Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Disembarkation disembarkation notice to all passengers arriving
Speaker 1: on Station Oracus. The Dune Planetary Tourism Consortium, funded by
Speaker 1: the great generosity of the most noble House Hardconed, would
Speaker 1: like to welcome you to Planet Aracus. Aracus is a
Speaker 1: dry place. Please remember to conserve water whenever possible. It
Speaker 1: is recommended that you do not venture outside without a
Speaker 1: properly fitted still suit to recycle your sweat, urine and
Speaker 1: vegal moisture. When traveling beyond the shield wall, remember always
Speaker 1: to watchful where I'm signed by keeping the mind. The
Speaker 1: three ahs, hissing, heaving and high energy discharge, A hissing
Speaker 1: sound in the sand, heaving up with display sediment, and
Speaker 1: high energy setting discharge from the dunes may all indicate
Speaker 1: that the sand worm is here and the event of
Speaker 1: worm signed. Do not activate shields and proceed immediately to
Speaker 1: the nearest cave building or evacuation orn't thought or local
Speaker 1: vendors and kiosks found throughout Station Iraqis are in the
Speaker 1: best place to purchase steel suits, frank hits, and individually
Speaker 1: packaged worm thumbers. And duty free prices. Please remember also
Speaker 1: the spice must flow. Anyone suspected of sabotaging, inhibiting, or
Speaker 1: interfering with spice production may be subject to penalties up
Speaker 1: to and including lactatorial remuneration on gaining prime or personal evaporation.
Speaker 1: Please enjoy your say among the dunes. Hey, he wasn't
Speaker 1: a stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is episode two
Speaker 1: in our exploration of the science of Done, the science
Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert's sci fi classic Done, which is celebrating
Speaker 1: its fiftieth anniversary this year. Yeah, so if you missed
Speaker 1: the first part, you should go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that first part one where we talk about the technology
Speaker 1: of doing, and we we talked about some important sort
Speaker 1: of introductory materials to the universe of Done. If you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with it, we highly recommend that you check
Speaker 1: out that part first before you listen to this one.
Speaker 1: But if you just want to get thrown right into
Speaker 1: the middle, here we are. Yeah, last time we talked
Speaker 1: about but Larry and Jehad, we talked about still suits,
Speaker 1: We talked about order thoptors and a little bit about
Speaker 1: the Holtzman effect, whatever that is. But yeah, this time
Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about the the living science
Speaker 1: of Done, about the biology and ecology of the planet Iracus.
Speaker 1: And one of the coolest things about the Done universe
Speaker 1: has got to be the sandworms. Yes, I imagine that
Speaker 1: is one of, if not the key aspects of the
Speaker 1: franchise that come to people's minds when they think of Doing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I So, I just finished reading this book a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and I loved it. I absolutely adored this book.
Speaker 1: As I said in the last podcast, it frequently struck
Speaker 1: me as just amazingly fresh for a fifty year old book.
Speaker 1: It's full of ideas that you don't encounter elsewhere. It
Speaker 1: just felt very original and unique and different. But the
Speaker 1: moment where the book really kicked into gear for me
Speaker 1: was the first sandwarm attack. And this is when they're
Speaker 1: going out to observe spice harvests. Correct. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: want to kind of put you the listener into the
Speaker 1: moment of the sandwarm attack. So imagine you're one of
Speaker 1: a group of twenty six spice miners working on a
Speaker 1: patch of spice in the deep deserts. So you're out
Speaker 1: there among the dunes. The heat is high, the sun's
Speaker 1: bearing down on you. You've got your protective still suit on.
Speaker 1: You're working the harvester machine, trying desperately to get this
Speaker 1: spice going. And you've you've been at it for several minutes,
Speaker 1: and over head there's this enormous cargo aircraft. I suppose
Speaker 1: it would be some type of ornithopter with flapping wings, which,
Speaker 1: as we discussed in the last last episode, doesn't make
Speaker 1: a lot of aerodynamic sense, but okay, uh, And it's
Speaker 1: called a carryall. It hovers nearby, waiting to lift you
Speaker 1: off at a moment's notice, and preferably at the last
Speaker 1: possible minute, to maximize the profits, because you've got to
Speaker 1: get as much spice as you can. The spice is important.
Speaker 1: The spice must flow, the universe needs it. But a
Speaker 1: worm will come. The worm always comes it. Here's the harvester.
Speaker 1: It knows where you are and the moment you start working,
Speaker 1: it's on its way. Now. With proper precautions, you'll lift
Speaker 1: off at just the right moment. You'll get the maximum
Speaker 1: spice and you'll avoid the worm. But if you're not
Speaker 1: able to lift off in time, you may notice a
Speaker 1: hissing sound in the sand sliding, you know, it's sand
Speaker 1: sliding against sand. In the background, you might a static
Speaker 1: discharge in the air, and eventually you're gonna notice an
Speaker 1: upheaval of sand is the worm rises to the shallows
Speaker 1: of the desert. And then finally you see, and it's
Speaker 1: probably the last thing you see, a great gaping circular mouth,
Speaker 1: maybe up to eighty meters wide, emerging from the dunes,
Speaker 1: spreading open, closing over you, and swallowing you and your
Speaker 1: friends and your mining vehicle all in one bite. It's
Speaker 1: quite a site, and as far as sound goes, we
Speaker 1: do want to give a quick thanks to Chris Knife
Speaker 1: double O seven. He's on band camp as Cheesy Nervosa.
Speaker 1: Will include a link to his account on the landing
Speaker 1: Bait for this episode. But he does a lot of
Speaker 1: cool ambient tracks where he gets the ambiance from from
Speaker 1: various sci fi properties, and so this was the track
Speaker 1: that we used. Hear was Dune sand Worm Ride. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I love the sandworms. I love the sandworms scenes
Speaker 1: in the book. When we first encounter sandworms in the book,
Speaker 1: it's there merely as a threat. You know, this this
Speaker 1: huge terrifying beast that lives in the desert. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a gigantic snake eel worm type creature that it's
Speaker 1: sort of like the monsters and tremors. You know. It
Speaker 1: lives under Yeah, it lives under the ground. It can
Speaker 1: hear where you are. You know, it might be hundreds
Speaker 1: of meters long. They're so huge you can't fight them off.
Speaker 1: There's no way to avoid them except to run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've seen it describe that that the Frank Herbert
Speaker 1: sandworms are are kind of like dragons, and but but
Speaker 1: not nearly in just the threat aspect. Not just a
Speaker 1: monstrous dragon, but a celestial dragon, because they're ultimately the
Speaker 1: gateway to wisdom. Yeah, that's true. Because I don't want
Speaker 1: to spoil too much. But then later on in the book,
Speaker 1: we learned that the desert dwellers of the planet Iraq
Speaker 1: is the Fremen, have a more complex relationship with the sandworms.
Speaker 1: It's not just you know, here's this huge, threatening creature
Speaker 1: that we have to avoid. They have a sort of
Speaker 1: a bit of a back and forth. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say too much more, but it's really interesting, and
Speaker 1: so I thought we should talk about the sandworm. What
Speaker 1: is this organism as it's imagined in the Dune universe,
Speaker 1: and how has this changed the way we think about
Speaker 1: aliens and science fiction and what what analogies can we
Speaker 1: make to real world life forms? Yeah, and for starters,
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and roll through what we know
Speaker 1: from from Frank Herbert's books. And again it's one of
Speaker 1: those cases where Herbert throws a lot of information at
Speaker 1: you about how sand worms work, but then when you
Speaker 1: add it all up right, you realize you don't know
Speaker 1: key things. Um, here's what we know. The sand worm
Speaker 1: or shy hallud I believe that is the fleming term
Speaker 1: a creature. Again, you utterly unique to iraq Us, totally
Speaker 1: tied to a complex life cycle on the desert planet.
Speaker 1: Links exceed four hundred meters, width of a hundred meters
Speaker 1: at the thickest point, perhaps as long as the thousand
Speaker 1: meters in the deep isolated parts of the desert mouth.
Speaker 1: Diameter is probably about eighty ms, so when it's open
Speaker 1: and lined with a thousand or more carbo silica crystal
Speaker 1: teeth um. A typical worm consists of one to four
Speaker 1: hundred segments, and each segment possessed its own nervous system.
Speaker 1: Something to keep in mind for later. Now, what Herbert
Speaker 1: didn't tell us. He didn't tell us whether sand mourns
Speaker 1: lay eggs. They he didn't tell us if they're male
Speaker 1: and female, how reproduction occurs at all. He didn't tell
Speaker 1: us if it's a definitively if it's a vertebrate or
Speaker 1: an invertebrate. He didn't explain the physics of how it moves,
Speaker 1: and he didn't tell us what it eats. I would
Speaker 1: be surprised if it's vertebrate, simply because I think of
Speaker 1: vertebrate as a category belonging to Earth life. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it might have some kind of internal, you know,
Speaker 1: rigid structure. But it's weird to think about those, you know,
Speaker 1: those peculiarities of evolution that seems so ubiquitous on Earth.
Speaker 1: We just assume their natural categories. But I mean, who
Speaker 1: knows if a alien life form is likely to have
Speaker 1: a backbone, right, And I think that ultimately, the like
Speaker 1: the segmented nature and the independence of segments, tends to
Speaker 1: imply something that is inherently invertebrate. But but again, he
Speaker 1: doesn't draw a distinct line in the sand Well, then
Speaker 1: to learn more about the sand worm, I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to turn back to our old friends that
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the last episode, a couple of books
Speaker 1: that we used as resources. So one of these is
Speaker 1: going to be The Science of Doune, edited by Kevin R. Grazier,
Speaker 1: and then the other one is the Dune Encyclopedia, right right.
Speaker 1: That one's compiled by Dr Willis E. McNelly, and that
Speaker 1: came out in eighty five. It's out of print, but
Speaker 1: you can still find used copies in various places. Um,
Speaker 1: and I got mine online for like, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty bucks, so it's it's still out there and
Speaker 1: it's not like an out of your reach collector's item.
Speaker 1: In particular, that the explanations for sand worms from these
Speaker 1: two books. From Done Encyclopedia, we have an explanation by
Speaker 1: Maureen A. Shifflet, and Uh in the Science of Done
Speaker 1: we have a sybil hetchel pH D's explanation from her
Speaker 1: piece the Biology of the Sandworm. Now I'm actually gonna
Speaker 1: start with the Dune Encyclopedia explanation from Marine Shifflet. Uh.
Speaker 1: Shifflet goes ahead and defines both male and female sandworms
Speaker 1: the ladder somewhat smaller than the males, with the secondary
Speaker 1: segment of each worm containing its reproductive system, and she
Speaker 1: posits that at age one thousand, because these are longer
Speaker 1: than creatures. The female develops an egg sac in her
Speaker 1: reproductive system, constructs a deep, massive nest, and then attracts
Speaker 1: a male with rhythmic thumping. Now this is key because
Speaker 1: in the in Dune we see people attracting or distracting
Speaker 1: a worm by using a mechanical thumper. Right, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: one of the technologies we could have talked about in
Speaker 1: the last episode, but I guess we just didn't have time.
Speaker 1: The thumper is a sort of you might think of
Speaker 1: it as a defensive decoy mechanism out in the desert,
Speaker 1: where if you want to draw off a sandworm, or
Speaker 1: perhaps even attract a sandworm, you put this thing down
Speaker 1: on the ground and it starts beating on the sand
Speaker 1: to say come on over. Yeah, with a rhythmic pattern,
Speaker 1: because if you you know, there's like the thing if
Speaker 1: you gotta walk without rhythm, yeah, you know, unless you
Speaker 1: want to attract the worm. So yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's frequently mentioned in the book is that if
Speaker 1: you want to walk across the sand and not attract
Speaker 1: the worm, you have to walk without rhythm. You have
Speaker 1: to walk without any kind of uh cadence to your walk.
Speaker 1: And I love how they bring up the fact that
Speaker 1: this is so much harder to do than it sounds
Speaker 1: like like the characters are just exhausted from trying to
Speaker 1: walk without maintaining a rhythm of their gait. Right, And
Speaker 1: so she ties this into the into the lifecycle of
Speaker 1: the worm by saying that it's that kind of rhythmic
Speaker 1: thumping but not only indicates something unnatural on the desert surface,
Speaker 1: but perhaps the mating cry the mating call of the
Speaker 1: female worm. So she says that then the male would arrive,
Speaker 1: consumes the smaller female, just straight up eats the female
Speaker 1: and then goes into a dormant state. And it's during
Speaker 1: this state that the heavy duty spice fiber egg sac
Speaker 1: remains intact and it's fertilized by the male's reproductive system.
Speaker 1: And then when he wakes up, he's gonna spit that
Speaker 1: fertilized egg sac out. What yeah, I mean, I've heard
Speaker 1: of reproductive cannibalism, but what yeah, this is It's an
Speaker 1: interesting uh uh. And again this is you know, her
Speaker 1: taking Herbert's world and extrapolating on it and trying to
Speaker 1: come with a scientific explanation for how it might work.
Speaker 1: It's not this is not cannon by any means, but
Speaker 1: it is interesting because we don't see sexual cannibalism occur
Speaker 1: in nature that I can think of, where the male
Speaker 1: eats the female, because generally the female is the species
Speaker 1: and she may or may not eat the male after
Speaker 1: he's served his purpose. But here we have the male
Speaker 1: consuming the female. The Yeah, okay, I mean that just
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if this almost would start to play
Speaker 1: with the definitions of what counts as male and what
Speaker 1: counts as female in a species. Yeah, I would. I
Speaker 1: feel like I would feel more comfortable with this example
Speaker 1: of the genders were reversed and the primary primarily the
Speaker 1: sandworms are are female. But but you know, either way,
Speaker 1: the the best example that comes to mind of something
Speaker 1: close to this in the natural world would be um anglerfish,
Speaker 1: where you have those great things. So you've probably seen
Speaker 1: pictures of these from the deep ocean. They look like
Speaker 1: movie monsters. Uh. They've got the crazy faces and that
Speaker 1: they've got a little a little lit up fishing pole, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and those are the females. The females are the ones
Speaker 1: we see pictures of the males um are essentially a tiny,
Speaker 1: heat seeking sexual missile equipped with gigantic nostrils. Uh. All
Speaker 1: they do is they swim out in search of a female,
Speaker 1: and if he's lucky and most or not, they find
Speaker 1: one and they bite onto her abdomen and hang on. Again.
Speaker 1: These are the angler fish, real world organisms, nothing from
Speaker 1: sci fi. And then there I'm looking. I just google. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I looked. I just googled pictures of the male angler
Speaker 1: fish attaching to the female angler fish. And it's pathetic.
Speaker 1: It's you could go with that interpretation, because what happens
Speaker 1: is not only does he bite on and hold on,
Speaker 1: but their flesh grows together, their blood vessels connect, and
Speaker 1: the male becomes a mere part of the female's body,
Speaker 1: sustained by her systems. His eyes, fins, and some internal
Speaker 1: organs all atrophy and just leave him as just this
Speaker 1: fat flap of skin. This's this mindless thing on the female.
Speaker 1: And this way, the male and his reproductive systems are
Speaker 1: always there when she needs them, which is a necessary
Speaker 1: adaptation in the dark, lonely world of the deep ocean.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I've never read about this before. I was
Speaker 1: really I ran across in the past year or two
Speaker 1: and was pretty amazed by it. But that's certainly it's
Speaker 1: the case where the male and female fuse into one.
Speaker 1: And I guess you could interpret this consumption of the
Speaker 1: of the female sand worm is more of emerging and
Speaker 1: a consumption since there's not according to her model anyway,
Speaker 1: there's not really any nourishment to be gained from the
Speaker 1: worm eating the other worm. Okay, so this is where
Speaker 1: we start getting into a more complex life cycle. So
Speaker 1: bear with me, everyone, Um, when a male sum so,
Speaker 1: the male sand word comes to vomits up that egg
Speaker 1: case and he takes off the egg case. Eventually hatch
Speaker 1: catches into a legion of sand trout sand trout sand trout. Yes,
Speaker 1: and now these these this is where we're getting back
Speaker 1: into um, into the actual canon of of of Frank
Speaker 1: Herbert's sandworm biology, because these are very much a part
Speaker 1: of the series. Yeah, there are sequences in Dune where character,
Speaker 1: well at least one character I can think of, the
Speaker 1: planetary scientist kinds. Uh. There may be other characters, but
Speaker 1: not that I recall, at least kinds thinks about down
Speaker 1: under the the dunes of sand, there are these massive
Speaker 1: patches of life. Then there's moisture down there too, which
Speaker 1: is sort of hidden from the surface, which is I
Speaker 1: guess being trapped or used by these unicellular life forms.
Speaker 1: And in this case we're talking twenty by six centimeter
Speaker 1: unicellular organisms. But that's a big cell. You know, alien world,
Speaker 1: different laws, right, um. But but yeah, their water scavengers.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that they're traveling out, they're
Speaker 1: collecting water, they're bringing them back, according to UM to
Speaker 1: this model anyway, to the nest site, and they're sequestering
Speaker 1: the water. And here the water mixes with excretions from
Speaker 1: the pre spice mass uh. And here the C t
Speaker 1: U C two builds up as a byproduct, and this
Speaker 1: eventually results in a spice blow explosion. And this is
Speaker 1: very much a part of the books, where eventually the
Speaker 1: pressure builds up and it blasts that precious spice melange
Speaker 1: that's produced uh somehow by this sand trout nesting water
Speaker 1: sequestering action blows it up to the surface where people
Speaker 1: can say, hey, there's some spice there, let's go get
Speaker 1: it all right, all right, So but it's not only
Speaker 1: people that want to come get the spice that also
Speaker 1: attracts the sandworms, which get into um. And at this point,
Speaker 1: according to Schifflet, the sand worms enter a pre metamorphic
Speaker 1: stage during which surviving sand trout joining bodies, and as
Speaker 1: metamorphosis sets in properly, each sand trout, also known as
Speaker 1: a little maker among the fremen, becomes a segment of
Speaker 1: a conjoined body that becomes a small sandworm. So again
Speaker 1: we see conjoined bodies coming into play. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is this is certainly part of of Herbert's original model
Speaker 1: for the sand worm. So this is fascinating because the
Speaker 1: sand worm and that sense, it is sort of a
Speaker 1: composite organism. Yes, very much so. Um and this this play,
Speaker 1: I don't want to give any spoilers, but this also
Speaker 1: plays out in rather unique and mind blowing ways in
Speaker 1: the sequels. Okay, so how long does it take for
Speaker 1: little sand trout joining together to become the gigantic shi
Speaker 1: hlud like we see in the book? You know, before
Speaker 1: they're they're a big sand worm out in the desert
Speaker 1: over over a thousand years. Because it's going to take
Speaker 1: that long corners. Shifflet here to segment for the segments
Speaker 1: to take on. Uh, you know, the different properties such
Speaker 1: as the tooth head, the reproductive system. If you're going
Speaker 1: by her model, and during this time of environmental conditions
Speaker 1: are not met, then the underdifferentiated segments can revert to
Speaker 1: san trout. So it's kind of like those jellyfish that
Speaker 1: can that can reverse age, right, can revert to the
Speaker 1: earlier life form stage if things aren't going well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that detail that she throws in. And finally
Speaker 1: the a sexual juvenile warm develops and it's twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty long, and this is the form that fremen eventually
Speaker 1: capture and drown to produce spice essence. More about spice
Speaker 1: in this episode later that's coming up. Uh, most juveniles,
Speaker 1: according to Shifflet, would become females, but it's possible that
Speaker 1: it's possible that the environmental absence of a male is
Speaker 1: what results in male development. In the book itself, we're
Speaker 1: told that each male has a three four hundred kilometer
Speaker 1: territory that it defends against at worms, and she has
Speaker 1: a really interesting bit about how that combat would work.
Speaker 1: How do the worms fight each other? If they're just
Speaker 1: they're huge worms with big circular mouths. Well, she draws
Speaker 1: on a on a on a detail that we'll discuss
Speaker 1: in a minute. Um, but I guess let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and hit it. How does someone ride a sandworm? Ah? Yes,
Speaker 1: Well this is something we learned about later in the
Speaker 1: book and it's very interesting. So the sandworm, like the
Speaker 1: sandworms like we mentioned, have these segments on their bodies.
Speaker 1: They have sort of scales that protects their soft, fleshy
Speaker 1: inner tissues from the you know, the harsh exterior realities
Speaker 1: of Aracus and all the sand So a Fremen who
Speaker 1: is who is hopped up on spice and ready to ride,
Speaker 1: will go out into the desert with some hooks and
Speaker 1: attract a sandworm using a thumper, And if the sandworm
Speaker 1: comes by at the right time, the fremen writer can
Speaker 1: get the hooks under one of the sandworms outer plates
Speaker 1: or these ales segments, whatever you wants, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: pull it back. And what that does is exposed the
Speaker 1: sandworms inner tissues to the external elements. Obviously, the sand
Speaker 1: worm does not like this and says, oh no, and
Speaker 1: it rolls over to protect the exposed part of its
Speaker 1: body from the sand, and in doing so can lift
Speaker 1: the rider up onto its back. And then once you're
Speaker 1: going like that, the sandworm refuses. It doesn't resubmerge into
Speaker 1: the ground while it's got a part of its body
Speaker 1: exposed like that, because it doesn't want sand to get
Speaker 1: in there and hurt it. So you can essentially ride
Speaker 1: this sandworm around as long as you want until it's
Speaker 1: just exhausted and collapses, as long as you've got the
Speaker 1: hooks pulling back the plate. Right, did I describe that
Speaker 1: about right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's that's perfect. And and
Speaker 1: so in shifflet trying to understand like what its teeth
Speaker 1: are for, she draws on this detail and says, well, uh,
Speaker 1: what happens when two males are are getting to combat
Speaker 1: over territory. They're using those teeth to pull back each
Speaker 1: other's segments, essentially wrestling that way. And uh, because again
Speaker 1: sand gets in there, it's gonna irritate the flesh. And
Speaker 1: she posits that in extreme cases this could result in
Speaker 1: a viral infection that could kill a worm, but generally
Speaker 1: the loser breaks away, So, uh, yeah, just grappling with
Speaker 1: each other, exposing each other as inner flesh by pulling
Speaker 1: back with the teeth and eventually forcing one of them
Speaker 1: to give up and break. Yeah, and a lot. It's
Speaker 1: like in nature on Earth, a lot of territorial disputes
Speaker 1: between you know, angry males of species. They don't always
Speaker 1: end in death. They just one of them is like, okay,
Speaker 1: I give up. Yeah, if you can have it, you
Speaker 1: can eat all the females in this region that you want. Um. Finally,
Speaker 1: a word on diet from Shifflet. Her theory here is
Speaker 1: that the sand worm is a true autotroph that's an
Speaker 1: organism that's able to to form a nutritional organic substances
Speaker 1: from simple inorganic substances such as carbon dioxide. In this case,
Speaker 1: the sandworm is producing all of the nutritional needs from
Speaker 1: inorganic compounds on the planet's surface. The energy for this,
Speaker 1: she says that it it drives the synthetic reactions to
Speaker 1: completion just by by traveling across the sand, which causes
Speaker 1: an electrostatic charge differential, which we do see in the
Speaker 1: books with a whole You know, you see that you
Speaker 1: already mentioned the static charge that tells you that a
Speaker 1: worm is approaching and uh. Incidentally, she also uses this
Speaker 1: as an as an explanation for one water would be
Speaker 1: fatal to a sandworm, and that it would cause the
Speaker 1: electrons to discharge abnormally. Yeah. Now, obviously it can't be
Speaker 1: that any massive water is fatal to a sandworm because
Speaker 1: there there is some tiny amount of water on Iracus.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like a large amount of water will
Speaker 1: kill a sandworm, right, And it gets into that whole
Speaker 1: segmented thing because it's it's mentioned in the book that
Speaker 1: to really kill a sandworm, like to straight up kill it,
Speaker 1: it's so big. And since each since it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a central nervous system Sinich, each segment has its own
Speaker 1: nervous system, you would have to just nuke the whole
Speaker 1: thing with one of your your handy house atomics that
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to use anyway. Wow. Yeah, um so
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's a it's kind of a complex life cycle.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh it's it's summed up in this brief
Speaker 1: bit from the appendix to dune. Now they had a
Speaker 1: circular relationship little maker again, that's our our sound trout
Speaker 1: to Priespye spice mass little maker to shah Haloud shah
Speaker 1: Haloo to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures
Speaker 1: called sand plankton, which we'll get into the sand plankton
Speaker 1: food for shah Haloud, growing, burrowing, becoming little makers. Now
Speaker 1: that of course is a little complicated, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. Because here it seems like how can one
Speaker 1: does it? Sounds like one part of its own life
Speaker 1: cycle is also part of it is also it's part
Speaker 1: of its diet. That's bizarre, all right, And this brings
Speaker 1: us to biologist civil hetchel PhD sum Science of Dune explanation,
Speaker 1: which uh is also really interesting and I think gives
Speaker 1: us our best comparison to real world biology. Okay, so
Speaker 1: first of all, she she she zooms in on the
Speaker 1: whole idea that san trout produce oxygen deep underground, as
Speaker 1: mentioned by Kinds in the novel. But they need an
Speaker 1: energy source to produce oxygen, and since photos, since theist
Speaker 1: is out of the question because their underground, right, the
Speaker 1: best candidate is, of course de hydrothermal vents. That's how
Speaker 1: we see it working on Earth, right, Okay, so one
Speaker 1: could interpret the san trout as the producer of milange,
Speaker 1: and that's then certainly Herbert doesn't really say exactly like
Speaker 1: it's just sandworms are key to the production of spice. Mlehunch,
Speaker 1: but I don't know exactly how it goes happening. But
Speaker 1: of course we don't want them to go extinct, right,
Speaker 1: So Hetchel deposits that just as san trout scavenge and
Speaker 1: herd water, they may also tend a milang producing fungus.
Speaker 1: So in this case then it's not actually any part
Speaker 1: of the UH of the sandworms life cycle that produces
Speaker 1: the spice, but they are harvesters of spice, right. She's
Speaker 1: theorizing that they would sequester stashes of water around these
Speaker 1: hydrothermal areas, and this would cause the spice fungus to grow. UH.
Speaker 1: And in our world, plants, bacteria, and fungi produced the
Speaker 1: majority of exotic compounds, such as psychedelic compounds, so this
Speaker 1: would make extra sense, right, the secondary compact pounds that
Speaker 1: synthesized for protection by a particular fungus. And of course
Speaker 1: there are examples of animals on Earth that actually do
Speaker 1: practice farming, I mean animals other than humans. Right. The
Speaker 1: example here would be, of course, the leaf cutter ants.
Speaker 1: And that's the comparison that that civil Hetchel makes in
Speaker 1: this UH. In this piece. The leaf cutter ants are
Speaker 1: of course a number of species that are found in
Speaker 1: the America's and they cut tree leaves. They drag them
Speaker 1: to an underground growth chamber and they keep it moist
Speaker 1: to gold, cultivate guy on the leaves, um, and then
Speaker 1: they so they so basically it breaks down like this.
Speaker 1: They bring leaf cuttings back to the colony along well
Speaker 1: worn forest roads and paths. We've probably all seen video
Speaker 1: or images of this, you know, very very visual. Um.
Speaker 1: They filter out the bad cuttings, they hand the good
Speaker 1: ones off to their farmer ants. Then they munched the
Speaker 1: leaf cuttings down into a fine mulch. Then they grow
Speaker 1: the delicious fung guy on that mulch, lay some eggs
Speaker 1: in it, and enjoy. They dragged the depleted leaf cuttings
Speaker 1: to the dump chamber along with all the dead ants
Speaker 1: and dead fungus. So the crazy part about this and
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of sci fi uh sounding thing about the
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants is that they gave up hunting and
Speaker 1: gathering fifty million years ago and they became farmers, and
Speaker 1: they they discovered the technology of agriculture before we did.
Speaker 1: They did, and not only before we did, before we existed, right.
Speaker 1: They not only did they find this substance, but they
Speaker 1: essentially domesticated it, and it's grown extinct in the wild,
Speaker 1: like it's no longer something that they can go out
Speaker 1: and get. So the analogy here would be imagine if
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants, uh could grow to become giant leaf
Speaker 1: cutter ants that can eat a city. But also if
Speaker 1: the fungus that the little leaf cutter ants grew in
Speaker 1: their colonies created a drug that lets you see the future. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine all those leaf cutter ants vultronning up into a
Speaker 1: larger organism over the course of a thousand years. Um.
Speaker 1: And I do also want to know that it's it's
Speaker 1: also kind of like a caveman movie in that when
Speaker 1: a winged male prepares to leave leaf cutter cutter ant
Speaker 1: colony to found a new colony, they have to take
Speaker 1: a sample of that precious fungi with them, because again,
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist in the wild anymore. I was continually
Speaker 1: fascinated by that. Um, we're completely at the mercy of
Speaker 1: the ants. If we want this fungus exactly, and of
Speaker 1: course we don't want it, but they require it completely.
Speaker 1: It's key to their their their life. But back to
Speaker 1: the sandworms. Okay, so we don't know exact actually what
Speaker 1: sand plankton and sand trout are supposed to eat, but
Speaker 1: maybe they eat spice, uh and it and it, but
Speaker 1: you know, but it wouldn't make sense. Hetchel argues for
Speaker 1: the creature to both create and consume spice, so the
Speaker 1: fungus again makes more sense from from that analogy as
Speaker 1: well for that comparison as well. So she well, I
Speaker 1: mean I wonder you could look at depending on what
Speaker 1: you mean by create, you could look at an example
Speaker 1: like honey in a bee colony. You know, the bees
Speaker 1: don't create the honey, but they sort of they process
Speaker 1: the honey. Yes, And I think that would be an
Speaker 1: apt analogy here for the milange as well, that the
Speaker 1: kind of is a created element um. So she argues
Speaker 1: that sand trout communities um are essentially like a combination
Speaker 1: of leaf cutting, ant nest and hydrothermal vent community and
Speaker 1: in this case, sand plankton and sand trout would subsist
Speaker 1: on living spice, fungi and bacterial mats that grow around
Speaker 1: the events. She also presents the notion that sand trout
Speaker 1: or essentially a sexual and they might sub this as
Speaker 1: clone communities for quite some time at least until the
Speaker 1: build up of carbon dioxide from their farming efforts trigger
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction and also triggers that spice blow the results
Speaker 1: from the build up, and then that that would scatter
Speaker 1: the newly produced sandplankton. So then the sand worm comes in.
Speaker 1: It wants to eat up that spice, and in doing
Speaker 1: so it disperses the offspring across vast distances, because of
Speaker 1: course sandworms have those large spread out territories. That makes
Speaker 1: sense with some Earth earth life too. You can think
Speaker 1: about seeds that spread by growing in fruits that predators
Speaker 1: want to come and eat, or maybe not predators you'd
Speaker 1: call them. I guess they're predators of the plant. They
Speaker 1: come and want to eat the fruit, and then they
Speaker 1: take the seeds with them wherever they go afterwards. So
Speaker 1: now she also goes on in this piece. She has
Speaker 1: some some thoughts on size constraints of enormous organisms. If
Speaker 1: you want to read about that, do check out the
Speaker 1: book to check out her peace, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to go into them in this podcast. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I've already mentioned that I really loved about
Speaker 1: doing is that it's the most ecologically conscious novel I've
Speaker 1: ever read. It's it's a novel that really has interesting
Speaker 1: thoughts about ecosystems and about resources in ecosystems, like how
Speaker 1: resources get used and conserves, specifically water and spice, and
Speaker 1: then also about how organisms feed into one another and
Speaker 1: create ecosystems. There's actually a section in the book where
Speaker 1: the planetary scientist and ecologist Kinds has visions of his father,
Speaker 1: who is also an ecologist and lived among the Fremen
Speaker 1: on the dune planet, and the vision of his father
Speaker 1: says a couple of interesting things. He says, the more
Speaker 1: life there is within a system, the more niches there
Speaker 1: are for life. Life improves the capacity of the environment
Speaker 1: to sustain life. Life makes needed nutrients more readily available.
Speaker 1: It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous
Speaker 1: chemical interplay from organism to organism. And I think that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense because whenever you imagine a
Speaker 1: a rich, thriving ecosystem on Earth, it's one that already
Speaker 1: has a lot of life forms succeeding in It is
Speaker 1: kind of counterintuitive from a resource competition or evolutionary perspective.
Speaker 1: Places that have a lot of competitions seem like they
Speaker 1: they should be harder to survive in. But life creates
Speaker 1: ways for other life to thrive, and this is sort
Speaker 1: of part of the problem with Aracus as it's imagined,
Speaker 1: unless you you imagine it terraformed and seated with other
Speaker 1: life forms, as some characters in the novel do kind
Speaker 1: of imagine. I think primarily they talked about, let's plants,
Speaker 1: some grasses and you know, and settle the dunes. It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have enough biodiversity to be very hospitable
Speaker 1: to life forms. And uh, in addition to the sandworms.
Speaker 1: Like what life forms are described as inhabiting Aracus, Herbert
Speaker 1: mentions some scavenging birds and a few other carrion eaters
Speaker 1: and some kind of scrubby plants. But I got the sense,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you thought about this. I get
Speaker 1: the sense that a lot of these animals that are
Speaker 1: described as inhabiting Aracus are imports from human settlement. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you thought. That's that's the sense I
Speaker 1: got as well. They're like the scavenging birds have certainly
Speaker 1: evolved over over time to to thrive on Aracus, Like
Speaker 1: they're there's you know, they're far more conscious. They can
Speaker 1: basically hear water, you know, miles away, but that they're
Speaker 1: essentially a terrestrial product, while the sand worm is is
Speaker 1: entirely alien. So I don't know, maybe somewhere in the
Speaker 1: if it's in the sequels, or if I missed it.
Speaker 1: In the book, Herbert does talk about other life forms
Speaker 1: native to Aracus, but I can't think of any examples
Speaker 1: where I remember him talking about that, And and I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask the question, if we imagine that the sandworm,
Speaker 1: at the various stages of his life cycle, were the
Speaker 1: one and only organism native to a planet, is something
Speaker 1: like that possible in reality? Can you have a one
Speaker 1: organism ecosystem? Yeah, even if it's a really complex organism
Speaker 1: like this one. I was trying to find examples of this.
Speaker 1: I found one. Actually I think you found it first.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and eight there were reports that
Speaker 1: the first known single organism ecosystem had been discovered, and
Speaker 1: this was miles under the earth in the moment, I
Speaker 1: apologize if I'm pronouncing this wrong, Momponing gold mine in
Speaker 1: South Africa, and it was a bacteria called de sulfur
Speaker 1: Udis audax viator, it was a rod shaped bacterium, and
Speaker 1: it makes its living in a very remarkable way. It
Speaker 1: doesn't need sunlight and it doesn't need any prey organisms,
Speaker 1: so it lives down there by itself, and instead it
Speaker 1: puts together the organic molecules it needs by access only
Speaker 1: to water, carbon, and nitrogen in the ground and using
Speaker 1: energy from According to this Lawrence Berkeley Lab source I
Speaker 1: read on this, hydrogen and sulfate produced by the radioactive
Speaker 1: decay of uranium. So this is a it's surviving on
Speaker 1: chemicals created by radiation in the ground, almost two miles
Speaker 1: under the ground. This is essentially about as close to
Speaker 1: an alien microbe as I've ever heard of on Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty far removed from our traditional ecosystem model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I just thought that was fascinating. But another
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it is, if you imagine way
Speaker 1: way back in time two I don't know situations of
Speaker 1: a biogenesis on Earth, you probably at least have to
Speaker 1: imagine that there are some periods in the history of
Speaker 1: life where there was only one organism um and then
Speaker 1: and then of course we got a branching ecosystem. So
Speaker 1: that again makes me wonder if you could naturally have
Speaker 1: a planet where there's really only one type of organism there,
Speaker 1: it seems like the natural course of biological evolution is
Speaker 1: to diversify. But another way of thinking about this that
Speaker 1: that occurred to me is that what if it is
Speaker 1: the case that the sandworm and its various stages of
Speaker 1: life is the only major organism alive on Iracus and
Speaker 1: it wasn't always that way, So it could have been
Speaker 1: a planet rich with life that has essentially been conquered
Speaker 1: by a single invasive species, Like there's one organism that
Speaker 1: destroys all eco diversity on the planet. I can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can see that being the case too. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: you end up with just a sandworm only ecosystem because
Speaker 1: it's that dominant species in this environment. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: one wonders how sustainable a system like that would be.
Speaker 1: That Uh. And then of course, if you want to
Speaker 1: think about other parallels to the sandworm in reality, you've
Speaker 1: of course got the Mongolian deathworm. Ah. Now the Mongolian
Speaker 1: death worm is not real though, right, maybe not to you. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if maybe I've missed a new study
Speaker 1: where the occasionally you see an expedition to to to
Speaker 1: find it. No, as far as I'm aware, no one
Speaker 1: has ever discovered the Mongolian deathcorm. But if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: you should. I bet you've written a blog post about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever really covered Mongolian deathworm. Um, no,
Speaker 1: I haven't run a crud. You have something called a
Speaker 1: sandworm that lives in beach sand, but of course that's
Speaker 1: an entirely different scenario. Yeah, that's unfortunate, Okay, Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: imagine yourself at a party with some hip young people
Speaker 1: who start passing around the hottest new designer drug. It
Speaker 1: is the spice Melange. And Herbert never is exactly clear
Speaker 1: what the spice in the book looks like, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to imagine it here based on a
Speaker 1: scene from the movie and a description quote I read
Speaker 1: from a from a sequel. Uh, It's it's a little
Speaker 1: glass or box. And then inside the box there is
Speaker 1: some orange mass. It almost looks like a like an
Speaker 1: evacuated insects shell, you know how, like when the cicadas
Speaker 1: leave their shells behind after they mold some stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of brownish orange. And then you press down
Speaker 1: a little piston to crush some of this stuff in
Speaker 1: the glass, and an orange liquid strains out and it
Speaker 1: smells like cinnamon. And you can drink it right up,
Speaker 1: or you can add it to food or beverages, or
Speaker 1: have it transformed into a gas if you're a guild
Speaker 1: navigator in a tank. But it's going to be doing
Speaker 1: some weird stuff to you. Yeah. And if you're in
Speaker 1: Iraq in uh, Dennis, And if you if Iracus is
Speaker 1: your home and you're not pretty to a lot of
Speaker 1: outsider food coming in from other worlds. Uh, it's just
Speaker 1: gonna find its way into your diet. It's just an
Speaker 1: ambient part of of water and food on the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're not careful and you keep taking too
Speaker 1: much spice, you may begin to see the future and
Speaker 1: become fatally addicted. Yeah, and your eyes will turn blue
Speaker 1: despite the fatal addiction. There's something kind of appealing about
Speaker 1: the way they describe some of the spice consumption in
Speaker 1: the novel. Yeah. They mentioned having, you know, having a
Speaker 1: cup of spice coffee. Uh so I think there's some
Speaker 1: spice cakes that are mentioned here and there. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, I would kind of like that a
Speaker 1: nice uh, you know, a nice consciousness expanding cup of
Speaker 1: coffee as opposed to this, you know, these Red Bull
Speaker 1: and Simuda cocktails that I keep going. So characteristics of
Speaker 1: the spice in the book, which very according to the
Speaker 1: person taking it and the intake level, would be some
Speaker 1: of the following. First, I should say that it's core
Speaker 1: the spice is described, I think is an awareness drug
Speaker 1: and that it changes perception and consciousness. Now, the first
Speaker 1: major feature described is that it's the geriatric spice. It's
Speaker 1: when taken in small quantities over long periods of time,
Speaker 1: it extends your lifespan. And that's something we probably should
Speaker 1: have mentioned more earlier on. Like, that's another reason that
Speaker 1: iraq Is is the center of the universe, because not
Speaker 1: only does the spice enable interstellar travel, uh, it also
Speaker 1: allows the wealthy people to extend their lives. Right. Once
Speaker 1: you're a feudal lord and you've conquered all your enemies
Speaker 1: and you've secured a place in the in the power
Speaker 1: structures of the universe, what's the next thing you need.
Speaker 1: You've got to live forever, right, So it does that.
Speaker 1: And then another effect of it is that it stains
Speaker 1: your eyes. Taking spice will will cause blue tinting of
Speaker 1: the eyes, not just the iris is but the whole eye.
Speaker 1: It's a mind expander. It grants heightened awareness. In some
Speaker 1: cases it allows prescience or limited omniscience. I don't know
Speaker 1: if limited omniscience is a phrase that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: It allows you to have some knowledge beyond your physical
Speaker 1: time and place, and the ability to see some ass
Speaker 1: spects of the future or aspects of the present removed
Speaker 1: by distance, or to share communal awareness, sort of collaborating
Speaker 1: across aspects of mind with others. And they often make
Speaker 1: geographic comparisons in the book, So it's like looking into
Speaker 1: the future is kind of like looking across the landscape.
Speaker 1: And depending on your circumstances, you might be kind of
Speaker 1: standing in a like a shallow basin and you can't
Speaker 1: actually see that far. Other times it's flat. Other times
Speaker 1: maybe you're on a hill, and it depends on your
Speaker 1: prescient availabilities how far can you see? Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: of course the negative that the downside I alluded to
Speaker 1: earlier is the addiction. When you take it in large quantities,
Speaker 1: you will get addicted to it, and if you stop
Speaker 1: taking it, you will die, that'll happen, and unfortunately so.
Speaker 1: The idea of a drug that expands consciousness is certainly
Speaker 1: something you find in many cultures writing, including our own.
Speaker 1: You know, lots of people believe things like hallucinogens like LSD, marijuana, psilocybin, mushrooms, uh,
Speaker 1: and the Iowa oscar brew which I think the chemical, uh,
Speaker 1: the active chemical and that is d m T right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so under various circumstances, people have suggested all these
Speaker 1: drugs not only provide euphoria and sometimes sensory hallucinations, but
Speaker 1: they actually provide access to information or knowledge about reality
Speaker 1: that is not otherwise available to people. One of the
Speaker 1: most common claims you hear is the sort of transcendence
Speaker 1: journey you might call it, where the hallucinogen gives the
Speaker 1: user a mental vantage point from which he or she
Speaker 1: claims to see a deeper reality or to now understand
Speaker 1: that our day to day experiences are not all there is.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've encountered this before. Oh yeah, And of
Speaker 1: course it's and that's key to most religions too, that
Speaker 1: you have at the heart there's a deeper understanding of reality,
Speaker 1: um that you have to uncover Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I think the the hallucinogen comparison despy is
Speaker 1: perhaps quite on point because in a two thousand five
Speaker 1: book called Mycelium Running by the American mycologist Pulse statements,
Speaker 1: that's a person who studies fungus. Uh. The author claims
Speaker 1: that Frank Herbert, Well, I should just read this quote.
Speaker 1: It says uh. He says that Frank Herbert was apparently
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic mushroom collector himself who came up with this
Speaker 1: great system for for growing chantrelle mushrooms in a way
Speaker 1: that people hadn't realized how to do before, by creating
Speaker 1: this spore slurry in a bucket. But anyway, he says
Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert. Frank went on to tell me that
Speaker 1: much of the premise of Dune, the magic spice spores
Speaker 1: that allowed the bending of space tripping, the giant worms,
Speaker 1: maggots digesting mushrooms, the eyes of the fremen, the cerulean
Speaker 1: blue of psilocybin mushrooms, the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors,
Speaker 1: the Binny jess Er. It's influenced by tales of Maria
Speaker 1: Sabina and the Sacred mushroom culleds of Mexico came from
Speaker 1: his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his imagination
Speaker 1: was stimulated through his experiences with the use of magic mushrooms.
Speaker 1: All right, well, then that that certainly matches up with
Speaker 1: with what we see in the book. And again bearing
Speaker 1: in mind that this is you know, rising out of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and mid sixties and and uh and
Speaker 1: a lot of the counterculture movements that were taking place there,
Speaker 1: and the and the roll of drugs and hallucinogens in
Speaker 1: that subculture. Yeah, yeah, certainly, though one thing about that
Speaker 1: that was weird. I googled the psilocybia mushrooms and they
Speaker 1: didn't look blue to me. I don't know. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: there's sometimes I have seen have not. Yeah, they look
Speaker 1: like mushrooms to me. I've never noticed a blue one. Anyway.
Speaker 1: To go back to the science of Dune, the writer
Speaker 1: Carol Hart, PhD has a great essay about the spice
Speaker 1: milange and the science of Dune, and she makes some
Speaker 1: really interesting points comparing the spice to hallucinogens like the
Speaker 1: ones I mentioned above, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, uh ayahuasca, and
Speaker 1: there are the following changes that you can notice that
Speaker 1: are similar. One would be changes to the eyes. The spice,
Speaker 1: it seems, causes a more permanent kind of change with
Speaker 1: the blue tent, but hallucinogens like LSD and ayahuasca typically
Speaker 1: cause an extreme dilation of the pupils. She also notices
Speaker 1: suspension of time right, ecstaticus, an ecstatic and sometimes frightening
Speaker 1: sense of communion with others, out of body sensations, loss
Speaker 1: of self and merger into a oneness, euphoria, death, rebirth, experience,
Speaker 1: vision slash, hallucinations, and prescience and life changing realizations. And
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the most interesting things because,
Speaker 1: like like I said earlier, a lot of times people
Speaker 1: take hallucinogens not just with the idea that I'm going
Speaker 1: to see something interesting, but they take it with the
Speaker 1: idea that they're learning something about the true nature of reality.
Speaker 1: They're getting access to facts and useful information. She says,
Speaker 1: for example, for the Amazonian shamans, ayahuasca allowed the soul
Speaker 1: to leave the body, to search out the explanation for
Speaker 1: illness in the individual or problems threatening the community, and
Speaker 1: to decide the course of action. Yeah, I I remember reading,
Speaker 1: uh some words from Buddhist Alan Watts, who is also
Speaker 1: part of You Know the certainly a name during the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and he was commenting on the on
Speaker 1: the views of psychedelic drugs in the counterculture, and he
Speaker 1: compared them to the use of a telescope or microscope
Speaker 1: that it's something that you you know, you put your
Speaker 1: eye to the telescope of the microscope to learn something
Speaker 1: about reality, but then you also have to re engage
Speaker 1: with reality. You have to put the telescope or the
Speaker 1: microscope down in order to to take those lessons and
Speaker 1: apply them to life. Yeah, another really interesting parallel with Dune,
Speaker 1: I think is that the effect of the drug, whether
Speaker 1: you're talking about real hallucinogens or the spice in Dune,
Speaker 1: is not just a product of the drug. It's not
Speaker 1: just here are the molecules in the drug and what
Speaker 1: they'll do to you, but there are there are a product,
Speaker 1: a sort of combinatorial product of the drug acting on
Speaker 1: body and the preparation that the user has experienced. So
Speaker 1: it's about preparation, it's about departure. States. Some people will
Speaker 1: take acid, take LST and just mess around and have
Speaker 1: some weird experiences and don't learn a whole lot from it.
Speaker 1: Some people might have bad trips, some people might have
Speaker 1: what they would consider to be transcendent experiences. And I
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people who throughout the
Speaker 1: years have been advocates of controlled hallucinogen use, who lament
Speaker 1: the fact that it's taken for kicks. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: we look at some of the current research, and we're
Speaker 1: finally seeing a lot more research into psychedelics uh these days.
Speaker 1: For a while, it was such a taboo area, you know,
Speaker 1: really kind of poisoned by uh the more you know,
Speaker 1: extreme aspects of the counterculture in the way that it
Speaker 1: it gained coverage in the media, we're finally seeing it
Speaker 1: being an area that can get funded and and and
Speaker 1: be studied. Uh. And there have been some some really
Speaker 1: fascinating looks into how the right levels of hallucinogens combined
Speaker 1: with appropriate priming, uh, you know, preparation for the experience.
Speaker 1: Uh and as well as sort of after uh exploration
Speaker 1: of what they felt, it can be used to help
Speaker 1: terminally ill patients as they prepared to die. It can
Speaker 1: be used in in various therapies that even addiction therapies UH.
Speaker 1: So so Yeah, the priming, the purpose, really the ritual
Speaker 1: of it is essential. I mean, I imagine a number
Speaker 1: of our listeners can think of, you know, some individuals
Speaker 1: they've come across before that, at least on the surface,
Speaker 1: looks like they are gaining nothing of value from their
Speaker 1: experimentation with psychedelics. And and then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, there are cases where you know, this particular
Speaker 1: thinker claims to have had some sort of profound insight
Speaker 1: um intellectually or creatively while trying one of these substances. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, once wrote, he
Speaker 1: said special internal and external advanced preparations are required. With them,
Speaker 1: an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience. So I
Speaker 1: think he was one of those people you're you know,
Speaker 1: who recommended the preparations that go into making yourself ready
Speaker 1: for the mental journey of expanded consciousness. If you don't
Speaker 1: put the preparation time in, it doesn't work. And we
Speaker 1: see this in the novel Dune because people consuming lots
Speaker 1: of spice react to it in very different ways. You
Speaker 1: get the sense that when Paula Tradees starts taking lots
Speaker 1: of spice and then has his moment of expanded consciousness
Speaker 1: begins to see the future, begins to have you know,
Speaker 1: heightened awareness and pressions and limited omniscians. It's all because
Speaker 1: of the things that have gone into making Paul who
Speaker 1: he is. It's not just like he got a really
Speaker 1: strong hit of it, you know. So it's the fact
Speaker 1: that he's been trained in the Benny jesser At Ways
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the last episode in the
Speaker 1: mint At Ways, all this that went into making him
Speaker 1: who he is also made the expanded consciousness what it was.
Speaker 1: You can see that in contrast to another character in
Speaker 1: the novel that Twisted mint At. Do you call him
Speaker 1: Pider or Peter? Um always read At as Peter, but
Speaker 1: Pider might be more accurate. They call him Pider. In
Speaker 1: the David Lynch movie, I'll call him Peter. Peter Duvrees,
Speaker 1: the the bad Mintat who works for the evil Harconan's
Speaker 1: uh he. They say he takes huge amounts of spice too.
Speaker 1: He's just gobbles it like Candy, can't get enough of it.
Speaker 1: But he does not seem to have this same type
Speaker 1: of expanded awareness that Paul has from extended spice use
Speaker 1: and it seems to be that it's it's because of
Speaker 1: different types of preparation going into the experience. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean the other example, of course, the Guild navigators who
Speaker 1: have been engineered uh in bread to to pilot these
Speaker 1: spaceships uh while using the spice. So they consume the
Speaker 1: spice in order to safely navigate folded space and as
Speaker 1: a celestial mechanic. John C. Smith points out in the
Speaker 1: Science of doone, UH, there's a quantum physics tie in here.
Speaker 1: So eight years before the publication of doone, physicist Hugh
Speaker 1: Ever the Third proposed a radical interpretation of quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: that everything that can happen does happen, and each possible
Speaker 1: action spawns a new universe. This is what's known as
Speaker 1: the many worlds theory. Every time there's an indeterminate quantum event,
Speaker 1: the world the universe branches off into separate realities. It's
Speaker 1: the very thing that the Bores referenced with the Library
Speaker 1: of Babble, that this library would contain not only all books,
Speaker 1: but all possible books. So taking the spies here would
Speaker 1: have allowed the navigator to at least see the immediate
Speaker 1: path of the ship in many different multiverses. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then safely, you know, choose the safest path. UM. And
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, there is kind of a real world tie
Speaker 1: in here, because according to a nineteen seventy three studied
Speaker 1: compiled by the RAND Corporation for the US Defense Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency or DARPA, UM, there was a Soviet
Speaker 1: plan to launch psychics into orbit. Quote how how much
Speaker 1: should we how much space should we put in this report?
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe a grain of salt, I'll read the
Speaker 1: quote here. Regarding precognition, we found only one unverified report
Speaker 1: by a Soviet investigator that a program was being planned
Speaker 1: to train astronauts to quote foresee and to avoid accidents
Speaker 1: in space. It was clear from the context that he
Speaker 1: was referring to pre cognitive process. So I don't know, Uh,
Speaker 1: if they did look into it, obviously didn't work out.
Speaker 1: But this was a time when you know, the stakes
Speaker 1: were high in the Cold War. So if there was
Speaker 1: a possibility that there was something to some sort of
Speaker 1: paranormal uh situation, you checked it out. Yeah, why not
Speaker 1: training a bunker full of psychics? Yeah? The same The
Speaker 1: same Rand Corporation report also mentioned UM that there was
Speaker 1: a test into psychic communication by sacrificing a litter of
Speaker 1: baby rabbits on board of on board of Soviet submarine
Speaker 1: what and the idea here was that the mother rabbit
Speaker 1: located on the surface might receive psychic signals from the
Speaker 1: dying young. So again, uh, this is all unverified, but
Speaker 1: but it seems possible based on some of the other
Speaker 1: reports we've heard about both the US and Soviet investigations
Speaker 1: into the potential use of paranormal effects. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting to me about the role
Speaker 1: of spice in the Dune universe is that it posits
Speaker 1: a world in which the entire universe is completely dependent
Speaker 1: on a resource or that essentially produces effects similar to
Speaker 1: things that are taboo in our culture that not only
Speaker 1: do we you know, not depend on as a society,
Speaker 1: but we try to stamp out and say that's not okay. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: essentially everyone in the book seems to be taking some
Speaker 1: sort of um performance enhancing substance. If it's not milange,
Speaker 1: then it's the uh you know, they're taking simuda, or
Speaker 1: they're taking the I can't remember the name of it,
Speaker 1: but that wine that the mentense drink, which I believe
Speaker 1: is supposed to be derived from the same source as
Speaker 1: Samuda the Purple staind lips. Yeah, so everybody's just cranked
Speaker 1: the gills on something because you can't have been on
Speaker 1: the thinking machine. You got to depend on the human mind.
Speaker 1: So maybe you could say that if we had to
Speaker 1: get rid of our computers, there would be I don't
Speaker 1: know less opposition to recreational drug use. Maybe. So all right,
Speaker 1: you know, we're running out of time here, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, we might even have to cut this part,
Speaker 1: but I do want to mention the beneath a lack
Speaker 1: Sue face dancers before we close out. These are characters
Speaker 1: that you did not encounter in the book because they
Speaker 1: don't show up until book too, and then play an
Speaker 1: increasingly important role moving on. But as we mentioned, UH,
Speaker 1: I think in the first episode that many, if they
Speaker 1: lack su this is a group, this is like a
Speaker 1: faction in the Doing universe that are really involved in
Speaker 1: trans human post human um machinations. They're changing the human form, UH,
Speaker 1: engineering new people UH to UH to survive in this
Speaker 1: post singularity, you know, Postbutalian Jahad world. And so they're
Speaker 1: doing things like like essentially engaging in cloning, the producer
Speaker 1: of these ghoula's that play an important role in the
Speaker 1: later books where a dead individuals brought back as a clone.
Speaker 1: I like the sound of that. Yeah, they're the they're
Speaker 1: the faction that creates the twisted uh mentats we've already discussed.
Speaker 1: And then they also have these face dancers who are
Speaker 1: known and feared to spies and assassins um and they're
Speaker 1: essentially their shape shifters. They can change their their face,
Speaker 1: their appearance, um, their their voice, everything to resemble another
Speaker 1: person um and and so they you know, give them
Speaker 1: unparalleled acting ability. They serve as entertainers throughout the galaxy
Speaker 1: and UM and they're also key at the Laxu diplomats
Speaker 1: and conspirators as and as well as just core members
Speaker 1: of their society. So uh. There, there's actually a couple
Speaker 1: of cool articles about how this might work, essentially, how
Speaker 1: a shape shifting humanoid might work as an organism. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first uh and the primary one I want to
Speaker 1: mention comes to us from the Dune Encyclopedia, and this
Speaker 1: is from contributor Walter E. Myers, and he very much
Speaker 1: in envisions face dancer biology, a shape shifting biology as
Speaker 1: a complex creation of raining, breeding, embryotic manipulation, genetic team
Speaker 1: current tinkering, and surgical augmentation. So basically throwing all of
Speaker 1: these various everything, we got everything we got at creating
Speaker 1: this shape shifting creature. So I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: through the entire entry because it's a he has a
Speaker 1: lot of details that he throws out, but here are
Speaker 1: the high points. This is what you need. Key alterations
Speaker 1: include selected breeding for appropriate physicality and muscle control, because
Speaker 1: you're gonna need muscle control to shift the face around
Speaker 1: and shift everything about. Embryotic stimulation of overdeveloped back muscles
Speaker 1: and hyper elastic spine for height control. The embryotic manipulation
Speaker 1: of the bodies a psylamic sacks, altering their position and
Speaker 1: allowing them to serve in the voluntary inflation of artificial
Speaker 1: tubes that are implanted after puberty, thus allowing conscious body
Speaker 1: size alteration, so essentially bladders in the body that allow
Speaker 1: you to just fill up his needed childhood augmentation of
Speaker 1: facial structure replacing certain facial bones with elastic cartilage, coupled
Speaker 1: with extensive training to allow total manipulation of facial features.
Speaker 1: Cellular embryonic manipulation to allow conscious control of scalp temperature.
Speaker 1: In this help temperature, because this would be used to
Speaker 1: allow the color manipulation of artificial liquid crystal hair follicles
Speaker 1: that are later planted like individually. Genetic manipulation to enable
Speaker 1: the conscious formonal control of eye pigment, fetal manipulation, and
Speaker 1: surgical augmentation to produce male genitals that are retractable within
Speaker 1: a vaginal cavity for visual ginger swapping, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: actually be able to change sex, but they could sort
Speaker 1: of retract the genitals into a cavity as if they
Speaker 1: were the landing gear of an airplane. Training and surgery
Speaker 1: to enhance deferential muscle and autonomic nerve control. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in other words, a face answer by this definition would
Speaker 1: been extremely complex product uh and no mere human subspecies.
Speaker 1: But this is just one take. We also have a
Speaker 1: take from Sandy Field in her essay Evolution by Any
Speaker 1: Means on Dune, and this is from the Science of Dune,
Speaker 1: and she goes into a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: these sort of highly evolved human models that we discuss here,
Speaker 1: but she posits that the face dancers mimic their targets
Speaker 1: through conscious migration of body cells. So in order to
Speaker 1: swiftly change form a face dancwer, we need to wreck
Speaker 1: reorganize its skin cells, h muscle, aature and skeletal elements,
Speaker 1: a feat they might accomplish through the the dissolution and
Speaker 1: recombination of the cell to sell bonds that hold the
Speaker 1: tissue together. Now, how might the the lax who have
Speaker 1: accomplished this. Here's what she had to say. Quote the
Speaker 1: concerted action of newly created hormones selected genetically by the
Speaker 1: the laxo over many generations could act to allow different
Speaker 1: cell types to move when prompted by neurological signals. Face
Speaker 1: dancing then could be a genetically derived ability to generate
Speaker 1: specific hormones at will which allow for the concerted movement
Speaker 1: of skin, muscle, bone, and other cells to new locations
Speaker 1: to create the appearance of another person. So there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I appreciate that as a as a
Speaker 1: great attempt to explanation. I somehow don't feel like a
Speaker 1: creature like that could exist in reality. I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: you can imagine some types of uh, you know, chameleon
Speaker 1: type elements like changing pigmentation and when we see octopuses
Speaker 1: and stuff that have a remarkable ability to change their
Speaker 1: external appearance at web will, But the moving of bones
Speaker 1: and things like that, that sounds impossible to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I do love the the rigor in both of
Speaker 1: these examples, because one takes a very um, you know, genetic,
Speaker 1: cellular hormonal approach, and the other is a very more
Speaker 1: of a varied approach, but also all into just post
Speaker 1: humans ibrenetic tinkering. And I guess in reality you could
Speaker 1: create a model that is a combination of the two,
Speaker 1: maybe draw in some biomimicry by looking to the world
Speaker 1: of of the of the octopus or the cuttlefish and saying, well,
Speaker 1: how could you create those same sort of flesh effects
Speaker 1: in a humanoid creature. Well, here's something I would say.
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent they have shape shifting
Speaker 1: precision in the books, but I would I would buy
Speaker 1: this creature more if it could make basic changes to
Speaker 1: its body, but but not sort of target a particular
Speaker 1: individual like I, you know, can look now exactly like
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb as opposed to just I can look different
Speaker 1: than I normally look. Yeah, yeah, it would, And I
Speaker 1: think in the books. It's laid out that it depends
Speaker 1: on how long they study a target. So if they
Speaker 1: study you, know, they just sort of glance at you,
Speaker 1: would be like a very rough version, but they would
Speaker 1: ideally want to uh study you in earnest for a
Speaker 1: few days before replacing you. Yeah, all right, so there
Speaker 1: you go. We're we're out of time. Uh that's the
Speaker 1: biology of dooe. But before we go, Robert, I gotta
Speaker 1: ask you about David Lynch movie. I've been burning to
Speaker 1: talk about this. No, I mean, I read the book
Speaker 1: and then I watched the movie, and there's so much
Speaker 1: to like about the movie actually, because it's got great
Speaker 1: sets and costumes. Some parts of it are truly weird,
Speaker 1: uh in ways that are really fun and exciting, and
Speaker 1: other aspects of it are just incomprehensible. I watched it
Speaker 1: with my wife Rachel, and I constantly had to explain
Speaker 1: things because the movie does not make sense on its own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been a long time since I've seen the movie,
Speaker 1: though I did last night. I rewatched the intro material
Speaker 1: that was on the TV airing of it, where they
Speaker 1: have the the still illustrations and some narration to set
Speaker 1: up the world. Uh, yeah, I agree. There's there's so
Speaker 1: much that doesn't work in the films and ultimately led
Speaker 1: to it being a kind of a train wreck. But
Speaker 1: then there's so many elements that are there well done.
Speaker 1: Like some of the casting is just weird, some of
Speaker 1: the casting is just spot on. The costumes are amazing,
Speaker 1: some of the visual takes on the world are just perfect.
Speaker 1: But it just doesn't all come together. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I I think Doing could be a really great animated movie. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: imagine if Miyazaki had had taken it on, you know,
Speaker 1: because you have the ecological elements that he's all, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the president, his work. Oh man, that's a thing
Speaker 1: that I think was really lacking, and at least the
Speaker 1: version of Doing that I saw. Now I heard that
Speaker 1: there there are shorter There's a shorter version and a
Speaker 1: longer version. I'm not sure which one I saw. Uh.
Speaker 1: If there's a shorter version, I cannot imagine it because
Speaker 1: the version I saw left out so much explanation it's crazy.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the one thing that really seemed left
Speaker 1: out of the movie is the ecological themes of the book.
Speaker 1: All the concerns about water, about about how to survive
Speaker 1: in the environment. I mean, this is a this is
Speaker 1: a key part of the book and it's you know,
Speaker 1: maybe one out of every three pages is primarily about water.
Speaker 1: And this is just not the case in the movie. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: And that's you know, ultimately a you know, a large
Speaker 1: thing to be missing from the finished product. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, the movie does have I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember this from the movie, but the strategically inserted pug.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, how how C Trades has a pug? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you mentioned this, I saw the plug shows
Speaker 1: up in the still illustrations for the TV version intro.
Speaker 1: So it's got Jurgen proc Now standing there with his
Speaker 1: his beard in his uniform holding a pug. There's also
Speaker 1: a scene of Patrick Stewart as Gernie Halleck fighting a
Speaker 1: battle and he's got the pug in his arms. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do not remember I in my reread of the book,
Speaker 1: I've not come across the pug. Sure they added that
Speaker 1: they're pug at tradees is not in the book. They
Speaker 1: added the pug, They adding the added the weirding module.
Speaker 1: Um few other things they add and then left out
Speaker 1: some some key things as well, so there you go. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of you out there have
Speaker 1: comments you would like to add on the Dune universe,
Speaker 1: on the Dune movies, on some of this uh uh,
Speaker 1: some of the possible science behind the biology behind the
Speaker 1: technology that discussed in the other episodes, and we would
Speaker 1: of course loved to hear from you. As always, check
Speaker 1: out our home page Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you also want to check out the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode that will include links out to these
Speaker 1: books that we've mentioned too related articles, as well as
Speaker 1: where you can find some of the music that we
Speaker 1: featured and uh. And indeed, as we close out here,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be listening to the track Aracus by musician
Speaker 1: Raleigh Porter Office two thousand eleven album Aftertime released by
Speaker 1: Subtext Recordings. Uh. There'll be a link to that on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. But you can also
Speaker 1: learn more about him and his work at Raleigh Porter
Speaker 1: dot com. And if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us about your favorite aspect of the Dune novels
Speaker 1: or the Dune movies, or your least favorite aspect, or
Speaker 1: just tell us what should think about Dune or give
Speaker 1: us feedback on the episode. You can email us at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.