Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Man and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going
Speaker 3: to begin a series of episodes on the theme of
Speaker 3: being upside down and if you are wondering, yes, this
Speaker 3: is another baby looked at Me episode idea. I started
Speaker 3: thinking about this because of my three year old's fondness
Speaker 3: for dangling upside down. She really likes to ask us
Speaker 3: to hang her upside down and then to be brought
Speaker 3: face to face with other family members while she's hanging
Speaker 3: upside down. So like when she sees them, I guess,
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what's so funny about it, but
Speaker 3: she descends into like cackling madness, and it's kind of like,
Speaker 3: can you believe this? This is absurd?
Speaker 2: No, No, this is totally understandable. And you know, even
Speaker 2: as an adult, there'll be times where I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'll be in the right position. Maybe I'll be, you know,
Speaker 2: reclined on the floor for a yoga class or something,
Speaker 2: or just in my living room and you'll imagine the
Speaker 2: ceiling as the floor and what it would be like
Speaker 2: to be up there. Or an even more terrifying one
Speaker 2: is if you find yourself out either on like a
Speaker 2: clear starry night or even a really clear blue day,
Speaker 2: and imagine yourself detached from the gravity of the planet
Speaker 2: and ascending upward, falling upward, that sort of thing. You know,
Speaker 2: it can the wildness of the concept, once you sort
Speaker 2: of like break through your everyday mundane blocks to it
Speaker 2: can still be almost overwhelming.
Speaker 3: I feel like you've mentioned the falling upward into the
Speaker 3: sky daydream before. This is a common thing for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not. I wouldn't say it's like
Speaker 2: a central anxiety point or or even like a recurring
Speaker 2: dream so much. But I don't know. There is something
Speaker 2: about like a really clear day, especially a really clear
Speaker 2: like blue sky day, and sometimes a very clear, star
Speaker 2: filled night that kind of taps into this notion. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like if you stop and try to remind
Speaker 2: yourself to breathe, which, to be clear, can also be
Speaker 2: a very grounding and beneficial practice, but you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, I'm breathing now, and then you can
Speaker 2: kind of like sort of freak out about about making
Speaker 2: sure that you're breathing, you know, taking something that is
Speaker 2: just a basic background process of your life and turning
Speaker 2: it down his head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or if you like, think about your heartbeat too much,
Speaker 3: it can make you start feeling like you wonder is
Speaker 3: something wrong with it?
Speaker 2: Or yeah, yeah, that's sort of.
Speaker 3: So before we get into the pulp of today's episode,
Speaker 3: I wanted to start us off with a bit of
Speaker 3: poetry to establish the upside down mood. And I was
Speaker 3: looking around for some literary examples to kick things off here,
Speaker 3: and I actually found what I thought is a great one,
Speaker 3: and it's going to take us straight to Hell. So
Speaker 3: I want to talk about a very weird, actually scientifically
Speaker 3: loaded and also I think very funny scene from the
Speaker 3: Divine Comedy. So this is going to be from Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 3: Canto thirty four. And the scene we're going to be
Speaker 3: talking about is right before the end of the first
Speaker 3: book of the Divine Comedy, right before the end of
Speaker 3: the Inferno, So it's going to come at the tail
Speaker 3: end of Dante's journey through Hell, before he emerges again
Speaker 3: to face the mountain of Purgatory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and reminder for listeners who are maybe not that
Speaker 2: familiar with this work or haven't heard us talk about it?
Speaker 2: In a bit. Inferno is book one of three in
Speaker 2: the Divine Comedy of Dante Aligary, who lived twelve sixty
Speaker 2: five through thirteen twenty one, poet scholar, really almost the
Speaker 2: sort of polymath exile of Florence. It's a narrative poem,
Speaker 2: and theor stands as one of the greatest and most
Speaker 2: important works of not only late medieval Italian literature, but Western,
Speaker 2: if not global literature as a whole. It's notable for
Speaker 2: a number of reasons. It was written in Italian rather
Speaker 2: than Latin, it popularized and shaped the concept of Christian purgatory,
Speaker 2: and in general, I would argue that the text still
Speaker 2: stands as a highly readable if you have a good translation,
Speaker 2: good notes, and you know and interest in reading it.
Speaker 3: Notes are very important because there are a lot of
Speaker 3: things in it that don't make any sense at all
Speaker 3: unless you get like historical context explaining them.
Speaker 2: Yes, you are, in some respects not the intended reader
Speaker 2: by the stretch, but once you get into the notes
Speaker 2: and into that world is very enjoyable because it's essentially
Speaker 2: a crash course in Dante's entire world. His faith, his feuds,
Speaker 2: his loves, his trials and tribulations, his fascination with just
Speaker 2: a host of philosophical, historical, mythological, and even scientific topics.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you've really you get to find out who
Speaker 3: Dante's mad at. Sometimes they pop up in hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was thinking about this. I was
Speaker 2: like listing all this out, these things that the text is,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about lyrics to a DMX track,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Dante was kind of like a
Speaker 2: rap star of his age, you know, oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, almost kind of getting into distract territory at
Speaker 2: times in.
Speaker 3: Absolutely work, Yeah, putting his enemies and like showing their
Speaker 3: wickedness and their punishments. But also, yeah, there is a
Speaker 3: lot of genuine wonder in there as well. And so well,
Speaker 3: let's get right into the scene and then we can
Speaker 3: talk about the implications after I do a reading. So
Speaker 3: in this scene, Dante he begins as a lost traveler.
Speaker 3: He's wandering in the Selvoskura. He's wandering into dark wood,
Speaker 3: and he meets the soul of the Roman poet Virgil,
Speaker 3: who can't go to heaven himself because he was not
Speaker 3: a Christian. He lived before Christ, but he lives in
Speaker 3: limbo alongside other figures, many of whom are known as
Speaker 3: the Virtuous Pagans. So he's in limbo with these people
Speaker 3: who don't really belong in either Heaven or Hell, people
Speaker 3: like Homer, Socrates, Ptolemy, and saladein and so Virgil meets
Speaker 3: Dante and he leads him on a tour of the
Speaker 3: nine circles of Hell, going down and down all the time,
Speaker 3: deeper and deeper further into the bowels of the earth.
Speaker 3: And so together eventually Virgil and Dante reach the very
Speaker 3: bottom of Hell, where Satan himself lives. Depicted as a
Speaker 3: giant shaggy beast, almost a winged bigfoot, but I think
Speaker 3: like a thousand feet tall, So a gigantic shaggy beast,
Speaker 3: encrusted with ice, with three heads, leathery wings like those
Speaker 3: of a bat, and forever. Satan is described as forever
Speaker 3: weeping tears that freeze into ice and are then frozen
Speaker 3: further by the flapping of his wings. So the flapping
Speaker 3: of his wings generates a wind that freezes the center
Speaker 3: of Hell. It's almost like in trying to escape his
Speaker 3: own suffering by flapping his wings and in the expression
Speaker 3: of his anguish, he further creates the freezing conditions and
Speaker 3: the misery of the very core of hell. So he's
Speaker 3: down there flapping the bat wings, crying these frozen tears,
Speaker 3: drooling blood from his three mouths, and then in his
Speaker 3: three mouths he's described as eternally gnawing on the damned
Speaker 3: souls of Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ and the Gospels,
Speaker 3: and Brutus and Cassius, the betrayers of Julius Caesar. These
Speaker 3: are the three figures that Dante the poet sort of
Speaker 3: considered the worst traders against God and country in human history.
Speaker 3: A lot of modern readers really don't understand very well
Speaker 3: why Brutus and Cassius are there. That seems like man,
Speaker 3: that's really giving them an important place. But it makes
Speaker 3: more sense if you understand the Dante medieval or late
Speaker 3: medieval Italian mindset of like really valorizing the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3: It's just like the Roman Empire was like the best
Speaker 3: there ever was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, you have to keep in mind that is
Speaker 2: it is a very personal work in so many respects
Speaker 2: as well, and like this is Dante's take on it.
Speaker 2: It's like if someone elsewhere to where to say reserve
Speaker 2: the third spot in Satan's mouth for say Yoko Ono
Speaker 2: saying like, how dare she? How dare she allegedly break
Speaker 2: up the Beatles? You know, that is one of the
Speaker 2: greatest strggies of all time. And then in your mind, yes,
Speaker 2: she belongs to this, this place of infamy. So there's
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit about that going on. But also yes,
Speaker 2: I think it's also essential to realize how much weight
Speaker 2: these traitors had in the public mind and in the
Speaker 2: culture at that time.
Speaker 3: I've got some love for Yoko.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't speak to any personal animosity there.
Speaker 3: Right, but I understand what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a common cultural reference point.
Speaker 3: For death rides. But so anyway, in the story, after
Speaker 3: reaching the lower depth of the pit, Virgil and Dante
Speaker 3: they have to continue going. But they what are they
Speaker 3: going to do? Like, they've reached the bottom here, Satan,
Speaker 3: so they have to continue their journey by crawling directly
Speaker 3: down the devil's huge, nasty body. So here I'm going
Speaker 3: to begin reading from Kanto thirty four. This is the
Speaker 3: Longfellow translation, and in this selection, Dante starts off talking
Speaker 3: about a hymn. That's talking about Virgil his guide. So
Speaker 3: the poem goes as seemed him good. I clasped him
Speaker 3: round the neck, and he the vantage seed of time
Speaker 3: and place. And when the wings were opened wide apart,
Speaker 3: he laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides. From fell
Speaker 3: to fell, descended downward, then between the thick hair and
Speaker 3: the frozen crust. When we were come to where the
Speaker 3: thigh revolves exactly on the thickness of the haunch, the guide,
Speaker 3: with labor and with hard drawn breath, turned round his
Speaker 3: head where he had had his legs, and grappled to
Speaker 3: the hair, as one who mounts, so that to hell.
Speaker 3: I thought we were returning. Keep fast thy hold, for
Speaker 3: by such stairs as these, the master said, penting as
Speaker 3: one fatigued, we must perforce depart from so much evil.
Speaker 3: Then through the opening of a rock he issued, and
Speaker 3: down upon the margin seated me. Then towards me he
Speaker 3: outstretched his wary step. I lifted up mine eyes and
Speaker 3: thought to see Lucifer in the same way I had
Speaker 3: left him, and I beheld him upward hold his legs. WHOA.
Speaker 3: So this part catches a lot of readers off guard,
Speaker 3: like what is going on here. Dante and Virgil, they
Speaker 3: are climbing physically down the hairy, beastly body of Satan,
Speaker 3: who's like a giant against a giant, three headed, bat
Speaker 3: winged bigfoot. They're crawling down him and at the moment
Speaker 3: they get to like his hip or upper thigh area,
Speaker 3: sort of around the side of his butt. With some exertion, Virgil,
Speaker 3: who Dante is clinging to, rotates his body around, so
Speaker 3: Dante so like his head is pointing down now, and
Speaker 3: he grabs hold of the devil's shaggy fur, and Dante's confused.
Speaker 3: He's asking, wait, what's going on? Are we going backwards now?
Speaker 3: Are we going back into hell? But Virgil bids him
Speaker 3: to continue, so they crawl on into a tunnel in
Speaker 3: the rock. And when Dante looks back at the devil now,
Speaker 3: he's amazed because it seems like the devil flipped upside down.
Speaker 3: Something has changed. Now he's looking at Satan and Satan
Speaker 3: has got his giant gamey legs sticking up with his
Speaker 3: head pointed down? So why is the devil flipping upside down?
Speaker 3: But we will actually get a scientific explanation, at least
Speaker 3: as far as the as far as things were understood
Speaker 3: by the natural philosophy of Dante's time, writes quote. And
Speaker 3: if I then became disquieted, let stolid people think, who
Speaker 3: do not see what the point is beyond which I
Speaker 3: had passed, Rise up, The Master said, upon thy feet.
Speaker 3: The way is long and difficult, the road, and now
Speaker 3: the sun to middle tierce returns. It was not any
Speaker 3: palace corridor where there where we were, but dungeon natural,
Speaker 3: with floor uneven and unease of light air from the abyss.
Speaker 3: I tear myself away, my master said I, when I
Speaker 3: had arisen to draw me from an error, speak a little.
Speaker 3: Where is the ice? And how is this one fixed
Speaker 3: thus upside down? And how in such short time from
Speaker 3: eve to morn has the sun made his transit? And
Speaker 3: he to me, thou still imaginest thou art beyond the
Speaker 3: center where I grasped the hair of the fell worm
Speaker 3: who mines the world. That side thou wast so long
Speaker 3: as I descended. When I turned to me, thou didst
Speaker 3: past the point to which things heavy draw from every side.
Speaker 3: So there is an explanation given here. Satan did not move.
Speaker 3: Satan did not flip upside down, while crawling down Satan's body,
Speaker 3: Dante and Virgil passed through the very center of the Earth, which,
Speaker 3: in the Aristotelian cosmology that Dante believed in, is also
Speaker 3: the center of the universe. So the point to which
Speaker 3: all objects with weight what Aristotle called the heavy objects
Speaker 3: like solids and liquids, the point to which all heavy
Speaker 3: objects are pulled. So nothing in their surroundings had actually
Speaker 3: changed position. All the stuff was in the same place
Speaker 3: it had been, but for Dante and his guide, down
Speaker 3: suddenly became up and up became down.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I think this is such an interesting almost science
Speaker 3: fiction plot element to include in a tail from the
Speaker 3: early fourteenth century. It feels like something you know, it's not.
Speaker 3: It's not science fiction in the sense of speculating about
Speaker 3: the future or about technology, but it is incorporating a
Speaker 3: leading scientific understanding of the world at the time to
Speaker 3: explain the mechanics of a fantastical scenario.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's like if we're trying
Speaker 2: to imagine what it would be like to crawl through
Speaker 2: the center of a Torus space station, you know, one
Speaker 2: that's spinning like a big wheel. You know, a very
Speaker 2: similar situation with perceptions of gravity, artificial gravity caused by
Speaker 2: the spinning might be observed. And since we don't have
Speaker 2: a space station like this, and we also do not
Speaker 2: have a world like this with Satan at the center
Speaker 2: of it, we can crawl up and down. You know,
Speaker 2: we're just using our understanding of the natural world to
Speaker 2: put ourselves in that place. What would it be like
Speaker 2: to do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, using inference from our best understanding of physics to
Speaker 3: describe this fantastical scenario.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I should point out that this is not the only
Speaker 3: place in the Divine Comedy where Dante has this kind
Speaker 3: of science fiction style attention to weird physical realities. On
Speaker 3: several occasions he engages seriously with scientific theories of his day,
Speaker 3: with like astronomical theories and stuff about how light works
Speaker 3: and all this, and he applies these these understandings to
Speaker 3: his fantastical settings. Dante was a bit of a of
Speaker 3: a science nerd, though they wouldn't have called it science
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, There's so many different places, like the one
Speaker 2: in particular that I always come back, and this is
Speaker 2: a small one, but just about how what happens when
Speaker 2: or freezes it expands? Uh, you know, there's a place
Speaker 2: where they're talking about the damned or frozen. There that
Speaker 2: the lake at the in the lake at the center
Speaker 2: of the world, and their their eyes are looking upward,
Speaker 2: their their sockets pool with tears, the tears freeze and
Speaker 2: then expand painfully in their eye socket. You know, So
Speaker 2: little things like that, you know, it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: he's not, you know, positioning in some sort of impossible realm,
Speaker 2: but he is certainly applying his understanding of the natural
Speaker 2: world to these little details.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think there are a number of things
Speaker 3: about this little passage in the Inferno that are very interesting,
Speaker 3: but they have different implications for Dante than they have
Speaker 3: for us. So again, Dante believed the Earth was the
Speaker 3: center of the created material universe, with the domains of
Speaker 3: the planets and the stars existing in these concentric spheres
Speaker 3: extending out from our planet, and thus the center of
Speaker 3: the Earth was sort of the center of the center
Speaker 3: of everything that was material and created, and that's where
Speaker 3: Satan is. So that kind of seems weird, doesn't it
Speaker 3: that a fourteenth century Catholic like Dante would situate Satan,
Speaker 3: the Prince of darkness, father of lies, at the center
Speaker 3: of everything, the heart of all physical reality, seems like
Speaker 3: a kind of privileged place to put the worst possible being, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you start thinking about like the
Speaker 2: pure cosmology of the thing, like this is the center
Speaker 2: of everything, and this is where the great enemy is.
Speaker 3: But if you understand Dante's cosmology, if you understand his
Speaker 3: model of the universe, it actually makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Because Dante believed that God himself dwells in or I
Speaker 3: guess maybe even beyond what's known as the empirehean it's
Speaker 3: this area that's the highest heaven, or he might say
Speaker 3: beyond the highest heaven, actually above and somewhat outside the
Speaker 3: concentric spheres of the created universe. So to be at
Speaker 3: the center of the earth and the center of the
Speaker 3: universe is actually to be as far as one can
Speaker 3: possibly reside from God's light. So throughout the Divine Comedy,
Speaker 3: Dante repeatedly compares sin to weight and grace to lightness.
Speaker 3: So sin and evil and wretchedness all sink, They physically
Speaker 3: sink towards that central point to which all heavy things
Speaker 3: are pulled, and redemption and holiness cause things to rise,
Speaker 3: to rise up through the heavens. So given that, it
Speaker 3: actually makes a lot of sense that for Dante, Satan
Speaker 3: is the center of the universe. That's the worst place
Speaker 3: you can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it makes sense given the trajectory of the
Speaker 2: entire Divine comedy, which again is starting in the mundane world,
Speaker 2: and then you descend into Inferno, go to the very
Speaker 2: bottom of it, then crawl your way up to the
Speaker 2: center of the Earth. You go up to the mount
Speaker 2: of Purgatory on the other side of the world, ascend
Speaker 2: to the top of that, which takes you to the
Speaker 2: terrestrial Eden, and then from there you venture into the paradise,
Speaker 2: into the realm of heaven and God and so forth right.
Speaker 3: But the other cool implication of this passage is that,
Speaker 3: given Dante's cosmology, once the character Dante and Virgil crawl
Speaker 3: down the devil's disgusting bigfoot thigh, they have not only
Speaker 3: crossed through the center of the planet Earth because of
Speaker 3: the cosmology, they have crossed to the other side of everything.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of fascinating too. It's like the midpoint
Speaker 3: of the universe and they've gone to the other side.
Speaker 3: But there's another interesting implication of this passage. If you
Speaker 3: apply our modern, more Copernican influenced view of the cosmos,
Speaker 3: in which we know that there is no good reason
Speaker 3: to think that the center of the Earth, or in
Speaker 3: fact any point in space, is the center of the universe.
Speaker 3: Astronomers and physicists now generally believe that there actually is
Speaker 3: no such thing as a center of the universe. And
Speaker 3: it's not just that we don't have a way to
Speaker 3: find the center. It's that when you zoom out far enough,
Speaker 3: the universe appears to be the common expression is homogeneous
Speaker 3: and isotropic, meaning it looks basically the same from all
Speaker 3: locations and in all directions, and it's expanding equally in
Speaker 3: all directions. So that's kind of hard for us to
Speaker 3: understand intuitively, because if you like, you can't really picture
Speaker 3: a three dimensional space without a center point. Like if
Speaker 3: you imagine the volume of a cube or a sphere,
Speaker 3: there is a middle point in there, somewhere inside the
Speaker 3: middle there is a point that's furthest from all the boundaries.
Speaker 3: But our best evidence indicates that the real universe, the
Speaker 3: universe at large, is not like that. No direction you
Speaker 3: move in can bring you closer to or further from
Speaker 3: the spatial boundaries, and in fact, there probably are no
Speaker 3: spatial boundaries. So that sounds kind of counterintuitive because how
Speaker 3: can a space not have any boundaries? But this point
Speaker 3: is pretty interesting. There are several different, still possibly viable
Speaker 3: models for the large scale geometry of the universe, but
Speaker 3: none of the standard ones have spatial boundaries. So, based
Speaker 3: on our best evidence from things like the cosmic microwave background,
Speaker 3: the universe is either infinite in spatial dimension, meaning there
Speaker 3: are no boundaries and you can just go forever in
Speaker 3: any direction, or the spatial volume of the universe is finite,
Speaker 3: so it's not infinite, but it's closed meaning A common
Speaker 3: analogy used to explain this is if you think about
Speaker 3: the two dimensional surface of a three dimensional sphere, so
Speaker 3: like the skin of a balloon or a ball. If
Speaker 3: you imagine an ant crawling on the surface of a ball,
Speaker 3: it's not infinite, like there's only there's a limited area
Speaker 3: that it can crawl around, but it can never reach
Speaker 3: a boundary. You can just keep going forever in any
Speaker 3: direction there is no boundary. So this analogy isn't perfect,
Speaker 3: but it does capture the idea that, like the surface
Speaker 3: of a sphere, where the area is finite, but there's
Speaker 3: no outer boundary. The universe itself is possibly finite, but
Speaker 3: without a boundary, and is kind of like the surface
Speaker 3: of a higher dimensional space.
Speaker 2: Okay, certainly hard for us to envision. It's not the
Speaker 2: sort of environment that we evolve to make sense of
Speaker 2: in our own mind totally.
Speaker 3: But again the point is our best models of the universe,
Speaker 3: the ones that best conform to the evidence and are
Speaker 3: subscribed to by the most physicists and physical cosmologists, they
Speaker 3: don't have a center point, and they don't have boundaries.
Speaker 3: They're either infinite or you can or they're finite but closed,
Speaker 3: and they don't boundaries either way. So, given our modern view,
Speaker 3: the interesting physical thing about this part of the poem
Speaker 3: is actually how it highlights that up and down are
Speaker 3: merely a matter of perspective. In Dante's cosmology, there is
Speaker 3: an objective, universal up and down, but in our universe
Speaker 3: there is no universal or objective up and down. Up
Speaker 3: and down are sensations we feel based on our relationship
Speaker 3: to the nearest, strongest gravitational attractor. So you change your
Speaker 3: orientation to the attractor and the directions of up and
Speaker 3: down change as well, which is what they would have
Speaker 3: done going through the center of the Earth. Also, there
Speaker 3: is the change in our understanding of gravity that makes
Speaker 3: this passage interesting. You know, in our like post Galileo
Speaker 3: post Isaac Newton world, we know that gravity is not
Speaker 3: the tendency of heavy objects to sync to the center
Speaker 3: of the universe, as Aristotle thought, putting aside Einstein's refinements
Speaker 3: of functionally, gravity is the mutual attraction of mass to mass.
Speaker 3: So there's actually nothing gravitationally special about the Earth, or
Speaker 3: about planets, or even about the center of a planet.
Speaker 3: And this can really be illustrated by applying what we
Speaker 3: know now about gravity to the idea of going through
Speaker 3: the center of the Earth. We now know that if
Speaker 3: you were really somehow able to crawl down to the
Speaker 3: center of the Earth, and you can't do that because
Speaker 3: of the pressure and everything, but what you would actually do,
Speaker 3: what you would actually experience if you could do that,
Speaker 3: would be decreasing gravity as you get closer and closer
Speaker 3: to the center point, closer to the bottom of Hell.
Speaker 3: And once you finally hit the center of the Earth,
Speaker 3: you would experience microgravity, or effectively zero gravity, because the
Speaker 3: mass of the Earth attracting you would no longer be
Speaker 3: disproportionately below you. It would now be roughly equal in
Speaker 3: every direction all around you. You'd be equally attracted to
Speaker 3: mass in all directions, you know, all around. So if
Speaker 3: anybody I was thinking about this, and it was like,
Speaker 3: if anybody ever wanted to make a weirdly pseudo scientifically
Speaker 3: accurate movie version of Dante's Inferno, they could have Dante
Speaker 3: and Virgil becoming lighter and lighter as they approached Satan's body,
Speaker 3: and then finally when they're going through, you know, going
Speaker 3: by Satan's butt here they float in the air like
Speaker 3: astronauts on the space station.
Speaker 2: Oh, or like Charlie and Grandpa after they had the
Speaker 2: fizzy lifting drink right exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that would be somewhat physically accurate if it
Speaker 3: were the center of the Earth. Though, if we're going
Speaker 3: to be nitpicky, this wouldn't really work either because they'd
Speaker 3: be under immense pressure and you know, so like a
Speaker 3: cavern like this could not exist. But anyway, for the
Speaker 3: rest of the series, I propose we we we spin
Speaker 3: around on Satan's wooly haunch and and kind of crawl
Speaker 3: into the upside down of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And I want to acknowledge here some of
Speaker 2: you are also enjoying video with this episode you're watching
Speaker 2: on Netflix. Netflix, of course, is also where Stranger Things is, So,
Speaker 2: you know, we should acknowledge that the idea of the
Speaker 2: upside down in our modern usage has been greatly affected
Speaker 2: by this show, where the upside down is like a
Speaker 2: shadow realm, an opposite world where things are creepy and dark.
Speaker 2: And you know, it wasn't the first property to explore
Speaker 2: this kind of concept, but it certainly is a has
Speaker 2: been a highly popular one over the past several years.
Speaker 3: I don't remember from I only saw the early I
Speaker 3: think maybe the first two seasons, but I don't remember.
Speaker 3: Is there actually anything upside down about it? Or is
Speaker 3: it more just kind of an alternate dimension.
Speaker 2: Alternate Well, you find out more about it. It's a
Speaker 2: show proceed I don't want to spoil anything, but early
Speaker 2: on it's all they also use, like, you know, talk
Speaker 2: about like a flea on a wire and as a
Speaker 2: way of like moving back and forth between these two
Speaker 2: dimensions and so forth. But you know, you can, I
Speaker 2: guess loosely think of it as just a dark, creepy world.
Speaker 2: That is the reflection, you know, it's through the looking
Speaker 2: glass compared to our world. But I wanted to briefly
Speaker 2: mention the idea of a phrase that I came across,
Speaker 2: and I think I'd encountered a few times in the past,
Speaker 2: the idea of an upside down kingdom, which initially brings
Speaker 2: to my mind the idea of like, you know, sinister
Speaker 2: elves living in some sort of a strange world that's like,
Speaker 2: you know, on the flip of our of our reality,
Speaker 2: you know, like tails from the dark side sort of
Speaker 2: energy going on here.
Speaker 3: But it's been something from Gulliver's travels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But you know, since we're already dealing a
Speaker 2: little bit with Christian themes, and since we're so close
Speaker 2: to Easter, I think it's worth acknowledging the concept of
Speaker 2: the upside down kingdom and Christianity. So this is a
Speaker 2: kind concept with biblical roots in the teachings of Jesus,
Speaker 2: you know, the first shall be last blessed, or the
Speaker 2: poor and so forth, but then with specific roots to
Speaker 2: a nineteen seventy work. By nineteen seventy eight work by
Speaker 2: sociologists and theologian Donald Crable, who wrote a book with
Speaker 2: this title arguing that from a sociology standpoint, Jesus argued
Speaker 2: for an inversion of the existing social structure and upside
Speaker 2: down kingdom, essentially turning everything topsy turvy, where people in
Speaker 2: positions of power serve rather than rule, the lifting up
Speaker 2: of social outcasts, the loving of one's enemies, the sharing
Speaker 2: of wealth, and ultimately, in the case of Jesus, the
Speaker 2: giving of one's life to save others.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Yeah, so the idea, the phrase upside down
Speaker 3: kingdom is not itself used in the Bible, but that's
Speaker 3: an interesting way of describing, Yeah, an attitude that's there
Speaker 3: in a lot of the preaching of Jesus and the Gospels,
Speaker 3: which is, in a way, I think you could say
Speaker 3: can continues in a pre existing tradition of apocalyptic preaching
Speaker 3: from Judaism, about the idea that many of the rulers
Speaker 3: and powerful and rich people in the world have gotten
Speaker 3: to the place they are by evil, and thus the
Speaker 3: you know, their rich, their wealth and their power is
Speaker 3: an expression of evil. But the powerless and the poor
Speaker 3: will one day be brought up to overcome them. You know,
Speaker 3: there will be an inversion, a righteous inversion, And I
Speaker 3: think maybe you could say that the preaching of Jesus
Speaker 3: to some extent, extends that beyond just the sociological power
Speaker 3: structure and into common moral understandings. The idea of having
Speaker 3: love and mercy for people who previously would have been
Speaker 3: morally condemned.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and of course love your enemy thing is
Speaker 2: one that is difficult for any of us to struggle with.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think it is interesting to think about,
Speaker 2: like an inverse world, an upside down world could also
Speaker 2: be considered not a dark world at a righteous world.
Speaker 2: Like maybe it's inverting things that have become twisted in reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that is that is like
Speaker 3: the apocalyptic Jewish idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, at this point, though, let's move away from the
Speaker 2: religious world and think more about the natural world again.
Speaker 2: When we think about the upside down and the natural world,
Speaker 2: there's one particular type of organism we tend to think about,
Speaker 2: and it's a superstar when it comes to living upside down.
Speaker 2: We're talking about bats. Oh yeah, we've all seen images, footage,
Speaker 2: artistic representations of this. Bats hanging inverted from limbs, from
Speaker 2: the roofs of caves, from other structures, and hanging by
Speaker 2: their little toes.
Speaker 3: We actually just did a series of episodes about Carchner
Speaker 3: caverns in Arizona, which you recently visited, and that is
Speaker 3: a major bat roosting cave. I assume the bats in
Speaker 3: there primarily do hang by their toes filing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely they do. Not. All species of bats actually
Speaker 2: hang inverted. The vast majority do. The exceptions we're talking about,
Speaker 2: they're like seven species exceptions out of a good like
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred recognized bat species. Most of them do hang.
Speaker 2: But you have examples like Madagascar sucker footed bat. This
Speaker 2: particular variety of bat clings head up to smooth surfaces,
Speaker 2: the smooth surfaces on leaves, using specialized pads on its
Speaker 2: wrists and ankles. So some sucker bats are the main outliers,
Speaker 2: but the vast majority of other bats definitely hang by
Speaker 2: their toes. And of course this is just one of
Speaker 2: the ways that bats are a wonderful inverse to our
Speaker 2: way of living. You know, we think of bats as
Speaker 2: creatures of the night, while we are creatures of the day.
Speaker 2: For the most part, we think of them roosting in
Speaker 2: caves within the earth while we live above the ground.
Speaker 2: We stand upright on the ground, while they hang inverted.
Speaker 2: We walk, they fly, And while we famously can never
Speaker 2: quite put ourselves in the mindset of a bat or
Speaker 2: know what it is to be a bat, we do
Speaker 2: this anyway. You know, when contemplating any other species, we
Speaker 2: imagine what would it be like to do that, and
Speaker 2: especially when it comes to considering their inverted lifestyle, this
Speaker 2: sort of thing results in a basic error in our
Speaker 2: understanding because we think about what it would be like
Speaker 2: for us to hang like that.
Speaker 3: You know, I think I would suspect even the strongest
Speaker 3: ballerina in the world cannot hang for very long by
Speaker 3: their toes.
Speaker 2: No, no, I would be very surprised, shocked even if
Speaker 2: I saw even a single example of someone hanging successfully
Speaker 2: by their toes. We can, of course hang by our
Speaker 2: fingers in our hands, and most of us have done
Speaker 2: this before, either at a push up bar or maybe
Speaker 2: you know, playing on the monkey bars or some other
Speaker 2: kind of gymnastics equipment, maybe you know as a as
Speaker 2: a serious gymnast, even but it's very much an ability
Speaker 2: we have to activate that we have to train and
Speaker 2: focus on. And your fingers are going to get tired.
Speaker 2: Your fingers and hands are going to get tired from
Speaker 2: all of that gripping.
Speaker 3: And it's weird that it takes us so much effort
Speaker 3: because in a way, we're at least our ancestors are
Speaker 3: somewhat evolved for this. I mean, there is a dedicated
Speaker 3: term in zoology for the type of locomotion that you
Speaker 3: see certain primates using to swing from tree branches. They
Speaker 3: hang from the tree branches. The swing is called braciation.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, so you know, yeah said, certainly there
Speaker 2: are some some some other superstar hangers out there when
Speaker 2: it comes to hanging by by hands and feet. But
Speaker 2: when we approach the idea of the bat, we can
Speaker 2: easily imagine bats having to exert the same force that
Speaker 2: we do. But it's actually quite the opposite with them.
Speaker 2: They can hang with minimal effort and can do so
Speaker 2: for extended periods of time. Young bats can do it
Speaker 2: at birth. So what's going on here is they have
Speaker 2: what's called a tendon locking mechanism or TLM, which can
Speaker 2: also be found among birds. Simons and Quinn, writing in
Speaker 2: the journal Mammalian Evolution back in ninety four, describe it
Speaker 2: as follows. In bats, this mechanism typically consists of a
Speaker 2: patch of tuberculated fibrocartilage cells on the planter surface of
Speaker 2: the proximal flexor tendons and a corresponding ply caated portion
Speaker 2: of the adjacent flexer tendon sheath.
Speaker 3: Okay, now I do not talk about that anatomy to
Speaker 3: make sense of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't worry if that did not compute, because we're
Speaker 2: about to get to the important part. They continue. The
Speaker 2: two components mesh together like parts of a ratchet, locking
Speaker 2: the digit in a flexed position until the mechanism is disengaged.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so I see. So it has a essentially
Speaker 3: a lo blocking mechanism that does not require continuous muscular
Speaker 3: effort to keep the grip closed.
Speaker 2: That's right. In fact, it has to be unlocked in
Speaker 2: order to let go. So it's the It is the
Speaker 2: complete inversion of the way we think about hanging on
Speaker 2: to something. You know, Like anytime you're watching an action film,
Speaker 2: you know, and somebody's hanging from the edge of a
Speaker 2: cliff or a skyscraper, it's like, keep hanging on, keep
Speaker 2: exerting pressure. For the bat it's like, just don't actively
Speaker 2: disengage from your hang. And so this allows them to
Speaker 2: just give into gravity and hang to sleep. For extended
Speaker 2: periods of time in this position to hibernate in this position,
Speaker 2: and the lock will even stay in place after death.
Speaker 3: Oh so the bat can die, but it just stays.
Speaker 3: Do people ever find bat skeletons still hang like defleshed
Speaker 3: but still hanging.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Maybe I have to look back
Speaker 2: into that for the next episode. I know you, I mean,
Speaker 2: certainly you. It's not like all bats die and then
Speaker 2: hang like bats die and fall or they you know,
Speaker 2: you'll find dead bats on the floor of caves, and
Speaker 2: there are in some cavern environments there are scavengers who
Speaker 2: take ready advantage of that.
Speaker 3: But wait a minute, So I've got a question, why
Speaker 3: do bats hang in the first place? What advantage does
Speaker 3: it provide them to dangle upside down as opposed to
Speaker 3: I don't know, just crawling into a hole or doing
Speaker 3: what you know, sitting right side up like most mammals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great question and one that we
Speaker 2: often don't even think about because this is just what
Speaker 2: bats do, right, We don't necessarily think about why they
Speaker 2: do it. I guess one of the real obvious answers,
Speaker 2: and probably the first one to come to mind, is
Speaker 2: is one that just makes sense to us floor dwellers
Speaker 2: when we look up at the ceiling. The ceiling is
Speaker 2: safer if you can get up there. Well, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of predators that cannot follow you or cannot
Speaker 2: easily follow you up there. So it seems like, you know,
Speaker 2: bats can access it seems like a good place for
Speaker 2: them to hang out. Again, they can fly. But there's
Speaker 2: more to it than that. Bats are for the most part,
Speaker 2: all in unflying. Even bats that have adapted to ground
Speaker 2: predation and are pretty good about crawling around, they still
Speaker 2: have what you might think of as a morphologically pure
Speaker 2: flyers build. You know, everything about their body has evolved
Speaker 2: for flight. They evolved from our boreal mammals, you know,
Speaker 2: more than fifty million years ago, and a lot of
Speaker 2: trade offs had to be made for these creatures to
Speaker 2: take to the sky like this, not just to glide
Speaker 2: through the air, but to fly through the air with
Speaker 2: true powered flight.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, one thing I would imagine is that
Speaker 3: by turning their fore limbs into wings, they have sacrificed
Speaker 3: a lot of alternate utility that can be made of
Speaker 3: four limbs.
Speaker 2: That's right. You know, we've touched on this before. But
Speaker 2: when you look at the wing of a bat. The
Speaker 2: wing is basically a hand. It's like a hand that
Speaker 2: has evolved into this wing. And so you know, this
Speaker 2: is one of one of the reasons they're going to
Speaker 2: have trouble moving around.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: If they try, if it even in intern de bat's
Speaker 2: mind somehow to like walk like a human and to
Speaker 2: interact with the world like a human, they would encounter
Speaker 2: problems here. Uh yeah, yeah, and some of them some
Speaker 2: do you know, we'll get through here. But I was
Speaker 2: looking at an article on the website of the Bat
Speaker 2: Conservation International Group, and this articles by one Kristen Pope,
Speaker 2: and they point out that birds, for example, one of
Speaker 2: the things that birds have adapted, one way that they've
Speaker 2: evolved for flight is that they have the you know,
Speaker 2: famously hollow bones. Bats do not have hollow bones, but
Speaker 2: they have light, long bones and this includes their femurs.
Speaker 2: And this means that their legs can't withstand compression stress
Speaker 2: which would come with standing up again, if it, if
Speaker 2: it all were even an option for a bat to
Speaker 2: stand up. Also, the again, the nature of the bat
Speaker 2: wing makes it difficult, makes it difficult for them to
Speaker 2: do something other than crawling about on the ground. And
Speaker 2: you know, again, this isn't to say that bats can't
Speaker 2: awkwardly move on the ground or even hunt there as
Speaker 2: in some species, but it's not their strong suit. A
Speaker 2: bat on the ground in any situation is going to
Speaker 2: be at its most vulnerable.
Speaker 3: Right So a bat can crawl, but it's not crawling
Speaker 3: specialized in the way like a scurrying rodent is.
Speaker 2: Right right now. The other great thing about hanging from something,
Speaker 2: be it a tree branch or the roof of a cave,
Speaker 2: is that this is just a great position from which
Speaker 2: to take to the air. Oh yeah, so again it
Speaker 2: comes back to flying again. But most bat species can
Speaker 2: take off from the ground. Being on the ground again
Speaker 2: puts them at a great disadvantage, and they absolutely have
Speaker 2: to possess many of them have to possess some sort
Speaker 2: of ability to take off. Some like vampire bats, are
Speaker 2: apparently especially good at it, like hurling their little bodies
Speaker 2: into the air, you know, maybe a little awkwardly at first,
Speaker 2: but they get up there, then they start flatt and
Speaker 2: then they're able to move.
Speaker 1: On.
Speaker 2: Vampire bats as well generally good ground movers as well,
Speaker 2: because they need to be able to discovery over the
Speaker 2: ground a little bit and also even over the bodies
Speaker 2: of their prey. Only your larger mega bat like fruit
Speaker 2: bats can't pull off taking to the air from the ground,
Speaker 2: and this is due to their size. They have to crawl, climb, drop,
Speaker 2: and fly. But of course generally they're living in areas
Speaker 2: that have a lot of trees, and you know, this
Speaker 2: is achievable for them if they find themselves in this situation.
Speaker 2: And these again are only going to be your mega
Speaker 2: bat fruit bats, not all fruit bats, and with all
Speaker 2: the but with all bats, the drop is still the
Speaker 2: most energetically effective way to transition to fly.
Speaker 3: So basically all bats would prefer to drop from above
Speaker 3: to flip into flight, but some, like I would imagine
Speaker 3: the megafruit bats. Would this include like the flying fox.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest of the flying foxes for example.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so.
Speaker 3: They they would have to climb up a tree and
Speaker 3: get on a branch in order to go into flight.
Speaker 3: That's amazing, Yeah, they almost like I'm thinking of how
Speaker 3: you know rockets need like some infrastructure in order to
Speaker 3: get going. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like where you know, you can think of
Speaker 2: examples too of like how are you going to take
Speaker 2: off on a glide, or you take off from the
Speaker 2: top of a sand dune, or the or the or
Speaker 2: the indention between the sand dunes. Obviously you want to
Speaker 2: go to the top, right, It makes the most sense energetically.
Speaker 3: So are you okay if I do a tangent on
Speaker 3: another mammal that dangles upside down?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, this is a great one.
Speaker 3: So bats are not the only mammal adapted to living
Speaker 3: upside down, or at least spending a significant amount of
Speaker 3: time upside down. Another example is the tree sloth. So quickly,
Speaker 3: I'm going to mention a couple of sources on what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about here. One is a paper for I'm
Speaker 3: the journal Biology Letters twenty fourteen by Rebecca Cliff, Judy
Speaker 3: Avy Arroyo, Francisco Arroyo, Mark Holton, and Rory Wilson, called
Speaker 3: Mitigating the squash Effect. Sloths breathe easily upside down. And
Speaker 3: I was also reading about this in a twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: blog post published on the website of the Sloth Conservation
Speaker 3: Foundation summarizing and contextualizing this paper. This blog post was unsigned,
Speaker 3: so I don't know exactly who the authors are, but
Speaker 3: it talks about the paper I just mentioned in the
Speaker 3: first person, so I'm assuming it was one or more
Speaker 3: of the authors of that paper. So there are two
Speaker 3: still living genera of tree sloths you have. Oh and
Speaker 3: I actually did not look up how to pronounce these genera.
Speaker 3: Rob If you know anything I'm saying here is wrong,
Speaker 3: correct me. You've got the three fingered sloths, which are
Speaker 3: called bradypus or bradypus, and then you've got the two
Speaker 3: fingered sloths, which are called a coloe or cho loopus. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't really chime in on either pronunciation, but I
Speaker 2: will mention briefly that I do. I've always loved that
Speaker 2: you can say sloth or you can say sloth sloth.
Speaker 2: In my household, we kind of have taken to saying
Speaker 2: sloth merely out of amusement and probably from watching, you know,
Speaker 2: certain documentaries.
Speaker 3: Is sloth not the uh? I don't know. To bring
Speaker 3: it back to Dante, the way you would pronounce the sin,
Speaker 3: the older sin and the medieval sins, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess so. So true to their name, sloths are famous
Speaker 3: for being incredibly slow moving, and the slowness is not
Speaker 3: just in their locomotion. It goes all the way down
Speaker 3: to their metabolism and digestion. In some cases, it can
Speaker 3: take a sloth or a sloth about a month to
Speaker 3: fully digest a meal, and they mainly leave. So you know,
Speaker 3: leaf goes in, it might take a two weeks or
Speaker 3: up to a month before the same leaf passes out,
Speaker 3: finally passes all the way out, uh, and they will go.
Speaker 3: They will go often a week in between trips to
Speaker 3: the forest floor to urinate and defecate, so you know,
Speaker 3: seven days in between bathroom breaks. Very slow moving, slow digesting,
Speaker 3: usually carrying a lot of poop and pee on deck.
Speaker 3: If you look up photos of a sloth in the trees,
Speaker 3: you will often see them hanging upside down in one sense,
Speaker 3: upside down in the quadrupedal mammal posture, so they'll have
Speaker 3: the body horizontal beneath a tree branch, hanging by the
Speaker 3: legs and kind of similar to what you were talking
Speaker 3: about with the bats, Sloths I was reading are able
Speaker 3: to grip branches easily and without exertion because their feet
Speaker 3: are relaxed in the closed position with the toes gripping something.
Speaker 3: So this is kind of different than what you think
Speaker 3: about with your hands, where you sort of have to
Speaker 3: flex in a way to close your fist. Sloths have
Speaker 3: to flex to have to flex their muscles to open
Speaker 3: their grip and not close it. So gripping is easy,
Speaker 3: that's the relaxed position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with both sloths and bats. It is just so
Speaker 2: hard for us to imagine to put ourselves in their bodies,
Speaker 2: because this nature of our grasp is just it's just
Speaker 2: such a part of our everyday, continual existence that it's
Speaker 2: just hard to imagine it another way, even though we're
Speaker 2: just talking about a rather seemingly simple inversion of the
Speaker 2: way things work. You know, it's easier for us to
Speaker 2: imagine living on the ceiling than it is to have
Speaker 2: a grip functionality like this.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, because at least you yourself have probably at
Speaker 3: some point, at least in childhood played around hanging upside down,
Speaker 3: so you can imagine that. But you can't. But it's harder.
Speaker 3: You have never had the experience of having different anatomy
Speaker 3: and different neuro anatomy than you do. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: so it's just like, you know, you can't really imagine
Speaker 3: it as clearly, at least not from exiod.
Speaker 2: It's like trying to imagine what if you could sense
Speaker 2: the electromagnetic field.
Speaker 3: That's sort of yeah. But the authors here mentioned that
Speaker 3: if you observe sloth behavior, you will not only see
Speaker 3: them upside down in this sense of hanging upside down
Speaker 3: with the body horizontal. They say tree sloths actually spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time hanging upside down in the vertical sense,
Speaker 3: so hanging from their toes with the head pointed down. Now,
Speaker 3: why would they do this, Well, it's not just for fun.
Speaker 3: This is metabolically important behavior. I was reading an interview
Speaker 3: with Rebecca Cliff, the lead author on this study, and
Speaker 3: she talks about how sloths really want specific kinds of leaves.
Speaker 3: You know, the leaves they eat off of trees. It's
Speaker 3: tough food, you know. It's they're tough, and they're fibrous,
Speaker 3: and they have a lot of unpleasant chemicals in them.
Speaker 3: So these leaves are what sloths are specialized eat. But
Speaker 3: they're not you know, easy going food. It's a tough
Speaker 3: life living on those kind of leaves. And Cliff says
Speaker 3: that they really want specific kinds of leaves, most of
Speaker 3: all the tender, young, freshly budded leaves that grow on
Speaker 3: the very outer tips of tree branches. And she says
Speaker 3: these leaves are easier for the sloth to digest, and
Speaker 3: they tend to have a lower concentration of toxins. So obviously,
Speaker 3: the leaves on the very tips of tree branches can
Speaker 3: be harder to reach than leaves further back on the branch,
Speaker 3: because if you imagine climbing on a tree to try
Speaker 3: to reach the leaves, the outer tips of branches tend
Speaker 3: to be delicate and not able to support a lot
Speaker 3: of weight. So to get into position to access these
Speaker 3: branch tip leaves throughout the tree, sloths have to spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time hanging vertically upside down to reach them,
Speaker 3: so that's head pointed to the ground, and they can
Speaker 3: be like this for hours and hours. But there is
Speaker 3: a problem if you have ever hung upside down yourself
Speaker 3: for an extended period of time. Might be fun at first,
Speaker 3: especially if you're a kid, but you probably know from
Speaker 3: experience that inverting the body pretty quickly becomes uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yeah, I'm reminded. I've mentioned this on the
Speaker 2: show before, But many years ago I got to see
Speaker 2: Bauhaus perform at Coachella and Peter Murphy was brought on
Speaker 2: stage inverted hanging upside down to perform Bella Legosi's Dead
Speaker 2: And at the time I didn't really know that this
Speaker 2: was special. I thought, well, maybe he does this all
Speaker 2: the time. Much later on listening to the show, said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is the only time Peter Murphy ever did this,
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing this is maybe the reason why maybe
Speaker 2: being upside down for the entire performance of a rather
Speaker 2: long long song and the time before you're actually brought
Speaker 2: on stage probably not something you want to do more
Speaker 2: at once.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not very good for you to. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, short inversions I think are okay, but you
Speaker 3: don't want to be like that for a long time.
Speaker 3: It's certainly not comfortable. You know, blood tends to pool
Speaker 3: in the head because the body is made to be
Speaker 3: right side up and the circulatory system is specialized normally
Speaker 3: for being right side up. And this even connects to
Speaker 3: you know, people who are in microgravity for an extended
Speaker 3: period of time experience discomfort due to the fact that
Speaker 3: outside of Earth's gravity, the heart is still trying to
Speaker 3: compensate for Earth's gravity with the way that it's pumping,
Speaker 3: with the way that it's pumping, you know, so they
Speaker 3: often end up with too much blood in the upper
Speaker 3: parts of their body up in the head and with
Speaker 3: sinus congestion and that sort of thing. And so if
Speaker 3: you turn your body upside down, blood tends to pool
Speaker 3: in the upper parts of your body and your head
Speaker 3: that's not comfortable, and in the body cavity. The whole
Speaker 3: jar of spaghetti turns upside down. So the organs in
Speaker 3: your abdomen when you're invert will sit on top of
Speaker 3: your lungs, pressing down, making it harder to expand the
Speaker 3: lungs and breathe in. And actually, to be more precise,
Speaker 3: they're not directly on the lungs. The abdominal organs would
Speaker 3: be pressing on the diaphragm, which is the muscle that
Speaker 3: contracts and expands down into the abdomen to expand the
Speaker 3: chest cavity when you breathe in. So when you inhale,
Speaker 3: you are contracting the diaphragm. It goes lower into the
Speaker 3: space of the abdomen. And if you're upside down, the
Speaker 3: diaphragm now has to lift the weight of the guts
Speaker 3: while it is contracting to inhale, so it makes breathing
Speaker 3: in harder. So The question is sloths are already on
Speaker 3: a they're on a metabolic knife edge. You know, they
Speaker 3: are constantly fighting to have enough energy to survive because
Speaker 3: they know they have to live off of these leaves
Speaker 3: which are not super energy dense. So how does sloths
Speaker 3: manage to spend so much time hanging upside down without
Speaker 3: suffering made consequences? And the authors of this paper from
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen found the answer. Quote. Sloths are mammals renowned
Speaker 3: for spending a large proportion of time hanging inverted. In
Speaker 3: this position, the weight of the abdominal contents is expected
Speaker 3: to act on the lungs and increase the energetic costs
Speaker 3: of inspiration, meaning breathing in quote continues. Here we showed
Speaker 3: that three fingered sloths Bradypus vireagatis, possess unique fibrinous adhesions
Speaker 3: that anchor the abdominal organs, particularly the liver and the
Speaker 3: glandular stomach, to the lower ribs. The key locations of
Speaker 3: these adhesions, close to the diaphragm, prevent the weight of
Speaker 3: the abdominal contents from acting on the lungs when the
Speaker 3: sloth is inverted. So this is pretty cool. Inside the
Speaker 3: abdomen of the sloth. There are these special pieces of
Speaker 3: connective tissue that, in rough terms, essentially duct taped the
Speaker 3: organ's life, the glandular, stomach, and the liver to the
Speaker 3: rib bones, so that when the sloth hangs upside down,
Speaker 3: the jar of spaghetti cannot just fully fall down to
Speaker 3: the lid. The digestive organs don't sit on the diaphragm
Speaker 3: and make it harder to breathe. Instead, they hang from
Speaker 3: the inside of the ribs, sort of like the sloth
Speaker 3: itself hangs from the tree branch. The authors also found
Speaker 3: that the kidneys were lashed to the pelvic girdle in
Speaker 3: a similar fashion. They don't really move at all when
Speaker 3: the sloth goes upside down. So yeah, so the liver, glandular, stomach, kidneys,
Speaker 3: all this heavy stuff in the abdomen has its own
Speaker 3: suspension so that it doesn't squash the lungs when the
Speaker 3: sloth goes head down to get these leaves, and by
Speaker 3: keeping the weight of the organs off the lungs, the
Speaker 3: authors estimate that these adhesions could reduce the metabolic energy
Speaker 3: expenditure of a sloth by between seven and thirteen percent
Speaker 3: when it is hanging upside down, because again it takes
Speaker 3: more energy to expand the lungs and breathe when something
Speaker 3: is pressing down, and they say that the energy difference
Speaker 3: here is quite meaningful to an animal like a sloth,
Speaker 3: which again does not usually have a lot of extra
Speaker 3: energy to burn. Sloths are typically able to eat just
Speaker 3: about enough to survive and do not have much more
Speaker 3: in terms of energy reserves. Another thing that the authors
Speaker 3: point out they were talking about this in that blog post,
Speaker 3: is that they sloths can store up to about a
Speaker 3: third of their body weight in gut contents before they
Speaker 3: have to go urinate and defecate, because remember, it might
Speaker 3: be a week in between bathroom breaks. So that Sloth
Speaker 3: Conservation Foundation post points out that this means the waste
Speaker 3: products and the partially digested food in the gut make
Speaker 3: up a surprisingly huge percentage of the sloth's total body mass.
Speaker 3: Quote with their limited energy supply, it would be energetically
Speaker 3: very expensive, if not completely impossible, for a sloth to
Speaker 3: lift this extra weight with each breath were it not
Speaker 3: for the adhesions. Oh wow, So yeah, think about all that,
Speaker 3: You know, all the partially digestive leaves and the poop
Speaker 3: and the pea all just weighing on you, maybe a
Speaker 3: third of your body mass pressing down on the lungs.
Speaker 3: But no, the sloth has adaptations to survive this. To
Speaker 3: get around it, they're taped up to the ribs. And
Speaker 3: this is also, they point out, not the only adaptation
Speaker 3: that helps sloths in hanging upside down. They also make
Speaker 3: general reference to the fact that both two and three
Speaker 3: fingered sloths they're able to hang upside down for up
Speaker 3: to ninety percent of the day if necessary, and to
Speaker 3: facilitate this, they have special circulatory adaptations that probably keep
Speaker 3: blood pressure in the head under control, and they have
Speaker 3: a specialized esophagus that helps them swallow in this position,
Speaker 3: and things like that.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's fascinating, The upside Down Lives of sloths total.
Speaker 3: But oh, I know, you had a little bit more
Speaker 3: about bats, didn't you, in the In the upside down
Speaker 3: this becoming ranging into the uncanny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So basically I was I was looking at
Speaker 2: a few different texts, and one of the books I
Speaker 2: was looking at is The Secret Lives of Bats by
Speaker 2: Merlin Tuttle, who's a great bat expert. Ali Ward had
Speaker 2: a great interview with him on ologies at some point
Speaker 2: in the past that I recently listened to with with
Speaker 2: with my kiddo and one of their friends. But in
Speaker 2: the Secret Lives of Bats, Tuttle refers he cites the
Speaker 2: author Bill Shutt, author of Dark Banquet and also former
Speaker 2: guest on Stuff to Blow your Mind and Merlin. Tuttle
Speaker 2: says the following quote, Bill Shutt found that bird feeding
Speaker 2: vampire bats stalk perched prey, taking one slow, upside down
Speaker 2: step at a time along the underside of the branch
Speaker 2: where a bird is sleeping. And so I just found
Speaker 2: that wonderfully creepy, because you know, it doesn't take much
Speaker 2: for a vampire bat to be a little creepy and cool.
Speaker 2: It's kind of what they do. But this just sounds
Speaker 2: like straight up Dracula behavior, right.
Speaker 3: Yea upside down sneaking, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And reminiscent of certain vampire films and just other uncanny
Speaker 2: films where you have some sort of be it a
Speaker 2: vampire or say, you know, a dark wizard crawling on
Speaker 2: the ceiling and then perhaps dropping down or reaching down
Speaker 2: to do something nefarious.
Speaker 4: Right yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in my notes here at this point, I have
Speaker 2: some stuff on Dracula, and then I have some other
Speaker 2: folkloric entities, things that in various traditions that live upside
Speaker 2: down or in some way inverted, or are creatures of
Speaker 2: the ceiling. But I'm looking at the clock now and
Speaker 2: realizing that we're pretty much out of time for this episode,
Speaker 2: so I would say join us next time, where we'll
Speaker 2: continue to explore the upside down in the topsy turvy,
Speaker 2: and we'll definitely look at some monsters and some spirits
Speaker 2: for sure, and who knows what other areas we'll get
Speaker 2: into considering the upside down, because there are just so
Speaker 2: many different ways to take it.
Speaker 3: Totally, yes, all right.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, certainly, we'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 2: out there if you have any thoughts on anything we
Speaker 2: discussed here, or if you have recommendations for topics you'd
Speaker 2: like to hear us tackle in the future. We'll remind
Speaker 2: everyone that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and
Speaker 2: Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 2: wherever you get your audio podcasts, and you can also
Speaker 2: find us on Netflix of course, if you would like
Speaker 2: the audio video experience of the thing. Let's see. On
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form episode and on Fridays
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns, so just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact app Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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