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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hi,

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Speaker 1: my name is Robert Lammon. This is the Monster Fact,

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Speaker 1: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters. In time,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to turn our attention to the symbiants of

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Speaker 1: the Marvel universe at this point. Now, for those of

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Speaker 1: us less familiar with the intricacies of the Marvel universe,

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Speaker 1: such as familiarity primarily through various films and the ninety

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Speaker 1: Spider Man cartoon, the basic origin story is pretty straightforward. Here,

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Speaker 1: Spider Man acquires a new black and white costume from

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Speaker 1: space that turns out to be a kind of sentient

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Speaker 1: alien ooze. It flows over him, becomes his new costume.

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Speaker 1: It gives him enhance stabilities, but it also becomes clear

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Speaker 1: that the aliens Symbiant is slowly taking over. Once successfully rejected,

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Speaker 1: the alien Suit finds a new host in Eddie Brock,

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Speaker 1: giving birth to the villain and ultimately anti hero venom.

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Speaker 1: Initially introduced in the mid nineteen eighties, the lore and

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Speaker 1: legacy of the Alien Symbiant Suit would continue to grow

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Speaker 1: in Marvel comics. Eventually encompassing multiple Clintar symbiants as they

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Speaker 1: would come to be known, such as Carnage, as well

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Speaker 1: as a fleshed out origin story. They are the ancient

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Speaker 1: bioweapons of a dark stellar deity known as Knoll, the

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Speaker 1: King in Black, overthrown but not killed by his own

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Speaker 1: slimy creations in ages past, Venom stands out as the

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Speaker 1: prime example of a clintar symbiant merged with a human being,

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Speaker 1: while the case of Spider Man wearing the Alien suit

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Speaker 1: suggests more of an exosymbiant, a layer of living ooze

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Speaker 1: that acts as a kind of organic power armour. Venom

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Speaker 1: is merged with host Eddie Brock. Ultimately, at a cellular level,

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Speaker 1: it flows over him, encompassing him in a powerful artifice

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Speaker 1: of pseudopods and muscles. This would be exosymbiosis, but it

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Speaker 1: also surges inside him, which would be endo symbiosis. In

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Speaker 1: a similar way, Venom's chaotic offspring Carnage manages to merge

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Speaker 1: with host Kletus Cassidy's very blood. In the natural world,

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Speaker 1: symbiosis is a complex topic. At times, it can be

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Speaker 1: tricky to determine just where parasitism ends. In some form

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Speaker 1: of mutualism or commensalism begins. A parasitic relationship between two

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Speaker 1: organisms can evolve into mutualism over time, for instance, with

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Speaker 1: a one sided relationship becoming something more balanced. But symbiosis

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Speaker 1: on its own need not benefit both organisms to be

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Speaker 1: symbiotic in nature. A twenty eighteen Yale study by Shapiro

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Speaker 1: and Turner published in the journal Evolution explored mutualistical relationships

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Speaker 1: between bacteria and viruses that were seemingly once parasitic in nature.

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Speaker 1: They found that these changes could evolve in either direction

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Speaker 1: in as little as twenty generations. The paper discusses parasitism

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Speaker 1: and mutualism is both being on the quote unquote symbiotic spectrum,

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Speaker 1: which is perhaps a term worth keeping in mind when

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Speaker 1: considering the Clintars of Marvel comics. Some view the Clintars

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Speaker 1: as parasites, others as symbiotic enhancements. Certainly, they can be

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Speaker 1: either in the eye of the beholder, but the exact

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Speaker 1: balance of the change they bring to a host can

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Speaker 1: certainly adjust over time, as we see with venom or Certainly,

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Speaker 1: this relationship could simply evolve over the vast expanse of time.

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Speaker 1: Since the King in Black first brought them into the cosmos. Venom,

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Speaker 1: the alien costume, and the various symbiants are the creation

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Speaker 1: of multiple Marvel artists and illustrators, but the basic idea

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Speaker 1: arises out of the zeitgeist of the mid nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 1: Assessments have linked the entity to various social and public

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Speaker 1: health issues of the nineteen eighties in compelling ways. From

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Speaker 1: a purely scientific point of view, Beyond the mere treatment

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Speaker 1: of symbiosis, Venom and his fellow Clintars would also be

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Speaker 1: examples of a kind of pan spermic symbiosis. After all,

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Speaker 1: the origin of the alien suit is somewhere in outer space. Right.

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Speaker 1: On one hand, even a highly adaptive symbiotic organism just

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Speaker 1: might not be able to join with an extraterrestrial mode

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Speaker 1: of life. The attempt could simply be ineffective, or it

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Speaker 1: could be catastrophic. On the other hand, if one leans

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Speaker 1: fully into the fringes of pan spermia hypothesis, then maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe we'd have enough in common. But again, we're drifting

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Speaker 1: into the unknown and the unprovable here, especially since life

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Speaker 1: on Earth is the only model of life we know.

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Speaker 1: But the symbiants of Marvel are ultimately less concerned with

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Speaker 1: science and more concerned with power, IDENTI and will, and

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Speaker 1: also with lashing tendrils of ooze. Of course, tune in

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Speaker 1: for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always,

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Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.