker 1: of packets of soil that it's almost like a package.
Speaker 1: You see this that's closed, but it's got something inside
Speaker 1: of It's like cat litter that's got fertilizer in it. Um.
Speaker 1: So you could maybe do something like that, but you
Speaker 1: couldn't have a totally natural forest type environment in the
Speaker 1: absence of gravity. So in order to have something like
Speaker 1: depicted in Silent Running. You would absolutely have to have
Speaker 1: artificial gravity, and you know from our previous discussions no
Speaker 1: magic fixes allowed here. Right as far as we know now,
Speaker 1: you would have to simulate gravity through acceleration. And you
Speaker 1: can go back to our artificial gravity episode for more
Speaker 1: on how that might work. But I'll just say, short story,
Speaker 1: your best bet would probably seem to be some kind
Speaker 1: of huge rotating cylinder with the forests inside it. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, that does present additional problems for energy. Right.
Speaker 1: Forests need sunlight to grow, and if you can't simply
Speaker 1: angle them towards the sun, because you know they'd have
Speaker 1: to be on the inside of the cylinder to benefit
Speaker 1: from the effects of gravity, then you need an appropriate
Speaker 1: artificial light source, or at least some sort of complex
Speaker 1: reflective system like something that would that would would give
Speaker 1: them the cost of sunlight they need. Right. However, if
Speaker 1: you don't care about simulating a full natural environment with
Speaker 1: a whole equal ecosystem and a soil floor and all that,
Speaker 1: your options really do expand to include hydroponic containers and
Speaker 1: packet contained soil beds with growth via exposure to artificial
Speaker 1: grow lights and all that, but then again, also some
Speaker 1: of the benefits might be reduced by some of those limitations.
Speaker 1: And this is useful for a lot of reasons. Researching
Speaker 1: plants in space is not just sort of a lark.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's useful for one thing, because knowledge about
Speaker 1: how plants growing space can actually be useful for agriculture
Speaker 1: back on Earth. You can isolate variables in space that
Speaker 1: you can't isolate on Earth. But it's also useful for
Speaker 1: long term space mission planning because, as Silent Running argues,
Speaker 1: we really can't live without plants. Like any truly long
Speaker 1: term space colonization efforts, if they're ever going to be
Speaker 1: realized there, it's it's gonna be really hard to do
Speaker 1: them entirely in metal boxes with prepacked rations. Those things
Speaker 1: eventually expire. Rehydratable or radiated or thermostabilized. Shrimp cocktail is
Speaker 1: only going to take them so far. At the very least.
Speaker 1: Long term astronauts or Mars colonists need to be able
Speaker 1: to grow their own food. And that's just food. That's
Speaker 1: not even talking about uh, you know, holy ecosystems, in
Speaker 1: the environmental benefits they bring beyond growing crops. This is
Speaker 1: just about what potatoes am I going to eat tonight? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I was reading a twenty nineteen article by Marina
Speaker 1: Corrin in The atlant Antic. Uh And I don't think
Speaker 1: I knew this fact before. Astronauts actually have been allowed
Speaker 1: to eat plants that they grew on space station. Apparently
Speaker 1: the Russian cosmonauts have been eating stuff on space stations
Speaker 1: for a long time, since around two thousand three. I
Speaker 1: think they've been allowed to eat half the crops they
Speaker 1: grew in their experiments, including early crops of a type
Speaker 1: of lettuce called missouna, which is I think a type
Speaker 1: of Japanese mustard greens. They've been allowed to eat peas
Speaker 1: they grew there. I think they tried to grow tomatoes
Speaker 1: but the crop failed. Um and and there have been
Speaker 1: others since then. In twenty fifteen, I believe it was yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to read from Marina's article quote, astronauts have already made
Speaker 1: a space salad. In astronauts on the space station were
Speaker 1: allowed to try the leaves of a red romaine lettuce
Speaker 1: that was cultivated in NASA's first fresh food growth chamber.
Speaker 1: They added a little balsamic dressing and took a bite.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. The NASA astronaut KELLN Lyndagrin said, then tastes good. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I love red romaine. It's my favorite for salads
Speaker 1: at home. So that's a good choice there. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of the foods that we we gravitate towards,
Speaker 1: like the artificial ones. Uh. You know, the argument is that,
Speaker 1: like a potato chip is so satisfying because you know,
Speaker 1: it's fatty, it's salty and all this, but it also
Speaker 1: has a Christmas to it, as if we have discovered
Speaker 1: in the potato chip bag a crisp vegetable like lettuce
Speaker 1: that is ready for our consumption. Well, one of the
Speaker 1: things when you look up these pictures of like the
Speaker 1: lettuce screens growing on the I S s, they look
Speaker 1: like really high quality to me. Maybe maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: hungry while I'm looking at the picture or something, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I want to eat that. They don't
Speaker 1: look like, you know, limp and sad produce, the kind
Speaker 1: of limp and sad produce you sometimes find at the
Speaker 1: grocery store when it's already been picked over. Uh. They
Speaker 1: look like really good, like the best stuff you could
Speaker 1: find in a really good farmer's market. Now, in mentioning
Speaker 1: the I want to go back to gravity for just
Speaker 1: a second, because I want to make it clear that
Speaker 1: what we see in silent running what is depicted there.
Speaker 1: There's no attempt to depict any kind of rotation or
Speaker 1: acceleration basis. It's just magic gravity. And ultimately, in science
Speaker 1: fiction we're off. We were often very forgiving of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately sure, this picture is based in the
Speaker 1: sort of the more the metaphorical scenario here of here
Speaker 1: is a portion of the world's dead forests sustained within
Speaker 1: an artificial environment. They're just kind of attached to the
Speaker 1: sides of the valley forge. Yeah, in many ways, a
Speaker 1: science fiction film can, even a good one, can be
Speaker 1: kind of like a science experiment. You know, they isolate
Speaker 1: variables that they're not always gonna spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time getting every detail accurate. They're more like focusing on
Speaker 1: some key themes and they want you to contemplate a
Speaker 1: scenario to you know, have you see what you think
Speaker 1: about it? Uh, sci fi films, I think are often
Speaker 1: like they're they're like the thought experiments that people do
Speaker 1: in philosophy classes. You know, when when you ask about
Speaker 1: the philosophy class like, wait, why was Donald Davidson walking
Speaker 1: in the swamp when he got turned into the you know,
Speaker 1: by the lightning strike turned into the swampman. Well, that
Speaker 1: detail is not important. Just ignore that. And I think
Speaker 1: the gravity and silent running is kind of like that.
Speaker 1: It's just like a detail that they don't want to
Speaker 1: be bothered with. Uh they you know, some some audiences
Speaker 1: do get bothered by those things. Even so, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna bring up Carl Sagan in a minute, and that
Speaker 1: will be uh, that'll be a point that sticks with him,
Speaker 1: I think. But anyway to sum up about growing plants
Speaker 1: in space, so I would say that summary is learning
Speaker 1: how to grow plants in space is very important for
Speaker 1: the future of space travel and uh and even just
Speaker 1: for knowledge that we can apply in the present day
Speaker 1: on Earth. Plants do seem to grow just fine in
Speaker 1: microgravity conditions, but they sometimes need a lot of special
Speaker 1: care because of those conditions. Uh, special growing habitats, plenty
Speaker 1: of the right kind of artificial light, special applications of
Speaker 1: water and nutrients, atmospheric management because of course they need
Speaker 1: access to c O two to grow their bodies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And never forget you know that this is sort of
Speaker 1: a tangent, but you when you breathe out the you
Speaker 1: two in your breath is later taken in by a
Speaker 1: plant and made into leaves and wood plants are made
Speaker 1: of your breath. And we'll get back to that a
Speaker 1: little later as well. But also, you know, growing entire
Speaker 1: ecosystems that simulate Earth ecosystems, like a full forest. It's
Speaker 1: not I would say, I don't know of any facts
Speaker 1: that make it impossible in principle, but you would encounter
Speaker 1: a lot more challenges related to energy and gravity and
Speaker 1: environmental chemistry and the atmosphere and all that. And finally,
Speaker 1: just to point out, a lot of the future of
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial botany research is probably going to be focused on
Speaker 1: how to grow plants on Mars given those specific local conditions,
Speaker 1: rather than in microgravity. Because if you're going to Mars
Speaker 1: and you want to grow plants there, you can just
Speaker 1: like freeze seeds and take them with you. You don't
Speaker 1: have to be growing plants all the way there, right,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, based on you know, some of
Speaker 1: the recent discussions that I've I've been been been privy
Speaker 1: to regarding like traveling to Mars, like it's we we
Speaker 1: could pack enough. I mean, it's kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: that's a there's a lot of thought that goes into
Speaker 1: exactly how much you would need to bring and then
Speaker 1: how you're going to sustain yourself when you when you
Speaker 1: when once you get there. But the trip to Mars
Speaker 1: is the sort of trip in which we yes, you
Speaker 1: could surround yourself with the plant, with the food and
Speaker 1: water that you would need, and actually surrounding yourself with
Speaker 1: the food and water would help protect you from potentially
Speaker 1: protect you from radiation. That's right, a hazard suit made
Speaker 1: out of sandwiches, yeah, made out of shrimp cocktail essentially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or made out of water, I guess. And and the
Speaker 1: food's got a lot of water and yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: basically have food, food and water is protecting you. So
Speaker 1: don't eat too much of it, don't. All right, we
Speaker 1: should take a quick break and then we come back.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll talk about Carl Sagan in Silent, Silent Running. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Yeah. So one of the benefits of this
Speaker 1: being a major science fiction film that came out in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies is that Carl Sagan around to
Speaker 1: see it himself and to comment on it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he he mentions it in an article that was published
Speaker 1: in The New York Times on May nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: called growing Up with Science Fiction. Now, this article isn't
Speaker 1: focused on Silent Running, but he devotes a paragraph to
Speaker 1: it in the article, and more generally he talks about, uh,
Speaker 1: science fiction. And it's a great article, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's collected in Broca's Brain, Reflections on the Romance of Science,
Speaker 1: which was published in nineteen seventy nine, still very very available.
Speaker 1: I picked up a copy of this in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years and read it. The whole book is
Speaker 1: an excellent read. And yeah, this particular chapter, this particular
Speaker 1: paper discuss his works that he both admires and criticizes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's not only a great read in and
Speaker 1: of itself, but I would say it's also a wonderful
Speaker 1: place to get some fresh reading ideas, fresh in terms
Speaker 1: that they haven't been updated since the late nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: But still he mentions a number of important works of
Speaker 1: science fiction. Uh, you know, stuff that he grew up
Speaker 1: on as a kid, stuff that he learned about later,
Speaker 1: stuff that he thinks what he thought was really solid,
Speaker 1: and stuff that you know, he had other, you know,
Speaker 1: decent things to say about it, like I I have
Speaker 1: at times thought what we really need like a Sagan
Speaker 1: sci fi book club in which we just used this
Speaker 1: particular um chapter in the book as a guideline. Uh
Speaker 1: and just read everything that Sagan's discussing here, including the
Speaker 1: stuff that he was critical off. He recommends Doon by
Speaker 1: the way there uh so say yeah. Sagan tells the
Speaker 1: story of how he fell in love with science fiction
Speaker 1: at the age of ten, and how his adolescent adoration
Speaker 1: for science fiction actually in the end led him to
Speaker 1: real science. Like he tells stories of how there were
Speaker 1: these sci fi stories with unanswered questions and inconsistencies that
Speaker 1: he wanted resolved because they were intriguing, and found real
Speaker 1: science is basically is a way to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of them, to get real answers to the questions
Speaker 1: posed by science fiction. But he also talks about his
Speaker 1: frustration with science fiction stories where characters don't know scientific
Speaker 1: facts that it makes no sense for them to be
Speaker 1: unaware of. And one example he gives his silent running
Speaker 1: so yeah and to to to drive home what he's
Speaker 1: talking about here, though the lower character in Silent Running
Speaker 1: played by Bruce Dern is supposed to be a botanist
Speaker 1: and an ecologist. Yes he's Yeah, so he's a space botanist.
Speaker 1: He's space low Ax. Uh. I don't know if anybody's
Speaker 1: called him that. Space low Axtleax and Dr Seuss Lotleax
Speaker 1: is also you know, he speaks for the trees in
Speaker 1: the environment and is perceived as being abrasive and obnoxious
Speaker 1: and in the way of of you know, of the
Speaker 1: the advancement of the corporate world. Right. Uh so, So
Speaker 1: Dern is a botanist who takes these plants out and
Speaker 1: he's flying them out into deep space farther and farther
Speaker 1: away from the sun. Uh, And the forests are dying
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know why, and he's trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out. And I guess this is a semi spoiler,
Speaker 1: but it's a moving from the seventies. Eventually it's revealed that, oh,
Speaker 1: the problem was they need sunlight and they weren't getting
Speaker 1: enough sunlight because he, I guess, flew them too far
Speaker 1: away from the sun. Right. Even forgiving the character a
Speaker 1: little bit and thinking, well, he's recovering from an injury,
Speaker 1: he's super lonely and maybe you know, there's some mental
Speaker 1: health issues that are arising out of that, and perhaps
Speaker 1: he's being bombarded with with cosmic rays. Still, that's a
Speaker 1: big one to miss as a botanist. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say so, and and uh Sagan thinks that too. So.
Speaker 1: Quote in Douglas Trumbull's technically proficient science fiction film Silent Running,
Speaker 1: the trees are dying in vast space born closed ecological
Speaker 1: systems on the way to Saturn. After weeks of painstaking
Speaker 1: study and agonizing searches through botany texts, the solution is
Speaker 1: found plants. It turns out needs sunlight. Trumbull's characters are
Speaker 1: able to build interplanetary cities, but have forgotten the inverse
Speaker 1: square law, and that refers to the fact of radiation
Speaker 1: becoming exponentially we acre as he gets farther away from
Speaker 1: the source um and that has to do with the
Speaker 1: three dimensional nature of space. But also, he continues, I
Speaker 1: was willing to overlook the portrayal of the rings of
Speaker 1: Saturn as pastel colored gases, but not this. Uh So,
Speaker 1: he's really bothered by the fact that that the Dern's
Speaker 1: character would not have been aware of this. It just
Speaker 1: he can buy a lot, but he can't buy that,
Speaker 1: you know. And I suspect that I was reading about
Speaker 1: the origins of the story for Silent Running, and I
Speaker 1: think part of this might have to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that the the the original story like starting off
Speaker 1: early versions of the screenplay apparently didn't have the protagonist
Speaker 1: as a botanist, and he he basically like broke free
Speaker 1: and ran off with the forest, not because he cared
Speaker 1: about the forest, but because he just want to be
Speaker 1: left alone. He didn't want to go back to Earth,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound nearly as interesting. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: this is a case where you know, the story evolves,
Speaker 1: and as it evolves, it doesn't you know, completely um removed,
Speaker 1: or it creates some problems that might not have been
Speaker 1: there originally, such as this, like you have to have
Speaker 1: this character run away from the run further away from
Speaker 1: the Sun and then encounter problems, but it's complicated by
Speaker 1: the fact that now you've made him a botanist. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would think that by the time you're at the
Speaker 1: orbit of Saturn, you're already sufficiently far away from the
Speaker 1: Sun for those uh, those solar rays to really not
Speaker 1: be helping your your forests like they should. So it's
Speaker 1: from Sagan especially, this is a this is a solid
Speaker 1: criticism of the film. I do also think it's always
Speaker 1: interesting just as a little thing about each individual person's personality.
Speaker 1: What's the breaking point for you in a suspension of
Speaker 1: disbelief scenario. You're you're engaging with fictional narrative and you're
Speaker 1: okay with this, but not with that, And everybody's got
Speaker 1: those little things that they're not okay with. What is
Speaker 1: it about about the character lacking this important piece of
Speaker 1: knowledge that's the breaking point for Sagan, whereas these other things,
Speaker 1: the fake artificial gravity and all that aren't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean part of it is like there are certain things
Speaker 1: that are just so universally broken in our science fiction
Speaker 1: that we just don't think about it, Like they're being
Speaker 1: sound in space, like just open sound in space, or
Speaker 1: or or certainly the magical gravity scenario like those that's
Speaker 1: just all over the place and you just you just
Speaker 1: come to expect it um. But with this, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: it's just a part of it just being more crude
Speaker 1: central to the plot. Now, certainly this is not something
Speaker 1: I thought about when I watched it in junior high
Speaker 1: and uh and and and I'm very forgiving of the
Speaker 1: film I think overall, but in retrospect it does seem
Speaker 1: like a major blunder. Just a couple other notes from
Speaker 1: Sagan's article, just because I thought they were interesting and
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention them. One fact he points out
Speaker 1: is that science fiction authors are often quicker to adapt
Speaker 1: to new scientific knowledge than supposedly true accounts of space are. Uh.
Speaker 1: I just want to read a quote here. It is
Speaker 1: satisfyingly rare to find a science fiction story written today
Speaker 1: that posits algae farms on the surface of Venus. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: the UFO contact mythologizers are slower to change, and we
Speaker 1: can still find accounts of flying saucers from a Venus
Speaker 1: which is populated by beautiful human beings in long white
Speaker 1: robes inhabiting a kind of Cytherian garden of Eden. The
Speaker 1: nine degree fahrenheit temperatures of Venus give us one way
Speaker 1: of checking such stories. I do think that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: People intentionally weaving clearly fake narratives that are meant to
Speaker 1: be fiction are often quicker to adapt to new information
Speaker 1: about the planets and stuff than people trying to tell
Speaker 1: supposedly true stories are I wonder if if this is
Speaker 1: part of the reason that the John Carter movie Um
Speaker 1: didn't do so well at the box office. Did you
Speaker 1: ever see this when it came out? No? I didn't.
Speaker 1: You know it's it's based on the work of Ed
Speaker 1: Grice Burrows was a to say Williams, which has been
Speaker 1: very been a very different film, but it's it's an
Speaker 1: entertaining film, but it is bit is based on this,
Speaker 1: this older, pulpy sci fi vision of Mars. And indeed
Speaker 1: it's based on books that Sagan discusses um in Uh
Speaker 1: in the paper that we're discussing here. Sean loved them
Speaker 1: when he loved him when he was a kid, and
Speaker 1: he he mentions how he came back to them later
Speaker 1: and he was like, oh, this just is not working
Speaker 1: its magic on me anymore. But he still makes the
Speaker 1: case for the for the usefulness of science fiction, and
Speaker 1: not just in wedding the appetites of young people for
Speaker 1: education about real science. That that is part of it.
Speaker 1: I want to read a couple of quotes here quote
Speaker 1: the greatest human significance of science fiction maybe as thought experiments,
Speaker 1: as attempts to minimize future shock as contemplations of alternative destinies.
Speaker 1: This is part of the reason that science fiction has
Speaker 1: so wide an appeal among young people. It is they
Speaker 1: who will of in the future. No society on Earth
Speaker 1: today is well adapted to the earth of a hundred
Speaker 1: or two hundred years for from now, if we are
Speaker 1: wise enough or lucky enough to survive that long, we
Speaker 1: desperately need an exploration of alternative futures, both experimental and conceptual.
Speaker 1: And later he says, quote, I think it is not
Speaker 1: an exaggeration to say that if we survive, science fiction
Speaker 1: will have made a vital contribution to the continuation and
Speaker 1: benign evolution of our civilization. I love that. I want
Speaker 1: to touch briefly on the concept of future shock. We
Speaker 1: have a couple of older episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind that dealt with this that I recorded with
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas back in the day. But this is referring
Speaker 1: to the book, the nine seventy book Future Shock by
Speaker 1: Alvin and Heidi toffler Um. I think Alvin alone had
Speaker 1: credited on the original publication, but his wife wrote it
Speaker 1: with him, and they had co author status on subsequent books.
Speaker 1: But it was a very influential book that is talking
Speaker 1: was talking about just the idea that technology was a
Speaker 1: dancing and is advancing, you know, so swiftly that it
Speaker 1: it kind of reduces one to a state of shock,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's a little more nuanced than that,
Speaker 1: but that's the basic idea. There's also they're also also
Speaker 1: a wonderful TV documentary version of it, narated by Orson Welles. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is tremendously entertaining in its in its own right,
Speaker 1: but also kind of you know, hypes everything up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh, this is funny from the nineties seventies, right,
Speaker 1: you know, from our perspective, it seems like technology is
Speaker 1: only accelerated since then, you know, especially in the realms
Speaker 1: of consumer technology. You know how much our individual lives
Speaker 1: have been changed by especially communications technology. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean the concept of future shock, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years ago, like basically when I recorded that
Speaker 1: episode with Julie about it, I I kind of viewed
Speaker 1: it more as something that was archaic or something that
Speaker 1: was maybe maybe didn't match up with modern reality. But
Speaker 1: now years later, uh, now that I'm I'm forty years old,
Speaker 1: I I feel future shock a lot more yeah, like
Speaker 1: there's a there's enough advancement going on that I'm like,
Speaker 1: WHOA hold on a little bit. I think sometimes I
Speaker 1: feel like things are moving a bit too fast. Not
Speaker 1: to criticize technology in the right of technology, but I
Speaker 1: wonder you have future shock to whatever extent it exists.
Speaker 1: Also depends on just how how long you've been in
Speaker 1: the stream of time. You know, in what level of
Speaker 1: technology you kind of grew uh comfortable with. Well, one
Speaker 1: thing that I do think is interesting about Silent Running
Speaker 1: is that it in this main character. We've got a
Speaker 1: character who is a fierce sort of prophet of the woods.
Speaker 1: He is a priest to the forest and an advocate
Speaker 1: of the pure, undisrupted environment and and ecology. But at
Speaker 1: the same time he's not technophobic at least not like
Speaker 1: he he enjoys the company of the robots, even you
Speaker 1: can see him being technologically proficient, like he reprogramm ms
Speaker 1: the robots himself and messes around with them. And I
Speaker 1: feel like in a lot of nineteen seventies visions of
Speaker 1: the future, I think you would probably see these two
Speaker 1: tendencies paired against each other. You would have the people
Speaker 1: who have an affinity for technology and the people who
Speaker 1: have an affinity for nature and that that's what's in opposition.
Speaker 1: But the movie actually identifies a different kind of opposition.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just the preservation of the environment versus
Speaker 1: the destruction of the environment. And that's that's not really
Speaker 1: related to whether you also like technology or not. Like,
Speaker 1: can't you easily imagine the Horrible remake of this in
Speaker 1: which the humans have to protect the forest from the
Speaker 1: robots who have the program to destroy the forest, right,
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't want to be controversial, And I mean
Speaker 1: i'd see it probably chopped chopping mall meets silent running
Speaker 1: um in space, of course, but but i'd watch the
Speaker 1: Terrible in its own right. Well, that does set way
Speaker 1: into another thing that I want to talk about with
Speaker 1: regards to this movie, which is the way that environmental
Speaker 1: conservation and preservation is presented as a public issue in
Speaker 1: a public debate. So I think one maybe quibble I
Speaker 1: would have with this movie is that it seems to
Speaker 1: embrace a narrative um that I think unwittingly, But it
Speaker 1: does sort of fall into this common narrative, especially of
Speaker 1: past decades, that says human economic prosperity on the one hand,
Speaker 1: and the preservation of the natural environment on the other hand,
Speaker 1: are goals at odds with one another. And Dern's crewmates
Speaker 1: are fine with the world without forests. And they say
Speaker 1: why they're fine with it. They basically say, because industry.
Speaker 1: You know, the industrialization of the world has made resources
Speaker 1: plentiful for everybody, and everybody has a job, and and
Speaker 1: you've got everything you need, right, So there's like economic
Speaker 1: prosperity on the one hand, but then you've got the
Speaker 1: preserve vation of the forests as this thing in conflict
Speaker 1: with that, And Dern resists it. He takes a qualitative
Speaker 1: view that defends nature for its own sake and revels
Speaker 1: in the aesthetic qualities of nature over the synthetic landscapes.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all these qualitative judgments. How do you
Speaker 1: put that crap in your body? You know, when you
Speaker 1: eat that, you want to go back to that, You know,
Speaker 1: landscape where you never see a tree. It's all qualitative,
Speaker 1: it's all aesthetic. And I don't think this classic narrative
Speaker 1: about environmental conservation versus economic flourishing is actually a very
Speaker 1: accurate diagnosis of what the what the risks and benefits
Speaker 1: of environmental destruction are now obviously there are cases where
Speaker 1: you can say, increase the efficiency of a business by
Speaker 1: dumping waste into a river rather than paying more to
Speaker 1: dispose of it, you know, in an environmentally friendly way.
Speaker 1: But these tradeoffs are they're almost always I think temporary.
Speaker 1: They're like temporary individual ways to leverage destruction of the
Speaker 1: natural environment for personal gain. I don't think that overall
Speaker 1: destruction of the natural environment leads to widespread long term
Speaker 1: economic flourishing in general. It's more just sort of a
Speaker 1: temporary way for you to cheat, right, And I mean
Speaker 1: it basically comes down to a question of how far
Speaker 1: down the road are you kicking the cane is are
Speaker 1: you are you going? Is it going to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, five years, ten years, is it one generation?
Speaker 1: Is it two or three generations? Yeah? What is the
Speaker 1: what's the cost? Yeah? And and so this is because
Speaker 1: destruction of the natural environment, of course, as we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show all the time, at least all
Speaker 1: kinds of costs and losses that are unpredictable and that
Speaker 1: everybody has to bear. Just to to go back to
Speaker 1: the example of you know, dumping industrial waste in the river,
Speaker 1: imagine every factory upstream says, Okay, we can increase profits
Speaker 1: if we don't have to dispose of this stuff properly.
Speaker 1: We just dump it in the river. They dump it
Speaker 1: in the river. But now the farmers downstream can't use
Speaker 1: the river water to irrigate their crops, so they have
Speaker 1: to get their water in a way that's more costly
Speaker 1: and inefficient, or maybe they can't grow their crops at
Speaker 1: all or something. And here is a net maybe a
Speaker 1: net economic loss actually from this, even disregarding all of
Speaker 1: the environmental devastation, this is just a loss to what
Speaker 1: what kind of wealth people are able to produce? Uh.
Speaker 1: And So for the specific example of deforestation used in
Speaker 1: the movie, because in the nineteen seventies, I think this
Speaker 1: was sort of the big environmental issue, right that people
Speaker 1: talked about the most. It was the destruction of the forests,
Speaker 1: and that's why the forest geodesic domes or what the
Speaker 1: movie is all about. Luckily, we've got that all taken
Speaker 1: care of. There's no more forestation. No, it certainly is
Speaker 1: still a problem, but for some reason, it's not like
Speaker 1: the main problem that comes to mind when people think
Speaker 1: about environmental problems. Now. I think it's probably been supplanted
Speaker 1: by the global issue of climate change, I guess. But
Speaker 1: any of this is also part of the problem, right,
Speaker 1: because because they're related, Yeah, they're related. But also the
Speaker 1: messaging of the forest is so so much easier because
Speaker 1: there's an emotional connection to a definite physical location. You
Speaker 1: can basically say, hey, you like going to the forest,
Speaker 1: don't you You like it? Even if you don't want
Speaker 1: to go in it, you're probably like looking out the
Speaker 1: window at it. Well, imagine if all that went away
Speaker 1: like that is a mucher. That's far easier for us
Speaker 1: to wrap our hands it heads around, versus the realities
Speaker 1: of climate change. That as though some of the the
Speaker 1: the the ramifications of climate change you know down the road,
Speaker 1: I mean when they are described, when you're talking about uh,
Speaker 1: you know, rising ocean waters, I think that still creates
Speaker 1: some scenarios that definitely should have an emotional um uh
Speaker 1: you know impact on anyone who hears them. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: the forest, I mean you can talk about today. It's
Speaker 1: a thing you have now. I mean people people feel
Speaker 1: losses more than they feel the loss of potential gains. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a psychological problem. And if you if you say, uh,
Speaker 1: sometime in the future there could be economic opportunities that
Speaker 1: would be lost because of you know, things about climate
Speaker 1: change is harder to picture. You can say, if you're
Speaker 1: in a forest right now, imagine this forest is gone.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's immediate, it's visceral. I think it reaches
Speaker 1: people in another way though, I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you could make the same argument, like you're saying about
Speaker 1: about sea level increase if you're in a coastal area
Speaker 1: or something. Um. But yeah, just giving the example of deforestation, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is something that of course I would say. You know,
Speaker 1: there are sort of like maybe aesthetic and even people
Speaker 1: might call them spiritual reasons to value nature for its
Speaker 1: own sake. But imagine you don't and you're just you're
Speaker 1: like a Dern's crewmates who only care about economic flourishing.
Speaker 1: They just want there to be resources for everybody, and
Speaker 1: everybody has a job and all that. I mean, even then, deforestation,
Speaker 1: I think reeks devastating effects on those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So deforestation leads to soil erosion. Roots you know, they
Speaker 1: hold soil in place, and then if you have deforestation,
Speaker 1: you get all these exposed surfaces everywhere without plant life
Speaker 1: to hold the soil in place, the soil of roads
Speaker 1: during exposure to weather and water, and that soil run
Speaker 1: off drains into waterways and clogs them and you know,
Speaker 1: washes away the good soil that you could be using
Speaker 1: for agriculture. And um, it's just so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of economic catastrophe right there. There's disruption of the water
Speaker 1: table that happens through deforestation. There's like deforestation can lead
Speaker 1: to widespread flooding. You know, economic catastrophes from flooding, destruction
Speaker 1: of habitats and extinctions of course, which can lead to
Speaker 1: downstream effects like the you know rise of new zoonotic
Speaker 1: diseases and things like that. Oh yeah, increasing like boosting
Speaker 1: the diseases that we're gonna have in the future, while
Speaker 1: at the same time removing various biological agents from the
Speaker 1: world that you know, which we could find potential cures
Speaker 1: and new antibiotics to help us battle those very diseases. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then of course, not to mention the way that
Speaker 1: the big thing, the way forests can help contribute to
Speaker 1: atmospheric dynamics. Of course, deforestation contributes to climate change, global warming.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's it is not accurate to frame.
Speaker 1: Deforestation is an issue of like, well, you've got wealth
Speaker 1: gains on the one hand, and you've got protecting the
Speaker 1: environment on the other hand. Like protecting the environment is
Speaker 1: a is a crucial investment in the future of human
Speaker 1: kind and economic investment. You destroy those forests and there
Speaker 1: will be so much lost wealth and economic potential from that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But then again, I don't want to discount the of course,
Speaker 1: the you know, the inherent value of nature for its
Speaker 1: own sake. Now, to place this film in the context
Speaker 1: of US environmental history, uh, which I think is is interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: President Richard Nixon had only just created the US Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency, the e p A in Nino and Uh
Speaker 1: it's interesting too. I was reading a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: I was looking at there was an Atlantic mini article.
Speaker 1: Actually it's a gallery why Nixon created the e p A,
Speaker 1: which is the interesting read. And in the Science History
Speaker 1: out Org has Richard Nixon in the rise of American environmentalism,
Speaker 1: because we tend not Nixon comes up a lot recently.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of parallels being made today between
Speaker 1: our current in a political um uh situation and UH
Speaker 1: and Watergate and Nixon etcetera. So we tend not to
Speaker 1: think about environmentalism and Nixon. But but it is interesting
Speaker 1: to look at this time because, you know, given how
Speaker 1: tragically politicized climate change has become in the United States,
Speaker 1: it's almost staggering to realize that the the National Environmental
Speaker 1: Policy Act enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support, uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: and politicians were responding to a very real pressing and
Speaker 1: environmental danger at the local and national level level, or
Speaker 1: dangers I should say. Was it in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: that the Cuyahoga River river caught fire? Yes? Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was actually heard a piece on NPR just this morning
Speaker 1: talking about that. And then of course you're talking about
Speaker 1: how that falls into this this whole situation with the
Speaker 1: creation of the e p A. Yeah, it's also interesting
Speaker 1: if you go back and look at exactly what was
Speaker 1: being said, even by Nixon himself and speeches and so forth,
Speaker 1: and there was there was kind of this holy reverence
Speaker 1: there for nature, even at times in Nixon's own words.
Speaker 1: Not to say that Nixon himself actually felt any of this, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he was very much and he and his
Speaker 1: people were very much responded just for the zecheist of
Speaker 1: the time and something that was again a bipartisan um issue.
Speaker 1: But at times Nixon cast such environmentalism as being in
Speaker 1: the tradition of Republican Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I think it was, yeah, and I mean the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: I think has changed changed a lot between the time
Speaker 1: of Teddy Roosevelt in the nineteen seventies. Yeah. Absolutely, But
Speaker 1: but I think it is you know, it is I
Speaker 1: think helpful to to realize that environmentalism and environmental concerns, um,
Speaker 1: you know, have at plenty of times in our country's
Speaker 1: history been a bipartisan issue and something that we can
Speaker 1: all agree on, is something that matters. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a huge case to be made that that's that's
Speaker 1: a part of of the American dream, you know, that
Speaker 1: is a part of some of the best of America,
Speaker 1: is what America has done, uh to sustain bits of
Speaker 1: our natural environments, such as with the National Park UH services.
Speaker 1: It would be amazing if someone could figure out a
Speaker 1: vast sort of psychological program to just de politicize environmental issues. UM.
Speaker 1: It's really tragic the way they've taken on a partisan
Speaker 1: cast and of course that you know, that leads to
Speaker 1: these bit just obvious solutions to environmental problems becoming these
Speaker 1: impossible political battles. You know, one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: about Silent Running is that they don't spend a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of time describing what life is like on Earth.
Speaker 1: Now they allude to it, you certainly never really see it.
Speaker 1: And uh and it's I think that's tantalizing, and it
Speaker 1: makes this wonder what this world is like? What does
Speaker 1: this world become? Uh? And I think that the film
Speaker 1: is at least in part, you know, they're pushing the
Speaker 1: notion that humanity separated from nature is inherently sickened and
Speaker 1: it is lessened by that separation. And the other crew
Speaker 1: members don't mind eating tasteless feud cubes and nuking the
Speaker 1: world's less forest because they have no connection to nature anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, per a discussion we had earlier over email,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a lot more focus in
Speaker 1: modern environmental discourses on you know, framing the production of
Speaker 1: the environment in terms of its material benefit to humans, which,
Speaker 1: as we were just talking about, I mean, environmental conservation
Speaker 1: is not without material benefits to humans. But you notice
Speaker 1: that that's what people who advocate environmental conservation tend to
Speaker 1: talk about these days. They're thinking, like, no, it's in
Speaker 1: your interests to protect the environment. This was a different time.
Speaker 1: I mean, the film presents a very inherent case for nature.
Speaker 1: It's this like that the forest in itself is a
Speaker 1: holy and beautiful thing that must be protected for its
Speaker 1: own sake. Yeah. The film, though, is is kind of
Speaker 1: pushing this more of a spiritual connection with it um
Speaker 1: which made me think of the microbiome in some ways.
Speaker 1: The micro microbiome and the effect you know, getting into
Speaker 1: the microbes that live inside us and their connection to
Speaker 1: the outside world. The interplay between us and our natural
Speaker 1: environment and it's microbiome. You know, a lot of this
Speaker 1: can feel kind of spiritual and kind of magic at times.
Speaker 1: So I was reading about this a little bit, and
Speaker 1: we've certainly covered this on the show but in the past.
Speaker 1: But you know, with our growing understanding of the microbiome,
Speaker 1: you know, we realize that there's this interplay between our
Speaker 1: internal microbial legions, uh, and our exposure to the natural
Speaker 1: world for us and fields if we can get them,
Speaker 1: but even access to a pet animal that has access
Speaker 1: to the outside can provide some level of this natural connection.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things we often talk about
Speaker 1: with Charlie at home is that he brings us dirts
Speaker 1: your yeah, your dog, Charlie. Yeah. And that's something that's
Speaker 1: touched on in the book Never Home Alone by Rob Dunn,
Speaker 1: a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University.
Speaker 1: In that book, he points out that, you know, we
Speaker 1: still have a lot to learn, but it seems as
Speaker 1: if families and urban environments with dogs tend to have
Speaker 1: kids who are less prone to allergy and asthma because
Speaker 1: the dogs may actually be serving as this kind of vehicle,
Speaker 1: this kind of connection for the natural world, microbes that
Speaker 1: the humans used to live in. So you know, we're
Speaker 1: not getting out as natures into nature as much as
Speaker 1: we should. But if we're letting the dog do it,
Speaker 1: if the dog's really getting its nose into nature, then
Speaker 1: it's kind of rubbing some of that that that natural world,
Speaker 1: some of that microbiome off on us. Good reason to
Speaker 1: let the dog in the bed, right and you know,
Speaker 1: naturally there are microbes in the natural world to do
Speaker 1: his harm, others that are beneficial or at least seem
Speaker 1: kind of benign and the grand grand balance of things,
Speaker 1: And that's something we've discussed in the show before as well.
Speaker 1: You know, our bodies are, our beings are a vast
Speaker 1: multi cellular system inhabited by microbial legions. And you can
Speaker 1: even make the argument that we are those microbial legions
Speaker 1: and they're us. Yeah, we might not share the same
Speaker 1: d n A as them, but they are in a
Speaker 1: sense part of us, right and they play into the
Speaker 1: like our our emotions and our our wants and needs.
Speaker 1: Like this, this manifestation of self that we you know,
Speaker 1: have wrapped up an ego and think of as being
Speaker 1: separate from the world and separate from nature is all
Speaker 1: a product of of this interplay um in our artificial
Speaker 1: environment's mess with that balance, and and that's today here
Speaker 1: on Earth. So imagine a world such as the Earth
Speaker 1: of Silent running with with an even more severely damaged ecosystem,
Speaker 1: you know, one in which vegetation has been pretty much eradicated.
Speaker 1: And now imagine that world spacecraft. Because even if Lowell
Speaker 1: and the Box continually track in dirt, and even as
Speaker 1: they they distribute plants around on the place and thrust
Speaker 1: melons at the other crew members. You know, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's still you know, a very artificial
Speaker 1: world outside of the uh, the the farm, outside of
Speaker 1: the forest that they've sustained there. Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think this was envisioned by the filmmakers, But one
Speaker 1: thing you could say to interpret the film is it's
Speaker 1: long been a question of how would our microbiome be
Speaker 1: messed up by space travel? Uh and by being confined
Speaker 1: to environments in space or on other planets. Even if
Speaker 1: we bring along a lot of our soil and plants
Speaker 1: with us, you know, there might just be some ways
Speaker 1: in which the gravity environment, maybe the atmospheric difference, whatever,
Speaker 1: the the different artificial environments somehow changes the microbial loads
Speaker 1: that were exposed to and that we take into our bodies.
Speaker 1: And this could this could change us. It could change
Speaker 1: who we are. It could make us sick, It could
Speaker 1: affect our mental health, It could do all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that we can't anticipate fully yet. And so I
Speaker 1: wonder if maybe that's getting to Durn's character a little bit,
Speaker 1: like Durn's yelling people about a cantaloupe because he's even
Speaker 1: though he's the one out there in the forest. The
Speaker 1: forest and the dome in space doesn't have exactly the
Speaker 1: same kind of microbes that would back on Earth, and
Speaker 1: his his microbial his microbiome is off and he's he's
Speaker 1: getting a little antcy. Oh wow. So this is it's
Speaker 1: almost like the idea of say a people who once
Speaker 1: had you know, an actual uh you know, visual or
Speaker 1: audible connection with God and then when that goes away,
Speaker 1: that you have to sustain faith and faith alone because
Speaker 1: there is no direct, visible sign of the Almighty and
Speaker 1: that could that's kind of what he's doing. He is
Speaker 1: a profit of the natural world that that via the
Speaker 1: loss of the biome, the microbiome, uh, microbiome, biomedic connection Uh,
Speaker 1: must now rely on faith. He has faith in the fruit,
Speaker 1: faith in the cantaloupe, but that actual connection to nature
Speaker 1: is gone. All right, we need to take one more break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back to finish up the discussion.
Speaker 1: Than alright, we're back. Uh. You know, this film also
Speaker 1: made me think a lot about you know, Wilson's biophilia hypothesis. Uh. This,
Speaker 1: we did an entire episode on this in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. But this is basically the idea is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we we have this innate tendency to focus
Speaker 1: on life and lifelike processes and uh in in the
Speaker 1: more extreme versions of the hypothesis, there might even be
Speaker 1: a genetic component to that. Yeah. So he basically says, like,
Speaker 1: we're wired to want to be in and around nature
Speaker 1: and living things that completely synthetic environments are not are
Speaker 1: not what our minds crave. That there's an inherent predisposition
Speaker 1: against that, and it's not just cultural. Right. So if
Speaker 1: if biophilia hypothesis is true, and I think it would
Speaker 1: be great if it were, and and EO. Wilson is
Speaker 1: and and and has been one of the I think
Speaker 1: the greatest minds writing and communicating about our connection with
Speaker 1: the natural world. But but if that we're not. You
Speaker 1: can see that in the way he shoves his hand
Speaker 1: into a mound of fire, ants, yeah, look at them
Speaker 1: biting me. Yeah. And also an unlike Lowell in the film,
Speaker 1: like he's he's very believed, like you, you're like, yes,
Speaker 1: this this guy is not abrasive about it, like you
Speaker 1: just totally bindo everything he's saying. But if bio philiate
Speaker 1: hypothesis is true, it's difficult to imagine a species with
Speaker 1: such an innate connection to nature reaching such a fall
Speaker 1: in place as you see the world in Silent Running.
Speaker 1: You know, because most of the characters that with most
Speaker 1: of the humans we meet in the movie, and then
Speaker 1: presumably most of the humans on Earth are totally okay
Speaker 1: with this, or they've become totally okay with this disconnection
Speaker 1: from nature. Now, another way you could argue it is
Speaker 1: that Again, I don't think this was necessarily intended by
Speaker 1: the filmmakers, but you could also argue that Lowell's crewmates
Speaker 1: maybe are only they're they're only so happy to disregard
Speaker 1: nature because cause they are the few humans that are
Speaker 1: exposed to it, Like they're the fact that they can
Speaker 1: be walking through these forests or actually they generally tend
Speaker 1: to drive through them on little go karts, but that
Speaker 1: they can drive through these forests and be exposed to nature,
Speaker 1: that is what makes them feel like they don't need it,
Speaker 1: you know, because you don't appreciate what you've already got,
Speaker 1: and that maybe all the people back on Earth are miserable.
Speaker 1: We don't hear from them, We don't know what life
Speaker 1: is like from from their point of view. But perhaps
Speaker 1: these other crewmates are just like there and and not
Speaker 1: appreciating the how lucky they are to be one of
Speaker 1: the like five humans who gets to walk among the trees,
Speaker 1: you know. And this this brings us to another question
Speaker 1: that I had in thinking about the films, something I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about much in the past with past
Speaker 1: viewings of it. But I started wondering, like this, this
Speaker 1: earth that we're told about, an earth where like the
Speaker 1: vast majority of or if not all, botanical life it
Speaker 1: is over Like what would that even? Like? Uh? You
Speaker 1: know what? Because as we've discussed the connection between the
Speaker 1: botanical world and and the human world and the world
Speaker 1: of animals, uh is essential. How would a planet exist
Speaker 1: without that? What would a world without plants be? Right?
Speaker 1: And I ran across a couple of sources on this.
Speaker 1: There's an article from New Scientists from two thousand seven
Speaker 1: titled I have all the oxygen producing plants disappeared suddenly?
Speaker 1: How long would it take for us to die? And
Speaker 1: then I also found a really good source on the
Speaker 1: website for the university. You see Santa Barbara at U, C. S. B.
Speaker 1: Dot E d U and Uh. Both of them get
Speaker 1: into it. They start breaking down the numbers and there's
Speaker 1: no like definitive answer for this because you end up
Speaker 1: having to You're talking about an entire planet's worth of atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and then the the interplay between
Speaker 1: the entire botanical world and the entire animal world and
Speaker 1: and other factors as well. Um, basically, the big take
Speaker 1: home is that of course, ultimately we would die, all die.
Speaker 1: It would be it would be a catastrophic That's that
Speaker 1: much is for certain. I mean, the basic school grade
Speaker 1: explanation still applies. Animals breathe oxygen and excel c O two.
Speaker 1: Plants need the C O two and produce oxygen. We're
Speaker 1: in balance all of us and humans do not have
Speaker 1: a private privileged status in all of this. According to UCSB,
Speaker 1: if all the plants went away, just like magically they're gone, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it wouldn't be an end to oxygen on Earth.
Speaker 1: We'd still have an atmosphere's worth of oxygen. And that's
Speaker 1: roughly two quintillion pounds of oxygen remaining. It sounds like
Speaker 1: plenty of right, But of course it's not just us, right,
Speaker 1: there are all these animals that need it to So
Speaker 1: to simplify it, okay, let's go ahead and go off
Speaker 1: all the animals, because it's not expressly stated in Silent Running,
Speaker 1: but we might well imagine that most of not all
Speaker 1: of the animals are gone as well. Why Okay, so
Speaker 1: if all the animals were gone as well, that would
Speaker 1: leave the human species with one thousand and four year's
Speaker 1: worth of oxygen. Okay, that's one take on it. But
Speaker 1: they also break it down so that we might be
Speaker 1: looking at more like one thousand, two hundred years of
Speaker 1: breathable oxygen. But then the increase in C O two
Speaker 1: would elevate global temperatures and other concerns would also probably
Speaker 1: bring this down even further, and we'd be talking more
Speaker 1: like one to four centuries of breathable oxygen. Now, another
Speaker 1: take is that we have several thousands of years worth
Speaker 1: of breathable oxygen because of the vast pools of oxygen
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, the origins of which stem from microorganisms
Speaker 1: to begin with. Plus, there would be reserves of oxygen
Speaker 1: locked up in H two O and in carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: that we can conceivably, you know, breakdown using our technology.
Speaker 1: Certainly we have the technology to send for us into orbit.
Speaker 1: Then maybe they also have the technology, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to do some widespread breaking down of ocean waters into
Speaker 1: breathable atmosphere. But another huge issue, a huge issue, is
Speaker 1: that without plants, the entire food pyramid essentially collapses. Right,
Speaker 1: What would anything eat? Yeah, so I would. I would
Speaker 1: sure hope that those disgusting food food cubes that the
Speaker 1: crew members are eating on the valley forge are tasty
Speaker 1: and that they don't require plants or animal life. I
Speaker 1: don't know what they'd be made of. I guess they
Speaker 1: could be made from what nutrients gained from microbial mats
Speaker 1: or Sanda bacterias like that. But but otherwise there's a
Speaker 1: there's a very strong argument to be made that we
Speaker 1: would starve before we ran out of oxygen um. Now,
Speaker 1: other uh and estimates really kind of vary. James Lovelock,
Speaker 1: for instance, originator of gaia hypothesis, estimated we'd be looking
Speaker 1: at half a million years UM And then that New
Speaker 1: Scientist article I mentioned, they threw out a few different
Speaker 1: estimates by different folks, ranging from a few hundred years
Speaker 1: to a few thousand years. Again with the food concerns
Speaker 1: and possible poisoned air concerns as well, Right, because we'd
Speaker 1: also be breathing out c O two and pumping CO
Speaker 1: two into the atmosphere of VR machines that would be
Speaker 1: not getting processed. But and of course all of this
Speaker 1: again is is just very broad and big, big picture
Speaker 1: and not getting into all the other challenges that would
Speaker 1: occur if all the plants died. How does this square
Speaker 1: with the sci fi Earth that is alluded to in
Speaker 1: Silent Running? You know, could the leaders of such a world,
Speaker 1: could the people and the institutions actually allow uh, such
Speaker 1: a cataclysm to come to pass and then scuttle the
Speaker 1: key plan to correct it? Surely not. People would never
Speaker 1: let anything like that happen. Yeah, I will, that's the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, you would, You would hope not certainly. And
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid thinking, well, you know, at
Speaker 1: some level, like, surely they wouldn't do that. Why would
Speaker 1: they do this, because there's never a real great reason given, right,
Speaker 1: They're just like, oh, well, we've got to put these
Speaker 1: uh the spaceship back into commercial use, So we're just
Speaker 1: jettisoning all these forests, even though presumably they're up there
Speaker 1: because they want to bring botanical life back to Earth
Speaker 1: in the future. So um, yeah, details of how we
Speaker 1: managed to destroy all botanical whole life on Earth side.
Speaker 1: In this stuff film, I think we can well imagine
Speaker 1: us as a people, as a species, continuing on, satisfied
Speaker 1: with assurances from the more optimistic estimates that give us
Speaker 1: you know, many centuries or even you know, thousands of
Speaker 1: years to correct the problem. They'll fix it down, they'll
Speaker 1: fix it down the road. Look at these new technologies
Speaker 1: are talking about. You know, essentially, we just kicked the
Speaker 1: can down that that road for our children, for our
Speaker 1: grandchildren to solve. We take comfort in the pending technologies
Speaker 1: of orbital for us and life on other world's oxygen
Speaker 1: extraction and whatever you know process produces those mucky little
Speaker 1: food cubes. You know. We so we'd grow complacent, we'd
Speaker 1: refuse to change, and one day someone might be in
Speaker 1: a position to say, you know, these space for us
Speaker 1: are incredibly expensive. Why are we we dealing with this? Uh,
Speaker 1: let's just get rid of them. And I think all
Speaker 1: of that line falls in line with how we have
Speaker 1: been thinking about our environment, just despite you know a
Speaker 1: lot of tremendous environmental progress. Uh, you know, certainly just
Speaker 1: since you know, the since the nineteen seventy uh and
Speaker 1: despite all the you know, the very passionate voices and environmentalism. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, you know, collectively, we can still
Speaker 1: make these kinds of errors. You know, the world of
Speaker 1: silent running, which is presented as a cautionary tale. It's
Speaker 1: not a it's not presented as a hey, what would
Speaker 1: happen of all the forest died? Uh sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It's like saying, here is what we do not want,
Speaker 1: but here is a here is a you know, an
Speaker 1: exaggerated circumstance that is in many ways very much in
Speaker 1: keeping with how humans think about the environment, or can
Speaker 1: think about the environment if they don't listen to the
Speaker 1: lolls of the world. I mean, we're obviously facing problems
Speaker 1: like this right now. I mean, the most pressing global
Speaker 1: environmental problem now being climate change. And like it's one
Speaker 1: of those cases where it's it's pretty clear what steps
Speaker 1: we need to be taking right now, or you know,
Speaker 1: really need to be taking yesterday, what we absolutely need
Speaker 1: to be taking right now, and people that people just
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with it. They just rather I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got some people, I think, who managed to delude
Speaker 1: themselves into thinking nas you know, it's all a hoax
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's Chinese hoax or it's whatever. It's just
Speaker 1: a bunch of alarmism. And then I think you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of other people who they don't really know
Speaker 1: of any reason to disagree with the science. They just
Speaker 1: rather not think about it, you know, they just rather
Speaker 1: kicked the can. And the day is a kick in
Speaker 1: the can, even as a as an opportunity grow mighty short. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I think it was. It was actually
Speaker 1: Alan watts Um, the Canadian science fiction author who you
Speaker 1: know who, who pointed especially to the nineteen seventies as
Speaker 1: being like the time when you know, we should have
Speaker 1: gotten really serious about environmentalism, and if we had gotten
Speaker 1: really serious about environmentalism, we could have avoided the even
Speaker 1: tensor scenario we find ourselves in today. Um, but here
Speaker 1: we are, but like the scenario in Silent Running, all
Speaker 1: the forests have not been jettisoned into space. Yet. We're
Speaker 1: we're we're we're nowhere near there. Just yet we need
Speaker 1: a Joan Bias song to get everybody on the same
Speaker 1: page here. I know, I wish we could actually play
Speaker 1: one of those Joan Bias songs on the podcast, But
Speaker 1: I think that would be problematic. I found some some
Speaker 1: some music that has subtracts a similar vibe that perhaps
Speaker 1: we can lead out with here at the end of
Speaker 1: the episode. So often we want to play a song
Speaker 1: on the podcast, but it all lies behind the door
Speaker 1: of the the intellectual property jail that we cannot free.
Speaker 1: The only place we would be able to play it
Speaker 1: would be in orbit bord. No, actually, probably not, because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these these uh, the legal
Speaker 1: documentations for I P like they talk about the entire universe.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I saw that. I'm like,
Speaker 1: really with the entire universe, Like I would go to
Speaker 1: Mars and I still couldn't play this Joan Baez song. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, even if Joan Bayez gave me the thumbs
Speaker 1: up like a record company would be, would would just
Speaker 1: say no, I'm sorry. The label says the entire universe.
Speaker 1: So unless send a robotic probe to serve you, you
Speaker 1: would have to extend into an alternate universe in which
Speaker 1: the rights were different. Commander Lamb, you've been served, all right.
Speaker 1: Well there you have it. A silent running uh still
Speaker 1: one of my favorite films, very influential at this without
Speaker 1: this film. We wouldn't have Mystery Science Theater three thousand either,
Speaker 1: because clearly modeled on ye. Joe Hodgson is is very
Speaker 1: up and forward about that that like he saw it
Speaker 1: in college and it was a huge inspiration to him.
Speaker 1: And uh, and that's how we ended up with a
Speaker 1: human and three robots in space watching terrible movies instead
Speaker 1: of tending to forest. The film is a yeah, films
Speaker 1: out there. It's available wherever you get your movies. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh, you know we're gonna go ahead and call
Speaker 1: this episode, but again, we're trying to do one of
Speaker 1: these a month. We've had some wonderful suggestions from listeners
Speaker 1: already about what films we should consider covering in the future,
Speaker 1: but we want to continue to hear from you. And
Speaker 1: also if you have thoughts about Silent Running, did you
Speaker 1: love it? Did you hate it? Uh? Did it? What
Speaker 1: role did it have in your your own upbringing? Uh?
Speaker 1: Share your thoughts with us. Did you see in the
Speaker 1: theater when it came out? I would love to hear
Speaker 1: about that experience as well. In the meantime, heading over
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, Uh, that
Speaker 1: is that's the Valley Forge of our operations here. That's
Speaker 1: our mothership UM. It has links out to our very
Speaker 1: social media accounts, and it also has a module on
Speaker 1: it that, instead of being a forest, is our discussion
Speaker 1: module UM on Facebook. That's just just a discussion group
Speaker 1: where a lot of folks hang out and discuss the show.
Speaker 1: It's the one lovely green place on Facebook. It is. Yeah, long,
Speaker 1: may it not be jettisoned into the black avoid of
Speaker 1: social media emptiness. But anyway, those are all wonderful things
Speaker 1: to to check out. If you want to support the show,
Speaker 1: just make sure you rate and review us wherever you
Speaker 1: have the power to do so. Leave us some stars,
Speaker 1: leave a nice comment. It really helps out the helps
Speaker 1: out the show when it comes to the almighty algorithms
Speaker 1: that rule our world. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer, Tori Harrison. If you'd like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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