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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. Disembarkation disembarkation notice to all passengers arriving

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Speaker 1: on Station Oracus. The Dune Planetary Tourism Consortium, funded by

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Speaker 1: the great generosity of the most noble House Hardconed, would

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Speaker 1: like to welcome you to Planet Aracus. Aracus is a

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Speaker 1: dry place. Please remember to conserve water whenever possible. It

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Speaker 1: is recommended that you do not venture outside without a

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Speaker 1: properly fitted still suit to recycle your sweat, urine and

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Speaker 1: vegal moisture. When traveling beyond the shield wall, remember always

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Speaker 1: to watchful where I'm signed by keeping the mind. The

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Speaker 1: three ahs, hissing, heaving and high energy discharge, A hissing

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Speaker 1: sound in the sand, heaving up with display sediment, and

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Speaker 1: high energy setting discharge from the dunes may all indicate

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Speaker 1: that the sand worm is here and the event of

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Speaker 1: worm signed. Do not activate shields and proceed immediately to

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Speaker 1: the nearest cave building or evacuation orn't thought or local

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Speaker 1: vendors and kiosks found throughout Station Iraqis are in the

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Speaker 1: best place to purchase steel suits, frank hits, and individually

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Speaker 1: packaged worm thumbers. And duty free prices. Please remember also

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Speaker 1: the spice must flow. Anyone suspected of sabotaging, inhibiting, or

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Speaker 1: interfering with spice production may be subject to penalties up

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Speaker 1: to and including lactatorial remuneration on gaining prime or personal evaporation.

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Speaker 1: Please enjoy your say among the dunes. Hey, he wasn't

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Speaker 1: a stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is episode two

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Speaker 1: in our exploration of the science of Done, the science

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Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert's sci fi classic Done, which is celebrating

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Speaker 1: its fiftieth anniversary this year. Yeah, so if you missed

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Speaker 1: the first part, you should go back and listen to

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Speaker 1: that first part one where we talk about the technology

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Speaker 1: of doing, and we we talked about some important sort

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Speaker 1: of introductory materials to the universe of Done. If you're

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Speaker 1: not familiar with it, we highly recommend that you check

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Speaker 1: out that part first before you listen to this one.

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Speaker 1: But if you just want to get thrown right into

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Speaker 1: the middle, here we are. Yeah, last time we talked

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Speaker 1: about but Larry and Jehad, we talked about still suits,

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Speaker 1: We talked about order thoptors and a little bit about

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Speaker 1: the Holtzman effect, whatever that is. But yeah, this time

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about the the living science

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Speaker 1: of Done, about the biology and ecology of the planet Iracus.

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Speaker 1: And one of the coolest things about the Done universe

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Speaker 1: has got to be the sandworms. Yes, I imagine that

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Speaker 1: is one of, if not the key aspects of the

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Speaker 1: franchise that come to people's minds when they think of Doing. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I So, I just finished reading this book a few

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Speaker 1: weeks ago, and I loved it. I absolutely adored this book.

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Speaker 1: As I said in the last podcast, it frequently struck

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Speaker 1: me as just amazingly fresh for a fifty year old book.

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Speaker 1: It's full of ideas that you don't encounter elsewhere. It

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Speaker 1: just felt very original and unique and different. But the

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Speaker 1: moment where the book really kicked into gear for me

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Speaker 1: was the first sandwarm attack. And this is when they're

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Speaker 1: going out to observe spice harvests. Correct. Yeah, So I

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Speaker 1: want to kind of put you the listener into the

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Speaker 1: moment of the sandwarm attack. So imagine you're one of

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Speaker 1: a group of twenty six spice miners working on a

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Speaker 1: patch of spice in the deep deserts. So you're out

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Speaker 1: there among the dunes. The heat is high, the sun's

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Speaker 1: bearing down on you. You've got your protective still suit on.

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Speaker 1: You're working the harvester machine, trying desperately to get this

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Speaker 1: spice going. And you've you've been at it for several minutes,

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Speaker 1: and over head there's this enormous cargo aircraft. I suppose

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Speaker 1: it would be some type of ornithopter with flapping wings, which,

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Speaker 1: as we discussed in the last last episode, doesn't make

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Speaker 1: a lot of aerodynamic sense, but okay, uh, And it's

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Speaker 1: called a carryall. It hovers nearby, waiting to lift you

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Speaker 1: off at a moment's notice, and preferably at the last

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Speaker 1: possible minute, to maximize the profits, because you've got to

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Speaker 1: get as much spice as you can. The spice is important.

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Speaker 1: The spice must flow, the universe needs it. But a

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Speaker 1: worm will come. The worm always comes it. Here's the harvester.

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Speaker 1: It knows where you are and the moment you start working,

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Speaker 1: it's on its way. Now. With proper precautions, you'll lift

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Speaker 1: off at just the right moment. You'll get the maximum

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Speaker 1: spice and you'll avoid the worm. But if you're not

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Speaker 1: able to lift off in time, you may notice a

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Speaker 1: hissing sound in the sand sliding, you know, it's sand

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Speaker 1: sliding against sand. In the background, you might a static

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Speaker 1: discharge in the air, and eventually you're gonna notice an

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Speaker 1: upheaval of sand is the worm rises to the shallows

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Speaker 1: of the desert. And then finally you see, and it's

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Speaker 1: probably the last thing you see, a great gaping circular mouth,

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Speaker 1: maybe up to eighty meters wide, emerging from the dunes,

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Speaker 1: spreading open, closing over you, and swallowing you and your

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Speaker 1: friends and your mining vehicle all in one bite. It's

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Speaker 1: quite a site, and as far as sound goes, we

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Speaker 1: do want to give a quick thanks to Chris Knife

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Speaker 1: double O seven. He's on band camp as Cheesy Nervosa.

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Speaker 1: Will include a link to his account on the landing

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Speaker 1: Bait for this episode. But he does a lot of

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Speaker 1: cool ambient tracks where he gets the ambiance from from

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Speaker 1: various sci fi properties, and so this was the track

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Speaker 1: that we used. Hear was Dune sand Worm Ride. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so I love the sandworms. I love the sandworms scenes

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Speaker 1: in the book. When we first encounter sandworms in the book,

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Speaker 1: it's there merely as a threat. You know, this this

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Speaker 1: huge terrifying beast that lives in the desert. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's a gigantic snake eel worm type creature that it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like the monsters and tremors. You know. It

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Speaker 1: lives under Yeah, it lives under the ground. It can

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Speaker 1: hear where you are. You know, it might be hundreds

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Speaker 1: of meters long. They're so huge you can't fight them off.

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Speaker 1: There's no way to avoid them except to run. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I've seen it describe that that the Frank Herbert

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Speaker 1: sandworms are are kind of like dragons, and but but

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Speaker 1: not nearly in just the threat aspect. Not just a

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Speaker 1: monstrous dragon, but a celestial dragon, because they're ultimately the

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Speaker 1: gateway to wisdom. Yeah, that's true. Because I don't want

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Speaker 1: to spoil too much. But then later on in the book,

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Speaker 1: we learned that the desert dwellers of the planet Iraq

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Speaker 1: is the Fremen, have a more complex relationship with the sandworms.

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Speaker 1: It's not just you know, here's this huge, threatening creature

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Speaker 1: that we have to avoid. They have a sort of

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Speaker 1: a bit of a back and forth. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to say too much more, but it's really interesting, and

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Speaker 1: so I thought we should talk about the sandworm. What

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Speaker 1: is this organism as it's imagined in the Dune universe,

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Speaker 1: and how has this changed the way we think about

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Speaker 1: aliens and science fiction and what what analogies can we

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Speaker 1: make to real world life forms? Yeah, and for starters,

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Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and roll through what we know

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Speaker 1: from from Frank Herbert's books. And again it's one of

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Speaker 1: those cases where Herbert throws a lot of information at

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Speaker 1: you about how sand worms work, but then when you

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Speaker 1: add it all up right, you realize you don't know

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Speaker 1: key things. Um, here's what we know. The sand worm

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Speaker 1: or shy hallud I believe that is the fleming term

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Speaker 1: a creature. Again, you utterly unique to iraq Us, totally

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Speaker 1: tied to a complex life cycle on the desert planet.

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Speaker 1: Links exceed four hundred meters, width of a hundred meters

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Speaker 1: at the thickest point, perhaps as long as the thousand

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Speaker 1: meters in the deep isolated parts of the desert mouth.

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Speaker 1: Diameter is probably about eighty ms, so when it's open

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Speaker 1: and lined with a thousand or more carbo silica crystal

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Speaker 1: teeth um. A typical worm consists of one to four

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Speaker 1: hundred segments, and each segment possessed its own nervous system.

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Speaker 1: Something to keep in mind for later. Now, what Herbert

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Speaker 1: didn't tell us. He didn't tell us whether sand mourns

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Speaker 1: lay eggs. They he didn't tell us if they're male

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Speaker 1: and female, how reproduction occurs at all. He didn't tell

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Speaker 1: us if it's a definitively if it's a vertebrate or

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Speaker 1: an invertebrate. He didn't explain the physics of how it moves,

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Speaker 1: and he didn't tell us what it eats. I would

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Speaker 1: be surprised if it's vertebrate, simply because I think of

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Speaker 1: vertebrate as a category belonging to Earth life. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think it might have some kind of internal, you know,

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Speaker 1: rigid structure. But it's weird to think about those, you know,

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Speaker 1: those peculiarities of evolution that seems so ubiquitous on Earth.

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Speaker 1: We just assume their natural categories. But I mean, who

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Speaker 1: knows if a alien life form is likely to have

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Speaker 1: a backbone, right, And I think that ultimately, the like

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Speaker 1: the segmented nature and the independence of segments, tends to

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Speaker 1: imply something that is inherently invertebrate. But but again, he

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Speaker 1: doesn't draw a distinct line in the sand Well, then

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Speaker 1: to learn more about the sand worm, I think we're

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Speaker 1: gonna have to turn back to our old friends that

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Speaker 1: we mentioned in the last episode, a couple of books

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Speaker 1: that we used as resources. So one of these is

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Speaker 1: going to be The Science of Doune, edited by Kevin R. Grazier,

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Speaker 1: and then the other one is the Dune Encyclopedia, right right.

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Speaker 1: That one's compiled by Dr Willis E. McNelly, and that

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Speaker 1: came out in eighty five. It's out of print, but

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Speaker 1: you can still find used copies in various places. Um,

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Speaker 1: and I got mine online for like, you know, fifteen

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Speaker 1: or twenty bucks, so it's it's still out there and

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Speaker 1: it's not like an out of your reach collector's item.

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Speaker 1: In particular, that the explanations for sand worms from these

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Speaker 1: two books. From Done Encyclopedia, we have an explanation by

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Speaker 1: Maureen A. Shifflet, and Uh in the Science of Done

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Speaker 1: we have a sybil hetchel pH D's explanation from her

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Speaker 1: piece the Biology of the Sandworm. Now I'm actually gonna

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Speaker 1: start with the Dune Encyclopedia explanation from Marine Shifflet. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Shifflet goes ahead and defines both male and female sandworms

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Speaker 1: the ladder somewhat smaller than the males, with the secondary

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Speaker 1: segment of each worm containing its reproductive system, and she

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Speaker 1: posits that at age one thousand, because these are longer

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Speaker 1: than creatures. The female develops an egg sac in her

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Speaker 1: reproductive system, constructs a deep, massive nest, and then attracts

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Speaker 1: a male with rhythmic thumping. Now this is key because

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Speaker 1: in the in Dune we see people attracting or distracting

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Speaker 1: a worm by using a mechanical thumper. Right, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: one of the technologies we could have talked about in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, but I guess we just didn't have time.

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Speaker 1: The thumper is a sort of you might think of

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Speaker 1: it as a defensive decoy mechanism out in the desert,

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Speaker 1: where if you want to draw off a sandworm, or

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Speaker 1: perhaps even attract a sandworm, you put this thing down

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Speaker 1: on the ground and it starts beating on the sand

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Speaker 1: to say come on over. Yeah, with a rhythmic pattern,

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Speaker 1: because if you you know, there's like the thing if

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Speaker 1: you gotta walk without rhythm, yeah, you know, unless you

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Speaker 1: want to attract the worm. So yeah. One of the

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Speaker 1: things that's frequently mentioned in the book is that if

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Speaker 1: you want to walk across the sand and not attract

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Speaker 1: the worm, you have to walk without rhythm. You have

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Speaker 1: to walk without any kind of uh cadence to your walk.

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Speaker 1: And I love how they bring up the fact that

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Speaker 1: this is so much harder to do than it sounds

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Speaker 1: like like the characters are just exhausted from trying to

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Speaker 1: walk without maintaining a rhythm of their gait. Right, And

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Speaker 1: so she ties this into the into the lifecycle of

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Speaker 1: the worm by saying that it's that kind of rhythmic

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Speaker 1: thumping but not only indicates something unnatural on the desert surface,

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Speaker 1: but perhaps the mating cry the mating call of the

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Speaker 1: female worm. So she says that then the male would arrive,

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Speaker 1: consumes the smaller female, just straight up eats the female

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Speaker 1: and then goes into a dormant state. And it's during

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Speaker 1: this state that the heavy duty spice fiber egg sac

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Speaker 1: remains intact and it's fertilized by the male's reproductive system.

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Speaker 1: And then when he wakes up, he's gonna spit that

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Speaker 1: fertilized egg sac out. What yeah, I mean, I've heard

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Speaker 1: of reproductive cannibalism, but what yeah, this is It's an

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Speaker 1: interesting uh uh. And again this is you know, her

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Speaker 1: taking Herbert's world and extrapolating on it and trying to

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Speaker 1: come with a scientific explanation for how it might work.

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Speaker 1: It's not this is not cannon by any means, but

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Speaker 1: it is interesting because we don't see sexual cannibalism occur

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Speaker 1: in nature that I can think of, where the male

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Speaker 1: eats the female, because generally the female is the species

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Speaker 1: and she may or may not eat the male after

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Speaker 1: he's served his purpose. But here we have the male

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Speaker 1: consuming the female. The Yeah, okay, I mean that just

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Speaker 1: makes me wonder if this almost would start to play

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Speaker 1: with the definitions of what counts as male and what

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Speaker 1: counts as female in a species. Yeah, I would. I

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Speaker 1: feel like I would feel more comfortable with this example

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Speaker 1: of the genders were reversed and the primary primarily the

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Speaker 1: sandworms are are female. But but you know, either way,

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Speaker 1: the the best example that comes to mind of something

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Speaker 1: close to this in the natural world would be um anglerfish,

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Speaker 1: where you have those great things. So you've probably seen

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Speaker 1: pictures of these from the deep ocean. They look like

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Speaker 1: movie monsters. Uh. They've got the crazy faces and that

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Speaker 1: they've got a little a little lit up fishing pole, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and those are the females. The females are the ones

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Speaker 1: we see pictures of the males um are essentially a tiny,

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Speaker 1: heat seeking sexual missile equipped with gigantic nostrils. Uh. All

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Speaker 1: they do is they swim out in search of a female,

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Speaker 1: and if he's lucky and most or not, they find

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Speaker 1: one and they bite onto her abdomen and hang on. Again.

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Speaker 1: These are the angler fish, real world organisms, nothing from

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Speaker 1: sci fi. And then there I'm looking. I just google. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: I looked. I just googled pictures of the male angler

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Speaker 1: fish attaching to the female angler fish. And it's pathetic.

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Speaker 1: It's you could go with that interpretation, because what happens

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Speaker 1: is not only does he bite on and hold on,

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Speaker 1: but their flesh grows together, their blood vessels connect, and

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Speaker 1: the male becomes a mere part of the female's body,

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Speaker 1: sustained by her systems. His eyes, fins, and some internal

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Speaker 1: organs all atrophy and just leave him as just this

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Speaker 1: fat flap of skin. This's this mindless thing on the female.

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Speaker 1: And this way, the male and his reproductive systems are

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Speaker 1: always there when she needs them, which is a necessary

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Speaker 1: adaptation in the dark, lonely world of the deep ocean.

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Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I've never read about this before. I was

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Speaker 1: really I ran across in the past year or two

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Speaker 1: and was pretty amazed by it. But that's certainly it's

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Speaker 1: the case where the male and female fuse into one.

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Speaker 1: And I guess you could interpret this consumption of the

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Speaker 1: of the female sand worm is more of emerging and

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Speaker 1: a consumption since there's not according to her model anyway,

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Speaker 1: there's not really any nourishment to be gained from the

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Speaker 1: worm eating the other worm. Okay, so this is where

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Speaker 1: we start getting into a more complex life cycle. So

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Speaker 1: bear with me, everyone, Um, when a male sum so,

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Speaker 1: the male sand word comes to vomits up that egg

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Speaker 1: case and he takes off the egg case. Eventually hatch

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Speaker 1: catches into a legion of sand trout sand trout sand trout. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and now these these this is where we're getting back

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Speaker 1: into um, into the actual canon of of of Frank

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Speaker 1: Herbert's sandworm biology, because these are very much a part

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Speaker 1: of the series. Yeah, there are sequences in Dune where character,

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Speaker 1: well at least one character I can think of, the

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Speaker 1: planetary scientist kinds. Uh. There may be other characters, but

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Speaker 1: not that I recall, at least kinds thinks about down

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Speaker 1: under the the dunes of sand, there are these massive

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Speaker 1: patches of life. Then there's moisture down there too, which

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Speaker 1: is sort of hidden from the surface, which is I

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Speaker 1: guess being trapped or used by these unicellular life forms.

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Speaker 1: And in this case we're talking twenty by six centimeter

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Speaker 1: unicellular organisms. But that's a big cell. You know, alien world,

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Speaker 1: different laws, right, um. But but yeah, their water scavengers.

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Speaker 1: So the idea here is that they're traveling out, they're

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Speaker 1: collecting water, they're bringing them back, according to UM to

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Speaker 1: this model anyway, to the nest site, and they're sequestering

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Speaker 1: the water. And here the water mixes with excretions from

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Speaker 1: the pre spice mass uh. And here the C t

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Speaker 1: U C two builds up as a byproduct, and this

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Speaker 1: eventually results in a spice blow explosion. And this is

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Speaker 1: very much a part of the books, where eventually the

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Speaker 1: pressure builds up and it blasts that precious spice melange

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Speaker 1: that's produced uh somehow by this sand trout nesting water

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Speaker 1: sequestering action blows it up to the surface where people

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Speaker 1: can say, hey, there's some spice there, let's go get

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Speaker 1: it all right, all right, So but it's not only

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Speaker 1: people that want to come get the spice that also

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Speaker 1: attracts the sandworms, which get into um. And at this point,

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Speaker 1: according to Schifflet, the sand worms enter a pre metamorphic

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Speaker 1: stage during which surviving sand trout joining bodies, and as

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Speaker 1: metamorphosis sets in properly, each sand trout, also known as

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Speaker 1: a little maker among the fremen, becomes a segment of

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Speaker 1: a conjoined body that becomes a small sandworm. So again

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Speaker 1: we see conjoined bodies coming into play. Uh. And this

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Speaker 1: is this is certainly part of of Herbert's original model

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Speaker 1: for the sand worm. So this is fascinating because the

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Speaker 1: sand worm and that sense, it is sort of a

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Speaker 1: composite organism. Yes, very much so. Um and this this play,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to give any spoilers, but this also

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Speaker 1: plays out in rather unique and mind blowing ways in

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Speaker 1: the sequels. Okay, so how long does it take for

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Speaker 1: little sand trout joining together to become the gigantic shi

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Speaker 1: hlud like we see in the book? You know, before

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Speaker 1: they're they're a big sand worm out in the desert

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Speaker 1: over over a thousand years. Because it's going to take

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Speaker 1: that long corners. Shifflet here to segment for the segments

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Speaker 1: to take on. Uh, you know, the different properties such

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Speaker 1: as the tooth head, the reproductive system. If you're going

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Speaker 1: by her model, and during this time of environmental conditions

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Speaker 1: are not met, then the underdifferentiated segments can revert to

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Speaker 1: san trout. So it's kind of like those jellyfish that

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Speaker 1: can that can reverse age, right, can revert to the

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Speaker 1: earlier life form stage if things aren't going well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like that detail that she throws in. And finally

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Speaker 1: the a sexual juvenile warm develops and it's twenty to

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Speaker 1: thirty long, and this is the form that fremen eventually

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Speaker 1: capture and drown to produce spice essence. More about spice

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Speaker 1: in this episode later that's coming up. Uh, most juveniles,

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Speaker 1: according to Shifflet, would become females, but it's possible that

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Speaker 1: it's possible that the environmental absence of a male is

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Speaker 1: what results in male development. In the book itself, we're

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Speaker 1: told that each male has a three four hundred kilometer

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Speaker 1: territory that it defends against at worms, and she has

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Speaker 1: a really interesting bit about how that combat would work.

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Speaker 1: How do the worms fight each other? If they're just

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Speaker 1: they're huge worms with big circular mouths. Well, she draws

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Speaker 1: on a on a on a detail that we'll discuss

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Speaker 1: in a minute. Um, but I guess let's go ahead

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Speaker 1: and hit it. How does someone ride a sandworm? Ah? Yes,

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Speaker 1: Well this is something we learned about later in the

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Speaker 1: book and it's very interesting. So the sandworm, like the

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Speaker 1: sandworms like we mentioned, have these segments on their bodies.

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Speaker 1: They have sort of scales that protects their soft, fleshy

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Speaker 1: inner tissues from the you know, the harsh exterior realities

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Speaker 1: of Aracus and all the sand So a Fremen who

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Speaker 1: is who is hopped up on spice and ready to ride,

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Speaker 1: will go out into the desert with some hooks and

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Speaker 1: attract a sandworm using a thumper, And if the sandworm

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Speaker 1: comes by at the right time, the fremen writer can

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Speaker 1: get the hooks under one of the sandworms outer plates

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Speaker 1: or these ales segments, whatever you wants, yeah, and then

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Speaker 1: pull it back. And what that does is exposed the

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Speaker 1: sandworms inner tissues to the external elements. Obviously, the sand

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Speaker 1: worm does not like this and says, oh no, and

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Speaker 1: it rolls over to protect the exposed part of its

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Speaker 1: body from the sand, and in doing so can lift

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Speaker 1: the rider up onto its back. And then once you're

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Speaker 1: going like that, the sandworm refuses. It doesn't resubmerge into

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Speaker 1: the ground while it's got a part of its body

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Speaker 1: exposed like that, because it doesn't want sand to get

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Speaker 1: in there and hurt it. So you can essentially ride

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Speaker 1: this sandworm around as long as you want until it's

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Speaker 1: just exhausted and collapses, as long as you've got the

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Speaker 1: hooks pulling back the plate. Right, did I describe that

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Speaker 1: about right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's that's perfect. And and

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Speaker 1: so in shifflet trying to understand like what its teeth

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Speaker 1: are for, she draws on this detail and says, well, uh,

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Speaker 1: what happens when two males are are getting to combat

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Speaker 1: over territory. They're using those teeth to pull back each

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Speaker 1: other's segments, essentially wrestling that way. And uh, because again

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Speaker 1: sand gets in there, it's gonna irritate the flesh. And

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Speaker 1: she posits that in extreme cases this could result in

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Speaker 1: a viral infection that could kill a worm, but generally

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Speaker 1: the loser breaks away, So, uh, yeah, just grappling with

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Speaker 1: each other, exposing each other as inner flesh by pulling

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Speaker 1: back with the teeth and eventually forcing one of them

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Speaker 1: to give up and break. Yeah, and a lot. It's

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Speaker 1: like in nature on Earth, a lot of territorial disputes

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Speaker 1: between you know, angry males of species. They don't always

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Speaker 1: end in death. They just one of them is like, okay,

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Speaker 1: I give up. Yeah, if you can have it, you

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Speaker 1: can eat all the females in this region that you want. Um. Finally,

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Speaker 1: a word on diet from Shifflet. Her theory here is

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Speaker 1: that the sand worm is a true autotroph that's an

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Speaker 1: organism that's able to to form a nutritional organic substances

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Speaker 1: from simple inorganic substances such as carbon dioxide. In this case,

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Speaker 1: the sandworm is producing all of the nutritional needs from

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Speaker 1: inorganic compounds on the planet's surface. The energy for this,

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00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:09,159
Speaker 1: she says that it it drives the synthetic reactions to

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Speaker 1: completion just by by traveling across the sand, which causes

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Speaker 1: an electrostatic charge differential, which we do see in the

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Speaker 1: books with a whole You know, you see that you

393
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Speaker 1: already mentioned the static charge that tells you that a

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Speaker 1: worm is approaching and uh. Incidentally, she also uses this

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Speaker 1: as an as an explanation for one water would be

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Speaker 1: fatal to a sandworm, and that it would cause the

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Speaker 1: electrons to discharge abnormally. Yeah. Now, obviously it can't be

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Speaker 1: that any massive water is fatal to a sandworm because

399
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Speaker 1: there there is some tiny amount of water on Iracus.

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Speaker 1: But it sounds like a large amount of water will

401
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Speaker 1: kill a sandworm, right, And it gets into that whole

402
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Speaker 1: segmented thing because it's it's mentioned in the book that

403
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Speaker 1: to really kill a sandworm, like to straight up kill it,

404
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Speaker 1: it's so big. And since each since it doesn't have

405
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Speaker 1: a central nervous system Sinich, each segment has its own

406
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Speaker 1: nervous system, you would have to just nuke the whole

407
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Speaker 1: thing with one of your your handy house atomics that

408
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Speaker 1: you're not allowed to use anyway. Wow. Yeah, um so

409
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Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's a it's kind of a complex life cycle.

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Speaker 1: Uh and uh it's it's summed up in this brief

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Speaker 1: bit from the appendix to dune. Now they had a

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Speaker 1: circular relationship little maker again, that's our our sound trout

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Speaker 1: to Priespye spice mass little maker to shah Haloud shah

414
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Speaker 1: Haloo to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures

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Speaker 1: called sand plankton, which we'll get into the sand plankton

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Speaker 1: food for shah Haloud, growing, burrowing, becoming little makers. Now

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Speaker 1: that of course is a little complicated, and we'll get

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Speaker 1: into that. Because here it seems like how can one

419
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Speaker 1: does it? Sounds like one part of its own life

420
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Speaker 1: cycle is also part of it is also it's part

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Speaker 1: of its diet. That's bizarre, all right, And this brings

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Speaker 1: us to biologist civil hetchel PhD sum Science of Dune explanation,

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Speaker 1: which uh is also really interesting and I think gives

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Speaker 1: us our best comparison to real world biology. Okay, so

425
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:14,280
Speaker 1: first of all, she she she zooms in on the

426
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:18,160
Speaker 1: whole idea that san trout produce oxygen deep underground, as

427
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 1: mentioned by Kinds in the novel. But they need an

428
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 1: energy source to produce oxygen, and since photos, since theist

429
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,199
Speaker 1: is out of the question because their underground, right, the

430
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: best candidate is, of course de hydrothermal vents. That's how

431
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:34,160
Speaker 1: we see it working on Earth, right, Okay, so one

432
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,360
Speaker 1: could interpret the san trout as the producer of milange,

433
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:40,320
Speaker 1: and that's then certainly Herbert doesn't really say exactly like

434
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 1: it's just sandworms are key to the production of spice. Mlehunch,

435
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:47,199
Speaker 1: but I don't know exactly how it goes happening. But

436
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 1: of course we don't want them to go extinct, right,

437
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 1: So Hetchel deposits that just as san trout scavenge and

438
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 1: herd water, they may also tend a milang producing fungus.

439
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 1: So in this case then it's not actually any part

440
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: of the UH of the sandworms life cycle that produces

441
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:10,959
Speaker 1: the spice, but they are harvesters of spice, right. She's

442
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 1: theorizing that they would sequester stashes of water around these

443
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:20,640
Speaker 1: hydrothermal areas, and this would cause the spice fungus to grow. UH.

444
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,480
Speaker 1: And in our world, plants, bacteria, and fungi produced the

445
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: majority of exotic compounds, such as psychedelic compounds, so this

446
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: would make extra sense, right, the secondary compact pounds that

447
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:35,600
Speaker 1: synthesized for protection by a particular fungus. And of course

448
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 1: there are examples of animals on Earth that actually do

449
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: practice farming, I mean animals other than humans. Right. The

450
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 1: example here would be, of course, the leaf cutter ants.

451
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 1: And that's the comparison that that civil Hetchel makes in

452
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: this UH. In this piece. The leaf cutter ants are

453
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 1: of course a number of species that are found in

454
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,040
Speaker 1: the America's and they cut tree leaves. They drag them

455
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 1: to an underground growth chamber and they keep it moist

456
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 1: to gold, cultivate guy on the leaves, um, and then

457
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 1: they so they so basically it breaks down like this.

458
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:08,880
Speaker 1: They bring leaf cuttings back to the colony along well

459
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 1: worn forest roads and paths. We've probably all seen video

460
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: or images of this, you know, very very visual. Um.

461
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:17,360
Speaker 1: They filter out the bad cuttings, they hand the good

462
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 1: ones off to their farmer ants. Then they munched the

463
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:22,520
Speaker 1: leaf cuttings down into a fine mulch. Then they grow

464
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: the delicious fung guy on that mulch, lay some eggs

465
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,160
Speaker 1: in it, and enjoy. They dragged the depleted leaf cuttings

466
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: to the dump chamber along with all the dead ants

467
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: and dead fungus. So the crazy part about this and

468
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of sci fi uh sounding thing about the

469
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants is that they gave up hunting and

470
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:44,640
Speaker 1: gathering fifty million years ago and they became farmers, and

471
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: they they discovered the technology of agriculture before we did.

472
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 1: They did, and not only before we did, before we existed, right.

473
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 1: They not only did they find this substance, but they

474
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:59,640
Speaker 1: essentially domesticated it, and it's grown extinct in the wild,

475
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:02,120
Speaker 1: like it's no longer something that they can go out

476
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 1: and get. So the analogy here would be imagine if

477
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:09,680
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants, uh could grow to become giant leaf

478
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: cutter ants that can eat a city. But also if

479
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 1: the fungus that the little leaf cutter ants grew in

480
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: their colonies created a drug that lets you see the future. Yeah. Yeah,

481
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: imagine all those leaf cutter ants vultronning up into a

482
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: larger organism over the course of a thousand years. Um.

483
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: And I do also want to know that it's it's

484
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:32,880
Speaker 1: also kind of like a caveman movie in that when

485
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,880
Speaker 1: a winged male prepares to leave leaf cutter cutter ant

486
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 1: colony to found a new colony, they have to take

487
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,880
Speaker 1: a sample of that precious fungi with them, because again,

488
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist in the wild anymore. I was continually

489
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: fascinated by that. Um, we're completely at the mercy of

490
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: the ants. If we want this fungus exactly, and of

491
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 1: course we don't want it, but they require it completely.

492
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:56,399
Speaker 1: It's key to their their their life. But back to

493
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 1: the sandworms. Okay, so we don't know exact actually what

494
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:03,639
Speaker 1: sand plankton and sand trout are supposed to eat, but

495
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 1: maybe they eat spice, uh and it and it, but

496
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: you know, but it wouldn't make sense. Hetchel argues for

497
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: the creature to both create and consume spice, so the

498
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,479
Speaker 1: fungus again makes more sense from from that analogy as

499
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:19,439
Speaker 1: well for that comparison as well. So she well, I

500
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: mean I wonder you could look at depending on what

501
00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: you mean by create, you could look at an example

502
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,200
Speaker 1: like honey in a bee colony. You know, the bees

503
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,159
Speaker 1: don't create the honey, but they sort of they process

504
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: the honey. Yes, And I think that would be an

505
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: apt analogy here for the milange as well, that the

506
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: kind of is a created element um. So she argues

507
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: that sand trout communities um are essentially like a combination

508
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: of leaf cutting, ant nest and hydrothermal vent community and

509
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 1: in this case, sand plankton and sand trout would subsist

510
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: on living spice, fungi and bacterial mats that grow around

511
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: the events. She also presents the notion that sand trout

512
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: or essentially a sexual and they might sub this as

513
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 1: clone communities for quite some time at least until the

514
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: build up of carbon dioxide from their farming efforts trigger

515
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:11,000
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction and also triggers that spice blow the results

516
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: from the build up, and then that that would scatter

517
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: the newly produced sandplankton. So then the sand worm comes in.

518
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: It wants to eat up that spice, and in doing

519
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: so it disperses the offspring across vast distances, because of

520
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: course sandworms have those large spread out territories. That makes

521
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 1: sense with some Earth earth life too. You can think

522
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: about seeds that spread by growing in fruits that predators

523
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:35,720
Speaker 1: want to come and eat, or maybe not predators you'd

524
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: call them. I guess they're predators of the plant. They

525
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: come and want to eat the fruit, and then they

526
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: take the seeds with them wherever they go afterwards. So

527
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: now she also goes on in this piece. She has

528
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: some some thoughts on size constraints of enormous organisms. If

529
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: you want to read about that, do check out the

530
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: book to check out her peace, but we're not going

531
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 1: to go into them in this podcast. So one of

532
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: the things I've already mentioned that I really loved about

533
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: doing is that it's the most ecologically conscious novel I've

534
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: ever read. It's it's a novel that really has interesting

535
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 1: thoughts about ecosystems and about resources in ecosystems, like how

536
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 1: resources get used and conserves, specifically water and spice, and

537
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: then also about how organisms feed into one another and

538
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: create ecosystems. There's actually a section in the book where

539
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: the planetary scientist and ecologist Kinds has visions of his father,

540
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 1: who is also an ecologist and lived among the Fremen

541
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: on the dune planet, and the vision of his father

542
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 1: says a couple of interesting things. He says, the more

543
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: life there is within a system, the more niches there

544
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 1: are for life. Life improves the capacity of the environment

545
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: to sustain life. Life makes needed nutrients more readily available.

546
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:57,480
Speaker 1: It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous

547
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 1: chemical interplay from organism to organism. And I think that

548
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense because whenever you imagine a

549
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 1: a rich, thriving ecosystem on Earth, it's one that already

550
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 1: has a lot of life forms succeeding in It is

551
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 1: kind of counterintuitive from a resource competition or evolutionary perspective.

552
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: Places that have a lot of competitions seem like they

553
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 1: they should be harder to survive in. But life creates

554
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 1: ways for other life to thrive, and this is sort

555
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: of part of the problem with Aracus as it's imagined,

556
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: unless you you imagine it terraformed and seated with other

557
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: life forms, as some characters in the novel do kind

558
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:40,360
Speaker 1: of imagine. I think primarily they talked about, let's plants,

559
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 1: some grasses and you know, and settle the dunes. It

560
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:48,959
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have enough biodiversity to be very hospitable

561
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 1: to life forms. And uh, in addition to the sandworms.

562
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 1: Like what life forms are described as inhabiting Aracus, Herbert

563
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 1: mentions some scavenging birds and a few other carrion eaters

564
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: and some kind of scrubby plants. But I got the sense,

565
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: I don't know what you thought about this. I get

566
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,680
Speaker 1: the sense that a lot of these animals that are

567
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 1: described as inhabiting Aracus are imports from human settlement. I

568
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: don't know what you thought. That's that's the sense I

569
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 1: got as well. They're like the scavenging birds have certainly

570
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 1: evolved over over time to to thrive on Aracus, Like

571
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 1: they're there's you know, they're far more conscious. They can

572
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:31,560
Speaker 1: basically hear water, you know, miles away, but that they're

573
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 1: essentially a terrestrial product, while the sand worm is is

574
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: entirely alien. So I don't know, maybe somewhere in the

575
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: if it's in the sequels, or if I missed it.

576
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 1: In the book, Herbert does talk about other life forms

577
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: native to Aracus, but I can't think of any examples

578
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 1: where I remember him talking about that, And and I

579
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 1: wanted to ask the question, if we imagine that the sandworm,

580
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: at the various stages of his life cycle, were the

581
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:01,719
Speaker 1: one and only organism native to a planet, is something

582
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 1: like that possible in reality? Can you have a one

583
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: organism ecosystem? Yeah, even if it's a really complex organism

584
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 1: like this one. I was trying to find examples of this.

585
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: I found one. Actually I think you found it first.

586
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and eight there were reports that

587
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: the first known single organism ecosystem had been discovered, and

588
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: this was miles under the earth in the moment, I

589
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: apologize if I'm pronouncing this wrong, Momponing gold mine in

590
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:35,719
Speaker 1: South Africa, and it was a bacteria called de sulfur

591
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: Udis audax viator, it was a rod shaped bacterium, and

592
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: it makes its living in a very remarkable way. It

593
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: doesn't need sunlight and it doesn't need any prey organisms,

594
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: so it lives down there by itself, and instead it

595
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:56,600
Speaker 1: puts together the organic molecules it needs by access only

596
00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:01,040
Speaker 1: to water, carbon, and nitrogen in the ground and using

597
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 1: energy from According to this Lawrence Berkeley Lab source I

598
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:09,280
Speaker 1: read on this, hydrogen and sulfate produced by the radioactive

599
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: decay of uranium. So this is a it's surviving on

600
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 1: chemicals created by radiation in the ground, almost two miles

601
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 1: under the ground. This is essentially about as close to

602
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:25,879
Speaker 1: an alien microbe as I've ever heard of on Earth. Yeah,

603
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:31,279
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty far removed from our traditional ecosystem model. Yeah,

604
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 1: and so I just thought that was fascinating. But another

605
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:37,560
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it is, if you imagine way

606
00:34:37,600 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 1: way back in time two I don't know situations of

607
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: a biogenesis on Earth, you probably at least have to

608
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: imagine that there are some periods in the history of

609
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: life where there was only one organism um and then

610
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: and then of course we got a branching ecosystem. So

611
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: that again makes me wonder if you could naturally have

612
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 1: a planet where there's really only one type of organism there,

613
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: it seems like the natural course of biological evolution is

614
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: to diversify. But another way of thinking about this that

615
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 1: that occurred to me is that what if it is

616
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 1: the case that the sandworm and its various stages of

617
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 1: life is the only major organism alive on Iracus and

618
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: it wasn't always that way, So it could have been

619
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: a planet rich with life that has essentially been conquered

620
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 1: by a single invasive species, Like there's one organism that

621
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:41,359
Speaker 1: destroys all eco diversity on the planet. I can say, Okay,

622
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:42,919
Speaker 1: I can see that being the case too. Yeah, where

623
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 1: you end up with just a sandworm only ecosystem because

624
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: it's that dominant species in this environment. Yeah, I mean,

625
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,800
Speaker 1: one wonders how sustainable a system like that would be.

626
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 1: That Uh. And then of course, if you want to

627
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:57,160
Speaker 1: think about other parallels to the sandworm in reality, you've

628
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: of course got the Mongolian deathworm. Ah. Now the Mongolian

629
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: death worm is not real though, right, maybe not to you. Well,

630
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: I didn't know if maybe I've missed a new study

631
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: where the occasionally you see an expedition to to to

632
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:14,319
Speaker 1: find it. No, as far as I'm aware, no one

633
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: has ever discovered the Mongolian deathcorm. But if you're not familiar,

634
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 1: you should. I bet you've written a blog post about that.

635
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever really covered Mongolian deathworm. Um, no,

636
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: I haven't run a crud. You have something called a

637
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: sandworm that lives in beach sand, but of course that's

638
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: an entirely different scenario. Yeah, that's unfortunate, Okay, Robert, Yes,

639
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:40,280
Speaker 1: imagine yourself at a party with some hip young people

640
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:45,319
Speaker 1: who start passing around the hottest new designer drug. It

641
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 1: is the spice Melange. And Herbert never is exactly clear

642
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: what the spice in the book looks like, but I'm

643
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 1: going to try to imagine it here based on a

644
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 1: scene from the movie and a description quote I read

645
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 1: from a from a sequel. Uh, It's it's a little

646
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 1: glass or box. And then inside the box there is

647
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: some orange mass. It almost looks like a like an

648
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:13,799
Speaker 1: evacuated insects shell, you know how, like when the cicadas

649
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: leave their shells behind after they mold some stuff like that.

650
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: It's kind of brownish orange. And then you press down

651
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: a little piston to crush some of this stuff in

652
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 1: the glass, and an orange liquid strains out and it

653
00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: smells like cinnamon. And you can drink it right up,

654
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: or you can add it to food or beverages, or

655
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: have it transformed into a gas if you're a guild

656
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: navigator in a tank. But it's going to be doing

657
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: some weird stuff to you. Yeah. And if you're in

658
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: Iraq in uh, Dennis, And if you if Iracus is

659
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 1: your home and you're not pretty to a lot of

660
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 1: outsider food coming in from other worlds. Uh, it's just

661
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: gonna find its way into your diet. It's just an

662
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 1: ambient part of of water and food on the world. Yeah.

663
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: And if you're not careful and you keep taking too

664
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: much spice, you may begin to see the future and

665
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:08,120
Speaker 1: become fatally addicted. Yeah, and your eyes will turn blue

666
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:11,479
Speaker 1: despite the fatal addiction. There's something kind of appealing about

667
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:13,800
Speaker 1: the way they describe some of the spice consumption in

668
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:16,360
Speaker 1: the novel. Yeah. They mentioned having, you know, having a

669
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 1: cup of spice coffee. Uh so I think there's some

670
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 1: spice cakes that are mentioned here and there. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,

671
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, I would kind of like that a

672
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: nice uh, you know, a nice consciousness expanding cup of

673
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 1: coffee as opposed to this, you know, these Red Bull

674
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 1: and Simuda cocktails that I keep going. So characteristics of

675
00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 1: the spice in the book, which very according to the

676
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:41,880
Speaker 1: person taking it and the intake level, would be some

677
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,319
Speaker 1: of the following. First, I should say that it's core

678
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: the spice is described, I think is an awareness drug

679
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: and that it changes perception and consciousness. Now, the first

680
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:56,719
Speaker 1: major feature described is that it's the geriatric spice. It's

681
00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:59,919
Speaker 1: when taken in small quantities over long periods of time,

682
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 1: it extends your lifespan. And that's something we probably should

683
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:07,359
Speaker 1: have mentioned more earlier on. Like, that's another reason that

684
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: iraq Is is the center of the universe, because not

685
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: only does the spice enable interstellar travel, uh, it also

686
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,919
Speaker 1: allows the wealthy people to extend their lives. Right. Once

687
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: you're a feudal lord and you've conquered all your enemies

688
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:23,320
Speaker 1: and you've secured a place in the in the power

689
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: structures of the universe, what's the next thing you need.

690
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: You've got to live forever, right, So it does that.

691
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:32,320
Speaker 1: And then another effect of it is that it stains

692
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: your eyes. Taking spice will will cause blue tinting of

693
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,760
Speaker 1: the eyes, not just the iris is but the whole eye.

694
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 1: It's a mind expander. It grants heightened awareness. In some

695
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: cases it allows prescience or limited omniscience. I don't know

696
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 1: if limited omniscience is a phrase that makes any sense.

697
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 1: It allows you to have some knowledge beyond your physical

698
00:39:56,920 --> 00:39:59,959
Speaker 1: time and place, and the ability to see some ass

699
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: spects of the future or aspects of the present removed

700
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: by distance, or to share communal awareness, sort of collaborating

701
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 1: across aspects of mind with others. And they often make

702
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: geographic comparisons in the book, So it's like looking into

703
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 1: the future is kind of like looking across the landscape.

704
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:19,920
Speaker 1: And depending on your circumstances, you might be kind of

705
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 1: standing in a like a shallow basin and you can't

706
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: actually see that far. Other times it's flat. Other times

707
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 1: maybe you're on a hill, and it depends on your

708
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 1: prescient availabilities how far can you see? Yeah, And then

709
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: of course the negative that the downside I alluded to

710
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: earlier is the addiction. When you take it in large quantities,

711
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: you will get addicted to it, and if you stop

712
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:45,839
Speaker 1: taking it, you will die, that'll happen, and unfortunately so.

713
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,280
Speaker 1: The idea of a drug that expands consciousness is certainly

714
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:52,239
Speaker 1: something you find in many cultures writing, including our own.

715
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:58,919
Speaker 1: You know, lots of people believe things like hallucinogens like LSD, marijuana, psilocybin, mushrooms, uh,

716
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 1: and the Iowa oscar brew which I think the chemical, uh,

717
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,799
Speaker 1: the active chemical and that is d m T right. Yeah,

718
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,480
Speaker 1: And so under various circumstances, people have suggested all these

719
00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:15,719
Speaker 1: drugs not only provide euphoria and sometimes sensory hallucinations, but

720
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 1: they actually provide access to information or knowledge about reality

721
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:25,080
Speaker 1: that is not otherwise available to people. One of the

722
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:28,440
Speaker 1: most common claims you hear is the sort of transcendence

723
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: journey you might call it, where the hallucinogen gives the

724
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: user a mental vantage point from which he or she

725
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: claims to see a deeper reality or to now understand

726
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: that our day to day experiences are not all there is.

727
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,880
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've encountered this before. Oh yeah, And of

728
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: course it's and that's key to most religions too, that

729
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: you have at the heart there's a deeper understanding of reality,

730
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 1: um that you have to uncover Yeah, and I think

731
00:41:55,520 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I think the the hallucinogen comparison despy is

732
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: perhaps quite on point because in a two thousand five

733
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 1: book called Mycelium Running by the American mycologist Pulse statements,

734
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: that's a person who studies fungus. Uh. The author claims

735
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,360
Speaker 1: that Frank Herbert, Well, I should just read this quote.

736
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:19,320
Speaker 1: It says uh. He says that Frank Herbert was apparently

737
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic mushroom collector himself who came up with this

738
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 1: great system for for growing chantrelle mushrooms in a way

739
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:30,240
Speaker 1: that people hadn't realized how to do before, by creating

740
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 1: this spore slurry in a bucket. But anyway, he says

741
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert. Frank went on to tell me that

742
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: much of the premise of Dune, the magic spice spores

743
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 1: that allowed the bending of space tripping, the giant worms,

744
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: maggots digesting mushrooms, the eyes of the fremen, the cerulean

745
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 1: blue of psilocybin mushrooms, the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors,

746
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:59,320
Speaker 1: the Binny jess Er. It's influenced by tales of Maria

747
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: Sabina and the Sacred mushroom culleds of Mexico came from

748
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his imagination

749
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:11,279
Speaker 1: was stimulated through his experiences with the use of magic mushrooms.

750
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:15,719
Speaker 1: All right, well, then that that certainly matches up with

751
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:17,919
Speaker 1: with what we see in the book. And again bearing

752
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: in mind that this is you know, rising out of

753
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and mid sixties and and uh and

754
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:25,839
Speaker 1: a lot of the counterculture movements that were taking place there,

755
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 1: and the and the roll of drugs and hallucinogens in

756
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: that subculture. Yeah, yeah, certainly, though one thing about that

757
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 1: that was weird. I googled the psilocybia mushrooms and they

758
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: didn't look blue to me. I don't know. Yeah, maybe

759
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,919
Speaker 1: there's sometimes I have seen have not. Yeah, they look

760
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 1: like mushrooms to me. I've never noticed a blue one. Anyway.

761
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: To go back to the science of Dune, the writer

762
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 1: Carol Hart, PhD has a great essay about the spice

763
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:56,759
Speaker 1: milange and the science of Dune, and she makes some

764
00:43:56,840 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: really interesting points comparing the spice to hallucinogens like the

765
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:06,839
Speaker 1: ones I mentioned above, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, uh ayahuasca, and

766
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:09,880
Speaker 1: there are the following changes that you can notice that

767
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,760
Speaker 1: are similar. One would be changes to the eyes. The spice,

768
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: it seems, causes a more permanent kind of change with

769
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: the blue tent, but hallucinogens like LSD and ayahuasca typically

770
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:24,000
Speaker 1: cause an extreme dilation of the pupils. She also notices

771
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: suspension of time right, ecstaticus, an ecstatic and sometimes frightening

772
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 1: sense of communion with others, out of body sensations, loss

773
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:39,440
Speaker 1: of self and merger into a oneness, euphoria, death, rebirth, experience,

774
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:45,480
Speaker 1: vision slash, hallucinations, and prescience and life changing realizations. And

775
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the most interesting things because,

776
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: like like I said earlier, a lot of times people

777
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: take hallucinogens not just with the idea that I'm going

778
00:44:55,160 --> 00:44:57,799
Speaker 1: to see something interesting, but they take it with the

779
00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: idea that they're learning something about the true nature of reality.

780
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:05,240
Speaker 1: They're getting access to facts and useful information. She says,

781
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:10,320
Speaker 1: for example, for the Amazonian shamans, ayahuasca allowed the soul

782
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 1: to leave the body, to search out the explanation for

783
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:17,839
Speaker 1: illness in the individual or problems threatening the community, and

784
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: to decide the course of action. Yeah, I I remember reading,

785
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 1: uh some words from Buddhist Alan Watts, who is also

786
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,240
Speaker 1: part of You Know the certainly a name during the

787
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and he was commenting on the on

788
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: the views of psychedelic drugs in the counterculture, and he

789
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:40,959
Speaker 1: compared them to the use of a telescope or microscope

790
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:43,239
Speaker 1: that it's something that you you know, you put your

791
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,320
Speaker 1: eye to the telescope of the microscope to learn something

792
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:48,800
Speaker 1: about reality, but then you also have to re engage

793
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:50,480
Speaker 1: with reality. You have to put the telescope or the

794
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: microscope down in order to to take those lessons and

795
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: apply them to life. Yeah, another really interesting parallel with Dune,

796
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:01,240
Speaker 1: I think is that the effect of the drug, whether

797
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 1: you're talking about real hallucinogens or the spice in Dune,

798
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:07,799
Speaker 1: is not just a product of the drug. It's not

799
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:10,279
Speaker 1: just here are the molecules in the drug and what

800
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,040
Speaker 1: they'll do to you, but there are there are a product,

801
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 1: a sort of combinatorial product of the drug acting on

802
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 1: body and the preparation that the user has experienced. So

803
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,719
Speaker 1: it's about preparation, it's about departure. States. Some people will

804
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 1: take acid, take LST and just mess around and have

805
00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:32,319
Speaker 1: some weird experiences and don't learn a whole lot from it.

806
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: Some people might have bad trips, some people might have

807
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:39,640
Speaker 1: what they would consider to be transcendent experiences. And I

808
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:41,759
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people who throughout the

809
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:46,800
Speaker 1: years have been advocates of controlled hallucinogen use, who lament

810
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 1: the fact that it's taken for kicks. Yeah. I mean,

811
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:52,040
Speaker 1: we look at some of the current research, and we're

812
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:56,840
Speaker 1: finally seeing a lot more research into psychedelics uh these days.

813
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: For a while, it was such a taboo area, you know,

814
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 1: really kind of poisoned by uh the more you know,

815
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: extreme aspects of the counterculture in the way that it

816
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,719
Speaker 1: it gained coverage in the media, we're finally seeing it

817
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: being an area that can get funded and and and

818
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 1: be studied. Uh. And there have been some some really

819
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:20,920
Speaker 1: fascinating looks into how the right levels of hallucinogens combined

820
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: with appropriate priming, uh, you know, preparation for the experience.

821
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:28,919
Speaker 1: Uh and as well as sort of after uh exploration

822
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: of what they felt, it can be used to help

823
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: terminally ill patients as they prepared to die. It can

824
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 1: be used in in various therapies that even addiction therapies UH.

825
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 1: So so Yeah, the priming, the purpose, really the ritual

826
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: of it is essential. I mean, I imagine a number

827
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: of our listeners can think of, you know, some individuals

828
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:51,240
Speaker 1: they've come across before that, at least on the surface,

829
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:54,399
Speaker 1: looks like they are gaining nothing of value from their

830
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,720
Speaker 1: experimentation with psychedelics. And and then on the other hand,

831
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 1: you know, there are cases where you know, this particular

832
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:04,719
Speaker 1: thinker claims to have had some sort of profound insight

833
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 1: um intellectually or creatively while trying one of these substances. Yeah. So,

834
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: as Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, once wrote, he

835
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: said special internal and external advanced preparations are required. With them,

836
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience. So I

837
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 1: think he was one of those people you're you know,

838
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: who recommended the preparations that go into making yourself ready

839
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 1: for the mental journey of expanded consciousness. If you don't

840
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: put the preparation time in, it doesn't work. And we

841
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 1: see this in the novel Dune because people consuming lots

842
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: of spice react to it in very different ways. You

843
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:49,479
Speaker 1: get the sense that when Paula Tradees starts taking lots

844
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: of spice and then has his moment of expanded consciousness

845
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: begins to see the future, begins to have you know,

846
00:48:55,680 --> 00:49:00,759
Speaker 1: heightened awareness and pressions and limited omniscians. It's all because

847
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:03,399
Speaker 1: of the things that have gone into making Paul who

848
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:05,359
Speaker 1: he is. It's not just like he got a really

849
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:08,720
Speaker 1: strong hit of it, you know. So it's the fact

850
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: that he's been trained in the Benny jesser At Ways

851
00:49:12,320 --> 00:49:13,840
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the last episode in the

852
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:17,319
Speaker 1: mint At Ways, all this that went into making him

853
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: who he is also made the expanded consciousness what it was.

854
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:24,200
Speaker 1: You can see that in contrast to another character in

855
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: the novel that Twisted mint At. Do you call him

856
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,319
Speaker 1: Pider or Peter? Um always read At as Peter, but

857
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:33,480
Speaker 1: Pider might be more accurate. They call him Pider. In

858
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 1: the David Lynch movie, I'll call him Peter. Peter Duvrees,

859
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 1: the the bad Mintat who works for the evil Harconan's

860
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: uh he. They say he takes huge amounts of spice too.

861
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: He's just gobbles it like Candy, can't get enough of it.

862
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: But he does not seem to have this same type

863
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 1: of expanded awareness that Paul has from extended spice use

864
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: and it seems to be that it's it's because of

865
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: different types of preparation going into the experience. Yeah. I

866
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: mean the other example, of course, the Guild navigators who

867
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 1: have been engineered uh in bread to to pilot these

868
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: spaceships uh while using the spice. So they consume the

869
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 1: spice in order to safely navigate folded space and as

870
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 1: a celestial mechanic. John C. Smith points out in the

871
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:20,919
Speaker 1: Science of doone, UH, there's a quantum physics tie in here.

872
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:24,239
Speaker 1: So eight years before the publication of doone, physicist Hugh

873
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 1: Ever the Third proposed a radical interpretation of quantum mechanics

874
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 1: that everything that can happen does happen, and each possible

875
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 1: action spawns a new universe. This is what's known as

876
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:39,360
Speaker 1: the many worlds theory. Every time there's an indeterminate quantum event,

877
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: the world the universe branches off into separate realities. It's

878
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: the very thing that the Bores referenced with the Library

879
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 1: of Babble, that this library would contain not only all books,

880
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:54,479
Speaker 1: but all possible books. So taking the spies here would

881
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 1: have allowed the navigator to at least see the immediate

882
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: path of the ship in many different multiverses. Uh, and

883
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 1: then safely, you know, choose the safest path. UM. And

884
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,880
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, there is kind of a real world tie

885
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 1: in here, because according to a nineteen seventy three studied

886
00:51:14,680 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 1: compiled by the RAND Corporation for the US Defense Advanced

887
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:23,520
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency or DARPA, UM, there was a Soviet

888
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: plan to launch psychics into orbit. Quote how how much

889
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 1: should we how much space should we put in this report?

890
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe a grain of salt, I'll read the

891
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: quote here. Regarding precognition, we found only one unverified report

892
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: by a Soviet investigator that a program was being planned

893
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,800
Speaker 1: to train astronauts to quote foresee and to avoid accidents

894
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 1: in space. It was clear from the context that he

895
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 1: was referring to pre cognitive process. So I don't know, Uh,

896
00:51:56,719 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 1: if they did look into it, obviously didn't work out.

897
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:01,720
Speaker 1: But this was a time when you know, the stakes

898
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:03,799
Speaker 1: were high in the Cold War. So if there was

899
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: a possibility that there was something to some sort of

900
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 1: paranormal uh situation, you checked it out. Yeah, why not

901
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 1: training a bunker full of psychics? Yeah? The same The

902
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: same Rand Corporation report also mentioned UM that there was

903
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:23,319
Speaker 1: a test into psychic communication by sacrificing a litter of

904
00:52:23,360 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 1: baby rabbits on board of on board of Soviet submarine

905
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: what and the idea here was that the mother rabbit

906
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 1: located on the surface might receive psychic signals from the

907
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:37,560
Speaker 1: dying young. So again, uh, this is all unverified, but

908
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:41,799
Speaker 1: but it seems possible based on some of the other

909
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,919
Speaker 1: reports we've heard about both the US and Soviet investigations

910
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:48,000
Speaker 1: into the potential use of paranormal effects. You know, one

911
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting to me about the role

912
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: of spice in the Dune universe is that it posits

913
00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 1: a world in which the entire universe is completely dependent

914
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 1: on a resource or that essentially produces effects similar to

915
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:08,600
Speaker 1: things that are taboo in our culture that not only

916
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:11,320
Speaker 1: do we you know, not depend on as a society,

917
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: but we try to stamp out and say that's not okay. Yeah, Like,

918
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:19,279
Speaker 1: essentially everyone in the book seems to be taking some

919
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: sort of um performance enhancing substance. If it's not milange,

920
00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 1: then it's the uh you know, they're taking simuda, or

921
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: they're taking the I can't remember the name of it,

922
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: but that wine that the mentense drink, which I believe

923
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:34,319
Speaker 1: is supposed to be derived from the same source as

924
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:38,280
Speaker 1: Samuda the Purple staind lips. Yeah, so everybody's just cranked

925
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 1: the gills on something because you can't have been on

926
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 1: the thinking machine. You got to depend on the human mind.

927
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:45,480
Speaker 1: So maybe you could say that if we had to

928
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:48,879
Speaker 1: get rid of our computers, there would be I don't

929
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:55,759
Speaker 1: know less opposition to recreational drug use. Maybe. So all right,

930
00:53:55,840 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: you know, we're running out of time here, and I

931
00:53:57,719 --> 00:53:59,359
Speaker 1: don't know, we might even have to cut this part,

932
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:04,120
Speaker 1: but I do want to mention the beneath a lack

933
00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: Sue face dancers before we close out. These are characters

934
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 1: that you did not encounter in the book because they

935
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,120
Speaker 1: don't show up until book too, and then play an

936
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: increasingly important role moving on. But as we mentioned, UH,

937
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,040
Speaker 1: I think in the first episode that many, if they

938
00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:22,640
Speaker 1: lack su this is a group, this is like a

939
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:26,400
Speaker 1: faction in the Doing universe that are really involved in

940
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 1: trans human post human um machinations. They're changing the human form, UH,

941
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 1: engineering new people UH to UH to survive in this

942
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: post singularity, you know, Postbutalian Jahad world. And so they're

943
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: doing things like like essentially engaging in cloning, the producer

944
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: of these ghoula's that play an important role in the

945
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: later books where a dead individuals brought back as a clone.

946
00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 1: I like the sound of that. Yeah, they're the they're

947
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 1: the faction that creates the twisted uh mentats we've already discussed.

948
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:01,920
Speaker 1: And then they also have these face dancers who are

949
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,960
Speaker 1: known and feared to spies and assassins um and they're

950
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:09,280
Speaker 1: essentially their shape shifters. They can change their their face,

951
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:14,800
Speaker 1: their appearance, um, their their voice, everything to resemble another

952
00:55:14,920 --> 00:55:18,759
Speaker 1: person um and and so they you know, give them

953
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 1: unparalleled acting ability. They serve as entertainers throughout the galaxy

954
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 1: and UM and they're also key at the Laxu diplomats

955
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 1: and conspirators as and as well as just core members

956
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:37,280
Speaker 1: of their society. So uh. There, there's actually a couple

957
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: of cool articles about how this might work, essentially, how

958
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: a shape shifting humanoid might work as an organism. Uh.

959
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: The first uh and the primary one I want to

960
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 1: mention comes to us from the Dune Encyclopedia, and this

961
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 1: is from contributor Walter E. Myers, and he very much

962
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,480
Speaker 1: in envisions face dancer biology, a shape shifting biology as

963
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:03,279
Speaker 1: a complex creation of raining, breeding, embryotic manipulation, genetic team

964
00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 1: current tinkering, and surgical augmentation. So basically throwing all of

965
00:56:07,640 --> 00:56:10,680
Speaker 1: these various everything, we got everything we got at creating

966
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: this shape shifting creature. So I'm not going to go

967
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 1: through the entire entry because it's a he has a

968
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:18,880
Speaker 1: lot of details that he throws out, but here are

969
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: the high points. This is what you need. Key alterations

970
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:27,879
Speaker 1: include selected breeding for appropriate physicality and muscle control, because

971
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: you're gonna need muscle control to shift the face around

972
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:35,600
Speaker 1: and shift everything about. Embryotic stimulation of overdeveloped back muscles

973
00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: and hyper elastic spine for height control. The embryotic manipulation

974
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:44,960
Speaker 1: of the bodies a psylamic sacks, altering their position and

975
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 1: allowing them to serve in the voluntary inflation of artificial

976
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:53,440
Speaker 1: tubes that are implanted after puberty, thus allowing conscious body

977
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 1: size alteration, so essentially bladders in the body that allow

978
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:02,200
Speaker 1: you to just fill up his needed childhood augmentation of

979
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: facial structure replacing certain facial bones with elastic cartilage, coupled

980
00:57:06,640 --> 00:57:10,480
Speaker 1: with extensive training to allow total manipulation of facial features.

981
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:15,920
Speaker 1: Cellular embryonic manipulation to allow conscious control of scalp temperature.

982
00:57:16,520 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: In this help temperature, because this would be used to

983
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: allow the color manipulation of artificial liquid crystal hair follicles

984
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:28,720
Speaker 1: that are later planted like individually. Genetic manipulation to enable

985
00:57:28,760 --> 00:57:32,760
Speaker 1: the conscious formonal control of eye pigment, fetal manipulation, and

986
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: surgical augmentation to produce male genitals that are retractable within

987
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: a vaginal cavity for visual ginger swapping, so they wouldn't

988
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: actually be able to change sex, but they could sort

989
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:47,720
Speaker 1: of retract the genitals into a cavity as if they

990
00:57:47,720 --> 00:57:51,480
Speaker 1: were the landing gear of an airplane. Training and surgery

991
00:57:51,520 --> 00:57:56,200
Speaker 1: to enhance deferential muscle and autonomic nerve control. Uh So,

992
00:57:56,280 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 1: in other words, a face answer by this definition would

993
00:57:59,240 --> 00:58:04,040
Speaker 1: been extremely complex product uh and no mere human subspecies.

994
00:58:04,920 --> 00:58:07,240
Speaker 1: But this is just one take. We also have a

995
00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:11,120
Speaker 1: take from Sandy Field in her essay Evolution by Any

996
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: Means on Dune, and this is from the Science of Dune,

997
00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:16,280
Speaker 1: and she goes into a lot of a lot of

998
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:18,920
Speaker 1: these sort of highly evolved human models that we discuss here,

999
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 1: but she posits that the face dancers mimic their targets

1000
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:26,440
Speaker 1: through conscious migration of body cells. So in order to

1001
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: swiftly change form a face dancwer, we need to wreck

1002
00:58:28,840 --> 00:58:33,240
Speaker 1: reorganize its skin cells, h muscle, aature and skeletal elements,

1003
00:58:33,240 --> 00:58:37,080
Speaker 1: a feat they might accomplish through the the dissolution and

1004
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:40,480
Speaker 1: recombination of the cell to sell bonds that hold the

1005
00:58:40,520 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 1: tissue together. Now, how might the the lax who have

1006
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 1: accomplished this. Here's what she had to say. Quote the

1007
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: concerted action of newly created hormones selected genetically by the

1008
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:55,840
Speaker 1: the laxo over many generations could act to allow different

1009
00:58:55,920 --> 00:59:00,320
Speaker 1: cell types to move when prompted by neurological signals. Face

1010
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:04,200
Speaker 1: dancing then could be a genetically derived ability to generate

1011
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:08,040
Speaker 1: specific hormones at will which allow for the concerted movement

1012
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:10,800
Speaker 1: of skin, muscle, bone, and other cells to new locations

1013
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:14,800
Speaker 1: to create the appearance of another person. So there you go.

1014
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I I appreciate that as a as a

1015
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 1: great attempt to explanation. I somehow don't feel like a

1016
00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:25,040
Speaker 1: creature like that could exist in reality. I mean, certainly

1017
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: you can imagine some types of uh, you know, chameleon

1018
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: type elements like changing pigmentation and when we see octopuses

1019
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:36,600
Speaker 1: and stuff that have a remarkable ability to change their

1020
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 1: external appearance at web will, But the moving of bones

1021
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:45,560
Speaker 1: and things like that, that sounds impossible to me. Yeah.

1022
00:59:45,600 --> 00:59:48,680
Speaker 1: I I do love the the rigor in both of

1023
00:59:48,680 --> 00:59:52,560
Speaker 1: these examples, because one takes a very um, you know, genetic,

1024
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: cellular hormonal approach, and the other is a very more

1025
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:59,360
Speaker 1: of a varied approach, but also all into just post

1026
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:02,919
Speaker 1: humans ibrenetic tinkering. And I guess in reality you could

1027
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: create a model that is a combination of the two,

1028
01:00:05,200 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 1: maybe draw in some biomimicry by looking to the world

1029
01:00:08,080 --> 01:00:11,920
Speaker 1: of of the of the octopus or the cuttlefish and saying, well,

1030
01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 1: how could you create those same sort of flesh effects

1031
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 1: in a humanoid creature. Well, here's something I would say.

1032
01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:20,880
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent they have shape shifting

1033
01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:24,760
Speaker 1: precision in the books, but I would I would buy

1034
01:00:24,800 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: this creature more if it could make basic changes to

1035
01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:32,560
Speaker 1: its body, but but not sort of target a particular

1036
01:00:32,600 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 1: individual like I, you know, can look now exactly like

1037
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:39,280
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb as opposed to just I can look different

1038
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:42,480
Speaker 1: than I normally look. Yeah, yeah, it would, And I

1039
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 1: think in the books. It's laid out that it depends

1040
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 1: on how long they study a target. So if they

1041
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: study you, know, they just sort of glance at you,

1042
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 1: would be like a very rough version, but they would

1043
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:55,440
Speaker 1: ideally want to uh study you in earnest for a

1044
01:00:55,440 --> 01:00:59,360
Speaker 1: few days before replacing you. Yeah, all right, so there

1045
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:02,320
Speaker 1: you go. We're we're out of time. Uh that's the

1046
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: biology of dooe. But before we go, Robert, I gotta

1047
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 1: ask you about David Lynch movie. I've been burning to

1048
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 1: talk about this. No, I mean, I read the book

1049
01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 1: and then I watched the movie, and there's so much

1050
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: to like about the movie actually, because it's got great

1051
01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 1: sets and costumes. Some parts of it are truly weird,

1052
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:23,480
Speaker 1: uh in ways that are really fun and exciting, and

1053
01:01:23,720 --> 01:01:28,080
Speaker 1: other aspects of it are just incomprehensible. I watched it

1054
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:31,360
Speaker 1: with my wife Rachel, and I constantly had to explain

1055
01:01:31,520 --> 01:01:36,480
Speaker 1: things because the movie does not make sense on its own. Yeah,

1056
01:01:36,600 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: it's it's been a long time since I've seen the movie,

1057
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:42,920
Speaker 1: though I did last night. I rewatched the intro material

1058
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 1: that was on the TV airing of it, where they

1059
01:01:45,360 --> 01:01:48,960
Speaker 1: have the the still illustrations and some narration to set

1060
01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:52,800
Speaker 1: up the world. Uh, yeah, I agree. There's there's so

1061
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:55,920
Speaker 1: much that doesn't work in the films and ultimately led

1062
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 1: to it being a kind of a train wreck. But

1063
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:00,400
Speaker 1: then there's so many elements that are there well done.

1064
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:02,520
Speaker 1: Like some of the casting is just weird, some of

1065
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: the casting is just spot on. The costumes are amazing,

1066
01:02:06,880 --> 01:02:11,000
Speaker 1: some of the visual takes on the world are just perfect.

1067
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 1: But it just doesn't all come together. Yeah, you know,

1068
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 1: I I think Doing could be a really great animated movie. Yeah, Like,

1069
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:22,240
Speaker 1: imagine if Miyazaki had had taken it on, you know,

1070
01:02:22,280 --> 01:02:25,480
Speaker 1: because you have the ecological elements that he's all, you know,

1071
01:02:25,640 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 1: it's the president, his work. Oh man, that's a thing

1072
01:02:28,400 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: that I think was really lacking, and at least the

1073
01:02:30,400 --> 01:02:32,320
Speaker 1: version of Doing that I saw. Now I heard that

1074
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:34,840
Speaker 1: there there are shorter There's a shorter version and a

1075
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:38,400
Speaker 1: longer version. I'm not sure which one I saw. Uh.

1076
01:02:38,480 --> 01:02:41,800
Speaker 1: If there's a shorter version, I cannot imagine it because

1077
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:46,400
Speaker 1: the version I saw left out so much explanation it's crazy.

1078
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the one thing that really seemed left

1079
01:02:49,240 --> 01:02:52,320
Speaker 1: out of the movie is the ecological themes of the book.

1080
01:02:52,760 --> 01:02:57,120
Speaker 1: All the concerns about water, about about how to survive

1081
01:02:57,280 --> 01:02:59,480
Speaker 1: in the environment. I mean, this is a this is

1082
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:01,800
Speaker 1: a key part of the book and it's you know,

1083
01:03:02,080 --> 01:03:05,480
Speaker 1: maybe one out of every three pages is primarily about water.

1084
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:10,560
Speaker 1: And this is just not the case in the movie. Yeah, indeed,

1085
01:03:10,600 --> 01:03:13,280
Speaker 1: And that's you know, ultimately a you know, a large

1086
01:03:13,360 --> 01:03:16,240
Speaker 1: thing to be missing from the finished product. On the

1087
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: other hand, the movie does have I don't know if

1088
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:22,640
Speaker 1: you remember this from the movie, but the strategically inserted pug.

1089
01:03:23,080 --> 01:03:26,040
Speaker 1: Oh yes, how how C Trades has a pug? Yeah,

1090
01:03:26,080 --> 01:03:28,400
Speaker 1: and if you mentioned this, I saw the plug shows

1091
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:33,120
Speaker 1: up in the still illustrations for the TV version intro.

1092
01:03:33,680 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 1: So it's got Jurgen proc Now standing there with his

1093
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:39,960
Speaker 1: his beard in his uniform holding a pug. There's also

1094
01:03:40,040 --> 01:03:43,280
Speaker 1: a scene of Patrick Stewart as Gernie Halleck fighting a

1095
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:47,800
Speaker 1: battle and he's got the pug in his arms. Yeah.

1096
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:50,600
Speaker 1: I do not remember I in my reread of the book,

1097
01:03:50,600 --> 01:03:53,360
Speaker 1: I've not come across the pug. Sure they added that

1098
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:56,120
Speaker 1: they're pug at tradees is not in the book. They

1099
01:03:56,120 --> 01:03:58,760
Speaker 1: added the pug, They adding the added the weirding module.

1100
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 1: Um few other things they add and then left out

1101
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:06,080
Speaker 1: some some key things as well, so there you go. Well, hey,

1102
01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of you out there have

1103
01:04:07,920 --> 01:04:10,680
Speaker 1: comments you would like to add on the Dune universe,

1104
01:04:10,760 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 1: on the Dune movies, on some of this uh uh,

1105
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:17,040
Speaker 1: some of the possible science behind the biology behind the

1106
01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:19,760
Speaker 1: technology that discussed in the other episodes, and we would

1107
01:04:19,800 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: of course loved to hear from you. As always, check

1108
01:04:22,160 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 1: out our home page Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh,

1109
01:04:24,640 --> 01:04:26,400
Speaker 1: and you also want to check out the landing page

1110
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:28,400
Speaker 1: for this episode that will include links out to these

1111
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:31,520
Speaker 1: books that we've mentioned too related articles, as well as

1112
01:04:31,640 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 1: where you can find some of the music that we

1113
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:36,360
Speaker 1: featured and uh. And indeed, as we close out here,

1114
01:04:36,560 --> 01:04:40,360
Speaker 1: we're gonna be listening to the track Aracus by musician

1115
01:04:40,440 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: Raleigh Porter Office two thousand eleven album Aftertime released by

1116
01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:46,160
Speaker 1: Subtext Recordings. Uh. There'll be a link to that on

1117
01:04:46,200 --> 01:04:47,840
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. But you can also

1118
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,280
Speaker 1: learn more about him and his work at Raleigh Porter

1119
01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:52,640
Speaker 1: dot com. And if you want to get in touch

1120
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:56,360
Speaker 1: with us about your favorite aspect of the Dune novels

1121
01:04:56,520 --> 01:04:59,080
Speaker 1: or the Dune movies, or your least favorite aspect, or

1122
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:01,200
Speaker 1: just tell us what should think about Dune or give

1123
01:05:01,240 --> 01:05:03,640
Speaker 1: us feedback on the episode. You can email us at

1124
01:05:03,680 --> 01:05:15,360
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For

1125
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:18,040
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how

1126
01:05:18,080 --> 01:05:22,960
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.