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Speaker 1: This facility is a mess, totally not up to imperial standards.

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Speaker 1: He says that it's due to his haste. He could

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Speaker 1: perform tidier neckruptcies of the alien species requested, but it

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Speaker 1: would require more time. Lord Veta has absolutely forbidden a

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Speaker 1: third episode. The analysis needs to be completed today. The

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Speaker 1: surgical droid is requesting that we each hold a flap

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Speaker 1: of tissue. I am just here to supervise. Doesn't he

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Speaker 1: have extra arms for precisely this reason? Those are for

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Speaker 1: waving around all right? Then, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two

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Speaker 1: of our Star Wars Alien necropsies. So in the last episode,

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Speaker 1: if you haven't heard that, yeah, you should probably just

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Speaker 1: go listen to that one first where we discuss what

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Speaker 1: we're doing here and then and then come back and

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Speaker 1: rejoin us for this one. But hey, if if you're

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Speaker 1: all caught up here, we are again. And the last

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Speaker 1: time we talked about some aliens from the Star Wars galaxy,

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Speaker 1: we talked about some vacuum dwellers like the exo Gorth

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Speaker 1: and the Mynox and compared that to some real world biology,

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Speaker 1: both both definite and hypothetical. And we also talked about

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Speaker 1: the Jedi toe Gruta, a powerful and honorable species of

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Speaker 1: alien with some with awesome stuff on their heads. But

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Speaker 1: but we're back again, and I think it's heads up

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Speaker 1: first again today, isn't it? It is? And I'm glad

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Speaker 1: you mentioned the togruta because because basically it comes down

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Speaker 1: to this situation where you have various scenes in Star Wars,

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Speaker 1: Cantina scenes, Jedi Council scenes, etcetera, where part of the

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Speaker 1: fun is like, wow, look at the alien diversity and

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Speaker 1: look at all the strange things going on with with morphology,

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Speaker 1: with with these aliens heads and bodies. But of course,

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Speaker 1: if we're looking at things from a biological standpoint, things

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Speaker 1: are shaped certain ways for a reason. Things have evolved

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Speaker 1: into different forms for a reason. And those strange heads

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Speaker 1: you see just filling up the space if we were,

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Speaker 1: if we were to look at them with scientific scrutiny,

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Speaker 1: and you know, and also lean into the uh, you know, two,

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Speaker 1: into the imagination, into the fantasy of that you know,

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Speaker 1: all these things have a purpose, and and we can

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Speaker 1: we can turn, of course, to to Cannon and to

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Speaker 1: the fiction itself to get some of those answers. But

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Speaker 1: then a lot of the fun is in extrapolating and

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Speaker 1: saying what else could it be used for? Or if

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Speaker 1: the thing they're telling me is true, what are the ramifications,

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Speaker 1: often the unexplored ramifications of that right? What can you

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Speaker 1: deduce about the ancestral environment of the creature that confronts

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Speaker 1: Luke in the moss as Lee Cantina with the weird

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Speaker 1: little lobes on his chin. I actually know the answer

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Speaker 1: to that one. I think that was that one has

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Speaker 1: been described in Cannon. I think it's Cannon anyway as

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Speaker 1: being um like a a surgical It's like a self

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Speaker 1: surgical addict. So so all those weird features are at

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Speaker 1: least partially the result of self surgery. I think that's right.

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Speaker 1: Could be wrong on that. We might have to take

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Speaker 1: that out if I'm wrong, but but I believe that's

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Speaker 1: the case. That is not the answer I expect. Wait,

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Speaker 1: are you talking about the guy who talks to Luke

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Speaker 1: or just the guy who grunt? No, I meant the

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Speaker 1: guy who grunts at him, who has the weird little

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Speaker 1: kind of like the butt on his mouth or chin area. Yes, Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know as much about those guys, but but

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Speaker 1: they are. They are described at length in some of

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Speaker 1: the books that uh, that I've looked at. One of

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Speaker 1: which I want to go ahead and mention is Star

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Speaker 1: Wars Alien Archive, which is just a wonderful illustrated tone

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Speaker 1: of Aliens from all I think, all the Star Wars

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Speaker 1: movies up through Solo, and it had just wonderful illustrations,

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Speaker 1: nice little write ups about them. It's one of these

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Speaker 1: books that UM that I got from my my son

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Speaker 1: sometime last year early last year, and we've already like

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Speaker 1: worn it out, their pages falling out of it. You know,

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Speaker 1: anytime you get the book out, you have to like

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Speaker 1: reinsert different parts of it that have come come apart.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's seen a lot of a lot of

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Speaker 1: wear and tear and love. So I highly recommend that one. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think we've talked to many times before about our

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Speaker 1: our love for the illustrated encyclopedias of fictional worlds, and

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Speaker 1: and this is a great one. But the the first

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Speaker 1: selection I want to make here today is Um is

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Speaker 1: not a creature from a Cantina. It is that, in fact,

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Speaker 1: a creature from UH that we first encounter in the

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Speaker 1: Jedi Council scenes in UH Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Now,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember these these guys are

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Speaker 1: not are really there's mainly one guy that we encounter,

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Speaker 1: but the species they're known as the Serians. Oh, this

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Speaker 1: is the guy who looks like a wizard but with

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Speaker 1: a tower head. So it's almost as if the Tower

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Speaker 1: of Eisenard has been incorporated into Saruman's skull. Yes, these

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Speaker 1: uh these were a bipedal largely humanoid species. Were told

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Speaker 1: their native to the planet Syria, and they're most notable

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Speaker 1: for their in large, just vaguely conical craniums, though they

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Speaker 1: lack the pronounced cone heads of the Mulachians of cone

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Speaker 1: Head's fame. Um. We're told that they have two hearts,

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Speaker 1: the second of which is said to supply extra blood

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Speaker 1: and oxygen to their most curious uh neurobiology. And that

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Speaker 1: is a binary brain. Oh okay, I can see why

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Speaker 1: this caught your attention. Yes, so what is meant by

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Speaker 1: a binary brain? Well? In UH again, the excellent illustrated

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Speaker 1: Star Wars Alien Archive it is said that the Syrian

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Speaker 1: binary brain is quote able to process many things at

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Speaker 1: the same time, sort through data quickly and also consider

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Speaker 1: two sides of the same arguments simultaneously parallel processing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's also been suggested I think in perhaps this

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Speaker 1: is like an extended universe, you know, novelization thing. But

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Speaker 1: it's been suggested that this sort of brain structure allows

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Speaker 1: at least certain members of of of the Syrian species,

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Speaker 1: especially like for or sensitive individuals, to explore both the

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Speaker 1: light and the dark side of the force in ways

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Speaker 1: that are maybe somewhat safer compared to just normal dabbling

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Speaker 1: in the dark side. Oh, I see. So the understanding

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Speaker 1: is that normally, if you are to explore the dark side,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of not possible to just do that as

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Speaker 1: a curiosity like learning. The dark side necessarily will corrupt

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Speaker 1: and contaminate your brain. And so if you have a

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Speaker 1: divided mind like this, maybe you can sort of quarantine

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Speaker 1: the half of your brain that does get corrupted with

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Speaker 1: that so that it doesn't spread to the other half.

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Speaker 1: Is is that what you're saying? That is what? That

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Speaker 1: is what I believe the argument is. I haven't actually

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Speaker 1: read anything um or viewed anything where they get into that.

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Speaker 1: But certainly, if anyone out there has, if you're familiar

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Speaker 1: with with whatever novelization or or novel or comic this

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Speaker 1: happens to be from, I'd love to hear it a

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Speaker 1: little bit more. Now. The most famous and recognizable Serian is,

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Speaker 1: without a doubt, Jedi Master Kai Adimundi, hero general of

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Speaker 1: the Clone Wars who fought alongside the likes of Anakin

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Speaker 1: Skywalker and Obie one Kenobi. He fought at the first

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Speaker 1: and second battles of Genosis and perished during the invasion

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Speaker 1: of the Ghetto with the twenty one Novocore. When Supreme

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Speaker 1: Chancellor Palpatine initiated Order sixty six, he stilled with a lightsaber.

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Speaker 1: He was a skilled force combatant, but he was equally

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Speaker 1: known and respected for his logic and tactics. That big

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Speaker 1: brain of his. Yeah, that would make sense. I seem

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Speaker 1: to recall his death scene. I think it's in Revenge

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Speaker 1: of the Sith. He's like running across a is it

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Speaker 1: across a bridge or something? Yeah, I think it's a

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Speaker 1: bridge battle and all the Clone troopers start shooting him

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Speaker 1: in the back. Yeah. Yeah, So so he definitely goes

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Speaker 1: down but you so you don't see a lot of

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Speaker 1: him in the live action stuff, but um And in

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Speaker 1: those prequel films he was played by an actor by

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Speaker 1: the name of Silas Carson under heavy um effects makeup.

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Speaker 1: But in the Clone Wars animated series, the main one,

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Speaker 1: he was voiced by British Israeli actor Brian George, who

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Speaker 1: does a great job with him, and they have a

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Speaker 1: little more time to flesh him out. And in the

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Speaker 1: two thousand three Clone Wars series from Ghindi Tartakowski, you

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Speaker 1: don't have um you don't really have a lot of

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Speaker 1: character development there, but you have a lot of action.

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Speaker 1: That's a very action centric series. And in that um

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Speaker 1: Master Mundi is an absolute shirt ripping beast. Like he's

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Speaker 1: running around with head bandaged and his shirt torn open,

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Speaker 1: with all these muscles and he's just like, you know,

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Speaker 1: killing the thousands of droids. It's it's pretty fun. So

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Speaker 1: he's like your Hunter from the Future mode. Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: slaying but you know, Okay, it's impressive that he can

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Speaker 1: do stuff with lightsaber and then he can go into

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Speaker 1: best mode. But the main thing we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about here is this idea of a binary brain and

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Speaker 1: as far as I know, there's no definitive word on

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Speaker 1: the exact structure of the Syrian brain or brains. But

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Speaker 1: I think there are essentially a couple of ways to

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Speaker 1: look at what might be going on inside that skull

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Speaker 1: of their's. Okay, let's let's hear it. What's the first option? Okay,

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Speaker 1: first option would be just, of course, a supersized brain

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Speaker 1: that enables this buying, very mental process, composed of two

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Speaker 1: lobes like ours, or maybe more lobes. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: you know, when you're getting into an unknown alien brain.

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Speaker 1: Who's to say, right, And Syrian brain evolution could certainly

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Speaker 1: follow the ice cream scoop model of human brain evolution.

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Speaker 1: I think we've discussed this on the show before. But

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Speaker 1: as explained by Kyle Moon Kittrick in a two thousand

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Speaker 1: ten Discover magazine article, quote, evolution built our brain by

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Speaker 1: taking simpler brains and just piling more brains on top,

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Speaker 1: like adding scoops of ice cream to an ice cream cone. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a good way of thinking about it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, we always want to be careful not

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Speaker 1: to oversimplify the way we think about the structures of

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Speaker 1: the brain. Because brains are complex and and all that,

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Speaker 1: but in rough terms, I think that is sort of true.

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Speaker 1: Like at the the lower levels of the brain, you

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Speaker 1: have um the more sort of automatic processes of the body,

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Speaker 1: and the more base level things like emotional type reactions.

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Speaker 1: And then when you get further and further into the

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Speaker 1: younger parts of the brain, younger in an evolutionary sense,

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Speaker 1: towards the top and front of the brain, you get

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Speaker 1: these you know, these coretexes, which are very involved in

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Speaker 1: executive function and a lot of the things we think

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Speaker 1: of as higher level thinking and behavior. Yeah, so mon

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Speaker 1: Gentric describes like the first the first layer is actually

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Speaker 1: the cone, and that's the nervous jellyfish cone, and then

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Speaker 1: you get your instinctive lizard scoop pile on top of that,

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Speaker 1: then the memory mouse scoop, then the thinking the thinking

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Speaker 1: ape scoop on top of that. So each layer brings

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Speaker 1: with it great pros that enable the human brain to

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Speaker 1: function and evolved, but also arguably certain cons and that's

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Speaker 1: one of the things they get into in this article.

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Speaker 1: But for our purposes, Yeah, I think you could look

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Speaker 1: at the Syrian the brain as essentially a human level

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Speaker 1: brain with additional scoops cowering atop the rest of the cone,

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Speaker 1: enabling this vastly increased functionality. Now you might think, well,

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Speaker 1: what would the cons of having higher brain function be?

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Speaker 1: And I would just say, like I, I'm not aware

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Speaker 1: of any reptiles that really get bogged down in rumination. Yeah, yeah, um,

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Speaker 1: and I and I really hope certainly a Jedi master

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have like Jedi masters have to deal with the

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Speaker 1: dark side too. I mean, that's kind of the thing, right,

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Speaker 1: Like higher cognition means you're open to the dark side.

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Speaker 1: Correct me if I'm wrong. But I seem to recall

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Speaker 1: in the prequels that a lot of Jedi training is

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Speaker 1: about purging emotions, or at least certain kinds of emotions.

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Speaker 1: Maybe not to the full Spock extent, but at least

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Speaker 1: like not letting impulsive emotional reactions guide you're thinking, to

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Speaker 1: be clear and to be you know, to to be

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Speaker 1: able to use clear thinking in your mind when when

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Speaker 1: our our natural tendency would be to get hot headed,

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Speaker 1: right uh yeah. And then there's a lot of Buddhist

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Speaker 1: uh uh Buddhism in there as well, dealing with like

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Speaker 1: the idea of avoiding attachments and all. So we see

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Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily work out all that well for those

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Speaker 1: who aspire to it, right in those films. But but

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Speaker 1: even like in terms of like confronting the dark side though,

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Speaker 1: like that's always been a part of the uh of

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Speaker 1: the of the Star Wars world, I mean, back the Empire,

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Speaker 1: when Luke goes into that swamp and he's completing his training,

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Speaker 1: like one of the things he does is the encounters

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Speaker 1: that that vision of of Darth Vader that is also

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Speaker 1: a vision of himself, right, I mean, I think we're

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Speaker 1: supposed to take that as like Luke is being confronted

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Speaker 1: by the possibility of what would happen if he himself

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Speaker 1: were seduced by the dark Side, which of course he does.

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Speaker 1: He does play pretty dangerous in the movies, right, he

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Speaker 1: gets close. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's basically this is like

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Speaker 1: one idea of looking at this big brain, just one

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Speaker 1: big brain in there, right, so it's like built up

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Speaker 1: level by level, and maybe the additional brains are are

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Speaker 1: something like what you would put even on top of

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Speaker 1: our neo cortex. Maybe like they've got like a neo

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Speaker 1: neo cortex or something. Yeah, Now, another interpretation and I

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Speaker 1: think a more exotic one and also maybe maybe more fun,

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Speaker 1: maybe more sci fi fantasy, but also one that I

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Speaker 1: think I've seen visually represented somewhere. I tried to hunt

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Speaker 1: it down to see if I could, because I would

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Speaker 1: have put it in our inside of our notes if

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Speaker 1: I could, but I couldn't find it. But I think

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Speaker 1: I've seen this represented visibly. And that is the idea

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Speaker 1: that Syrians actually have two brains inside their skull, one

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Speaker 1: positioned right on top of the other, just straight up,

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Speaker 1: two brains inside their heads. So that means one of

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Speaker 1: the brains is closer to the heart. Maybe that makes

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Speaker 1: it easier to get blood flow to that one. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's why they have two hearts, Joe. So the idea

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Speaker 1: is that that second heart is I guess, powering the

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Speaker 1: second brain or enabling just enough blood flow to get

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Speaker 1: up there to to work with both brains. Um. So

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Speaker 1: I want to stress I'm not talking two brains here

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Speaker 1: in the sense that the human brain consists of two

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Speaker 1: hemispheres connected by the corpus co awesome, but two separate brains,

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Speaker 1: perhaps each consisting of two hemispheres each. And uh, I

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Speaker 1: should also add that that some descriptions refer to Syrian

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Speaker 1: brains in a way that does seem to indicate two brains.

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Speaker 1: And again they do have too hard so I guess

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Speaker 1: the duplicity seems to to work out here. So these

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Speaker 1: two I tend to lean more towards the actual two

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Speaker 1: brains inside their their heads. Uh So, I guess another

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Speaker 1: you could do a third option. It would be a

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Speaker 1: variation on idea number two, and that would be that

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Speaker 1: they just had a very large humanoid brain, but the

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Speaker 1: hemispheres are not connected by something like the corpus colossum.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, that's very interesting. I want to say some things,

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Speaker 1: but I also don't want to preempt you because I

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Speaker 1: know you're going to get into talking about split brain

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Speaker 1: experiments here. Yeah, okay, but yeah, So the corpus colossum,

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Speaker 1: at least we know in the human brain, enables a

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Speaker 1: large amount of communication between the hemispheres, and in cases

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Speaker 1: where the corpus colossum in humans has been severed, often

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Speaker 1: a person can still live their life, like you can

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Speaker 1: function with your brain hemispheres severed, and you can do things.

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Speaker 1: But there are some very noticeable changes to how the

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Speaker 1: brain or brains react to certain types of stimuli and

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Speaker 1: scenarios under that condition. Yeah, yeah, when the color some

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Speaker 1: has been severed. And then when you have like often

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Speaker 1: it's you have to have certain experimental scenarios in place

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Speaker 1: to make it become obvious because otherwise the individual doesn't

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Speaker 1: notice and people who know them probably don't notice. But

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Speaker 1: we'll get out into all that in a second. Now,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of different directions you could go

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Speaker 1: in here, like why, I mean the big one is

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Speaker 1: like why would they go in this direction? First of all,

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Speaker 1: would it be natural? Would it be just an evolution

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Speaker 1: or would it be something that was engineered? And in

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Speaker 1: either case, like why would it have to do with uh,

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Speaker 1: like higher why would they need this like higher cognitive state?

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Speaker 1: Would it have something to do with, you know, being

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Speaker 1: an interstellar species or something to do with their their

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Speaker 1: home environment. I don't know. Well, I mean it makes

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Speaker 1: me think about how there are species on Earth that

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Speaker 1: have a more distributed model of intelligence and nervous system control.

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Speaker 1: And a great example would be octopuses, you know, like

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Speaker 1: the octopus of course, like they've got a central brain,

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Speaker 1: but then they have anglia throughout the body that are

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Speaker 1: sometimes written about and you could argue to what extent

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Speaker 1: this is a fair characterization, but they you could argue

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Speaker 1: that octopuses in some ways also think with their arms

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Speaker 1: in ways that are independent of the thinking that takes

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Speaker 1: place in the centralized brain. So you can imagine there

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Speaker 1: are scenarios where it's useful for an animal to have

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Speaker 1: thinking or information processing happening at multiple different places within

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Speaker 1: the body. But the Syrian seems kind of different because

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Speaker 1: you can imagine with the octopus, Okay, maybe somehow the

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Speaker 1: arm needs to think independently of the central brain. But

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Speaker 1: this is two central brains, two brains in the head,

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Speaker 1: So what's the what's like the second one doing differently?

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Speaker 1: How would that be distributed in a way that would

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Speaker 1: be useful like the octopus's arm. Yeah, and and so

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Speaker 1: in thinking about possibilities, you know, we also come into

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Speaker 1: ideas of that, like philosophical or spiritual upgrades to the brain.

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Speaker 1: I mean, why not if we're trying to determine where

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Speaker 1: we go from here, I mean, it seems that's worth

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Speaker 1: thinking about. I should also just go ahead and add

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Speaker 1: that obviously, big headed aliens is just a long, a

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Speaker 1: long standing trope, you know, going back to the outer limits,

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Speaker 1: and so forth. So, Uh, it's not like they invented

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Speaker 1: the idea of big headed aliens and big headed future humanoids.

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Speaker 1: It's been pretty much standard. Um. But but I don't

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Speaker 1: know that I have I'm sure there's some sci fi

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Speaker 1: out there predating this in which a human had two

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Speaker 1: brain or humanoid had two brains, aside from Steve Martin,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, but I'm not. I'm not aware of it

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Speaker 1: off the top of my head. But but a lot

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Speaker 1: of these considerations, like when we're talking about what, you know,

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Speaker 1: what does this mean? What would two brains be like?

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Speaker 1: I mean, it basically comes down to to that, what

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Speaker 1: would it be like to have two brains? What would

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Speaker 1: it conceive? What would conceivably be the mental state of

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Speaker 1: an an individual like Master moon Dy here with two

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Speaker 1: brains in their head? Ah, So now you're getting into

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Speaker 1: subjective experience, And this of course touches on really big

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Speaker 1: questions that are still unsettled in in human science and philosophy,

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Speaker 1: stuff about like where consciousness resides in what it consists of? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and ultimately, yeah, this is gonna be unanswerable and we

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Speaker 1: just have to sort of speculate and have fun with

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Speaker 1: the speculation. But on one level, you have to say

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Speaker 1: that ultimately the mind of alien being might just be

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Speaker 1: impossible for us to comprehend. It just might be that different.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, you could say, well, having two

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Speaker 1: brains in your head like this, it would just be

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Speaker 1: like our mental experience. Because, as we alluded to earlier, though,

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Speaker 1: the human brain consists of two cerebral hemispheres connected by

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Speaker 1: the corpus um closum, each with many different modules, all

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Speaker 1: of these acting in concert with each other, interconnected, and

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Speaker 1: we explored this at length in our episodes on split

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Speaker 1: brain experiments UM and of and of those experiments, most interestingly,

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Speaker 1: one of the big ta coms was is that indeed,

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Speaker 1: if you split the brain, you essentially split the person

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Speaker 1: as well. Um, we're talking one person per hemisphere of

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Speaker 1: the brain. A division of self, not one that is

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Speaker 1: obvious to the individual or two people around them, but

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Speaker 1: again presents itself when revealed through various experiments, particularly the

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Speaker 1: Nobel winning work of neuroscientists Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga

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Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies. And so we go into

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Speaker 1: much more depth than in that pair of episodes from

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Speaker 1: I think it was a couple of years ago now,

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Speaker 1: so you can go look those up if you want

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Speaker 1: the full scoop. But they did find some very interesting

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Speaker 1: things that I will say. Um. We also talked in

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Speaker 1: that episode, I think about how there has been some

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Speaker 1: research in recent years that sort of challenged their original findings,

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Speaker 1: but people have pushed back against that research too, So

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Speaker 1: it seems like, you know, this is one of the

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Speaker 1: many things in in psychology and neuroscience that's still an

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Speaker 1: ongoing question. But at least what they appeared to find

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Speaker 1: is that you can, for example, in a patient who's

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Speaker 1: had their hemisphere severed through this radical uh severing of

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Speaker 1: the corpus closum, which is done not for the purpose

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Speaker 1: of the experiment, but it's done specifically for people with

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Speaker 1: really uh treatment resistant epilepsy to prevent them from having

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Speaker 1: these recurr terrible seizures. UH. That you can sever the

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Speaker 1: corpus closum, a person still reports being able to live

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Speaker 1: their life generally like it is not a debilitating thing

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Speaker 1: to do to the brain, but it causes these strange

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Speaker 1: things where, for example, it seems that some amount of

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Speaker 1: information is prevented from being shared fully between the two

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Speaker 1: different parts of the brain. And so, for example, it

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Speaker 1: is widely uh that in in most brains it is

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Speaker 1: the left hemisphere that seems to do the talking, like

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Speaker 1: the language interactions with the outside world. And so you

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Speaker 1: can present stimuli that are only within the sensory awareness

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Speaker 1: of the right hemisphere of the brain, say by presenting

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Speaker 1: it in a certain part of the visual field. And

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Speaker 1: so the parts of the body controlled primarily by the

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Speaker 1: right hemisphere of the brain can do things that seem

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Speaker 1: to reflect knowledge of the stimulus that you have showed

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Speaker 1: that hemisphere of the brain, but the person can't talk

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Speaker 1: about that knowledge. They don't seem to have linguistic aware

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Speaker 1: earness of it, which is extremely weird. Yeah, And and

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Speaker 1: at times it kind of comes off as a sort

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Speaker 1: of subtle duality of self. Some of the most interesting

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Speaker 1: ideas that come come out of it because Anaga wraps

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Speaker 1: up in his interpreter theory, which which again we've discussed

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Speaker 1: on the show, in which the left brain hemisphere contains

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Speaker 1: some function that he calls the interpreter, which creates a

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Speaker 1: sense of self, even if it is a completely false sense.

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Speaker 1: By coming up with a post talk explanation for behaviors. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that there's this function that's largely seated within the

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Speaker 1: left hemisphere that sort of tells the narrative story to

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Speaker 1: your own brain, that explains why you're doing what you're doing.

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Speaker 1: It creates that moment to moment, the stream of consciousness

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Speaker 1: that helps you understand your own behavior. Even though it

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Speaker 1: seems a lot of your own behavior is caused by

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Speaker 1: things that are not actually within your awareness. It doesn't,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't. It's not downstream from your consciousness, but upstream

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Speaker 1: from your consciousness. Now I should also throw in that

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Speaker 1: in there. They did experiment with animals as well, and um,

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Speaker 1: you know, there are limitations when you're looking at animal

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Speaker 1: brains and you know, trying to compare it to human brains.

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Speaker 1: But but they found that if they produced a split

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Speaker 1: brain in some of these animals. Uh. First of all,

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Speaker 1: of course, each side seemed to function independently the other,

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Speaker 1: but also that an animal with a split brain could

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Speaker 1: memorize double the information. Uh. So that basic idea again,

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Speaker 1: we could at least when talking about Star Wars, we

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Speaker 1: could extrapolate to say, well, maybe if you did have

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Speaker 1: two independent brains in your head, yeah, maybe you could

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Speaker 1: uh process and contain double the information so that's really interesting.

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Speaker 1: But I'm also really interested in this idea of exploring

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Speaker 1: both sides of the force with a brain like this

429
00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:42,840
Speaker 1: that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, So with that in mind,

430
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 1: let's consider a couple of take comes. And again we're

431
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:47,400
Speaker 1: kind of cherry picking here, but a couple of take

432
00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:51,480
Speaker 1: comes from the split brain research that Kazanga put forth.

433
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:54,720
Speaker 1: First of all, the interpreter function of the left brain

434
00:22:54,880 --> 00:22:58,360
Speaker 1: makes it more makes it more likely to distort recall

435
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:02,920
Speaker 1: of events, and at the non interpreting, non explaining right

436
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 1: brain has a more accurate recall function. So it's not

437
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:10,879
Speaker 1: telling itself a story to post talk rationalize whatever is

438
00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:15,520
Speaker 1: it's experiencing. It's logging information in a more objective sense. Yeah,

439
00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:18,479
Speaker 1: Like one side is telling a story, crafting a story,

440
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:22,639
Speaker 1: and retelling a story. On the other side is recalling events,

441
00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: saying what happened. Also, the left and right hemispheres have

442
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:30,400
Speaker 1: different problem solving approaches. The right hemisphere bases its judgments

443
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:34,439
Speaker 1: on simple frequency information, while the left relies on the

444
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:38,760
Speaker 1: formation of elaborate hypotheses. So that this makes me wonder

445
00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:42,119
Speaker 1: like which side would lean dark side? Because you know

446
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: that the left is again partial to distorted recall, the

447
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:47,680
Speaker 1: very sort of distortion that we see in the fall

448
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:51,439
Speaker 1: of say Anakin Skywalker, but it also relies on uh,

449
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 1: you know those the idea of elaborate hypotheses, which again

450
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:58,160
Speaker 1: matches up with some of some of Skywalker's inner torment

451
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,000
Speaker 1: or or you know, as well as the expressed worldview

452
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:05,520
Speaker 1: of of his master Darth City, a simper of Palpatine, right. Uh,

453
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: and and perhaps the light you know, the right side

454
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:10,480
Speaker 1: of the force, the side of the brain here is

455
00:24:10,520 --> 00:24:15,639
Speaker 1: more about simple frequency information and accurate recall. So instead

456
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,239
Speaker 1: of the distorted worldview like this is the world as

457
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:21,760
Speaker 1: it is, like a more logical approach to reality. So

458
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:25,199
Speaker 1: if there is anything to interpreter theory, it seems to

459
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 1: me pretty clear that it would be the left side,

460
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:29,640
Speaker 1: this is the dark side, right, because what's the dark side?

461
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: Do the dark side? You tell a story in which

462
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:35,640
Speaker 1: your actions are justified because of some reason. Right, well,

463
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 1: I had to do it because I had to save

464
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:41,199
Speaker 1: pad May, right right, where the logical side is like, no,

465
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: you're just like strayed up killing people. Uh. But then again,

466
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 1: you know what would Darth City has say to all this?

467
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,920
Speaker 1: What would would Palpatine say and I think he might

468
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:53,119
Speaker 1: well argue that it's only through mental gymnastics that we

469
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:57,399
Speaker 1: arrive at the Jedi way, that the Jedi exists because

470
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,199
Speaker 1: they're telling this themselves, this story, you know, or run

471
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:04,640
Speaker 1: over again. They're creating their own mythology to rationalize their tyranny,

472
00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:07,200
Speaker 1: and that the Dark Side is just the shortest logical

473
00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:10,879
Speaker 1: path like that Sidious is the same man in the

474
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: universe that has been deluded by this um, this ancient religion.

475
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: Darth Cidius makes a good point, you know, I think

476
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 1: it would work better. Actually, though, if Darth said if

477
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: the Sith Lords were not always saying like, yes, we

478
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: are the dark Side, we we are the bad guys.

479
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:29,600
Speaker 1: Like what if Darth Cidius had been like, no, it's

480
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: the Jedi who are the dark Side? Well, I think

481
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: he also realized that, you know, dark Side is good branding.

482
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:38,400
Speaker 1: You know, oh yeah, yeah, it looks I mean seriously,

483
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: who looks cool or Darth Vader or what Yoda or

484
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:43,880
Speaker 1: Obi wan Kenobi? I mean yeah, have you ever seen

485
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: there's an illustration. I think this is from a comic

486
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: or something where they did an alternate reality where Darth

487
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: Vader fully redeemed himself and survived at some point in

488
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: like say Return of the Jedi, and then he's still

489
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: in his armor, but now it's white armor, white white

490
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 1: Darth Darth Vader outfit. And I mean it's kind of

491
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:05,840
Speaker 1: a neat idea. I love the idea of exploring alternate possibilities,

492
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, it just doesn't look as

493
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,119
Speaker 1: cool as it does in black. Oh. I think he

494
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:12,439
Speaker 1: should have kept it. I mean, I don't love anyway,

495
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: like the simple like color coordinating of morality. I mean,

496
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 1: like that's dumb. I mean, and they already transcended in

497
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: some ways, like the Stormtroopers are addressed in clean white, right,

498
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think they should let Darth Vader keep

499
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: his original armor. I mean, it looks looks awesome. Before

500
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:31,879
Speaker 1: we move on from the split brain stuff, I just

501
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: wanted to throw in. So so there's some more nuance

502
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: on the subject that that that research I alluded to

503
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: in recent years that's put some challenges to the original

504
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 1: split brain research. Uh. I think a lot of that

505
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 1: was associated with the researcher named Pinto, I think named

506
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 1: Yair Pinto, who I think is a Dutch neuropsychologist, and

507
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: basically what Uh. That person and colleagues have argued is

508
00:26:55,640 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: that the split brain experiments actually just proved divided perception,

509
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:04,919
Speaker 1: not divided consciousness. But then people who people have defended

510
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: the original research coming back against that. I don't remember

511
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: how all of the back and forth worked out right now,

512
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 1: but just be aware that there is ongoing division about that.

513
00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: In fact, split brain researchers appear to be somewhat divided.

514
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 1: We may say, yeah, well I'm of two minds myself

515
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,879
Speaker 1: on it right. Um. Speaking of which, back to the

516
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:28,480
Speaker 1: Syrian binary brain. Um. Again, they're apparently noted for their

517
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: ability to come at a topic from both sides simultaneously.

518
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And I got to thinking about that.

519
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:36,480
Speaker 1: I mean, in one hand, I was wondering, again, is

520
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: this something they do naturally or is it only accessible

521
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: via training? But I suppose one way to really tackle

522
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: the problem is again to come back to human cognition

523
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: and to ask what seems like it should be a

524
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 1: pretty simple question, is it possible for a human to

525
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:55,440
Speaker 1: think two things at one time, not to juggle between thoughts,

526
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 1: or to focus on like a combination of two things,

527
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:00,639
Speaker 1: Like you know, for instance, I can think about a

528
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:02,639
Speaker 1: human and I can think about a horse, you know,

529
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: I can sort of go back and forth between the two.

530
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: I can focus on the idea of a centaur and

531
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: kind of involve you know, both of them at once.

532
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: But can I think about a horse and a human

533
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: on like on, you know, and actually do parallel lines

534
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:16,919
Speaker 1: of thought at the same time, So not this is

535
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: a mixture between a horse and a human, but to

536
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 1: think simultaneously, this is one horse and this is one

537
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: human at the same time. Right, Can I what's the

538
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: business lingo dual track, parallel path, parallel path? I think

539
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,199
Speaker 1: that means something somewhat different, But yeah, yeah, I know

540
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: what you're saying, so like, yeah, being able to I mean,

541
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important thing in in good

542
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: mental hygiene, in training your brain to work well, that

543
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 1: you are able to hold conflicting ideas in your mind

544
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: in order to figure out which one makes more sense.

545
00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's our natural tendency to kind

546
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: of to instead get a feel for conflicting ideas pretty

547
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: quickly figure out which one we're more attached to, and

548
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: then just fully commit to that one and not consider

549
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 1: the other at all. But I think also maybe you're

550
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: getting at something different, which is not um being able

551
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: to consider conflicting ideas or conflicting explanations for something you're

552
00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: talking more about like having the focus of attention in

553
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: the mind be two different things at the same time.

554
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: Is that what you're okay? Yeah, yeah, that's a different thing.

555
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: And that's also very interesting because yeah, this once again

556
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: gets into like what is consciousness? And one of the

557
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: central features of consciousness seems to be this spotlight quality

558
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 1: to it, right that it consciousness seems to have a

559
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 1: basically like one focal point of attention at a time,

560
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: and other things can kind of intrude on consciousness suddenly.

561
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: But if you are thinking about a horse, you're also

562
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: not simultaneously thinking with the same level of focus and

563
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: intensity about a person, right right. And so this is

564
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: something that a psychologist by the name of nick I

565
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 1: believe it is Shader. I could have his last name

566
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: pronounced wrong, if so, I apologize here at c H

567
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: A T E er um. But he is the author

568
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: of the mind is flat, the illusion of mental depth

569
00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: in the improvised mind. And what he would argue here

570
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 1: is that that we depend on a cycle of thought

571
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: whereby a number of systems work to push forward ideas

572
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: step by step. Uh. So I he would argue, I think,

573
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 1: if he were to weigh in on on this topic,

574
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 1: that our limited human neural capacity is only sufficient to

575
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 1: pursue one goal at a time, and maybe just maybe

576
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: doubled human neural capacity is what it would actually take

577
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:43,400
Speaker 1: to truly dual track something. Does that make sense? Yeah,

578
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 1: I think so. So he's saying to to like consider

579
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:50,320
Speaker 1: like to you know, it's kind of how when we're

580
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: making like a to do list, you have to break

581
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: tasks apart into into like individual steps and do them

582
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: one at a time. Uh. And uh, I find, you know,

583
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 1: doing that for me, it definitely helps me organize the

584
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: flow of of work a lot better. But maybe if

585
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: you had a more powerful mind, if you had like

586
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: two brains in your head, you could actually you wouldn't

587
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 1: have to break things into parts quite so much. You could,

588
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: you know, consider more sort of umbrella tasks with all

589
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: of their subdivided parts simultaneously. Yeah. And I think ultimately

590
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: it's it's very difficult to imagine what that would be like.

591
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like trying to imagine what

592
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 1: would our view of reality be like if we could

593
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: also uh, you know, feel the magnetosphere or something you

594
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: know or or or you know, see wavelengths of light

595
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,960
Speaker 1: that we don't have access to that sort of thing. Um. Now,

596
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 1: the author of the Mind is Flat, well, he was.

597
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: He was also a co author on a paper um

598
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: along with Elizabeth A. May Mahler and Gregory V. Jones

599
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: from two thousand one titled searching for Two Things at Once.

600
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: And in this the author's conducted an experiment into whether

601
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: retrieval from semantic memory and autobiographical memory is exclusive or

602
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 1: whether people can search for two things at once, and

603
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: they concluded that quote exclusivity was observed to occur in

604
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: retrieval among multiple non overlapping categories in both semantic and

605
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: autobiographical memory. Again they're they're talking about about memory recall here,

606
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: but this also seems to get it sort of the

607
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 1: same idea. I was reading a summary of the Mind

608
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 1: is Flat by Stephen Pool for The Guardian, and they

609
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:30,719
Speaker 1: summarize some of this by by by saying, quote, we

610
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: can't even see two or more colors at once, but

611
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 1: switch between one at a time. In general, our richness

612
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 1: of experience seems to be a construct, and we've touched

613
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: on some of this before as well, especially with vision

614
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 1: about like how um you know, we we have this

615
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: idea in our mind that the whole everything we can see,

616
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 1: whether our eyes at one time are in like full

617
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: color and maybe even full detail. But you don't have

618
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: to really get too experimental. You can just to realize

619
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: that this is not the case. Yeah, And there are

620
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: tons of examples of this. We like if you close

621
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: one eye, you still feel like you have total vision

622
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: and you can see all around, but in fact there's

623
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 1: a blind spot caused by your optic nerve, and you

624
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 1: just don't see that there is a blind spot there,

625
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: um or. One of the other examples we've often cited

626
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: is color blindness and peripheral vision, Like you believe that

627
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: you can see color in your peripheral vision until you

628
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: try it. Like somebody holds up different colored objects right

629
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: at the edge of where you can see, and it

630
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 1: turns out you can't. You know, you can't see different

631
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: colors there. You can only see vague things. Something is moving,

632
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: even though it totally like a p it feels like

633
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: I can see color in my periphery, so so very roughly,

634
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: if we take that idea and we we extrapolate it

635
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,239
Speaker 1: to cognition itself. You know, we can we see the

636
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: limitations of of our focus. We see the limitations of

637
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 1: of how we construct a world and focus on it,

638
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: you know, and it is you could basically break it

639
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 1: down to the idea of we have the one spotlight,

640
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 1: but if we had two brains in our head, would

641
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: we essentially have two spotlights. That's very interesting and it

642
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: makes me wonder what the practical differences in like say,

643
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:08,680
Speaker 1: a culture and a technosphere and a science developed by

644
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: people with brains of that type would be, like, Yeah, Like,

645
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: how is art different if you can focus on more

646
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: than one thing at a time? How how is science

647
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: and technology different if you can focus on more than

648
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 1: one thing at a time? Yeah? Or even your your

649
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: use of symbols and language, etcetera. I mean it kind

650
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: of coming back to the idea of the center. The

651
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 1: center exists to a certain extent because it combines two

652
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 1: things into one and brags in aspects of both of

653
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: those independent things. But would you would these type would

654
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: these forms be necessary for um uh, for the Syrians,

655
00:34:43,200 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: or would they by just by necessity would all of

656
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:50,960
Speaker 1: their hybrids be more complex chimeras that involve like multiple aspects,

657
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:53,239
Speaker 1: like at least four aspects, because in terms of just

658
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,399
Speaker 1: contemplating two parallels, they can do that on their own.

659
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: They don't need a symbol to help with it. This

660
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: is really interesting. I want more about the Syrians now,

661
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: I want like Syrian focused Star Wars stories. I want

662
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 1: to master moondy Um novelization to read. Somebody, why do

663
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: we not have one? Mace Window got his own book.

664
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:15,439
Speaker 1: It's really really difficult to follow his inner monologue though.

665
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's it's actually two volumes and you have

666
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 1: to read them at the same time. Oh wait, No,

667
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 1: that's a fantastic idea. Actually you write two different novels

668
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: that narrate the exact same events, but they're one is

669
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 1: from each each brain in the head. That's really yeah.

670
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:37,240
Speaker 1: That could be good, now, that would that would actually

671
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 1: be a fun yeah, short story exercise if someone wanted it.

672
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,720
Speaker 1: To keep it simple, all right, talk about his death,

673
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: like the final moments leading up to his death, to

674
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: his betrayal by the Clone Troopers. He was aside, he

675
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,880
Speaker 1: was working aside, Like what is one account of it?

676
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:51,880
Speaker 1: What is the other? Like, I guess one account is

677
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 1: kind of like I didn't see this coming at all.

678
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 1: The other account is is, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,

679
00:35:57,400 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: I should have talked to the other brain about this

680
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 1: before we ran of them on the bridge. Yeah, all right,

681
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: well I say we we close out on the Syrians

682
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: for now. Obviously there there are a ton of other

683
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 1: weird brains and multi headed things we could talk about

684
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:14,360
Speaker 1: in Star Wars universe. But uh yeah, for for some reason,

685
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: I think the Syrian was the one that captured my

686
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 1: imagination the most here. This was a very good pick.

687
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 1: Thank all right, what do you have, Joe, What do

688
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: you have for us? Okay, well, you had to help

689
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: me with the Star Wars aspect of this one, because

690
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:34,160
Speaker 1: I admit this is one that I backed into because

691
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 1: I got interested in the analogy animal from reality first.

692
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 1: To be fully transparent, This is a type of animal

693
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 1: that I first started looking at for our episode last week.

694
00:36:44,760 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: I think it was about the sargassum seaweed, but then

695
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: I realized that it didn't really fit super well into

696
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:54,439
Speaker 1: that episode. This animal is not especially associated with sargassum,

697
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:57,839
Speaker 1: only in certain occasions. Uh So I figured I would

698
00:36:57,880 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: actually save it for this and I found what I

699
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:02,439
Speaker 1: believe a fantastic wedge to to get into the Star

700
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: Wars universe. But I felt like I had to hold

701
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 1: up a hand and be honest about where this comes from. Oh,

702
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: fair enough, but I wanted to think about bipedal, aquatic,

703
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: humanoid aliens, sentient water creatures who stand up on two

704
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 1: feet with a Homo sapiens posture. Now, the first one

705
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:22,480
Speaker 1: I thought about is is not your your excellent pick here,

706
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:25,279
Speaker 1: it's something that doesn't quite fit my animal as well.

707
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: But uh, the first one I wanted to talk about

708
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:31,439
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites from childhood, Admiral Akbar from

709
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi, and I think he's been featured

710
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: in many other things since. But Admiral Akbar the the noble, brilliant,

711
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,280
Speaker 1: big eyed commander of the Rebel Fleet during its attack

712
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:47,799
Speaker 1: on the second Death Star. Famously he discovers it is

713
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: a trap. Yeah, he's a super fun character, wonderful, just

714
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: wonderful special effects makeup to create that guy. And uh,

715
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: and that that species is is fleshed out a bit

716
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 1: more in the Clone Wars animated seri is as well.

717
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 1: We get to go to their their home world of

718
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: of Moncola, which is this ocean world and it's also

719
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:10,440
Speaker 1: where uh the core in live. Um. I don't know

720
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: if you remember these guys. They were also I think

721
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,760
Speaker 1: first uh shown to us in Return of the Jedi.

722
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: But they're like a squid face guy. Yes, yeah, they

723
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 1: pop up in a job as palace I believe, yes, so,

724
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,839
Speaker 1: Admiral Akbar. Species is called the mon Calamari and they

725
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 1: are native to this home planet of Montcola. But also, yes,

726
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: the Coreans, these other creatures who look more like so,

727
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 1: the Montclamari are an amphibious species, and they look sort

728
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: of I guess the closest analogy in Earth life would

729
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:39,360
Speaker 1: be they look kind of like frogs. They've got frog

730
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:42,719
Speaker 1: like eyes and kind of frog like skin, and it

731
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: would make sense since they're supposed to be amphibious. But

732
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 1: the Corn's they look more like bipedal uh humans basically,

733
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 1: but with squids for heads. I think they've sometimes been

734
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: called like kind of Cathulu aliens. Yeah, now the Montclamari.

735
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,360
Speaker 1: This does raise a number of questions itself, because I

736
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 1: wonder how does the bipedalism of the mon Calumari evolve

737
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 1: like bipedalism and limit even limited by beetle behaviors can

738
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: be found in a number of terrestrial animals on Earth.

739
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:18,799
Speaker 1: You've got birds and their extinct therapod dinosaur relatives, some

740
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: reptiles such as you know the reptiles we've discussed in

741
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: the past, lizards that run on the water with two

742
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:27,040
Speaker 1: back legs. Of course, in primate so a number of

743
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: animals will stand up on two legs, But almost all

744
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: the cases I can think of with this involve animals

745
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:37,839
Speaker 1: that are standing on or walking on solid land, or

746
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: walking or running across the top of the water. And

747
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:43,280
Speaker 1: it's actually still a matter of debate in a pretty

748
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:48,279
Speaker 1: interesting way, how human ancestors developed full time bipedalism. One

749
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: of the bygone hypotheses you've probably heard, this was from

750
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,400
Speaker 1: the old days, was that human ancestors evolved bipedalism so

751
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 1: that they could see over the tall grasses of the savannah.

752
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: But I think this hypothesis is mostly discarded now. One

753
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 1: of the main reasons is that it looks like from

754
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:09,439
Speaker 1: from the fossil record, that humans became by petal when

755
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: they still lived primarily in an arboreal environment, so around

756
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: the trees, not in grasslands with tall grasses, and so

757
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: there are a number of competing hypotheses today, one of

758
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 1: which that's pretty interesting, or I guess several actually get

759
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 1: into the idea that by petalism evolved because of the

760
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: evolutionary advantages in various different ways of having free hands

761
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:33,880
Speaker 1: available for carrying things around while you move. Yeah, as

762
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: I'm hunting and gathering, like I need those free hands

763
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: to hold like my my satchel of collected berries or

764
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: mushrooms or the tools that I'm using, yeah, to bring

765
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,920
Speaker 1: back to your family from across a long distance or

766
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: something like that. But there could be another explanation this better.

767
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: This is one one of those things where I think

768
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,279
Speaker 1: the it's wide open, you know, there there are tons

769
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: of different ideas competing and and and so it's very

770
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: interesting for that reason. But whatever the reason that that

771
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,480
Speaker 1: human ancestors have all full time by petalism, it does

772
00:41:01,520 --> 00:41:05,359
Speaker 1: seem kind of weird to imagine by petalism evolving in

773
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: an aquatic or mostly aquatic species, Like what are they

774
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: walking around on? You know, are they walking around on

775
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: the ocean floor? In order to do that, it would

776
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 1: seem like they would have to be very dense, right,

777
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: Like they sink to the bottom and they need to

778
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: stand up and walk around on the bottom. You'd imagine

779
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:24,720
Speaker 1: they'd mostly be geared for for swimming. Uh, though maybe

780
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: I don't know because the mont Calamari it says that

781
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: they're an amphibious species. Maybe they evolved by petalism for

782
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: whatever part of their life they spend walking around outside

783
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: the water on the land, if they if they do

784
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:37,879
Speaker 1: that at all, I don't know all that much about

785
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: the mont Calamari. But amphibious, yeah, maybe. Yeah. In the

786
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: episodes of Clone Wars where they're they're more fleshed out,

787
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:46,520
Speaker 1: we we don't really always see here. I think some

788
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:49,920
Speaker 1: like big submersible environments, and of course a lot of

789
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 1: like open water warfare that's taking place. So I don't

790
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 1: know if that ultimately we get much in the way

791
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 1: of answers from that show either. But in thinking about

792
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: other bipedal upright water aliens in the Star Wars universe, Rob,

793
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to help me with this one, because

794
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: you connected me to the species and I knew nothing

795
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 1: about it previously. But there is a species from the

796
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe called the Nephron in E. P H

797
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: R A N. And this is much closer to what

798
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: I want to talk about here, because this is a

799
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 1: bipedal aquatic alien that's more like a crustacean, like a

800
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 1: bipedal shrimp or crab. They are said to come from

801
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: an ocean world in the Star Wars galaxy called Nippotus,

802
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: And the main example character of this species is a

803
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: person from stuff I haven't seen called Therm scissor punch

804
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: Rob Can you can you fill me in, you know

805
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,279
Speaker 1: about Therm? Yeah, So this is a character if if

806
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:45,400
Speaker 1: memory serves, pops up in the movie Solo, which, of

807
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,880
Speaker 1: course the Han Solo prequel, which I know some folks

808
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: didn't care for. I we thought it was a lot

809
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: of fun when we watched a family. Uh. It certainly

810
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: had some great aliens in it for sure, and this

811
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: is one of them. Uh you know, this kind of shrimpy,

812
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: squitty looking guy and he's wearing what looks to be

813
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 1: like an interstellar flight suit. So this seems to support

814
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: like the theory that underwater creatures in the Star Wars

815
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 1: universe perhaps have an advantage when it comes to navigating

816
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: the three dimensional world of open space, because again, think

817
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 1: of the mont Calamari. Where do we encounter them time

818
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 1: and time again? Uh, heterggic commanders strategic commanders during space warfare.

819
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 1: So it makes you wonder do they have some sort

820
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:31,839
Speaker 1: of would they have some sort of advantage they're used

821
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: to the oceanic environment, like the open water warfare environment

822
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 1: and the survival environment. Do they are they better than

823
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:43,480
Speaker 1: contemplating threats in outer space? That would make a lot

824
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: of sense. Now, there's still some important differences. I'd say

825
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: one of the most important differences is even within the

826
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 1: water column, you've still got an up and down. You've

827
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 1: got gravity and buoyancy, which you don't have in space.

828
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 1: In space, there's no up and down. It's just a

829
00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:00,480
Speaker 1: limitless three dimensional space. But even with out you can

830
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: still see the advantage where you're naturally evolutionarily adapted to

831
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:07,399
Speaker 1: combat within a space where you can move in three

832
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: different dimensions in a way that we can't really on

833
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. Like you can jump and

834
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 1: you can climb a tree and stuff, but mostly you're

835
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 1: just going to be on flat ground when you're fighting

836
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: other people. Yeah, and of course you can have aircraft

837
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 1: and stuff, but that's not really part of the ancestral

838
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 1: environment that shaped our brains. Yeah, I imagine the reverse.

839
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: That's probably true too. I like a crustacean alien had

840
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: an advantage, and imagining open space warfare, they'd probably also

841
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 1: be really disadvantaged. Imagining like a land warfare. It would

842
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: be like like, what, what's your command, general, and they

843
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: would be like move, swim away, yea swim away, Yeah,

844
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: get back in the water. So this guy is called

845
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 1: therm scissor Punch, And at first the name seemed weird

846
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:52,400
Speaker 1: to me until I connected it to the fact that

847
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: he has crab like claws instead of hands. So if

848
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: he punches you, I guess it is much like being

849
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:01,439
Speaker 1: punched with a giant, blunt pair of scissors. Yeah, yeah,

850
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 1: I think so. Okay, But here we're gonna make the

851
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: lateral leap to real biology because I've got a crustacean

852
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: with an eerily human bipedal type posture to talk about.

853
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 1: And this is the skeleton shrimp from the crustacean family Caprilla. Day.

854
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: This is one absolutely to look up pictures of. Go

855
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,479
Speaker 1: google skeleton shrimp while I'm talking about this. They look

856
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 1: very cool, very creepy, and on top of that, and

857
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,840
Speaker 1: on top of their they're kind of haunting creepy appearance.

858
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: They somehow to me look a little bit obscene. I

859
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:41,080
Speaker 1: can't quite explain it very well, but they look like

860
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:45,280
Speaker 1: an acolyte of some horrible shadow god that was rightly

861
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 1: banished to the cavern of tears. Yeah, they are very

862
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 1: strange looking. And that's even if you're approaching it with

863
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: the idea that, yeah, there are a lot of different

864
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:56,840
Speaker 1: shrimp in the ocean, and not all shrimp, you know,

865
00:45:56,920 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: look like the shrimp that you might buy at the

866
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: seafood store. But these guys, especially, they feel like they

867
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:05,800
Speaker 1: earn their nickname the skeleton shrimp or the ghost shrimp.

868
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 1: They look like some sort of a horrible shri raith shrimp.

869
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: That would be a good name for them. I think

870
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:15,400
Speaker 1: they're called skeleton shrimp because they typically have a very

871
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: spindly appearance. They're almost like a stick insect, but creepier. Now.

872
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:23,799
Speaker 1: They're typically very small. They range in size from a

873
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:27,359
Speaker 1: few millimeters to a couple of inches long. But if

874
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:29,400
Speaker 1: you get up close and you look at them with

875
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: some magnification, you'll notice that they often have an upright

876
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 1: posture where they will stretch their body out as they

877
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,720
Speaker 1: cling onto something with their back legs. So in that sense,

878
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: they look eerily human. But in addition to this, they

879
00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: often have a kind of bent over supplicant posture within

880
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:53,319
Speaker 1: that upstanding position, almost looking like they're in prayer. Again,

881
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 1: I guess to that, to that rightly banished God. Yeah, yeah,

882
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: in a way, similar posture to old scissor punch. There,

883
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:03,400
Speaker 1: he looks a little bit dent over in the skills

884
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: I have of him. Oh, yes, you're right, I've seen

885
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: some of the skills I've seen of him. He looks

886
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 1: like he's hanging his head, or maybe like he's about

887
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 1: to bow down at the altar. Gravity is really hard

888
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 1: on him. But he must damble, he must play cards.

889
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:20,400
Speaker 1: Uh So, I was wondering if my raw sense of

890
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: obscenity when looking at a skeleton shrimp comes from the

891
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 1: different body parts that seem to defy type. It has

892
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: antentnie that look like legs, and claws that look like heads,

893
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 1: and little claws near the face of the actual head.

894
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: It's Its main claws are called natopods, and it has

895
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:41,839
Speaker 1: smaller natopods near its face that look kind of like,

896
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:45,400
Speaker 1: I don't know, like hip facial hair facial or I

897
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: don't know how hip. It would be the kind of

898
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:50,680
Speaker 1: facial hair that makes a statement. Now, despite being called

899
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:54,359
Speaker 1: skeleton shrimp, these are not exactly super closely related to

900
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:57,439
Speaker 1: the shrimp that you would eat in your shrimp cocktail. Um.

901
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: Skeleton shrimp in fact, consistent with what I was saying

902
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:04,239
Speaker 1: about their their different weird claws and legs. They are

903
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:08,280
Speaker 1: of an order of crustaceans known as amphipods, which literally

904
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 1: means different feet as opposed to related crustaceans that have

905
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,360
Speaker 1: more consistent sets of feet. And I was reading about

906
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 1: them on a page for the Monterey Bay Aquarium that

907
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: mentions that these animals are sometimes called praying mantises of

908
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:26,440
Speaker 1: the sea. I can absolutely understand the comparison. In addition

909
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:29,840
Speaker 1: to the of course praying posture I mentioned, Uh, the

910
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 1: claws look very much like the raptorial four legs of

911
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:38,439
Speaker 1: a praying mantis. So skeleton shrimp are often camouflaged within

912
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: their environment, making forests of seaweed a really great habitat

913
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:47,600
Speaker 1: for them. Uh. They're often found clinging to bryozoans, hydroids,

914
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 1: or eel grass, sometimes even in patches of sarcassum, which

915
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: we talked about last week. Those skeleton shrimp are found

916
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: in other habitats as well. You can find them on

917
00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: a ship's hull or on some other animals body. Even

918
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 1: one video I was watching of skeleton shrimp showed hundreds,

919
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:09,360
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe thousands of tiny skeleton shrimp clinging

920
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: to the scales of a scorpion fish, crowded right around

921
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 1: the fish's I I tried to take a take a

922
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: screen grab so you can see it here robbed down below.

923
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:21,879
Speaker 1: But they're just crowded around the eye and all over

924
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 1: the top of his head, and they're just swaying around

925
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 1: in the water. And the fish does not really look

926
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:29,799
Speaker 1: put out, I know, like at first glance, these look

927
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 1: like eyebrows and tufts of hair, almost kind of zat

928
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: ish tufts of hair, you know. Oh yeah, Sometimes they

929
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 1: can look quite fuzzy, especially when the females are carrying

930
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:44,399
Speaker 1: their brood along with them, like after mating. They they

931
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: reproduce sexually, and after mating, the females will sometimes carry

932
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 1: around what looks almost like a ball of dandelion fuzz

933
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: or something. But that's all they're young that that haven't

934
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 1: left the mother's body yet. Now, the different appendages jutting

935
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 1: off of the bodies provide a range of different ways

936
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:06,320
Speaker 1: to survive. In general, their back legs are for gripping

937
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:08,400
Speaker 1: onto a substrate, and this is where you get the

938
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:12,920
Speaker 1: bipedal posture. Here you will very often see skeleton shrimp

939
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 1: clinging to something a piece of seaweed or even a

940
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:20,439
Speaker 1: scorpion fish's head or something with their back legs while

941
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:23,319
Speaker 1: their body is stretched out above that, looking like they're

942
00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: standing up and reaching out into the water. And then meanwhile,

943
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: while they're clinging with their back legs and standing up

944
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,200
Speaker 1: like this, they're larger front legs with the folding features

945
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: that look like mantis claws. These can be used for

946
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: grooming the body or for violence in fighting each other,

947
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:42,359
Speaker 1: which it seems like they do a lot, or for

948
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: snagging food, and the antennae coming off of their head

949
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 1: apparently can sometimes be used for filter feeding. They eat

950
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:53,760
Speaker 1: everything it seems that they say are different. Different species

951
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:56,040
Speaker 1: of them will eat different things sometimes, but they're they're

952
00:50:56,040 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: pretty omnivorous. They scavenge for floating detritus, meaning particles of

953
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: dead organic matter. They're just sort of like hanging around

954
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:07,359
Speaker 1: in the water. Sometimes they eat algae or sometimes they

955
00:51:07,440 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 1: act as predators. They can snag kill and eat live prey,

956
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:14,919
Speaker 1: for example worms or crustacean larvae. And though they look

957
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 1: very bipedal when they're attached to a substrate and reaching

958
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: out into the water, I thought this was interesting. They

959
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: generally move not by walking on their back legs, but

960
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:28,439
Speaker 1: by gripping the substrate, folding their body over, and then

961
00:51:28,600 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: sliding along like an inchworm. Again, very creepy. And there's

962
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:38,360
Speaker 1: another fascinating comparison to the praying mantis. Some species of

963
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:43,839
Speaker 1: skeleton shrimp practice sexual homicide, where the female will kill

964
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 1: the male after mating, sometimes by stabbing them with a

965
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: special claw and injecting them with venom, which this strikes

966
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:56,360
Speaker 1: me as a very interesting example of convergent evolution, because

967
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: of course this is there's this superficial resemblance between the

968
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 1: body form of a praying mantis and a skeleton shrimp.

969
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:07,280
Speaker 1: They have these similar raptorial fore legs and similar posture

970
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: and stuff, and like a praying mantis, sometimes the female

971
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:13,960
Speaker 1: will kill the male after mating. Uh. Though I didn't

972
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:16,760
Speaker 1: see much about the female eating the male after mating.

973
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,839
Speaker 1: Maybe they do, because sometimes these skeleton shrimp are cannibalistic,

974
00:52:20,880 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: but mainly I just saw about killing the male with

975
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:26,800
Speaker 1: this venomous claw. I was wondering why it would be

976
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 1: that the female would kill the male after mating. I

977
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 1: wonder if this is in part to prevent the males

978
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:36,839
Speaker 1: from cannibalizing them or their offspring in the future. So

979
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 1: there are a couple of things they're one of which

980
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: is that mating. Uh So, of course these crustaceans, like

981
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 1: other crustaceans, they have to grow by molting, right because

982
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 1: having a hard outer exoskeleton. You can't get bigger with

983
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 1: a hardened outer exo skeleton. You have to shed the

984
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: exo skeleton and then come come out as a larger

985
00:52:57,600 --> 00:53:00,400
Speaker 1: soft version of yourself, and then the outer layer a

986
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:03,640
Speaker 1: few hardens into a new larger exoskeleton. This is the

987
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 1: molting process. And apparently skeleton shrimp can only mate when

988
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:11,960
Speaker 1: the female is freshly molted, so I don't know. There's

989
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,840
Speaker 1: possibly that means that she could be in a in

990
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,160
Speaker 1: a more vulnerable position around the time of mating, or

991
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: it could be to prevent males from from eating the

992
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:23,719
Speaker 1: new larva that will be coming along soon. I don't know.

993
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,600
Speaker 1: I wonder I like the idea that they have they

994
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: may have a special claw for this though, Oh yeah, yeah,

995
00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:32,280
Speaker 1: with the with the venom and apparently the males also

996
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: sometimes have venomous claws which they use for fighting each other.

997
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 1: I think in some cases at least for access to

998
00:53:38,239 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 1: mating real scissor punches. They're right exactly. But as I

999
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: said already, skeleton shrimp are really something that you need

1000
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:47,719
Speaker 1: to see with your eyes to appreciate. So I would

1001
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: highly recommend looking up some pictures and looking up some

1002
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 1: videos of these animals there. They're very small, but they're beautiful, creepy, unsettling,

1003
00:53:56,600 --> 00:54:06,480
Speaker 1: worth your attention absolutely than Alright, I think we have

1004
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:10,400
Speaker 1: time for one more specimen here, oh boy. And for

1005
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: this one, Joe, I'm gonna have to ask you to

1006
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 1: come to the planet Naboo with me. Well, I'll always

1007
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 1: go to Naboo. Well, I mean, it's an interesting world,

1008
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: but I would say one of the most interesting in

1009
00:54:19,239 --> 00:54:22,640
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe because even outside of its important

1010
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 1: role in galactic history, it has just incredibly rich fauna. Uh.

1011
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:29,440
Speaker 1: You have human human settlers coming to the planet at

1012
00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:32,239
Speaker 1: some point, and then there's signs of an elder civilization,

1013
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 1: but you have this native Gungan population um that are

1014
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:39,720
Speaker 1: an advanced amphibious species that make their home and underwater cities,

1015
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:44,319
Speaker 1: and the planets expansive underwater oceans. Uh Naboo seems to

1016
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: have a vast uh number of of impressive land animals,

1017
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: many of which are used as battle mounts by the Gungans.

1018
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: But then you have this this shadowy underwater realm that

1019
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: is home to just many many marine or anis ums.

1020
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:04,960
Speaker 1: And there's a fabulous uh section in The Phantom Menace

1021
00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:07,839
Speaker 1: where we get to explore it a bit. Uh. It's

1022
00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: the scene where we have our main characters there uh

1023
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:14,000
Speaker 1: with with the kid I think and and uh and

1024
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 1: jar jar and they're in a submarine and they are

1025
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:21,839
Speaker 1: attacked by one giant underwater creature after another, each one

1026
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,160
Speaker 1: bigger and more horrifying than the last. Out of the

1027
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:28,799
Speaker 1: frying pan and into the fish. Yes, so the first

1028
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:31,840
Speaker 1: one that attacks is this thing that's op c killer

1029
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:33,879
Speaker 1: that looks kind of like a like a deep sea

1030
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 1: angler fish type of of a thing. Then they're attacked

1031
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: by the colo clawfish, which looks like a cross between

1032
00:55:40,200 --> 00:55:42,960
Speaker 1: a crocodile and an eel, and then finally by this

1033
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:46,840
Speaker 1: even more titanic Sando Aqua monster, which is just an

1034
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: Apex of Apex predators looks like some sort of a

1035
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: salamandery um giant. Do I recall that in this sequence

1036
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 1: they are trying to like take a submarine through the

1037
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,280
Speaker 1: center of the world to get to the other side

1038
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: of the planet or something. I don't remember if they're

1039
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:06,280
Speaker 1: I don't remember if they're actually going through the center,

1040
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:08,759
Speaker 1: but they are at least at the very least. Yeah,

1041
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: they're going through the deep underwater sections of the of

1042
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:16,160
Speaker 1: of the world to get to a specific location. Okay, okay,

1043
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:18,840
Speaker 1: maybe it might just be underwater caves. Yeah, but I

1044
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:20,520
Speaker 1: don't know, it could be. If it is. If it's

1045
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: the former, then it it's dante esk and it's and

1046
00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:27,319
Speaker 1: it's nature, right. Yeah. But anyway, the creature of these

1047
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:29,080
Speaker 1: three I want to talk about is that middle one,

1048
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:32,880
Speaker 1: the colo clawfish, which which is pretty neat litt looking.

1049
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 1: I mean, all three of these are impressive creatures. This

1050
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:39,880
Speaker 1: one is um is again enormous. Its head is larger

1051
00:56:39,920 --> 00:56:43,400
Speaker 1: than the Gungan sub We're told in like the Alien

1052
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:45,880
Speaker 1: Archive and other books that they can reach lengths of

1053
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 1: at least forty one feet. Their long bioluminescent predators with

1054
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:55,279
Speaker 1: mandible like four legs to grip their their prey and

1055
00:56:55,320 --> 00:56:58,200
Speaker 1: this long mouth of razor sharp teeth and I and

1056
00:56:58,280 --> 00:57:00,399
Speaker 1: I believe they're supposed to have venomous things in there

1057
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:04,440
Speaker 1: is as well to partially or completely disable some of

1058
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 1: their prey. And they can unhinge their jaw like a

1059
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: terrestrial snake in order to eat prey larger than their

1060
00:57:10,760 --> 00:57:12,959
Speaker 1: own head. But the part that interests me the most

1061
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:15,680
Speaker 1: here is this one little tid debt that is that

1062
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: is described in the Star Wars Alien Archive book quote. However,

1063
00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: Colo's must ensure their prey is dead before ingesting it.

1064
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 1: Their digestive systems are slow, and they run the risk

1065
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:31,320
Speaker 1: of being eaten from inside out if the prey remains alive. WHOA.

1066
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: So obviously that got me thinking. I was like, is

1067
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:37,640
Speaker 1: there anything like this here on Earth? And uh I

1068
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: I found an excellent article on this in BBC Earth

1069
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:46,600
Speaker 1: by Sandrine Kristamont. This is from and and they made

1070
00:57:46,600 --> 00:57:49,760
Speaker 1: some wonderful points on this. So basically, as the author

1071
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:53,120
Speaker 1: points out, you'd probably need two key realities to be

1072
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 1: in place for something like this to happen. So, first

1073
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:58,840
Speaker 1: of all, the animal would have to survive the jaws

1074
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:00,920
Speaker 1: of its attacker. It would have to be swallowed whole.

1075
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 1: No fatal crushing, no incapacitating venom uh you know, inserted

1076
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 1: into the creature. It would no no death roll or

1077
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 1: death shake. Yeah, no death roll, no death shake, no

1078
00:58:12,120 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 1: intentional breaking of the bones like you see with you know,

1079
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:17,600
Speaker 1: like a cattle due to it to its um you know,

1080
00:58:17,720 --> 00:58:21,080
Speaker 1: rodent prey um, and you know it would it would

1081
00:58:21,080 --> 00:58:23,120
Speaker 1: just have to happen in the case of an animal

1082
00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:26,800
Speaker 1: that just gulps its prey down whole. Secondly, the digestive

1083
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 1: juices would have to be weak enough and or the

1084
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:33,680
Speaker 1: praise outer covering would have to be resilient enough for

1085
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:37,959
Speaker 1: it to survive entry into the stomach at least initial entry,

1086
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: if not its entire time there. So it seems like

1087
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 1: maybe there's some risk at like swallowing whole a creature

1088
00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 1: with a hard outer layer, like if you swallowed a

1089
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:49,280
Speaker 1: whole crab, that could be pretty bad, right. And then

1090
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:51,640
Speaker 1: also it would help if the prey in question has

1091
00:58:51,680 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: some sort of ace up its sleeve as well. So,

1092
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 1: as the author explains, yes, there are cases where all

1093
00:58:57,480 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: of these things seem to line up. Um. The first

1094
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:04,800
Speaker 1: one is the rough skinned newt can survive being swallowed

1095
00:59:04,840 --> 00:59:07,160
Speaker 1: by a frog and in in in large part this

1096
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:10,320
Speaker 1: is because it packs enough toxin to kill the predator

1097
00:59:10,600 --> 00:59:14,320
Speaker 1: before the digestive juices overpower it. Quote then the newts

1098
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: simply has to crawl back up the dead frog's throat

1099
00:59:17,080 --> 00:59:20,560
Speaker 1: and out of its mouth, which is pretty badass. I

1100
00:59:20,600 --> 00:59:23,680
Speaker 1: like that. Yes, that is power can respect. Now the

1101
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:27,200
Speaker 1: next example is is even weirder and maybe maybe not

1102
00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 1: as as cool in the sense that like it's not

1103
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:33,160
Speaker 1: a full survival story, but it's still really amazing. And

1104
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:37,520
Speaker 1: that is the case of the brahminy blind snake, a

1105
00:59:37,560 --> 00:59:40,880
Speaker 1: tiny natural burrower, and it has been observed to survive

1106
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:44,400
Speaker 1: the digestion of a toad and emerge out the other

1107
00:59:44,520 --> 00:59:47,520
Speaker 1: end of the toad, essentially swallowed by the toad, and

1108
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 1: then just wriggles through the rest of the way and

1109
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:53,760
Speaker 1: out out the rear entry um or the rear exit

1110
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 1: as it were. Uh So, in these cases of survival,

1111
00:59:57,160 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: it also really helps if if if it maybe even

1112
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: be essential that there's not another big meal up ahead

1113
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: of it blocking the way. I see. But then this

1114
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 1: is also a situation where protection from the digestive juices

1115
01:00:09,200 --> 01:00:12,040
Speaker 1: seems to be key. This is what the author Kristamont

1116
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 1: had to say. Quote, but its skin was probably the

1117
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:20,400
Speaker 1: biggest lifesaver. The closely knit, overlapping scales that help blind

1118
01:00:20,440 --> 01:00:24,600
Speaker 1: snakes move on land would likely block gastric juices, preventing

1119
01:00:24,640 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 1: them from reaching delicate tissues and organs. The scales of

1120
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:31,040
Speaker 1: other snakes come apart slightly when they move, so would

1121
01:00:31,080 --> 01:00:34,080
Speaker 1: not have the same protective effect. It's like a natural

1122
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: hazmat suit. Yeah, I have never I don't think I've

1123
01:00:37,440 --> 01:00:42,560
Speaker 1: ever considered this as a strategy for defending against predators before. Uh.

1124
01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 1: When I've always thought about trying to avoid getting eaten,

1125
01:00:46,280 --> 01:00:49,560
Speaker 1: I thought about trying to escape or trying to fight back,

1126
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:54,080
Speaker 1: not preventing eating from hurting you, Like, yeah, just get

1127
01:00:54,160 --> 01:00:58,080
Speaker 1: eaten and you know you'll be okay. Probably Now, it

1128
01:00:58,160 --> 01:01:00,360
Speaker 1: may be a case. First of all, it seems to

1129
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:02,120
Speaker 1: be a case where this is not certainly not an

1130
01:01:02,120 --> 01:01:05,680
Speaker 1: evolved way of surviving predators. Uh. And it also seems

1131
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 1: to be a case where survival is perhaps a um

1132
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:12,520
Speaker 1: an incorrect term for it. Because this in the case

1133
01:01:12,560 --> 01:01:15,160
Speaker 1: that it was observed by researchers here, the snake died

1134
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:18,120
Speaker 1: five hours later, probably due to complications due to lack

1135
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:20,840
Speaker 1: of oxygen. Because that's the thing. If even if you're

1136
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 1: armored against that that acid or the acid isn't strong enough,

1137
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:26,520
Speaker 1: you're still going to be inside that animal for a

1138
01:01:26,520 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 1: certain amount of time if you're not killing it with

1139
01:01:29,680 --> 01:01:32,440
Speaker 1: toxins and chron climbing out the front. Uh. You know,

1140
01:01:32,480 --> 01:01:35,479
Speaker 1: if you're gonna take the complete journey through, you're gonna

1141
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:38,960
Speaker 1: be without oxygen, and depending on your biology, you know,

1142
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:41,800
Speaker 1: that can have very detrimental effects. That itself can be

1143
01:01:41,880 --> 01:01:44,760
Speaker 1: the fatal flaw. Okay, so you're saying this is not

1144
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:48,520
Speaker 1: It doesn't appear that these tiny snakes have evolved a

1145
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:52,240
Speaker 1: capacity to be eaten and survived specifically as a protection

1146
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:56,040
Speaker 1: against predation. It just so happens like it's a coincidence

1147
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:59,720
Speaker 1: that some of their natural defenses for other things happened

1148
01:01:59,720 --> 01:02:02,760
Speaker 1: to a allow them to survive passing through the digestive

1149
01:02:02,760 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: system in at least this case or limited cases. Yeah,

1150
01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:10,080
Speaker 1: and maybe it's more of a curse. You know, they

1151
01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: get to survive the whole process. Now on top of

1152
01:02:14,360 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 1: these cases, apparently there are some land snails that can

1153
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 1: survive the journey through a bird's digestive system. And this

1154
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:23,920
Speaker 1: is a case where you have you have another important

1155
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:26,720
Speaker 1: helpful fact here, and that is SPEEDI or digestion time.

1156
01:02:26,960 --> 01:02:30,560
Speaker 1: So just less time spent in the bird's digestive system.

1157
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:34,720
Speaker 1: That means less exposure to the digestive juices, coupled with

1158
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:37,720
Speaker 1: the natural protection of the snail shell which is key,

1159
01:02:37,800 --> 01:02:40,720
Speaker 1: but also the mucus of the snail might also help

1160
01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 1: serve as a protective barrier like a chemical armor. Yeah.

1161
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: And so you have some aquatic snails as well that

1162
01:02:48,240 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 1: have been that have been observed to be very uh

1163
01:02:51,880 --> 01:02:56,000
Speaker 1: uh resilient to digestion. You have nematode worms of course,

1164
01:02:56,200 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 1: some of which are true internal parasites. So once you

1165
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:02,760
Speaker 1: get into that territory, I think we're more inclined to

1166
01:03:03,640 --> 01:03:05,960
Speaker 1: uh it's not expect but you know, not be surprised

1167
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 1: by that kind of resiliency things that that survive in

1168
01:03:09,720 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 1: the digestive system of of of host organisms. But you

1169
01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 1: generally don't think about snakes, salamanders and other things, uh,

1170
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:21,080
Speaker 1: you know, having a chance once they're actually in the

1171
01:03:21,120 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: predator's gullet. You have opened my eyes. So with to

1172
01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:29,040
Speaker 1: come back to the planet naboo. Uh, I guess the

1173
01:03:29,080 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: idea here is that we're largely talking about other deadly

1174
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: predators in the depths of Neboo that after having been eaten,

1175
01:03:35,440 --> 01:03:39,440
Speaker 1: then turn on the predator host here. Um. You know,

1176
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:42,880
Speaker 1: it's just that that crazy and environment. So it seems

1177
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:45,040
Speaker 1: entirely feasible that you could have something like this, like

1178
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:48,520
Speaker 1: maybe there's one particular type of fish or you know,

1179
01:03:48,560 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 1: creature in that deep sea underground environment and naboo, and

1180
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:54,960
Speaker 1: if it eats those, it gets too excited about them.

1181
01:03:54,960 --> 01:03:57,800
Speaker 1: Maybe it's maybe it's a venom doesn't work on that

1182
01:03:57,960 --> 01:04:00,680
Speaker 1: on that particular creature, or sometimes maybe it doesn't use

1183
01:04:00,680 --> 01:04:04,040
Speaker 1: its venom um. You know, often we see that with snakes, right,

1184
01:04:04,040 --> 01:04:05,720
Speaker 1: they're not going to use their venom every time if

1185
01:04:05,760 --> 01:04:08,400
Speaker 1: they don't have to. It is a it is an

1186
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: important resource. But maybe that's a fatal mistake for the

1187
01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:16,400
Speaker 1: COLO concerning certain prey species. You don't want to underestimate

1188
01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:19,760
Speaker 1: what you're eating. Yeah, all right, Well that's that's all

1189
01:04:19,800 --> 01:04:23,240
Speaker 1: I have, Joe. Should we close the compendium. Let's let's

1190
01:04:23,240 --> 01:04:26,160
Speaker 1: close it up now. Obviously there are tons of other

1191
01:04:26,320 --> 01:04:30,800
Speaker 1: creatures and aliens and the Star Wars universe, so you know,

1192
01:04:30,880 --> 01:04:33,160
Speaker 1: perhaps there's some other really good candidates that we didn't

1193
01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:36,800
Speaker 1: touch on. If you have suggestions for the future, let

1194
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:38,800
Speaker 1: us know. Likewise, you know, we could always take this

1195
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:43,160
Speaker 1: approach to other uh you know, fictional ecosystems and uh

1196
01:04:43,200 --> 01:04:44,680
Speaker 1: and take a look at those. I know we had

1197
01:04:44,720 --> 01:04:48,600
Speaker 1: some fun talking about the sandworms of Dune, uh several

1198
01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: years back. Um Dune is coming back. Yeah, yeah, I

1199
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:55,640
Speaker 1: need to revisit. I think I have some some ideas

1200
01:04:55,720 --> 01:04:59,080
Speaker 1: jotted down about things we might might consider when we

1201
01:04:59,080 --> 01:05:02,000
Speaker 1: get a little closer to uh to doom time. Well

1202
01:05:02,120 --> 01:05:04,960
Speaker 1: that's exciting, and hey, they're they're probably other world I'm

1203
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:06,760
Speaker 1: not even thinking of. I mean, I guess there's Star

1204
01:05:06,800 --> 01:05:08,560
Speaker 1: Trek too. I don't think we've ever done anything on

1205
01:05:08,600 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 1: Star Trek. If we we have, I'm certainly not remembering it.

1206
01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 1: Did you actually watch Star Trek? You weren't really a

1207
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:16,160
Speaker 1: Star Trek guy where you I wasn't an original Star

1208
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:19,960
Speaker 1: Trek guy, but there was I watched tons of Next

1209
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:24,360
Speaker 1: Generation and tons of Deep Space nine and uh and

1210
01:05:24,360 --> 01:05:27,160
Speaker 1: and you know some of the movies. But yeah, that

1211
01:05:27,160 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 1: that was my my area. Like I think it was

1212
01:05:29,360 --> 01:05:33,600
Speaker 1: like every evening at nine pm, Next Generation was on,

1213
01:05:33,720 --> 01:05:35,480
Speaker 1: and I always watched it like that was my go

1214
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:38,200
Speaker 1: to for a while. I like in the uh. I

1215
01:05:38,240 --> 01:05:40,320
Speaker 1: haven't seen all of the Next Generation, but I like

1216
01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:43,520
Speaker 1: those episodes. I think, especially in the early seasons of TNNG,

1217
01:05:43,720 --> 01:05:45,480
Speaker 1: where they would go down to a planet and it

1218
01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:49,160
Speaker 1: would just look like a nineteen nineties uh you know,

1219
01:05:49,280 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 1: family portrait photos studio with some potted plants on it. Yeah, yeah,

1220
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:55,840
Speaker 1: I remember some of those settings. I think I've said

1221
01:05:55,840 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 1: this on the show before, but I don't know exactly why.

1222
01:05:58,400 --> 01:06:01,040
Speaker 1: I always really really love a good cheap indoor for

1223
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:08,880
Speaker 1: outdoor set. Yeah. Yeah, I've also really been, uh been

1224
01:06:08,920 --> 01:06:12,560
Speaker 1: thinking about this a lot in terms of Outer Limits series,

1225
01:06:13,000 --> 01:06:15,000
Speaker 1: where they have some great sets on that show, but

1226
01:06:15,160 --> 01:06:18,480
Speaker 1: also each episode is like, Okay, what are they about

1227
01:06:18,480 --> 01:06:22,200
Speaker 1: to film in like the Toronto area that they're gonna

1228
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:26,480
Speaker 1: make look like the future or or the post apocalyptic world.

1229
01:06:26,520 --> 01:06:29,640
Speaker 1: Like there's some interesting choices at times where it's like,

1230
01:06:30,120 --> 01:06:32,320
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not really an impressive building they're

1231
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:34,400
Speaker 1: working with here, but they try and figure out ways

1232
01:06:34,440 --> 01:06:36,960
Speaker 1: to shoot it in such a way that it feels

1233
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:39,160
Speaker 1: fresh and different compared to all these other episodes they're

1234
01:06:39,160 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 1: pumping out, so they're actually writing around the second hand

1235
01:06:42,280 --> 01:06:46,520
Speaker 1: sets and costumes and stuff. Um, they seem to I

1236
01:06:46,720 --> 01:06:49,280
Speaker 1: I haven't seen all the outer limits yet, but they

1237
01:06:49,320 --> 01:06:51,320
Speaker 1: seem to do a pretty good job of of not

1238
01:06:51,400 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 1: repeating themselves, which I think can be hard when you

1239
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:56,960
Speaker 1: have so many episodes that are about being trapped in

1240
01:06:56,960 --> 01:07:00,320
Speaker 1: an alien spaceship, being trapped in a in a survival bunker.

1241
01:07:00,400 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 1: You know, like a lot of the same basic setups

1242
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:05,280
Speaker 1: are going to be in place. Like I wonder how

1243
01:07:05,320 --> 01:07:10,000
Speaker 1: many different alien hallways, uh they create alien spaceship hallways

1244
01:07:10,040 --> 01:07:12,480
Speaker 1: they created for this show and still found a way

1245
01:07:12,520 --> 01:07:16,120
Speaker 1: to make them feel different enough if if not, you know,

1246
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 1: substantially different. It's the mark of a good bottle episode.

1247
01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:22,800
Speaker 1: Different yep, just different enough? All right? Should we wrap up?

1248
01:07:23,080 --> 01:07:24,880
Speaker 1: Let's wrap up. If you want to listen to other

1249
01:07:24,880 --> 01:07:27,240
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, you can find

1250
01:07:27,280 --> 01:07:29,880
Speaker 1: them wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens

1251
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:32,120
Speaker 1: to be. We just asked that you rate, review, and subscribe.

1252
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:35,720
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1253
01:07:35,800 --> 01:07:38,120
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1254
01:07:38,200 --> 01:07:40,439
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other

1255
01:07:40,480 --> 01:07:42,440
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic, for the future or just to

1256
01:07:42,480 --> 01:07:45,560
Speaker 1: say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff

1257
01:07:45,600 --> 01:07:55,400
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

1258
01:07:55,400 --> 01:07:58,320
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

1259
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:00,080
Speaker 1: from my heart radio because at the heart rate you

1260
01:08:00,200 --> 01:08:14,360
Speaker 1: app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.