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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from How Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. A form slightly larger than Drifts, but

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Speaker 1: obviously humanoid, drifted around a nearby stalactite. Drifts kicked off

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Speaker 1: a stone to propel himself at it, drawing his other

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Speaker 1: scimitar as he went. He knew his peril a moment later,

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Speaker 1: for his enemy's head resembled a four tentacles octopus. Drifts

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Speaker 1: had never actually viewed such a creature before, but he

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Speaker 1: knew what it was. An ill apant, a mind flare,

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Speaker 1: the most evil and most feared monster in all of

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Speaker 1: the under dark. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Christian Sager,

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Speaker 1: and today we're talking about mind flares. That's right, you

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Speaker 1: get from that quote mind flares. For those of you

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Speaker 1: who aren't aware, we're really diving down the geek well

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Speaker 1: today to get a monster that we both love and

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Speaker 1: grew up with. But this is a creature that was

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Speaker 1: originally created for dungeons and dragons, right, Yeah. It also

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Speaker 1: has a long history that I'm just learning about in

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Speaker 1: the Final Fantasy games. And I imagine other other properties

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Speaker 1: as well. That that that's that were inspired by especially

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Speaker 1: early dungeons and dragons. Yeah. But so we're not just

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Speaker 1: talking about this because we're into geeky stuff, right, not

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Speaker 1: not that's like, yeah, we're using the mind flare as

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Speaker 1: a jumping off point to look at some really interesting

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Speaker 1: science both in biology but also a little bit in

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Speaker 1: technology today in the same way that drifts our hero

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Speaker 1: in the opening narration used that the stalactite as a springboard. Right.

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Speaker 1: So that was a quote from R. A. Salvatores Exile,

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Speaker 1: which is part of the Dark Elf trilogy. It's actually

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Speaker 1: booked two in the Dark Elf trilogy. Uh, you may

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Speaker 1: be familiar with this. If you're not, I'll give you

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Speaker 1: a quick primer. These are dungeons and Dragons based novels, uh,

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Speaker 1: set in the Forgotten Realm setting, based around this character,

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Speaker 1: dritzto Arden that is pretty popular with that crowd and

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Speaker 1: still still part of the property the board games that

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Speaker 1: come out. He's He's mentioned in the materials for the

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Speaker 1: Big Current under Dark campaign. I'm pretty sure they're still

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Speaker 1: coming out with novels with him in it too. Um,

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Speaker 1: and these I have a fondness for these novels because

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Speaker 1: they were like my way to wind down my brain

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Speaker 1: after doing too much research, either when I was in

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Speaker 1: graduate school or sometimes from podcasting. So I've read. I

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Speaker 1: want to say, there's like these books, and I've probably

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Speaker 1: read three quarters of them. Uh. Mostly I refer to

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Speaker 1: them as sword porn because there's just like whole sections,

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Speaker 1: like pages and pages where it's just describing like the

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Speaker 1: ways in which he moves his swords. I mean just

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Speaker 1: in this one paragraph alone, like they've had to mention

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Speaker 1: like the way he drew a scimitar and everything. But

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Speaker 1: mind flares are like the primary antagonist in this specific book.

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Speaker 1: So I pulled that quote and then there's another one

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Speaker 1: later on where I think that this contributed to the

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Speaker 1: lore surrounding them, so you know, we'll refer back to it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So see, we're using this this creature, this wondrous creature,

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Speaker 1: as as as an opportunity to discuss some some science,

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Speaker 1: and we're using science as a way to explain some

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Speaker 1: of the more fantastic aspects of this fictional monster. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of relationship we come back to time and time again, because,

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Speaker 1: as I like to say, no matter how fantastic, how

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Speaker 1: crazy the imagined monster is, you can you can almost

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Speaker 1: count on nature to have equal or surpassed it in weirdness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what's so wonderful about using this for

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Speaker 1: an episode of the show. And I'd like to point

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Speaker 1: out that this is actually connected to two other things

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Speaker 1: that we do on Stuff to All Your Mind. The

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Speaker 1: first is obviously Robert's Monster Science that he's been working

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Speaker 1: on for years. If you go to stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, there are I dare say a

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Speaker 1: hundred maybe monster science posts like you've covered almost every

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Speaker 1: monster in existence. Um well, well I wouldn't go that

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Speaker 1: far because they're pretty inexhaustible, but um yeah, the monster

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Speaker 1: the Monster of the Week post kind of like the

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Speaker 1: monster Science versions. And then there's the video series Monster

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Speaker 1: Science as well, which you can find there or you

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Speaker 1: can find while all the videos are on our Facebook

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Speaker 1: and our YouTube channel as well. Uh. But also you

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Speaker 1: and Joe are doing an episode coordinated with this that's

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Speaker 1: about mind control. Yeah. It's gonna be titled what Mind

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Speaker 1: Control feels Like, and it should be the episode that

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Speaker 1: follows this. I think this episode right here is coming

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Speaker 1: out on a Thursday, and the kind of the following one,

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Speaker 1: the mind Control episode, come out on who stay. But

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Speaker 1: it'll all come together, So brace yourselves, everybody. We're we're

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Speaker 1: really getting into it with minds, brains and actual brain

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Speaker 1: eating today. Yeah, because one of the things about the

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Speaker 1: mind flares, if you're not familiar and if you're not

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Speaker 1: familiar at all with the mind flares, just bear with us.

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Speaker 1: We'll get to the real science as well. But they

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Speaker 1: are not only these these octopus headed, purple fleshed evil

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Speaker 1: doers that live in the under dark, this vast subterranean

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Speaker 1: realm in the Dungeons and Dragons world. They are also

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Speaker 1: psychic or psionically gifted creatures that are able to just

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Speaker 1: dominate people left and right with their amazing psychic powers,

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Speaker 1: you know, throwing mind blasts all over the dungeon, just

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Speaker 1: really wreaking havoc. But that is their primary power, and

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Speaker 1: their finishing move is to grab ahold of you with

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Speaker 1: their tentacle mouths and suck your brain right out of

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Speaker 1: your head. It's like, uh, total kill, like instant kill.

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Speaker 1: I think if you get uh grappled by a mind

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Speaker 1: flare by the head or whatever. You know. They actually

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Speaker 1: not to skip too far ahead into their anatomy, but

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Speaker 1: they're generally represented as having um just four digits on

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Speaker 1: their hand, so they have three knuckles. And I was

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Speaker 1: thinking the other day, this would be perfect for a

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Speaker 1: t p K tattoo from my Flair or Total Party Kill.

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Speaker 1: That's you're like your thug mind flare, I like it,

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Speaker 1: I like But for those of you not from with

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Speaker 1: the game Total Party Killers, when the creatures in the

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Speaker 1: game were more specifically, the dungeon Master kills off the

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Speaker 1: entire party with a Generally, generally this occurs because the

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Speaker 1: encounter is not mathematically calibrated exactly. So yeah, so we're

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Speaker 1: gonna use these as a jumping off point. And you

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Speaker 1: guys are probably saying to yourselves right now, like, WHOA, Like,

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Speaker 1: this isn't what I signed up for. Just bear with us,

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Speaker 1: because the thing about mind flares in particular that is

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Speaker 1: really useful for stuff to blow your mind is they

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Speaker 1: were created for this game, and then it's been a

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Speaker 1: good almost forty years that people have been working on them,

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Speaker 1: whether it's in these novels that I mentioned earlier, or

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Speaker 1: for rule books or for video games or whatever. It's

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like Star Wars creatures. They've had like

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Speaker 1: more and more tagged onto their uh, fictional biology and

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Speaker 1: culture and philosophy over the years, to the point that

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Speaker 1: it's like it's this fleshed out world, you know, and

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Speaker 1: it's it's really fascinating what multiple people brought to the

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Speaker 1: table with it and how that then subsequently translates because

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Speaker 1: they were obviously inspired by you know, creatures from real

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Speaker 1: life or or philosophy in different cultures. Oh yeah, indeed.

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Speaker 1: I mean, and in so many cases, either the people

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Speaker 1: adding to the the mythos so say, the mind flares,

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Speaker 1: they either were directly inspired by natural world organisms or

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Speaker 1: they're just weird creativity managed to to parallel actual natural

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Speaker 1: world weird. That's the like somebody needs to do a

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Speaker 1: like a history of the mind flare creation book where

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Speaker 1: they like talk to all these people, because in front

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Speaker 1: of us here in the studio right now is Volo's

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Speaker 1: Guide to Monsters, and it has a pretty comprehensive, like

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Speaker 1: what almost ten page section on mind flares, more more,

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Speaker 1: I dare say, than real world encyclopedias have on some

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Speaker 1: of the real world animals we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: in today's episode. But it's really impressive and I would

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Speaker 1: love to see how all these pieces came together. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I just came out by the way of anyone

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Speaker 1: out there is interested, Uh just can't just published now.

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Speaker 1: In terms of what we're not going to attempt to

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Speaker 1: do what we just mentioned here, We're not going to actually,

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Speaker 1: uh you know, go piece by piece through the generation

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Speaker 1: of the mind Flare, but we will just touch on

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Speaker 1: its origins, which go back to Gary Gygax himself, the

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Speaker 1: creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Indeed, he is the guy.

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Speaker 1: He's the guy who started the whole thing, and you've

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Speaker 1: got a nice quote from him here, specifically about mind flares. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he said, quoth the mind Flare I made up out

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Speaker 1: of whole cloth using my imagination, but inspired by the

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Speaker 1: cover of Brian Lumley's novel in paperback edition, The Burrowers Beneath.

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Speaker 1: So I've never seen this before. What's it looked like? Um?

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Speaker 1: I looked at it, I will. I looked at the

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Speaker 1: various covers and the one that I think most modern

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Speaker 1: readers are used to is the one looks kind of

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Speaker 1: like an eye in the center of a nautilus, and

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Speaker 1: that one looks more mine flairy. Um. But the original cover,

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Speaker 1: the one that I think Guy Gas would have seen

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Speaker 1: just kind of looks like a silhouette of dark tentacles

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Speaker 1: rising out of a hill. But still I take the

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Speaker 1: man in his word, um lumly of course was Lovecraft influenced,

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Speaker 1: and there's definitely a lot of Lovecraft I and weirdness

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Speaker 1: to the mind flare. So just just as the fictional

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Speaker 1: race has crossed over from another realm in Dungeons and Dragons,

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Speaker 1: the very inception is sort of a cross pollination from

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Speaker 1: a different dimension of literary fannas. Yeah, I think you

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Speaker 1: could probably trace their origins all the way back to

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Speaker 1: of Craft's intense fear of sea life. So and just

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Speaker 1: to get this out of the way too, because again

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Speaker 1: I know a number of you maybe primarily familiar with

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Speaker 1: these critters from Final Fantasy. Are their properties e lit.

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Speaker 1: It is definitely a D n D property, right, They've

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Speaker 1: got the t M on that. Yeah, so you can't

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Speaker 1: just throw a lithids around another games or video games

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Speaker 1: or novels without you know, big Dungeon getting a cut,

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Speaker 1: but mind flavors you'll see elsewhere. Yeah, thats right. In fact,

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Speaker 1: we saw there was a paper that you found that's

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Speaker 1: stunning all about like the various types of sort of

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Speaker 1: cephalopod monster mollusks that show up in video games. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's an article um that was published in Geek Studies,

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Speaker 1: and I'll try to include a link to that on

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Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. But yeah, just all

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Speaker 1: about weird squid and octopus monsters from sixteen videos. And

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Speaker 1: there was this amazing chart of all of the various ones,

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Speaker 1: uh down to their little like eight bit renderings, and

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Speaker 1: there's the mind Flare very recognizable in there. So yeah, again,

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Speaker 1: these are basically purple people with octopus heads. Their mouths

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Speaker 1: are like Lamprey's. We're gonna go through the anatomy pretty

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Speaker 1: carefully because that's how we're going to tie it into

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Speaker 1: real world science. That's right, all right, So let's dive in.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about their origins real quick, which are of

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Speaker 1: course shrouded in mystery. So they're basically two origin stories

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Speaker 1: in play here. Most likely the mind Flares hail from

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Speaker 1: the far Realm, which is an alien dimension of cosmic

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Speaker 1: horror and the dn D universe, but there's also this

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Speaker 1: whispered rumor that from the future and perhaps even the

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Speaker 1: distant highly evolved state of humanoid life in the multiverse,

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Speaker 1: though I'm I'm not sure much doc is actually put

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Speaker 1: in that interpretation. I want to say that that is

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Speaker 1: that's the one that's heavily Lovecraft influence, because there's and

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Speaker 1: I can't believe I can't remember the name of the

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Speaker 1: monster from one of the Lovecraft short stories, but that's

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Speaker 1: one of the things from his This monster is from

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Speaker 1: the future and it's come back in time to sort

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Speaker 1: of right some wrong or something like that. And I

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Speaker 1: think this is again not there's no sources behind this,

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Speaker 1: but but if my memory is correct from playing D

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Speaker 1: and D for twenty some odd years, uh, their origin

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Speaker 1: story differs depending on which setting you're playing D and DAN. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's right, it's a it's a multiverse, and and of

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Speaker 1: course they also instill this in you. Your game is

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Speaker 1: not necessarily taking place in the same corner of the

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Speaker 1: multiverse as the campaign across across the Road. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So.

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Speaker 1: One of the really important plot points with the Lithids

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Speaker 1: is that in ages past they carved out an enormous

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Speaker 1: empire for themselves. What the cells, one that spanned whole

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Speaker 1: worlds and the material plane as well as other various planes.

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Speaker 1: They they had Slash have spaceships called no Alloyd's then

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Speaker 1: enable travel across the plains. But they've lost the technology

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Speaker 1: of their manufacture like any you know, decent elder race.

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Speaker 1: They've they've forgotten how to read kind of like relative

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Speaker 1: now out. But they built their empire mostly on the

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Speaker 1: back of psionically dominated slave labor. But after time, as

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Speaker 1: you know happens when you build your empire on slave labor,

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Speaker 1: the slaves rose up, they rebelled, and their their empire

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Speaker 1: felt to pieces, and so they had to go out

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Speaker 1: and just sort of find little corners to survive. And

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Speaker 1: and in particular they end up taking up in the

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Speaker 1: under dark. Uh and and here they end up, you know,

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Speaker 1: having more slave races, and each one they mess up

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Speaker 1: by just psionically dominating them, altering them, changing them into

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Speaker 1: whatever form suits the mind flares, and just just causing

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Speaker 1: lots of trauma and mischief, um, just across the world.

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Speaker 1: They remind me kind of of this ant that we've

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Speaker 1: covered on the show before. I'm gonna have trouble remembering

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Speaker 1: its Latin name off the top of my head, but

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Speaker 1: you might know it Court Accepts. Oh, yes, the Court

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Speaker 1: aceps U. Fun guy that end up growing in the

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Speaker 1: ants exactly. Um, so this this fun guy gets inside

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Speaker 1: these aunt brains and it's it sort of controls them

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Speaker 1: to take care of its fungal colony and allow it

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Speaker 1: to take the aunt resources and mind flair. I guess

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Speaker 1: sociology is somewhat similar. And that they they dominate these

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Speaker 1: you know, people of various D and D species, dwarves, elves,

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Speaker 1: human beings, whatever. Gift Oh yeah, the gift off touching

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Speaker 1: the gift here, and that they're the slaves that sort

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Speaker 1: of like work and do all the labor for the

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Speaker 1: mind flares. They even one of the things that the

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Speaker 1: slaves are known to do is they have to scrub

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Speaker 1: down the elder brain and get in massagy. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they all their brains important to that. That's the thing.

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Speaker 1: All the all these different elements that we're touching on here,

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Speaker 1: they might sound a bit like fluff that we're gonna

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Speaker 1: come back to them and discuss some science around them.

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Speaker 1: But real quick about the gift. The gift were the

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Speaker 1: the biggest mistake that they made. These were the thralls

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Speaker 1: that really os up and not only helped bring about

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Speaker 1: the follow their empire, but regularly now the Gift regularly

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Speaker 1: venture out from their astral plane headquarters to hunt down

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Speaker 1: and eradicate Elithid colonies wherever they can find them. And

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Speaker 1: that's one of the key reasons that elipids live and

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Speaker 1: you know, the safety and secret of the under dark

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Speaker 1: or other secluded places and in each separate colonies cut

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Speaker 1: off from all the others while while they calculate in

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Speaker 1: scheme and forgot how they're going to restore their empire. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So they basically like live in these like deep caves there.

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Speaker 1: It's like a it's almost like an ant colony, it is, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's all based around the center of this elder

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Speaker 1: brand I mentioned earlier, which we're gonna get into. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They but they yeah, they kind of like occasionally just

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Speaker 1: go out grab some slaves, pull them back in, and

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Speaker 1: like that's how their society runs. Yeah, it's gonna be

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Speaker 1: very helpful as we go far just to think of

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Speaker 1: them as youth social parasites. Yes, they write really like

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Speaker 1: they have two options. They either capture somebody and eat

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Speaker 1: their brain, or capture them and dominate their mind and

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Speaker 1: make them into a slave. Right, So either way, an

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Speaker 1: encounter with the mind flare is going to end up bad,

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Speaker 1: all right, So let's launch into their biology again. Bipedal

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Speaker 1: humanoid bodies, four tentacles, four claude digits per hand. Diet

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Speaker 1: consists mostly of psionic energy, with some additional sustenance stuff

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Speaker 1: from the gobble brains themselves. Uh. Now, technically speaking, their

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Speaker 1: troglophiles their cave dwelling creatures that complete their life cycles

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Speaker 1: in a cave, but they can also survive above ground.

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Speaker 1: Help me out with this. Troglo files is a real term. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this is a real term. There's not a

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Speaker 1: dungeon dragon's term. This would be the the the natural

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Speaker 1: world classification for a creature like this, though, of course,

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Speaker 1: classifications are difficult when you're considering even fictional intelligent creatures.

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Speaker 1: You know, one that is choosing to live underground in

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Speaker 1: a subterranean environment for their own purposes, and now their

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Speaker 1: reproductive system is utterly bizarre. And yet uh, there are

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Speaker 1: real world examples that are almost as bizarre. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean they're a real world example. When you start

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Speaker 1: looking at complex life cycles, you look at some of

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Speaker 1: the the parasite life cycles out there, and various insect

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Speaker 1: life cycles. They are not only just like a bizarre

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Speaker 1: circle of parasitic behavior, but also when you see branches

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Speaker 1: in the tree. And this is key to understanding the

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Speaker 1: mind flares, when you see various morphs that can emerge. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so all right, walk us through this. All right, So

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Speaker 1: you have an egg. That's where it starts, an a

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Speaker 1: lipid egg, a mind for an adult mind flare. What

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Speaker 1: came first, the mind flare the egg. Now an adult

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Speaker 1: mind flare lays an egg. Yes, okay, so they lay

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Speaker 1: an egg. That egg hatches into an a lipid tadpole,

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Speaker 1: so little squirming us a tadpole, a little larval elithid.

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Speaker 1: Now from that point there are a few different things

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Speaker 1: that can happen. Ideally there there's a process called sea

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Speaker 1: morphous us and this is where adult mind flares would

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Speaker 1: come and pick up the little tadpole and implant in

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Speaker 1: the cranium of a captive humanoid, like a captive kind

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Speaker 1: of like psychically washed humanoid. And they usually you put

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Speaker 1: it through the ear. But there's a drawing in volos

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Speaker 1: guide of monsters of like it's very based on wrath

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Speaker 1: of calm of like the tadpole like crawling its way

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Speaker 1: up the face towards the eye socket of a victim. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, that exact scenario. So one way or another,

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Speaker 1: they get that dust that puppy into the brain and

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Speaker 1: then it eats the brain, replaces the brain, and then

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Speaker 1: that host body becomes the new mind flare body. Go.

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Speaker 1: You know, I guess it turns purple, slimy, loses a

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Speaker 1: digit on each hand, gets pretty skinny. Yeah, and then

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Speaker 1: you've got You've got yourself an adult elithid that carries

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Speaker 1: on adult elipid business and eventually can go onto legs

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Speaker 1: of its own. Right now, there are two other possible

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Speaker 1: ways that this can go with the elithid tadpole. So

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Speaker 1: sometimes the elithid becomes a you lethar it. And this

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Speaker 1: is uh, this is essentially a super mind flare that

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Speaker 1: is going to eventually leave the colony with some other

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Speaker 1: mind flares, found a new colony and become its elder brain. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it doesn't have human humanoid form. It's just like

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Speaker 1: the superpowered tadpole. It's a super powered tadpole still have

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Speaker 1: to be implanted into a humanoid, but it's destined to

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Speaker 1: be this uh, this this cedar of a new colon

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Speaker 1: and it will eventually grow into a giant brain right

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Speaker 1: once it establishes itself. Else and then the other way

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Speaker 1: that things can go is the elithid tadpole can become

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Speaker 1: a neolithid. And this is when they're nobody's taking care

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Speaker 1: of the tadpoles. Nobody, no mind flares are coming around

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Speaker 1: to look after them and make sure they're stuffed into

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Speaker 1: the right skull. In this case, they all freak out

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Speaker 1: and start eating each other, and whichever one is left

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Speaker 1: grows into a giant, powerful beast intelligence monster. Huh. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I have never encountered one of these before. It's is good,

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Speaker 1: it's like a level wow. Okay. But but what's going

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Speaker 1: on with both of these cases, and this is where

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Speaker 1: there's a there's a real world parallel that will will

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Speaker 1: break down a little a little more in a bit,

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Speaker 1: is that you essentially have two morphs springing off from

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Speaker 1: the tadpole. One is caused by negative environmental constraints and

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Speaker 1: that leads to the neolithid, and the other is positive

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Speaker 1: environmental constraints, which leads to the leth All right, so

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Speaker 1: I'm assuming this is dependent on like how many humanoids

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Speaker 1: are available for them to eat. Brains of or make

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Speaker 1: slaves into or or or whatnot. How big the cave

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Speaker 1: system is that they're living within. Yeah, it's it has

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Speaker 1: to do with population density in our real world examples

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Speaker 1: that will get to so you can think of it

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Speaker 1: in those terms like is the is the colony successful

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Speaker 1: enough to send off anything to found a new colony,

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Speaker 1: or is it even successful enough for the tadpoles to

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Speaker 1: continue to thrive or should they just all eat each

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Speaker 1: other out of you know, purely economic cannibalism, which is

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Speaker 1: the thing that happened in multiple species. Yeah, well right, right,

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Speaker 1: in real species, but also in this fictional when we're

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Speaker 1: talking about right, just in our real world, cannibalism is

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Speaker 1: always the most economic path to avoid wasting the energy

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Speaker 1: that goes into flesh. So we've mentioned this elder brain

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Speaker 1: multiple times, and basically I just said it's a giant brain.

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Speaker 1: But let's let's get a little bit more defined here

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Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, I mean, essentially, it's just a giant

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Speaker 1: brain in a Brian pool that is in charge of

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Speaker 1: the mind flare colonies see in the in the Drifts books,

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Speaker 1: it's in cerebral fluid. And I always wondered where did

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Speaker 1: they get all that cerebral fluid from like maybe they

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Speaker 1: eat the brains and then they like keep they drain

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Speaker 1: the cerebral fluid out to put in their little elder

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Speaker 1: brain pool that they've got. Now, they just had Amazon

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Speaker 1: weekly deliveries on sailing, Okay, yeah, well the two day

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Speaker 1: shipping on projects. Yeah, we gotta do it, even to

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Speaker 1: the under dark exactly. Yeah. So according to vote is

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Speaker 1: what's going on here with the elder brain is? So

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Speaker 1: is this to survive and to make the necessary meta

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Speaker 1: calculations in order, you know, to to to actually survive

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Speaker 1: and to eventually reclaim their empire. Uh, they've either evolved

391
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Speaker 1: or developed the elder brains and these are giant immobile

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Speaker 1: thought thought organs that flowed in tanks of Brian serving

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Speaker 1: as the mind Flares colonies, library of knowledge, a history

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Speaker 1: of past lives and a nexus of metacognition for the

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Speaker 1: individuals in the colony and each individual that is going

396
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Speaker 1: to employ non aliftid thralls as well. This reminds me

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Speaker 1: of in the Marvel universe, they have a similar thing

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Speaker 1: the Cree alien species, which I haven't seen a lot

399
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Speaker 1: of the TV show Agents of Shield, but I think

400
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:45,840
Speaker 1: they show up in there, they're ruled by a thing

401
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:48,679
Speaker 1: that's very similar to this, that's called the Supreme Intelligence.

402
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:50,040
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing. It's just like a

403
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Speaker 1: big blob and like a giant canister of cerebral fluid,

404
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Speaker 1: and it's got some brain tentacles and the eyes in

405
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Speaker 1: the mouth. These don't have eyes in the mouth of

406
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Speaker 1: just brains, just big brains, and they do all sorts

407
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Speaker 1: of of you know, psionically powerful tactics against anybody that

408
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Speaker 1: threatens them. But we'll come back to the elder brains

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Speaker 1: in a bit, because there are actual parallels to discuss

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Speaker 1: with humans. All right, So that is the crash course

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Speaker 1: in the fictional elithics, and now from here on in

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Speaker 1: the episode, we're going to largely focus on what the

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Speaker 1: natural world, what real life biology can tell us about

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Speaker 1: what's going on with the elithids, and how we can

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Speaker 1: use the elithic examples the way to explore these examples. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so the way that I approached this was sort of like,

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Speaker 1: let's Frankenstein from the real world, a mind flare out

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Speaker 1: of what we know of how they're described, right, So

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Speaker 1: their biology, anatomy, all that stuff, like what's in the

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Speaker 1: real world that we can bring to our understanding of this.

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Speaker 1: And the first place that I went to was their

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Speaker 1: mouths because they are described as even though they've got

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Speaker 1: these tentacles, they're described as their specif cific mouths as

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Speaker 1: being like lamprey mouths. Lampreys, if you're unfamiliar, are jawless fish. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They've got these thorny, suction cup like mouths and they

426
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:12,000
Speaker 1: are parasites much like the mind flavors and a lot

427
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:14,119
Speaker 1: of the creatures we're gonna talk about today. They use

428
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: their mouths to attach to an animal's body and then

429
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 1: they cut with these teeth through surface tissue until they

430
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:24,440
Speaker 1: reach the blood and bodily fluids of it um. They've

431
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: they're known to live in both coastal and fresh water.

432
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: They're kind of they look like eels kind of, but

433
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: they're not. They're fish. Uh. There's three types of them.

434
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,719
Speaker 1: There's flesh eaters, blood drinkers, and just a type that

435
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:39,040
Speaker 1: lives for three to seven years in a larval stage

436
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: and then they only live for six months as adults,

437
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:43,920
Speaker 1: but they don't really feed. They just reproduce with other

438
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: lamp reas and then they die. So an equally weird

439
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:50,360
Speaker 1: example from the real world. Now, there is an excellent

440
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: article on Wired fromen called Absurd Creature of the Week

441
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,879
Speaker 1: the lamprey that just really dove deep into the lamprey's biology.

442
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:03,440
Speaker 1: So I turned to that for a real deep description

443
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,360
Speaker 1: of this mouth. What's going on with this mouth? Now,

444
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 1: flesh eater lampreys and blood drinker lampreys have different types

445
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 1: of mouth, So let's go with the flesh eater for today,

446
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: since we know that the mind flare is definitely using

447
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 1: it to eat brains. So they have a structure that's

448
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 1: like a tongue. These are lampreys, and it's called a piston.

449
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: It has this convex structure to it that moves both

450
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 1: side to side and up and down, basically gouging flesh

451
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:36,640
Speaker 1: out of its victim, with a strong middle tooth attached

452
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 1: to it. And this middle tooth is shaped like a

453
00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:42,639
Speaker 1: U in the flesh eater lampreys and like a W

454
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:45,640
Speaker 1: and the blood drinker lampreys. And for different reasons, when

455
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 1: one's better at like pulling flesh into the mouth, the

456
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: other is better getting blood flowing um. And there are

457
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:56,239
Speaker 1: very much like other animals that we've talked about. When

458
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: we've covered vampires on the show before. They have glands

459
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:02,879
Speaker 1: in their throat that secrete an anticoagulant and that helps

460
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: keep the blood flowing, help get stuffed down their throat. Uh.

461
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 1: In the flesh eaters, the anti coagulant glands are much smaller,

462
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: but they still exist. So presumably a mind flare would

463
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: have some kind of anticoagulant gland as well. Now, lampreys

464
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 1: have two rings of structures inside the mouth that helps

465
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:27,479
Speaker 1: them adhere to their victims through suction. One ring is

466
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:32,120
Speaker 1: the oral fimbria, and it basically looks like little leaves

467
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 1: that are made of flaps of tissue, and these adhere

468
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,439
Speaker 1: closely to the skin of the victim and they form

469
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: this tight seal. Like I mean, I've never been bitten

470
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,400
Speaker 1: by lamprey, but I imagine, like from what I've heard,

471
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: there next to impossible to get off of. You. Like,

472
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:48,520
Speaker 1: part of the country that I lived in for a

473
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: while in New Hampshire was right next to what was

474
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: called the Lamprey River, and so obviously there are a

475
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: lot of fresh water lamp freas in there. I never

476
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 1: encountered them, but you know, my understanding is, like you know,

477
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:01,200
Speaker 1: you have to basically kill it to get it off

478
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,679
Speaker 1: and then have it I think surgically removed. Um, so

479
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 1: it's it's clamped on their tight There's a second ring

480
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 1: in the mouth that is made of conical structures known

481
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 1: as papal a, and these help the lamprey actually sense

482
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: where best to attach themselves. So the blood drinking lampreys,

483
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: they're so sensitive with this region of their mouth that

484
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: they can actually use it to find underlying blood vessels

485
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:29,400
Speaker 1: around victims. So this is like think of it as

486
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:33,360
Speaker 1: like uh like radar almost right, Like it's a super

487
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 1: sensitive organ built into their mouth so they can find

488
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: the best possible place to clamp down and start chewing

489
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:44,880
Speaker 1: and sucking blood or and or flesh out of you. Now,

490
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 1: they don't often go after humans. Don't be listening to

491
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: this and like free times. Oh boy, like that. You know,

492
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: that's pretty rare. I think it. It has happened obviously.

493
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: But fun fact that Joe actually told me about. I

494
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:57,959
Speaker 1: was talking to him about this episode before we came

495
00:27:57,960 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: to the studio and he said, well, did you know

496
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:02,719
Speaker 1: the his classic Joe He's got just like this ample

497
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: amount of weird knowledge. He goes, did you know Henry

498
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 1: the First died from eating a pie fell lampreys. And

499
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: I was like, what what are you talking about? Like

500
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: a lamprey pie? Yeah, And he was right. Apparently, King

501
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,439
Speaker 1: Henry the First died from food poisoning when he ate

502
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: what was referred to as a surfeit of lamprey's in

503
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:24,440
Speaker 1: a pie. His physician specifically told him not to because

504
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 1: like this is this is a bad idea, and he instead,

505
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: I think he was like sixty eight sixty nine. He was,

506
00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 1: you know, for the time, quite elderly, but he was like, Nope,

507
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: I'm eating this pie flo lampreys. I can't imagine what

508
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:41,239
Speaker 1: that tastes like. It just made me immediately nauseous when

509
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: Joe told me about it. But by all accounts, there's

510
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: there's multiple pieces of evidence that this guy ate a

511
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: lamprey pie. We'll have to hear from people who have

512
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: a culinary experience with lampreys. Yeah, maybe they taste great.

513
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't imagine that a creature that

514
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: solely subsists on just like hanging onto the body of

515
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 1: its victim and draining it of blood has got like

516
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: a lot of like good fatty flesh on it. For eating,

517
00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 1: but I'm also a vegetarian. Now for the mind flares part,

518
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 1: of course, it's it's not so much about blood or meat,

519
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: it's about getting that brain. So so I guess the

520
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: idea here would be if we look at the lamprey,

521
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: it would be to either use some sort of specialized

522
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: tongue after attachment to either like cut its way through

523
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: an eye socket or some other natural uh the fleshy

524
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 1: gateway to the brain, or just like straight through the skull. Yeah.

525
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: The way I've always seen it drawn is from behind,

526
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: like the of mind flare, tentacles wrap around your face

527
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: from behind, the mouth attaches to the back of your skull,

528
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:47,240
Speaker 1: and then presumably this piston thing is in their mouth

529
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: and just bores through your skull, and subsequently they just

530
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: chunk your brain up and suck it up through their mouth. Yeah,

531
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: leaving you with the head without a brain. All right, Well,

532
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: on that note, uh, let's take a quick break, and

533
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: when we come back we will explore more horrifying wonders

534
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: related to the elithid body as well as natural world organisms. Okay,

535
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: so we're back, Robert. You had previously mentioned the possibilities

536
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: of tadpoles in real life and in mind flare life

537
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 1: being cannibals. So let's talk about this all right, So

538
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: once more again according to to Volo's guided monsters and

539
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 1: elithid las eggs and protected pools and larval tadpole hatcheries,

540
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: all right, the tadpoles hatch and then they get turned

541
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 1: into adult mind flares, now tadpoles and abandoned pools. These

542
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: are pools that, you know, the mind flares that looked

543
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 1: after we're all slain by high level adventures or or

544
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 1: or gift coming in from from the outside, so there's

545
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: nobody to take care of them, so that what they

546
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 1: do is they end up eating each other until all

547
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: you have left is just one mutated survivor known as

548
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: a neolithid, and this just grows into a monstrous psychic

549
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: worm that's a danger to elithids and non elithids alike,

550
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: large powerful animal, minded monster with us with some signic ability. Okay,

551
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: so there are some real world examples of this, right yeah, yeah,

552
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: For the real world world parallel here would be tiger

553
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: salamander cannibal Morse. So the life cycle of the tiger

554
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: salamander features an interesting developmental fork an egg can develop

555
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: into a normal larval tadpole or into this cannibal morph

556
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 1: see now, under normal circumstances, tiger salamat or eggs developed

557
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 1: into normal tadpoles and then into normal adult tiger salamanders.

558
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: But if the population is too large for the available environment,

559
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 1: so like they're in a small pool or something, uh,

560
00:31:55,440 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: then consistent tactile interactions with other tadpoles cause m with

561
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: the eggs to develop into tadpoles with larger heads, bigger mouths,

562
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: and more well developed teeth. And I'm definitely picturing like

563
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: a baby is you know more? Yeah? So yeah, it's

564
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: basically the scenario is not to personify uh that you know,

565
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: non human non intelligent um relationships here, but it's almost

566
00:32:22,560 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: like there's a there's somebody in charge of all, right,

567
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: we've got too many, we've got too many salamanders in

568
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: this pool. Let's just make one that's really good at

569
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: eating all the other all the other salamanders. Uh. And

570
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: so basically they have a built in population control system

571
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: larva on larva cannibalism. If the broodpools overcrowded and the

572
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:46,200
Speaker 1: resources are too scarce, then some tadpoles physically transform in

573
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: order to better gobble up the others. That is absolutely terrifying.

574
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 1: Let's back up for a second here, let's imagine let's

575
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:56,280
Speaker 1: apply this to human beings. Imagine there's a nursery and

576
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 1: it's you know, at the hospital, and it's got all

577
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: the babies in their little beds, and one baby grows

578
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 1: a little bit larger. Its head gets bigger, it gets

579
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: this huge mouth, and it grows well developed teeth, and

580
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: then it proceeds to crawl around the nursery and eat

581
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: some of the other babies. That's basically what we're talking

582
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: that's the basic scenario here. Yeah, now, and uh and

583
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: and after this calling is done, the the cannibal MorphOS salamander,

584
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: it keeps its large head and bigger mouth, but then

585
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:29,719
Speaker 1: goes through its diet normalizes, and it goes to a

586
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: normal life cycle. I'm trying to imagine like the animal

587
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 1: documentary that's narrated by like Morgan Freeman or Sigourney Weaver

588
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: or something, and they're like, and here we have the

589
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: tiger salamander eating all of its fellow tadpole babies, and

590
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 1: it's just like, well that that's exactly the kind of

591
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: thing Attenboro would hit us with Attenborough would love it,

592
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 1: that's true, and I would have to I would have

593
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: to immediately skip the track for my son, as would

594
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: watch the nature shows. Um, now let's turn to the

595
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: neil with it. So, Yeah, the neil that you can

596
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: look at and say, this is essentially a cannibal morph.

597
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 1: This is one tadpole eating all the other tadpoles and

598
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 1: then growing into this giant thing. So if we're to

599
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 1: use nature as our guide here, we can only assume

600
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: that the neolithid morph once served in evolutionary purpose, allowing

601
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: a tadpole pool to survive in times of chaos or abandonment,

602
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: absorbing the nutrients of its fellow tadpoles with just pure

603
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 1: economic ruthlessness, just like the cannibal morphs of tiger salamanders. However,

604
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 1: with the mind flares, you can definitely say that the

605
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: neolithid is something of of this stigial thing, right, because

606
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: there's there's no information any of the books I looked

607
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:41,839
Speaker 1: at that that let us know that. Then the neolithid

608
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: continues the alipid race in any way, shape or form um.

609
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: It's not going to develop into as far as I

610
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: can tell, it's not going to develop into an adult

611
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: mind flare. So this is perhaps in a you know,

612
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:59,319
Speaker 1: a fitting accident for a species that has manipulated other

613
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: species and itself for so long. Under normal condition, larger

614
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: tadpoles would would be killed and they certainly would not

615
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,080
Speaker 1: be permitted to mature into a kneel with it, right yeah.

616
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: I would imagine like in the mind flare society, this

617
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 1: isn't always a good thing, right yeah. It kind of

618
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,600
Speaker 1: deviates from your normal routine. It would be like it

619
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 1: would be exactly like if humans could do this, you

620
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: would you would know, never, never, always space your babies out,

621
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:26,959
Speaker 1: don't let don't put them too close, or you're gonna

622
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: end up with a cannibal morph baby. And then what

623
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 1: are we going to do about that? You know? Well, so,

624
00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: I this isn't directly related to the cannibalism thing, but

625
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 1: I found an interesting article about tadpoles that I just

626
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:40,799
Speaker 1: wanted to throw in here as well to try to

627
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:44,800
Speaker 1: understand the neolithids. So, according to research that was published

628
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:51,400
Speaker 1: in apparently tadpoles can see if you attach eyeballs to

629
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: their tails. What now, this is utterly bizarre? Why what

630
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: what I'm wondering, is like, you know what the working

631
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: conditions are like in this laboratory. But basically it was

632
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,959
Speaker 1: compelling to scientists to study because they wanted to learn

633
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 1: how much a tadpole brain could interpret sensory data. So

634
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 1: they took the African claw frog Xenopus lavists I believe

635
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:19,200
Speaker 1: that's the Latin pronunciation. They took their tadpoles and they

636
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: grafted eyeballs onto their torsos and tails, and then they

637
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:26,920
Speaker 1: removed their original eyes. So that's the part to me,

638
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:29,560
Speaker 1: I'm like, what mad science is this? That they're just

639
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: like plucking eyes out of these creatures and then pasting

640
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:34,960
Speaker 1: eyes onto other parts of their body. Yeah, who's the

641
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: awful under dark monster here? Yeah, exactly, this is very

642
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,440
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing mind flares too. Yeah. Um.

643
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: Then they gave a tadpole vision test, and the way

644
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 1: that they did this was they illuminated half the area

645
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: that the tadpoles were in with red light and half

646
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: with blue light. And in the red light, the tadpoles

647
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: would get electrocuted, they'd get zapped with electricity. So again,

648
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:01,879
Speaker 1: more torture, right, and we've already yanked your eyeballs out

649
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: pasted them onto your tail. Now we're gonna zap you.

650
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: But apparently some of these tadpoles would go over to

651
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: the blue light area because they knew that it was safe.

652
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: So the scientists determined some of them could actually see

653
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: with their eyeball tails because they stayed in these safe

654
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:24,840
Speaker 1: blue areas. So the researchers basically argued, this is evidence

655
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:29,799
Speaker 1: that the brain in general is remarkably plastic in its

656
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: configuration for different body arrangements, like especially at tadpole stage,

657
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: when it's so um, you know, you're at the beginning

658
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 1: of the life cycle, it can adapt quickly enough to

659
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: like somehow rewire, so it can attach to these eyeballs

660
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 1: that are just not supposed to be there um. And

661
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: this is what allows mutations in all kinds of body plans,

662
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: not just in frogs and tadpoles, to still work with

663
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: the existing anatomy. So the basic idea here is like,

664
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: if there's some kind of a mutation in a single organism,

665
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:08,440
Speaker 1: it can adapt quickly, or its brain can adapt quickly

666
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 1: because like it's designed to be so I don't know, flexible. Literally, Well,

667
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:15,880
Speaker 1: that's that's wonderful because this not only gives us a

668
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: little more information about tadpoles and how they work, but

669
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:22,720
Speaker 1: again it shows it supports the theory that mind flayers

670
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 1: are essentially us. Yeah, very much so. And I think right, like,

671
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:30,480
Speaker 1: can imagine there, here's your D and D campaign, right,

672
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: you have you have to hear some adventurers. You have

673
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: to sneak into a mind flare cave, take some of

674
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: their tadpoles, and then pull their eyes off and rejection

675
00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: their tails and perform this experiment in uh in D

676
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:45,800
Speaker 1: and D time. So we'll see what kind of odd

677
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 1: results that would have. Now we're talking about brain eating

678
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:52,760
Speaker 1: monsters here, so so one of the most obvious areas

679
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: to to to explore here would be what animals eat brains?

680
00:38:56,600 --> 00:38:59,359
Speaker 1: And it's a trickier scenario than we often think because

681
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:02,879
Speaker 1: they're playing almost eat brains, humans eat brains. Totally. Yeah,

682
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: I mean, this is gonna have forever scarred me. But

683
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: growing up Jeverisy Faces of Death No, I mean, I'm

684
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:13,240
Speaker 1: very familiar with them by reputation they were You're lucky

685
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 1: they didn't. But there was one of the like bootlegged

686
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: VHS copies that I saw back when I was god

687
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 1: it must have been like fourteen or fifteen years old. Uh.

688
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:25,320
Speaker 1: They they did the thing where they put the monkey

689
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: in the middle of the table. The table has like

690
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:30,399
Speaker 1: the circular entry, and you hit the monkey on the head,

691
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: open up at skull, and people eat the brains. This

692
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:37,759
Speaker 1: would be the very thing that was referenced in that

693
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:41,600
Speaker 1: awful scene in the second Indiana Jones movie. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

694
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 1: And if you wonder why I'm a vegetarian, that was

695
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 1: probably the beginnings of it right there. Yeah. God, what

696
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: what an odd I want to go back and watch

697
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: that movie sometimes, but don't. There's so much weird xenophobic material. Yeah, yeah,

698
00:39:56,719 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: it's Yeah. I feel sorry if our list wars are

699
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: out there and you know what I'm talking about. But yeah,

700
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of examples, plenty of animals, birds,

701
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 1: humans that eat brains, right, But to understand the mind

702
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 1: flare affect on, uh, the humanoids that they're eating the

703
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 1: brains of, I turned to a couple of specific creatures

704
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 1: that I think will help us out here, because one

705
00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 1: of the things about the mind flare is that you know,

706
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 1: in in a in a very fantasy way, it eats

707
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,440
Speaker 1: psychic energy. And of course there's no real parallels to

708
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 1: that in the in the real world. Otherwise, they're definitely

709
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 1: eating the brain and nothing else. So the way to

710
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: describe this in biology would be to say that they're

711
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:48,880
Speaker 1: I obligate, I guess neurovores, And it's difficult to find

712
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 1: anything like that in biology. But you have a couple

713
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 1: of pies, I do, yeah, all of them much smaller

714
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 1: than the mind flare. The first is and again help

715
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 1: me with my Latin here, I think it's neglia foul Larry.

716
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: This is referred to in English as the brain eating

717
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 1: amba uh and this amiba is the primary cause of

718
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: the infectious disease ambic men and joe encephalitis, which is

719
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 1: also referred to as just PAM P a M. The

720
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 1: amiba can exist in different kinds of environments, sometimes in soil,

721
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 1: sometimes in fresh water, and that's where it becomes trouble

722
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 1: for us as human beings. Or it can exist in

723
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: the human central nervous system. Now, these infections are really rare.

724
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:39,760
Speaker 1: Well we're about to tell you, like, don't get super

725
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,719
Speaker 1: freaked out. It's soup. It's incredibly rare. But when they

726
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: happen of the time, it's fatal, Like If you get

727
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:49,879
Speaker 1: one of these amiba in you, you're pretty much done

728
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: for this is this is rolling a one on your Yeah.

729
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: The CDC actually estimates that there were a hundred and

730
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: thirty eight cases of pam AND reported in the United

731
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 1: States between nineteen sixty two and Okay, so that gives

732
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,240
Speaker 1: you an idea of how rare it is. Of those,

733
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: only three of the patients survived. Uh so, how do

734
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: you get it? You're all probably immediately going, oh, well,

735
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:16,239
Speaker 1: I don't want that. How How how do I stay

736
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: away from that? Well, usually it's from engaging in recreational

737
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:22,320
Speaker 1: water activities like swimming or diving. So you know, you

738
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: basically have to stay away from water fun if you,

739
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 1: if you, if you want to totally avoid this thing.

740
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: The amiba enters the human body through your nose and

741
00:42:31,640 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: it attaches itself to the epithel cells that line the

742
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 1: inside of the nasal cavity. Then it migrates to the

743
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: nerves that are situated in the nasal area. Eventually this

744
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 1: reaches the central nervous system of your spinal cord and brain,

745
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: and it induces your body's immune system to activate macrophages

746
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:57,760
Speaker 1: and neutrophils to combat infection doesn't feel good. And here's why.

747
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: The amiba itself, this is the airy mind flawery. It

748
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,319
Speaker 1: has food cups on its surface that allow it to

749
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:08,319
Speaker 1: capture its own food resources, and this is everything from

750
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:12,440
Speaker 1: bacteria and fungi to human tissue if it's gotten up

751
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: your nose. In addition, it produces cell destructive molecules that

752
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 1: destroy the membrane structure of nerve cells. So the combination

753
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:25,759
Speaker 1: of these two things make it really effective at inducing

754
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:31,120
Speaker 1: severe nerve damage. It eventually will destroy your entire central

755
00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 1: nervous system. This makes them a pretty serious public health

756
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 1: hazard um because they can be easily acquired. You know,

757
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:41,440
Speaker 1: you just swimming along, you get one up your nose

758
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: and boom, and then they're associated with this really high

759
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 1: mortality rate. Now, the symptoms don't show up until about

760
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:52,839
Speaker 1: two to eight days after infection, and they include the

761
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: following and this is I think we can use these

762
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: as probably an idea of what symptoms would be like

763
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: of uh be either being under the thrall of mind

764
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: flares or during the process of your brain being consumed. Okay,

765
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: so as they're sucking that brain, just beginning to suck

766
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: it out. I guess, so sudden headache, that's a that's

767
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:19,240
Speaker 1: an obvious one, right, high fever, neck pain, nausea, vomiting, ryanitis,

768
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: light sensitivity, and eventually seizure, seizures in a coma. So alright,

769
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 1: mind flare is probably doing this much quicker than the

770
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: brain eating amiba is right, But that's a basic idea,

771
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: you know, unless they have different culinary styles. You know,

772
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: maybe there's some of them. Maybe they like to eat slow. Yeah,

773
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:39,759
Speaker 1: I mean I was reading the geek Out a little bit.

774
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: I was reading that supposedly some mind flares experiment by

775
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:48,760
Speaker 1: say subjecting their they're they're victims to musical thoughts or whatever.

776
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:51,320
Speaker 1: Like they'll they'll they'll want a certain mind state before

777
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: they eat it because it had just take later. Interesting, Okay,

778
00:44:55,160 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: so they go to like they go to like a

779
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 1: special school, like learn what specific thoughts to beam into

780
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: the brain before they eat it. Yeah, if you want

781
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: your your brain meal to be more a little like

782
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: a veal and wanted to be a sushi, you know

783
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:14,400
Speaker 1: that depends. Huh. Well again, I want to remind everybody

784
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:17,479
Speaker 1: the brain eating amba is pretty rare. It's so rare

785
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 1: that no clinical trials for developing treatments even exist as

786
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: often Usually if it's found, it's treated with something called

787
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:31,120
Speaker 1: Ampho terrison B, which is an anti fungal drug, as

788
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 1: well as a variety of other antifungal drugs. And I've

789
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 1: got some examples for you. In fact, these are the

790
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:39,719
Speaker 1: three survivors in the US, um one of the Now,

791
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: there's been seven survivors in the whole world. Three in

792
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 1: the US. One of them was a nine year old

793
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: girl in California who was infected in nineteen seventy eight,

794
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: and she caught it by swimming in Deep Creek Hot

795
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 1: Springs in San Bernardino National Forest. She was treated with

796
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: exactly what I just described. They gave her Ampho terrison

797
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: B some their antifungal drugs intravenously, and she beat it

798
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: and lived through the experience. Now, two other children were

799
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 1: reported survivors of this just in two thousand thirteen, so

800
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: just three years ago, and they were twelve and eight

801
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: years old. And a twelve year old first contracted it

802
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,280
Speaker 1: at a water park that was near Little Rock, Arkansas.

803
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: So don't think to yourself like, oh, this is only

804
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: if I swim in like natural water, because apparently they

805
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 1: got it at this water park as well. Uh. In

806
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: addition to the anti fungal treatments that they usually give,

807
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 1: this girl was so bad off that they had to

808
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 1: subject her to induced hypothermia to reduce her brain swelling.

809
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 1: So this is pretty nasty disease. Um. But also, you know,

810
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: let's keep it in mind when we're thinking about boy,

811
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:48,840
Speaker 1: this mind flare. It's got its lamprey mouth attached and

812
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: it's piston drilling through my head. What's that going to

813
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 1: feel like? So this would be an example of a

814
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:59,319
Speaker 1: creature that certainly doesn't depend on human brains at all

815
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: exact but this is it. But it also gives us

816
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: an example of what brain eating in the real world

817
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: consists off. Yep, we have a couple other examples here too.

818
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:14,320
Speaker 1: The next one is neurosist curosis, which is a type

819
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 1: of tape worm that usually lives in pigs. This is

820
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: very stuff to blow your mind. You must have covered

821
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: the pork tapeworm. Uh. Pork tape worm produced larva that

822
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: can latch onto cranium, whether it's a pigs cranium or

823
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:31,600
Speaker 1: human cranium, and they show up as large white cysts.

824
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:35,279
Speaker 1: They usually disperse through a pig's blood stream. So when

825
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: you're eating undercooked pork, you could be eating their larva.

826
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,799
Speaker 1: Uh So when they enter a human, usually from eating

827
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 1: undercooked pork, they still flow through our blood stream and

828
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 1: they get stuck inside the fluid filled cavities in our brains.

829
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: These can lead to a coma loss of motor functions,

830
00:47:54,160 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: violent seizures, or blindness. And the reason why they're eating

831
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 1: holes in your brain. Now, my understanding of this scenario

832
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 1: is that essentially you have a parasite that is lost

833
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: in an unfamiliar host exactly, Yeah, and it's just doing

834
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:11,800
Speaker 1: what it thinks it's supposed to do and it results

835
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah. Now, it's unlike the amiba. This is

836
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,320
Speaker 1: more common than you might think. It's estimated that two

837
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,840
Speaker 1: thousand people have them in the US, in twenty nine

838
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: million in Latin America. Now, these are just pork tape

839
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: worms going about the regular business, not not necessarily getting

840
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:32,239
Speaker 1: lost to winding up of the brain though, Yeah, I

841
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,839
Speaker 1: believe that's true. Yeah, which can be right, It can

842
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: subsequently lead to that. The other one that's related to

843
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: this similar effect, very different being is prion disease. And

844
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:47,800
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about this occasionally on the show um Prions.

845
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,799
Speaker 1: There are a variety of fatal neurological illnesses that are

846
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: associated with them. They are abnormal proteins and you can

847
00:48:56,040 --> 00:49:00,439
Speaker 1: both inherit them or have them transmitted into your through

848
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 1: infected animal tissue. They result in symptoms of dementia or

849
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 1: a taxio, which is impaired motor control, and they eventually

850
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 1: lead to death, and it can take anywhere from weeks

851
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: two months. UM. You might have heard of this as

852
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: Kreuzfeld Jakob disease. Uh, there's also new variant Kreutzfeld disease,

853
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: crew Gerstmann Stralser, Shinker syndrome, and fatal familial insomnia. So

854
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 1: all of these are caused by prion proteins in the brain. Yeah,

855
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: Kuru in particular is the one that is associated with

856
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: traditional acts of funeral cannibalism um in in certain parts

857
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 1: of the world. And yeah, exactly what Papa New Guinea.

858
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:49,439
Speaker 1: It leads to disease. Yeah, so all of us are

859
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:54,360
Speaker 1: probably most familiar with these from the animal form that

860
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 1: we referred to as mad cow disease. It's caused by

861
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: a similar thing with prions. Now we've known about this

862
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,280
Speaker 1: in sheep and goats. For hundreds of years it referred

863
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:08,880
Speaker 1: to as scrappy in sheeps and goats, but we didn't

864
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:12,000
Speaker 1: know that it was actually transmittable until the nineteen thirties.

865
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 1: So basically what happens here is these diseases are caused

866
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 1: by proteins that are misshapen um and that's why we

867
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:23,400
Speaker 1: refer to them as prions. They clump together and proliferate

868
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 1: by inducing shape changes in our normal proteins, and this

869
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: causes sponge like lesions in the brain that disrupt brain function.

870
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:36,360
Speaker 1: So there's your three examples. You get the prions, the

871
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 1: pork tape worm, and the brain eating amiba. Basically, you know,

872
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:44,759
Speaker 1: very different kinds of creatures that can get into your

873
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 1: nervous system and wreck havoc, but good examples of probably

874
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: what's going on with mind flare consumption. Alright, we're gonna

875
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we come back. We're going

876
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:59,799
Speaker 1: to compare the elpids to a certain tongue eating pair

877
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:08,239
Speaker 1: of site. So we talked about this earlier, but the

878
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 1: creation of the mind flare, and it's I guess lore

879
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: throughout the last forty odd years is so amazing that

880
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:22,359
Speaker 1: they've actually come up with a detailed process with its

881
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:28,320
Speaker 1: own title called ceremorphosis, which is basically the the idea

882
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: of how it reproduces parasitically, right right, Yeah, it's that

883
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 1: example we talked about earlier. The the little tadpole is

884
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:39,279
Speaker 1: shoved up into the cranium and then it eats the

885
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:43,240
Speaker 1: host brain and it attaches there to the brain, storm

886
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: swells up, grows into the new brain for this body,

887
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,200
Speaker 1: and then transforms the body. Now here's a here's a

888
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:54,000
Speaker 1: nerdy little bit that I remember about illids. Sometimes when

889
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: they do this, they take on like mental ticks from

890
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:02,360
Speaker 1: the host the they grow within. Uh. And this is

891
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:06,080
Speaker 1: considered like social flaw. It's like a it's a real

892
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: like bad sign of manners in mind player society, so

893
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: they try to hide it from the rest of their speechies.

894
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 1: So like let's say, like, um, all right, We'll use

895
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 1: Joe as an example. Let's say Joe has like a

896
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,399
Speaker 1: tick where he picks at his fingernails, and then they

897
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: insert a mind flare tadpole into Joe. It eats his brain,

898
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:27,360
Speaker 1: it turns Joe into a mind flare, regrows as his brain,

899
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:30,040
Speaker 1: but it may still have that tick. Where it picks

900
00:52:30,040 --> 00:52:33,440
Speaker 1: at its fingernails, but it has to hide it constantly

901
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 1: from other mind flas or else they'll they'll be like, oh,

902
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:40,279
Speaker 1: there's something off with you. You're not mind flairery enough.

903
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:44,239
Speaker 1: You didn't discard uh, the human shell that you're so

904
00:52:44,280 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: it's so you're weak because you're in a since you're

905
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 1: letting your your clothing control you. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Alright,

906
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:54,160
Speaker 1: So you're probably wondering, well, this sounds just monstrous and

907
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:58,680
Speaker 1: off one of the worldly. What's what possible parallel was there? Well,

908
00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:03,400
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful one and in the form of Simothia Exigua.

909
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:05,919
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is a Stufftabiliary Man classic. We talked

910
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 1: about this one on the Strain episode. Yeah, this is

911
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:13,280
Speaker 1: the tongue eating ice a pod. You might be familiar

912
00:53:13,360 --> 00:53:15,759
Speaker 1: with these from a movie that came out a couple

913
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:18,479
Speaker 1: of years ago. It's a found footage horror movie called

914
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:21,759
Speaker 1: The Bay, and I think the premise I watched it

915
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: a while ago, but the premise was something like, there

916
00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:26,080
Speaker 1: was some kind of pollutant in the waters around this

917
00:53:26,200 --> 00:53:31,600
Speaker 1: coastal town. It caused the the isopods to mutate, uh,

918
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:35,600
Speaker 1: and so they started infecting human beings instead of fish. Yeah. Now, luckily,

919
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:39,480
Speaker 1: luckily they don't actually affect humans. But there hasn't been

920
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 1: a lot of new research published on these creatures. It's

921
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: it's they're they're quite rare. They're possibly popping up more

922
00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: these days due to over fishing. But essentially what you

923
00:53:49,160 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: have here, this is the scenario. Is we understanding, This

924
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 1: little crustacean sneaks in through the gills of a fish,

925
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: It sets up shop on the host taste buds, and

926
00:53:57,600 --> 00:53:59,680
Speaker 1: then there's there's only so much room and a fish

927
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:02,439
Speaker 1: is on a fish mouth, so you can imagine what

928
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:05,240
Speaker 1: the the louse's first meal is. It has a tasty

929
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: helping of tongue juice, starts sucking on that tongue juice,

930
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 1: and once the loose drains the tongue of enough blood, uh,

931
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:15,640
Speaker 1: it attaches itself to the atrophied stump of the tongue

932
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 1: and essentially becomes the new tongue for the fish. And

933
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:22,359
Speaker 1: every time the host opens his mouth for a meal,

934
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: the loos, you know, helps itself to a little food

935
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:29,400
Speaker 1: on the way down. Yeah, you can easily u find

936
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:31,840
Speaker 1: a Google image search of what these things look like.

937
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:34,640
Speaker 1: There's plenty of pictures of people prying fish mouths opening

938
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: you can see the little isopod inside. Yeah, every time

939
00:54:37,680 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: I show my wife it, she just goes like she

940
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,319
Speaker 1: does the voice of the isopod saying like hello, like

941
00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:46,080
Speaker 1: this is peaking out from inside this fish mouth. Fun fact,

942
00:54:46,480 --> 00:54:50,280
Speaker 1: not these specific is A pods that that it regrow

943
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: as tongues, but other is A pods can grow to

944
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:56,440
Speaker 1: be over two point five feet long. And uh, these

945
00:54:56,440 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 1: aren't the tongue replacements. This that these are the kind

946
00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: that scavenge the carcass is of whales, which we've talked

947
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: about before the show as well. Yeah, so these are

948
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: really I mean, I don't I don't know how to

949
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 1: describe isopods verbally on the show, but they're real creepy

950
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,440
Speaker 1: looking critters. And just imagine them crawling along the corpse

951
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 1: of whale, just slowly chewing their way through it. Yeah,

952
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: to drag in another fictional comparison, they remind me a

953
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 1: lot of the Gartham from the Dark Crystal, the big

954
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:25,160
Speaker 1: beetle creatures. Yeah, yeah, that's a good Yeah, that's a

955
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 1: good example. So with Samothia exegua, you have a creature

956
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: here that that mainly you know sucks on tongue juice

957
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:36,319
Speaker 1: attaches itself to the stump, while the elithid tadpole goes

958
00:55:36,360 --> 00:55:39,799
Speaker 1: far beyond that. The the elithid tadpole is replacing the

959
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:43,399
Speaker 1: central organ of the nervous system. Uh. And it's it's

960
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:45,279
Speaker 1: quite appropriate to think of this as an act that

961
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 1: just kills the host, but it really serves as a

962
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: sort of of of parasitism. The body continues to live,

963
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:55,320
Speaker 1: albeit in a different form, and many natural world parasites

964
00:55:55,360 --> 00:56:00,200
Speaker 1: inflict behavioral and physical changes on their hosts. It also

965
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: gives us a rough evolutionary idea of where the elithids

966
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,280
Speaker 1: came from, or would have come from in a natural system,

967
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: right brain replacing parasites that eventually transcend into something greater. Yeah,

968
00:56:10,719 --> 00:56:13,000
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you really think about it, like

969
00:56:13,040 --> 00:56:17,439
Speaker 1: they have to even though like mind flare is best

970
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:21,120
Speaker 1: operate on the dark and hide an attack, they have

971
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 1: to come into contact with other humanoid species because otherwise

972
00:56:26,520 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 1: they're just going to only exist as tadpole form, right,

973
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:31,240
Speaker 1: they have to. They have to use humans for bodies,

974
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: they have to use humans for food. It's yeah, because also, yeah,

975
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:37,279
Speaker 1: you can think of it this way. So the parasitic

976
00:56:37,640 --> 00:56:41,719
Speaker 1: form that goes inside the host is physically eating the

977
00:56:41,760 --> 00:56:44,359
Speaker 1: brain from the out, from the inside out. But then

978
00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:47,399
Speaker 1: as adults they have to crack open skulls and get

979
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: brains um, you know, in a different way. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

980
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: I wonder what happens if a mind flare eats a

981
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:58,960
Speaker 1: prion infected brain. That would be that would be an

982
00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 1: interesting plot point. Infected brains and how maybe they can

983
00:57:02,400 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: detect them and know not to them. Maybe that's it.

984
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: That's like the oh, it's like it's like an alien

985
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:12,600
Speaker 1: three when they the aliens don't attack Sigourney Weaver because spoilers,

986
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:14,719
Speaker 1: she's got one of them in her. But like the

987
00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 1: mind flares will like kill everybody except for one person,

988
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:20,720
Speaker 1: and it's because they can sense that they've got, you know,

989
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: either pryon related disease or like a pork tape worm

990
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:25,560
Speaker 1: or something. But this would be a wonderful plot for

991
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:28,160
Speaker 1: anybody out there who's putting together a campaign. Imagine a

992
00:57:28,200 --> 00:57:30,920
Speaker 1: scenario in which the big breath that the mind flares

993
00:57:31,320 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 1: are facing, or perhaps the the methodology that's being employed

994
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:39,280
Speaker 1: by their enemies is a pry on. It's being induced

995
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 1: to the populations that the mind flavors depend on for

996
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:47,680
Speaker 1: food mad mind flare disease. Alright, but we've got some

997
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: more biological parallels specifically with locusts. Right, Yes, so remember

998
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 1: the oleithard that we have mentioned earlier. Yeah, this is

999
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: the super mind flare. So again, the scenario here is

1000
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:03,920
Speaker 1: you have tadpoles growing into adult mind flare if everything

1001
00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:06,640
Speaker 1: is going like normal, but then there's an exceptional mind

1002
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:12,120
Speaker 1: flare adult who starts rivaling the elder brain. You know,

1003
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 1: they they're they're disagreeing on everything. And finally the elder

1004
00:58:15,240 --> 00:58:17,640
Speaker 1: brain says, all right, go do your own thing, take

1005
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: your followers, get out of here, start your own colony.

1006
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: And that's what happens, seeds a new colony. And again

1007
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:27,160
Speaker 1: you can think of this as a morph a version

1008
00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 1: of the species that's going to go out and uh

1009
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:34,439
Speaker 1: and and found a new colony. Okay. And the best

1010
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:37,640
Speaker 1: example that that I came across to to discuss this

1011
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: is that of the desert locust. So desert locust feature

1012
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:46,160
Speaker 1: both a gregarious and a solitary morph. A gregarious morph

1013
00:58:46,400 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: arises as a response to population density. It's more adapted flying,

1014
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:52,560
Speaker 1: so it can it can get the heck out of

1015
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 1: that immediate area, go off and help found a new

1016
00:58:55,520 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: population of desert locusts. So I think that's what we

1017
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 1: have we have here with the olythics. You have a

1018
00:59:01,040 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: model that closely resembles morse that developed due to population

1019
00:59:04,720 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 1: density in order to spread out and establish new community.

1020
00:59:08,360 --> 00:59:10,600
Speaker 1: So in this case, it's it's the idea there's there's

1021
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:13,080
Speaker 1: enough of them around that it means that the population

1022
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 1: is healthy, the resources are abundant enough, and the colony

1023
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: can actually uh you know, depart, splinter and form new

1024
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:27,000
Speaker 1: populations of the species. Now, what's inherent about that, especially

1025
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 1: for these mind flares, is that they're hermaphrodites, so they

1026
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:33,760
Speaker 1: don't need mates in order to create more mind flares.

1027
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about this, I was like, all right,

1028
00:59:35,920 --> 00:59:39,600
Speaker 1: her map preditic reproduction is is definitely a real thing.

1029
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 1: But let's look to another example to try to figure

1030
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:45,800
Speaker 1: out how that would work with mind flares. And the

1031
00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 1: one I turned to was C. Elegants, which is a

1032
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:52,960
Speaker 1: type of nematode of roundworm or thread worm uh and

1033
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: it lives in the soil, usually sometimes rotting vegetation, and

1034
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 1: it basically feeds on bacteria and they're they're very primitive,

1035
01:00:00,520 --> 01:00:03,960
Speaker 1: but we human beings study them a lot, and why

1036
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: because they share essential characteristics with human biology, So you know,

1037
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:12,360
Speaker 1: they're great for studying the effects of certain things on

1038
01:00:12,760 --> 01:00:15,960
Speaker 1: without doing it to humans. Or I don't know, ferrets,

1039
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:18,520
Speaker 1: which are another sort of I guess if you're thinking

1040
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:21,120
Speaker 1: about it in terms of evolved life forms higher up

1041
01:00:21,120 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 1: the chain that has human characteristics. Except some of c

1042
01:00:26,800 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: elegants are self fertilizing hermaphrodites, just like the mind flairs are. Uh,

1043
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:36,680
Speaker 1: And the way that they do this is they cleave embryonically,

1044
01:00:36,880 --> 01:00:39,320
Speaker 1: So I would assume this is something that happens in

1045
01:00:39,360 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 1: the mind flare. It proceeds through morpha genesis, and then

1046
01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:46,280
Speaker 1: they grow into an adult. Now we've been told by

1047
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:49,720
Speaker 1: Volo's Guide of Monsters that mind flavors lay an egg.

1048
01:00:49,800 --> 01:00:52,680
Speaker 1: But this is all right, not trying to be grossier,

1049
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:54,640
Speaker 1: but I'm trying to figure this out. Right, you go

1050
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:58,880
Speaker 1: through ceremorphosis, changes your body, turns your head into an octopus.

1051
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:03,800
Speaker 1: Presumably it creates some kind of orifice that you can

1052
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:07,520
Speaker 1: lay an egg through. Yeah, I would guess so, or

1053
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 1: it's utilizing an existing orifice in some way. Shape or form. Okay, Um,

1054
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:16,240
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if maybe what's happening is it's because

1055
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: it's creating its own eggs. It's it's cleaving embryonically inside

1056
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:25,680
Speaker 1: of itself, laying that as an egg, and then that

1057
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:30,240
Speaker 1: egg hatches, proceeds through morpha genesis, and then goes through

1058
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: the ceremorphosis procedure that we've already described right now. See,

1059
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: elegants also has only male counterparts. So there's hermaphrodites and

1060
01:01:41,680 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: there's males, but there aren't females. It's kind of fascinating.

1061
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:48,480
Speaker 1: Most of their volume when you look at their anatomy,

1062
01:01:48,840 --> 01:01:52,200
Speaker 1: is taken up by their reproductive system. So you'd have

1063
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:54,560
Speaker 1: to imagine maybe mind flares would be the same way.

1064
01:01:54,640 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 1: Like other than the big head, everything from the neck

1065
01:01:57,240 --> 01:02:00,439
Speaker 1: down is reproductive system. Yeah. I mean, they probably don't

1066
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:02,680
Speaker 1: need much in the way of a traditional digestive system

1067
01:02:02,720 --> 01:02:05,040
Speaker 1: because they're only getting a limited amount of sustenance out

1068
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:08,120
Speaker 1: of that brain. Yeah. Um. And then and then who

1069
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:11,040
Speaker 1: knows how they defecate. Maybe they just they're always coming

1070
01:02:11,080 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 1: in slime, so maybe they just maybe they just secrete

1071
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: it through their wars. Well. Um, the sea elegance of

1072
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:19,920
Speaker 1: their nine hundred and fifty nine cells, three hundred of

1073
01:02:19,920 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 1: them are neurons. This sounds about right for a larval

1074
01:02:23,200 --> 01:02:28,120
Speaker 1: mind flare, especially if it's you know, primarily using its thoughts,

1075
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:33,960
Speaker 1: its brain, it's thinking capacity. See, elegans also have neural structures.

1076
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:37,200
Speaker 1: These are just in nematodes, mind you that include sense

1077
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:42,400
Speaker 1: organs for taste, smell, temperature, and touch. They don't have eyes,

1078
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:45,680
Speaker 1: but they do respond to light. Hopefully nobody starts sewing

1079
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:49,360
Speaker 1: eyes onto these guys anytime soon. But they they're responsive

1080
01:02:49,400 --> 01:02:52,640
Speaker 1: to light as well. Uh. And they move by flexing

1081
01:02:52,680 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 1: and relaxing their dorsal ventral waves along their body to

1082
01:02:56,440 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 1: propel themselves along. And this was how I was imagining

1083
01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:04,080
Speaker 1: the mind flare. Larvae must have to have some kind

1084
01:03:04,080 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: of locomotion, right, whether it's moving through cerebral fluid that

1085
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:11,440
Speaker 1: it's swimming around in, or it's crawling up into somebody's skull.

1086
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:14,560
Speaker 1: So it probably does a similar thing right by flexing

1087
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:17,080
Speaker 1: and relaxing until it burrows up in there and eats

1088
01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: the brain. So I think c elegants as a nematode

1089
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:24,640
Speaker 1: is a pretty good start. There's lots of hermaphroditic creatures

1090
01:03:24,680 --> 01:03:26,360
Speaker 1: out there that we could look to. But this seems

1091
01:03:26,480 --> 01:03:31,640
Speaker 1: plausible for how the mind flare I guess the reproductive

1092
01:03:31,720 --> 01:03:36,040
Speaker 1: part inside the actual adult mind flare's bodies working. Yeah, yeah,

1093
01:03:36,040 --> 01:03:38,120
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting spin on it, and certainly

1094
01:03:38,280 --> 01:03:40,919
Speaker 1: fleshes out something that at least in the guides I've

1095
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:44,240
Speaker 1: looked at, they don't really put a lot of detail into. Right, Yeah,

1096
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:48,040
Speaker 1: that's probably a little too much for your average A

1097
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 1: D and D reader that's in volos Additional Guy, the

1098
01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:58,439
Speaker 1: Midnight volos Erotic Guide the Monsters. Um, Okay, so we've

1099
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:00,600
Speaker 1: talked a lot about this on the side, but let's

1100
01:04:00,640 --> 01:04:04,880
Speaker 1: really get into it. The elder brain. So can imagine

1101
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:10,640
Speaker 1: like if we just had rather rather than like, um,

1102
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:14,640
Speaker 1: a boss at work instead, where your boss's office is,

1103
01:04:14,840 --> 01:04:19,280
Speaker 1: there's just a big baby pool that's filled with cerebral

1104
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:23,200
Speaker 1: fluid and a giant brain, and that's what tells you

1105
01:04:23,240 --> 01:04:25,800
Speaker 1: what your duties are for the day. I'm picturing it

1106
01:04:25,920 --> 01:04:27,920
Speaker 1: right now. I mean I could probably get behind it

1107
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:31,320
Speaker 1: after after a while. Yeah, yeah, you could trust an

1108
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:34,000
Speaker 1: elder brain. Yeah, I mean that's the older brain. Who's

1109
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: who's gonna question the alder brain, but you, I certainly

1110
01:04:37,080 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 1: wouldn't know, but Drid Stowarton did. That's a spoiler for

1111
01:04:41,240 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: that book Exile. Uh. Speaking of which, Yeah, so this

1112
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:48,880
Speaker 1: is actually a quote from it, and I'm going to

1113
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:51,400
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of an idea of from

1114
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:54,560
Speaker 1: the pros what they're like. The inside of the giant

1115
01:04:54,640 --> 01:04:58,439
Speaker 1: stone structure was ringed by balconies and spiraling stairways, each

1116
01:04:58,520 --> 01:05:01,400
Speaker 1: level housing several of the mind flares, But it was

1117
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:05,160
Speaker 1: the bottom chamber, unadorned and circular, that held the most

1118
01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:10,280
Speaker 1: important being of all, the central brain. Fully twenty feet

1119
01:05:10,320 --> 01:05:14,360
Speaker 1: in diameter, This boneless lump of pulsating flesh tied the

1120
01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:19,360
Speaker 1: mind Flare community together in telepathic symbiosis. The central brain

1121
01:05:19,480 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 1: was the composite of their knowledge, the mental eye that

1122
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:26,320
Speaker 1: guarded their outside chambers, in which had heard the warning

1123
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:29,600
Speaker 1: cries of the illaphid from the drows city many miles

1124
01:05:29,640 --> 01:05:33,080
Speaker 1: to the east. To the Illatids of the community. The

1125
01:05:33,200 --> 01:05:36,920
Speaker 1: central brain was the coordinator of their entire existence and

1126
01:05:37,040 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 1: nothing short of their god. Thus, only a very few

1127
01:05:41,200 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 1: slaves were allowed with this special tower, captives with sensitive

1128
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:50,919
Speaker 1: and delicate fingers that could massage the illiphant god thing

1129
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:55,640
Speaker 1: and soothe it with tender brushes and warm fluids. So

1130
01:05:55,960 --> 01:05:58,680
Speaker 1: it's a little insight into what goes on with the

1131
01:05:58,720 --> 01:06:01,800
Speaker 1: older brains with gotta keep the elder brain well scrubbed.

1132
01:06:02,480 --> 01:06:08,040
Speaker 1: It's like constantly, like at a day spa. Yeah. So again,

1133
01:06:08,080 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 1: you get back into this idea that either they developed

1134
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:15,120
Speaker 1: this over time or they evolved to have the elder

1135
01:06:15,160 --> 01:06:19,160
Speaker 1: brain as part of their their biology essentially um but

1136
01:06:19,280 --> 01:06:22,960
Speaker 1: part of their They're just there their life cycle. I

1137
01:06:23,000 --> 01:06:25,680
Speaker 1: tend to like the idea that they they developed it

1138
01:06:25,960 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: or they turned to it after the fall, because the

1139
01:06:29,160 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 1: mind flares endlessly plot the restoration of their empire, and

1140
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 1: to do so, they have to maintain a perfect balance

1141
01:06:34,360 --> 01:06:39,360
Speaker 1: of secrecy and exploration, ever clawing out the shortest, safest path,

1142
01:06:39,840 --> 01:06:42,720
Speaker 1: much like the Spacing Guild and the dude yeah yeah,

1143
01:06:43,880 --> 01:06:46,640
Speaker 1: can't make big risks because because if they don't pay off,

1144
01:06:46,680 --> 01:06:50,400
Speaker 1: they could lose everything. So to survive and to make

1145
01:06:50,400 --> 01:06:53,800
Speaker 1: the necessary meta calculations here, the elethids have this elder

1146
01:06:53,840 --> 01:06:58,560
Speaker 1: brain uh again, giant immobile thought organ in a tank

1147
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:01,320
Speaker 1: of brine. It's the in these library of knowledge, a

1148
01:07:01,400 --> 01:07:03,480
Speaker 1: history of all their past lives. When they die, their

1149
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:06,880
Speaker 1: their their own brains are returned to the elder brain.

1150
01:07:07,360 --> 01:07:10,960
Speaker 1: It's a nexus of metacognition for the individuals in the colony,

1151
01:07:11,400 --> 01:07:14,600
Speaker 1: and likewise kind of serves the thralls as well. You

1152
01:07:14,600 --> 01:07:17,880
Speaker 1: know what that sounds like to me? What cyborgi ism? Yeah,

1153
01:07:17,920 --> 01:07:21,240
Speaker 1: except for it's using organic material It sounds very much

1154
01:07:21,280 --> 01:07:24,280
Speaker 1: like what we talked about in our episode on cyborganism. Yeah,

1155
01:07:24,320 --> 01:07:27,320
Speaker 1: I mean, I couldn't help but think about human computing.

1156
01:07:27,720 --> 01:07:32,080
Speaker 1: The entire system resembles in many ways human information networking

1157
01:07:32,120 --> 01:07:35,840
Speaker 1: systems and the ever evolving supercomputers that manage it. But

1158
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:41,120
Speaker 1: the externalization and interconnectivity of thought, and as we drift

1159
01:07:41,480 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 1: ever closer to the technological singularity, when computer super intelligence

1160
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:50,080
Speaker 1: truly eclipses that humanity, it seems like we could be

1161
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:53,560
Speaker 1: approaching our own age of the elder brain, right, Yeah,

1162
01:07:53,600 --> 01:07:56,800
Speaker 1: I mean, well, think about it the cloud, the way

1163
01:07:56,840 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: everyone talks about the cloud, we're just like offloading and

1164
01:08:00,120 --> 01:08:03,360
Speaker 1: nation to the cloud. And I don't know, I mean,

1165
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:06,040
Speaker 1: I guess we do have like people whose whole job

1166
01:08:06,160 --> 01:08:08,040
Speaker 1: is to maintain the cloud. I don't know that they're

1167
01:08:08,040 --> 01:08:12,200
Speaker 1: necessarily giving it a delicate finger massages, but you know,

1168
01:08:12,400 --> 01:08:16,200
Speaker 1: they work inside these data centers that house all this information.

1169
01:08:16,640 --> 01:08:18,400
Speaker 1: That's our version of the elder We put all of

1170
01:08:18,439 --> 01:08:20,679
Speaker 1: our human knowledge into it. We put all these details

1171
01:08:20,680 --> 01:08:24,559
Speaker 1: about our daily life. Even when we die, information about

1172
01:08:24,680 --> 01:08:27,240
Speaker 1: us lives on. Yeah. Yeah, I mean what yea, what

1173
01:08:27,400 --> 01:08:29,599
Speaker 1: is the internet? What is the cloud? But an elder brain?

1174
01:08:29,640 --> 01:08:31,479
Speaker 1: And you know, the more I think about it, I

1175
01:08:31,520 --> 01:08:34,559
Speaker 1: would I think I'd be okay with trusting. I'd be

1176
01:08:34,760 --> 01:08:38,599
Speaker 1: I feel safer trusting the world. Do an elder brain

1177
01:08:38,800 --> 01:08:42,800
Speaker 1: or or in the human variation here, a super advanced

1178
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:46,240
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. Yeah, so you're ready to give up to

1179
01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:48,600
Speaker 1: sky neet at this point, You're like, maybe it'll do

1180
01:08:48,640 --> 01:08:50,760
Speaker 1: a better job than we have. It's kind of the

1181
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:54,559
Speaker 1: sky net situation, right because the mind flares are saying, look,

1182
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:57,160
Speaker 1: we screw this up. We're done, We're doomed, we're done.

1183
01:08:57,680 --> 01:09:00,559
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's have this elder rain that's going

1184
01:09:00,600 --> 01:09:04,400
Speaker 1: to take care of all those choices for us, and

1185
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:08,880
Speaker 1: this way we can survive and maybe even rise again. Yeah.

1186
01:09:08,920 --> 01:09:11,360
Speaker 1: And so I'm trying to think to like parallels of this,

1187
01:09:12,080 --> 01:09:14,760
Speaker 1: if you you know, like so in the stories of

1188
01:09:14,800 --> 01:09:18,920
Speaker 1: mind flares, basically they'll protect the elder brain at all costs. Uh,

1189
01:09:18,960 --> 01:09:21,320
Speaker 1: it's you know, as you mentioned earlier, I think it's

1190
01:09:21,360 --> 01:09:23,800
Speaker 1: a pretty high level monster to fight an elder brain

1191
01:09:23,880 --> 01:09:26,880
Speaker 1: or something, right, It's pretty like they'll just like psychically

1192
01:09:26,880 --> 01:09:28,759
Speaker 1: wipe you out if you try to hurt them. But

1193
01:09:28,760 --> 01:09:32,960
Speaker 1: but like, imagine if you just destroyed the Internet, you

1194
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:35,040
Speaker 1: just took out the cloud. Now, I know that's like,

1195
01:09:36,320 --> 01:09:39,320
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much as much fantasy as mind flares

1196
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:43,519
Speaker 1: at this point, right, But like the world right now

1197
01:09:43,800 --> 01:09:46,240
Speaker 1: without all of that data backed up that we've got

1198
01:09:46,280 --> 01:09:50,120
Speaker 1: would be an utter chaos, And so what are we

1199
01:09:50,160 --> 01:09:52,160
Speaker 1: gonna do for now? We're going to protect it at

1200
01:09:52,200 --> 01:09:57,799
Speaker 1: all costs, right, That's like information is our primary resource

1201
01:09:57,880 --> 01:10:02,080
Speaker 1: right now. Kind of crazy. Yeah, you sound like a

1202
01:10:02,120 --> 01:10:04,320
Speaker 1: modern human, you also sound like a mind flare and

1203
01:10:04,360 --> 01:10:06,679
Speaker 1: saying that, which brings us back again to this area,

1204
01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:09,880
Speaker 1: this idea that the mind flares are essentially us. They

1205
01:10:09,920 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 1: may have tentacles, they may eat more brains than we

1206
01:10:13,280 --> 01:10:16,880
Speaker 1: do on a daily basis, but they're essentially humans with

1207
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:23,800
Speaker 1: a with a very similar reliance on information and informational systems. Um.

1208
01:10:23,840 --> 01:10:25,760
Speaker 1: So think about that the next time you encounter one.

1209
01:10:25,920 --> 01:10:28,600
Speaker 1: You know, no one of your adventures. Yeah, absolutely, be

1210
01:10:28,640 --> 01:10:31,120
Speaker 1: a little bit more humane with the mind flares that

1211
01:10:31,200 --> 01:10:35,600
Speaker 1: you may be attacking. Yes, in humans before before you

1212
01:10:35,680 --> 01:10:39,719
Speaker 1: rule your initiative and I think twice all right, So

1213
01:10:40,240 --> 01:10:43,599
Speaker 1: there you have it mind flares. So this was an

1214
01:10:43,640 --> 01:10:46,400
Speaker 1: episode that was a little bit of an experiment for us,

1215
01:10:46,479 --> 01:10:48,720
Speaker 1: and we had fun. But obviously we want to know

1216
01:10:48,760 --> 01:10:51,400
Speaker 1: if you had fun too, if you liked this kind

1217
01:10:51,439 --> 01:10:54,080
Speaker 1: of thing and you want more content like this from us,

1218
01:10:54,120 --> 01:10:57,599
Speaker 1: in let us know, Okay, reach out to us, let

1219
01:10:57,680 --> 01:11:00,280
Speaker 1: us know on social media. We're thinking about doing something

1220
01:11:00,360 --> 01:11:03,360
Speaker 1: similar to this, maybe on our social media platforms when

1221
01:11:03,400 --> 01:11:08,680
Speaker 1: we do live videos. Uh. So remember we're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

1222
01:11:08,720 --> 01:11:11,519
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Those are all places where you can find

1223
01:11:11,560 --> 01:11:15,080
Speaker 1: content like this or communicate with us. You can also

1224
01:11:15,520 --> 01:11:18,120
Speaker 1: find more information like this if you liked this and

1225
01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:21,200
Speaker 1: you want more right now, there's lots of monster science

1226
01:11:21,200 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 1: and Monster of the Week articles on stuff to blow

1227
01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. Yeah, if you want our monsters,

1228
01:11:26,520 --> 01:11:28,479
Speaker 1: let us know. If you want more B and D

1229
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:31,680
Speaker 1: related content, role playing related content, let us know. Uh.

1230
01:11:31,720 --> 01:11:33,800
Speaker 1: And if there are any specific examples that we talked

1231
01:11:34,120 --> 01:11:37,000
Speaker 1: talked about in here, stuff from from the natural world

1232
01:11:37,000 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 1: that you would like to see explored in greater depth.

1233
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:41,120
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing we can do as well.

1234
01:11:41,760 --> 01:11:44,320
Speaker 1: And as always, if you want to reach us in

1235
01:11:44,400 --> 01:11:47,120
Speaker 1: any way about this, you don't have to drill holes

1236
01:11:47,160 --> 01:11:50,240
Speaker 1: in our skull. You don't have to shoot psionic mind

1237
01:11:50,280 --> 01:11:53,280
Speaker 1: blasts at our brain. You can email us directly and

1238
01:11:53,400 --> 01:12:05,320
Speaker 1: blow the mind at how stuff works dot dom for

1239
01:12:05,479 --> 01:12:07,760
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that

1240
01:12:07,840 --> 01:12:19,800
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. They believe