WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Machine Speaks 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.160 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:12.520 Robert Lamb and Hey it's Saturday. It's time to venture 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.480 into the vault once more for one of our core 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.520 episodes from the past. This is going to be The 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:24.120 Machine Speaks, Originally published on six twenty nine, twenty twenty three. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:27.600 We really hope you enjoy this one. It's a journey 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:32.080 through everything from ancient tales of artifice and wizardry to 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:37.040 the early breakthroughs in speech synthesis technology. Let's dive right in. 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:44.640 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:52.360 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:53.000 is Robert. 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.560 Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick, and today we're going 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:02.160 to be talking about some early voice synthesis machines. Rob 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.440 I actually got interested in this topic because last week, 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:09.000 when we were watching the Weird House Cinema movie The 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.800 Black Hole, I was thinking about Roddy McDowell's voice when 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.399 he's doing a voice for the robot character who shares 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.280 a lot of proverbs with the human characters. And I 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.400 kept listening to his line delivery and I couldn't decide 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.640 if he was trying to do quote robot voice or not. 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:28.560 He seemed to kind of dip in and out of it. 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:30.480 You know what I mean when I say robot voice, 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.480 where a character's playing a robot and they say things 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:35.040 like this, Well. 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.119 Of course I know what you are talking about, Joe. 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.199 I got kind of interested in the history of robot voice. 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:43.880 I was like, where does that come from? And I 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:45.560 was digging around a little. I'm sure there is a 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.200 good answer on that, but I don't know. My short 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.560 search didn't really turn up anything interesting, but it did 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:55.560 lead me indirectly to what we're talking about today, which is, 0:01:55.680 --> 0:02:00.520 of course, we have the voice synthesis systems that that 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.320 are largely digital today. Before that, you had a lot 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:09.400 of electrical and electro mechanical systems for synthesizing human voices. 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.359 But actually there is an even earlier generation, which are 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:17.520 the purely mechanical voice synthesizers before electricity even came into 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.040 the picture. And that is what really stole my heart, 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.920 especially one particular machine of this type that I'm going 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:25.960 to talk about in the second half of this episode. 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.120 I think, yeah, this is a fascinating topic, in part 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:31.359 because look at it. Look at where we are now, 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.640 right it's easy today in our Internet age for just 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.640 the average Internet user to engage with various chatbots and 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:43.760 generative AI, text to speech and so forth. And so 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.560 we're able to interact with an artifact, a thing that 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.480 reflects human will, that has been designed to do key 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.480 and telling things that have long been the hallmarks of 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:59.800 human activity, artistic generation, creative writing and conversation, or especially speech. 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.240 And of course it's you know, it's easy nowadays to 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.320 do that, right, to transform into audible or even video 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:11.000 content what is either written by human or or created 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:15.080 with some sort of a chat bot machine. And the 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.480 results may be amusing, they may may be disastrous. But 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:20.680 we're in this age where the idea of the machine 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.440 speaking is not in and of itself groundbreaking, or at 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.119 least if it is groundbreaking, or if it's amazing, it's 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:33.160 that it's a lower level of amazement compared to previous ages. 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.440 Well, as you say, it's very integrated into modern technology. 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.480 So there's you know, Siri and Alexa, all these like 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.520 home devices that speak, GPS devices for the car, you know, 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.480 that speak to you, but almost all of them are 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.320 still the subject of amusement if you actually pay attention 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.320 to what the voice sounds like, you know, like reading 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:54.800 emotions into the voice that's telling you what to do 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.920 as you're driving. That always makes me laugh because it 0:03:57.920 --> 0:03:59.400 always seems a little bit annoyed. 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.360 Yeah, yeah, what's series whole deal that sort of thing, right? 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.240 You know. The other interesting angle on all of this 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:12.880 is that are modern technological advancements here, or even some 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.960 of the historic technological advancements like they are kind of 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:20.040 the echo of a more ancient longing for this sort 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:25.120 of thing. It connects to something that's just fascinated us 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.359 for a long time, the idea generally of non human 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:31.560 entities engaging in speech. And you could you could go 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:35.280 absolutely wild chasing down the various divisions of this, right, 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:40.160 the various myths, legends, and traditions concerning the speech of animals, plants, 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:47.080 inorganic materials, supernatural entities, you know, voices seemingly internal but 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.920 also external to our individual experience. 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.599 Though I would say there is an interesting thing about 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.120 machines or human or automata or human artifacts in general 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:01.920 when compared to imagining an animal speaker or any other 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.080 usually not speaking things starting to speak, which is, if 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.799 you're talking about a machine that does it. That means 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.839 somebody has to make that machine and somebody has to 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.560 work that machine, and it kind of reminds me of 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.960 the idea of grammar in language. You know, the interesting 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:20.080 thing about grammar is that when we use language, we 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.279 all use grammar, so we have an intuitive grasp of 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.760 the rules of grammar, but without serious study, people can't 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.000 actually tell you what those rules are. And so, like, 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:31.000 you know, that had to be in a sense a 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.919 science to back engineer the rules of grammar that we 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.680 use intuitively to like make them systematic and you know, 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.000 actually discover what those rules are. The same thing could 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.880 be said about the phonetic rules that produce the intelligible speech. 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:48.839 We can all do it if we can speak, but 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:54.160 we don't necessarily understand what the individual physical properties of 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.200 a word are, and so we wouldn't necessarily know how 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.800 to make that same word come out of a machine. 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:02.520 Yeah, there are all these things that you have to 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.200 deconstruct before you can attempt to reproduce it artificially. And 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.440 we see that time and time again with in robotics, 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.000 for example. You know, things that we take for granted 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:17.000 concerning human movement, just about anything else you could imagine 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.600 it becomes so much more difficult to try and reproduce 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.479 that you've got to understand what it actually is on 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:23.640 an entirely new level. 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.480 First, Now, I am to understand that before anybody actually 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.760 made a machine that could approximate or synthesize a human 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.479 voice and produce intelligible speech, people were thinking about this 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:35.480 as a concept. 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.680 Yeah yeah, and this is not surprising. You know, this 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:43.559 is kind of the meat of science fiction. Right before 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:45.839 we can do it, we dream of it one way 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.679 or another, no matter what our exact grasp of science 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.080 happens to be. It always reminds me of that line 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.880 in William Gibson's Neuromancer where the character has made a deal, 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:01.320 a pact with a powerful AI, and it's pointed out like, 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.000 this is the sort of thing that in you know, 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.200 centuries ago, people only dreamed of making a deal with 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:10.120 a devil, and now we've made it possible through our 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:11.320 ingenuity and invention. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:12.880 Congratulations. 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:18.360 Yeah, so so yeah. Narrowing down here into generally the 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:27.200 realm of alleged human creations that through at least partial technology, 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.800 but also sometimes wizardry and alchemy and other things that 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:33.360 are kind of like you know, bunched in there together 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:37.760 with with actual technology to create some sort of a 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.600 device capable of speech. And then there are some also 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:42.880 some related things that are tied in there as well. 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:44.960 And a lot of it comes down to the idea 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:49.840 of a head, an artificial head that speaks. 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.800 I found something so loaded and revealing about that. As 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.800 a fact, the history of these machines, so many of 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:00.680 them had fa whether real or imagined, These machines, so 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.800 many of them early on had heads or faces, so 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.000 like it wouldn't just be a speaker like you would 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.000 have today, that's you know, it's just a mechanical device 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.040 for making the sound. It's like that the presence of 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.320 a head or a face was considered important or at 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:17.240 least desirable. 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:19.880 Yeah, and I wondered to what extent part of it 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:24.000 is just an echo of these earlier ideas. So going 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.680 to run through a few of these here. One of 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.400 the most famous, mainly from a literary tradition, as we'll 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.000 discuss here, is the idea of the brazen head. And 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:37.480 ultimately I guess there's more than one brazen head. We 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:42.720 can say brazen heads artificial heads that could speak. There's 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.400 a basically a lot of these stories concerned thirteenth century 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.600 English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, who's come up 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.360 on the show before, though this particular version of the 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.440 story doesn't seem to emerge until the sixteenth century, and 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:00.680 it does so within the works of contemporary drama. 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.400 I think we talked about Roger Bacon at length in 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.360 an episode we did about the invention of fireworks, which 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.360 may come back and feature again in the feed soon. 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.000 Yeah, yeah, I believe you're right. Yeah. I think Bacon 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.199 did come up in that he had a reputation as 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:18.960 not only a very learned man in both natural philosophy 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.319 and theology, and I should drive home definitely existed. I 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.560 don't think there's any doubt that there was a Roger Bacon. 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.280 But then there are all these other stories that he 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:31.880 was also potentially a wizard who was capable of producing 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:37.880 fabulous automata, either through amazing feats of clockwork ingenuity that 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:42.280 I think many would say was ultimately, you know, impossible 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:46.600 during his time period, or failing that, he was into 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.320 alchemy and of course dark dank necromancy. 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.000 I think the way I conceive of Roger Bacon is 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.360 that he of course was a real figure. He was 0:09:56.120 --> 0:10:00.520 of great intellectual note and significance, but much about his 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.280 sort of general reputation is kind of legendary, if that 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:05.840 makes sense. I mean, there are many things we know 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.559 about him that are true, but there's also just sort 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:12.160 of an aura or a vibe about him that is 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:13.560 not really based in reality. 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:17.360 Yeah, I mean, he becomes a character in literature, especially 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:19.680 in these accounts, so you can you can sort of 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.320 look at the different phases like historic individual ideas and 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:27.880 you know, misunderstandings have said real life individual and then 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.320 eventually that echoes into the fictional version of the person. 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:33.400 Which that's the more like wizard version. 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.800 Yeah, yeah, And so there are a few different examples 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.160 of this. This was like a popular motif for a while. 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.480 There's a sixteenth century prose romance titled the Famous History 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:45.920 of Friar Bacon, and it tells of Bacon trying to 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.920 give a replica of a human head speech and having 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.800 to call in the devil for help. Cool. Other versions 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:54.959 of this tale describe it as an artificial head given 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:58.920 life by demons, which was capable of spontaneous speech and 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.840 of course telling the future I mean, what else would 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:08.160 you tell right right? Robert Greene's sixteen thirty play Friar 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:12.880 Bacon and Friar Bungay mentions this several times, citing quote 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:18.199 Bacon's necromatic skill and heads of Brass that quote can 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:21.160 utter any voice. The idea that's exploring both of these 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.679 works is that Bacon wished to build a wall of 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.000 brass around Britain with the help of the Brazen Head. 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:29.640 He fails and the head explodes. 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:33.920 Why have I never heard this side? It as like 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:35.640 an early science fiction tale. 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:38.120 I don't know. I'm probably not doing due diligence on 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.040 exactly what happens and everything, at least like saying, well, 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.719 in Star Wars, the bad guys make one planet to 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:45.920 blow up another planet, and then the planet they may 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.760 blows up. You know, That's that's really skipping over a 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.040 lot of the nuance. And so I think there's there's 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:53.280 inevitably more nuance here, but I just I didn't get 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.280 into it. Okay, So this idea of the satanic brasshead 0:11:57.280 --> 0:12:00.480 of Roger Bacon persists despite the fact that there's no 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.520 indication that anything like this even created purely through technology 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.160 and not Satanic wizardry was part of Bacon's world. He 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.720 was interested in optics and certainly various instruments scientific instruments 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:14.680 of brass of the day. But there's no indication that 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.080 he ever built an artificial head and tried to get 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:17.760 it to speak. 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:20.320 Okay, so this is part of the wizard aura, not 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:22.360 part of his biography. 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.000 Right though, you know, we have to drive home to 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.600 is it possible that Roger Bacon, as a hobby did 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.040 what he could to create you know, I mean it's possible, 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.280 it's not. You know, I don't think he would have 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.120 gotten to speak. But there are various sort of ways 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.880 you could interpret this as having some basis in reality 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.480 that doesn't involve magic or superscience of the day. Okay, Now, 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.000 I went to my bookshelf and I pulled off my 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.680 dusty copy of Brewer's Dictionary Phrase and Fable. It provides 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.760 a little more insight on the legend. Quote. It was 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.960 said if Bacon heard it speak, he would succeed in 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.920 his projects, if not, he would fail. His familiar mile 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.000 was set to watch, and while Bacon slept, the head 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:07.400 spoke thrice. Time is half an hour later, it said, 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:11.840 time was in another half hour, it said times past 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.640 fell down and was broken to atoms to atoms to atoms. Yes, 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.160 surely Adams means something different here, Adams rights been discovered 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:23.600 at the time. I think it just means like small 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:24.520 parts or something. 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.400 Yeah, yes, yeah, that would be hilarious if it was 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:29.960 literally broken to atoms. 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:32.280 Yeah. So I don't know if it if it works though, 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:34.720 it sounds like it's kind of an alarm clock that explodes. 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.560 Well, but I don't understand the difference between time was 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.360 and times pasted. They're both past tens. 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:44.400 Hm m. That's a good point. Time is, time was 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.840 times past. It seems like you would want the president 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:52.439 there somewhere, but yeah, that's that's that's what it allegedly said. 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:57.679 And you'll you'll find woodcuts that that have this this 0:13:57.840 --> 0:13:59.240 motif on them as well. 0:13:59.600 --> 0:14:01.160 Like it would it made more sense if it said 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:05.000 the three things where time will be, time is, time was, 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:08.440 but this seems more like time is, time was, time 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:09.160 was was. 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.360 Now. Brewers notes that reference to the references to the 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.840 Brazen Head are just common in literature, appearing frequently in 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:23.080 early romances but with Eastern origins, though it doesn't get 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.200 into that a lot elsewhere in the volume. It's also 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:32.040 noted that artificial heads that speak occur elsewhere as well. 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:33.880 And some of these are brazen heads, and some of 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:35.680 these are other things, but they're kind of I think 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.440 it's important to run through briefly some of these examples 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:41.080 because they kind of paint a picture of not only 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.600 some of these other ideas of artificial heads speaking and 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:52.240 telling the future, but related non technological non artifacts that 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:57.960 kind of help inform what we think technology can do. Okay, okay, 0:14:58.000 --> 0:14:59.920 So one of them is a brazen head in the 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.960 possession of Pope Sylvester the Second in the tenth century, 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:07.680 which he also constructed, and misinterpretations of its utterances could 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:08.720 prove disastrous. 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.280 Oh, is this also believed to be Satanic in some way? 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:19.920 I didn't go too deep on Satanic implications, but possibly, I. 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.240 Guess it would depend on if this legend is associated 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.920 with pro Pope Sylvester or anti Pope Sylvester sources. 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:28.680 Right, right, But you can definitely see that they're in 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.040 the head itself, regardless of what's supposed to be powering it. 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:34.160 Like this, it ties into two oracular traditions. You know, 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.320 the idea that here is this thing that can give 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:41.120 you cryptic wisdom if you have the wisdom to decipher 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.760 what it's telling you. Another example that's brought up in 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:48.560 Brewers is or the Colossi of Memnon, which we did 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:50.240 at least a whole I don't know, I can't remember 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.560 as one episode or multiple episodes, but we discussed this 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.280 on stuff to blow your mind. This is a fascinating 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:57.400 topic in and of itself. 0:15:57.640 --> 0:15:59.920 This was basically, I think a statue or a pair 0:15:59.920 --> 0:16:03.320 of statues, part of sort of a ruins complex that 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:08.200 was famous during in Roman Egypt as basically because it 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.280 would make sounds, and there were different theories about how 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:12.600 it made sounds and why. 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.920 Yeah, yeah, it seems like I think some said it 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.320 was capable of speech, but generally it's described as singing 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.600 or some sort of a note. And as we discussed, 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.840 while there are some I think unlikely theories regarding the 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.640 use of some sort of intentional sound generating device or devices, 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.400 it seems like a more likely explanation would have to 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:34.880 do with peculiarities of the stone as it heated in 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.880 the sun and then cooled at night. Anyway, go back 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:39.200 and listen to that episode if you want to know 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.560 about them. They have a pretty fascinating history. 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:43.640 We'll remember better in the original. 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:49.480 Yes, there's the head of Orpheus at Lesbos, predicting the 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.080 doom and death of Cyrus the Great. However, I believe 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.400 this is generally thought to be the actual head of 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.280 the hero Orpheus, after he was torn apart by the 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.480 main ads of Dionysus during a bacchanalia for the sin 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:06.000 of worshiping Apollo or having worshiped Apollo. I'm not sure 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.400 what the exact charge was, but still a prophetic, disembodied 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:13.199 head that still continues to speak. Brewers also mentions the 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:17.439 head of Minos brought by Odin to Scandinavia, which I 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.040 didn't know what to make of this, because Minos is 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:26.840 of course the mythical king of Crete that we've discussed 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.320 on the show before as well. I think the actual 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.040 figure in reference here might be Nimir, the god of 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:39.080 wisdom that is beheaded in the Aservaniir War. Odin claims 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:42.240 this head and it continues to speak secret wisdom. Again, 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:44.560 this is another one that's not a mechanical head. It's 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.160 the head of an actual defeated divine being that continues 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.840 to live on and to speak. There are tales of 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:55.760 Albertus Magnus having an earthen head, which during the thirteenth 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.760 century was said to speak and move until Thomas Aquinas 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.720 breaks sit by accident, and Magnus says, there goes the 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:07.560 labor of thirty years, because now it's broken. So I 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:09.880 don't know what to make of that one either completely. 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.359 But again we see this motif of a fabulous artificial 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.919 head that speaks, that manages to break one way or another, 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.280 either something fails, somebody knocks it over, or you know, 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.840 it explodes after you hit this nooze alarm twice. Then 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.000 there's Alexander's statue of Ascalapius, the Greek god of medicine, 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:32.840 that was said to speak, but Lucian wrote that the 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:37.119 sounds came via a concealed man who spoke through tubes. 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:42.560 So here's an example of some sort of of a creation. 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:45.240 I guess it depends on you look at either a 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:50.920 statue that isn't intended to speak, or through supernatural machinations speaks, 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:54.240 But according to Lucian, it's in neither of those. It's 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.720 just tubes and some guy like hiding in the bushes 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.840 speaking through the tubes, which is still clever and still technological, 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:01.680 but is trickery. 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.879 Nonetheless, I think the Lucian you're alluding to there is 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:07.080 Lucian of Samosada. 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:09.760 Is that right? I believe so, yes, yeah, this. 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.760 Is like this was an ancient satirist from Syria who 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:17.560 is quite hilarious and was kind of a skeptic debunker 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.399 of the of like the second century CE, which is 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:24.119 sort of strange, but he was in that mold and 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:28.560 he made like vicious mockery of people of all sorts 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.240 and different philosophies and stuff, and also wrote a satire 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:34.840 that some people have considered one of the earliest forms 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:35.560 of science fiction. 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.480 Now this also reminds me this is not I mean, 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.000 I guess it memory series. Maybe it did speak, But 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.800 there was of course the man faced Serpent God Glicon 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:50.440 of the second century that is often held up as 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:54.120 being a hoax, like it was actually a puppet according 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:59.360 to commentators. But I've always wondered what to make of that, 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.560 because it kind of if someone is performing puppetry and 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:07.000 people are having an emotional or even religious reaction to it, 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.280 it kind of depends how it's presented. Right, are you 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:13.240 presenting Glican the man face serpent as like, this is it? 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:16.520 This is an actual man face serpent God, Come take 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.760 a look that it's life. Is proof that he is real? 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.680 Or is it something else? Is it more like performance 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.359 or is it more like reinterpretation? You know, because you 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:30.920 have plenty of examples where people will carry out performances 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:34.040 in which people dress as divine and semi divine figures. 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.240 It's not supposed to be like, look at the proof here, 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:40.600 here is this hero on the stage. This means God 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:41.880 is real. Funny enough. 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.440 I think Glicon was also written about by Lucian of 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:49.080 some Asada. But I guess the crucial question is like 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:51.840 is there an attempt at trickery or not? Like do 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.960 you want the audience to believe there is not somebody 0:20:56.080 --> 0:20:56.960 behind the mask? 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.640 Right? And you know that's interesting because that still kind 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:03.080 of applies to a lot of what's going on in 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.000 the world today with things like like chat box and 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:09.639 so forth. And you know, this idea that if we 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.480 know what is coming out of the box, what is 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:17.200 coming out of the artificial head? And you know, we 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.520 how are we interpreting it? And are we thinking there 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.919 is something there that is not. So it's like, on 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.359 what level is there trickery, and then there is like 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:30.920 interpretation of the trickery and so forth. But at any rate, 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:32.920 I think, you know, some of these examples they proved 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:35.520 that well before people could make any kind of a 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:38.359 mechanical thing, be it a head or not ahead that 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.159 could speak, we were still capable of dreaming about it. 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:44.080 And I think there's ample evidence that long before anyone 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:46.919 attempted to make a head that could talk through mechanical means, 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:52.159 individuals sought and sometimes found a voice emerging from disembodied heads, 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.240 either real ones the you know, the the remains of 0:21:55.280 --> 0:22:00.000 human beings or other animals, or or likenesses of human heads, 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.560 either attached or detached from statues, and so forth. And 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.600 I think there's room between trickery and belief for the 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:18.199 suspension of belief and ritual as well to take into account. 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:22.560 But of course, later on people would end up building real, 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:27.000 operable machines that were at least attempting to produce speech 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:28.920 that could be understood by humans. 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:31.560 That's right, And this is where we get more into 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:36.040 the deconstruction of what human speech is, which in and 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:41.400 of itself is a whole subject, but there are key 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.440 moments where we see some major advancements being made here. 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.080 So another major entry to discuss in all of this 0:22:48.160 --> 0:22:50.919 is the work of German born Russian doctor, physicist and 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:55.760