Speaker 1: And the banker, inspired with a courage so new it
Speaker 1: was a matter for general remark, rushed madly ahead and
Speaker 1: was lost to their view in his zeal to discover
Speaker 1: the snark. But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
Speaker 1: a bender snatch swiftly drew nigh and grabbed at the banker,
Speaker 1: who shrieked in despair, for he knew it was useless
Speaker 1: to fly. He offered large discount. He offered a check
Speaker 1: drawn to bearer for seven pounds ten, But the banderstatch
Speaker 1: merely extended its neck and grabbed at the banker again,
Speaker 1: without rest or pause, while those frumious jaws went savagely
Speaker 1: snapping around. He skipped, and he hopped, and he floundered
Speaker 1: and flopped till fainting he fell to the ground. The
Speaker 1: bandersnatch fled as the others appeared, led on by that
Speaker 1: fear stricken yell, and the bellman remarked, it is just
Speaker 1: as I feared, and solemnly told on his bell Welcome
Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind? A production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert Are you feeling more
Speaker 1: frabjous or more frumious today? I guess more frumious. Frumious
Speaker 1: would be my answer. That was, of course the poem
Speaker 1: The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, But I
Speaker 1: guess a number of people were probably more familiar with
Speaker 1: the Bandersnatch from another poem by Lewis Carroll, that being
Speaker 1: the jabberwat chapwakee Yes, where the Bandersnatch is just alluded
Speaker 1: to is another monstrous creature that might be running around
Speaker 1: the woods. I love it when a poet first name
Speaker 1: something in a kind of in a in a listical
Speaker 1: kind of way, you know, poem, poem as listical, uh,
Speaker 1: and then later it comes through in another poem with
Speaker 1: more force. I think that's sort of happened with um
Speaker 1: with the dim Organ, right, Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: And and in this case, yeah, the bander Snatch. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot really said about it in the writings
Speaker 1: of Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll, by the way, was the
Speaker 1: pen name of Charles Lutwich Dodgson who lived eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: two through eighteen nine, and he first introduced the band
Speaker 1: or snatch again just in a list of creatures that
Speaker 1: might pop up in his eighteen seventy two novel Through
Speaker 1: the Looking Glass in that poem the Jabberwocke, and then
Speaker 1: pops up again in this eighteen seventy four poem that
Speaker 1: we just read, the Hunting of the Snark, which we
Speaker 1: didn't read the whole of the poem. That was just
Speaker 1: an exerpt from it. I think where the like, who's
Speaker 1: the banker? The banker is one of these people who
Speaker 1: goes on a voyage hunting the snark. I think I've
Speaker 1: read that that poem was has been interpreted by some
Speaker 1: as as metaphorical of you know, that it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be an allegory about the search for human happiness and contentment.
Speaker 1: But then also I think i've heard it alleged that
Speaker 1: the poem actually has no allegorical meaning, that it's just
Speaker 1: it's just kind of silly. Yeah, I mean, in that sense,
Speaker 1: it's kind of enigmatic. And the creature itself is enigmatic,
Speaker 1: scarcely described, but certainly best avoided at all costs. There's
Speaker 1: no way to outrun it, no way to escape its intensity. Uh,
Speaker 1: And by the way frumious is a combination of fuming
Speaker 1: and furious. Carroll just gram these two words together to
Speaker 1: make a nice new adjective for strange. Monster is a
Speaker 1: perfectly cromulent word. Very frabjous um. And I was wondering,
Speaker 1: do you need a vorpal sword if you go up
Speaker 1: against a vander snatch or is that only for the
Speaker 1: jabberwock Well, it certainly worked on the Jabberwockie. I don't
Speaker 1: know about the bander Snatch. There's there are no tales
Speaker 1: of slaying it, are there, at least not in Lewis
Speaker 1: Carroll's original work. Does the vorpal sword show up as
Speaker 1: an artifact in D and D? It does? It certainly does. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: pretty good sword. Oh yeah, very good sword. Now. The
Speaker 1: name Bandersnatch has been invoked many times over the years
Speaker 1: and works of fantasy and science fiction. I've seen it
Speaker 1: pop up as a space slug, another such creature. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just kind of an enigmatic name for like a
Speaker 1: government project or something, because it's a great it's a
Speaker 1: great name. In depictions of Lewis Carroll's work, it is
Speaker 1: often take on a mammalian character. Nineteen century children's illustrator
Speaker 1: Peter Newell depicted it as kind of a furry horned
Speaker 1: beast that might resemble a cat or maybe a wolf
Speaker 1: like creature. Uh and this one this is a very
Speaker 1: popular image. And then film adaptations have depicted it as
Speaker 1: both bor like and cat like. The two thousand ten
Speaker 1: Tim Burton adaptation has a very memorable creature design for
Speaker 1: the Bandersnatch. Tim the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. Is
Speaker 1: that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, I have. I've
Speaker 1: seen the first one. Um, I never ventured that far
Speaker 1: into late Burton. Well, it it had some things going
Speaker 1: for it. It had it had a really good cast,
Speaker 1: and it had some some interesting character designs I'll say that,
Speaker 1: and and a very monstrous looking bander snatch. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: just a couple of other interesting uh tidbits about Lewis Carroll. Um.
Speaker 1: He was a mathematician. He worked in geometry and new
Speaker 1: ideas in algebra, logic, machines, ciphers. So between this and
Speaker 1: other details of of his life, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: black mirror to the originator of the bander Snatch. Also
Speaker 1: in Hallucinations, the book by Oliver Sacks, The late Oliver Sax.
Speaker 1: Sax points out that Carroll was known to suffer from
Speaker 1: classical migraines, and that Carol W. Lippman and others have
Speaker 1: suggested that his migraine experiences UH may have contributed to
Speaker 1: the way he envisioned through the Looking Glass and Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland, like the skewing of time and space. Um.
Speaker 1: Also you have auditory hallucinations that are not uncommon in migraines,
Speaker 1: as well as old factory hallucinations. I've also seen descriptions
Speaker 1: of of uh, this lifting feeling, that, this feeling of
Speaker 1: being moved through space. Yeah, I guess the the extension
Speaker 1: of the lightheadedness that comes on with the aura and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah. Um. You know there's actually an asteroid
Speaker 1: named Bandersnatch. Oh. I didn't know this and I looked
Speaker 1: this up. Bander Snatch. It's a Main Belt asteroid, so
Speaker 1: it's out beyond the orbit of Mars. Discovered in nineteen
Speaker 1: by Japanese astronomers Takashi Urata and Yasuhiro Shimizu at the
Speaker 1: Nachi Katsura Observatory, and it was named, of course after
Speaker 1: the Fermius Bandersnatch. Awesome. Now, one of the this is
Speaker 1: just sort of the introductory material on The Bandersnatch, because
Speaker 1: for the vast majority of this episode we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about what, as I guess, the most recent
Speaker 1: uh cinematic in vocation of the Bandersnatch, and that is
Speaker 1: the Black Mirror episode. Oh, it's not even an episode.
Speaker 1: It's a Black Mirror film that came out on Netflix
Speaker 1: December of what was theeen, so a little over a
Speaker 1: year ago. Um and uh, and there's a lot to
Speaker 1: unpack here. Actually I didn't watch it until this week,
Speaker 1: so I knew you wanted to do an episode about it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, I'll finally see what all
Speaker 1: the fuss is about. I was very impressed. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: get I'll certainly get more into my my very thoughts
Speaker 1: on it later. I was impressed with it when it
Speaker 1: came out, and then since we were going to do
Speaker 1: the episode, I rewatched it for the first time since
Speaker 1: its original release earlier this week, and uh, and I
Speaker 1: have to say it, I thought it held up. I
Speaker 1: even got a different ending and a different dead end
Speaker 1: at one point than I had encountered previously. So it
Speaker 1: was it was like, why every time you watch a
Speaker 1: film that you like again you find new things, but
Speaker 1: in this case you can actually get a different ending. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to be exploring today some of the
Speaker 1: some of the science and the ideas and philosophy that
Speaker 1: are alluded to in bandersnatch Um. But in doing so,
Speaker 1: of course, this will involve some spoilers for this strange film.
Speaker 1: So I would say there are a couple of places
Speaker 1: we're not We're not gonna go through and explore every
Speaker 1: possible ending or anything like that. But if you are
Speaker 1: in the case where you haven't seen it yet and
Speaker 1: you don't want anything at all spoiled, you should probably
Speaker 1: stop here and go watch it first before you listen
Speaker 1: to the rest of the episode. But if you've already
Speaker 1: seen it, or you haven't seen it, and you don't
Speaker 1: care about minor spoilers that don't go all the way
Speaker 1: to all the endings, then you know, forge ahead with us. Please. However,
Speaker 1: some of you may be asking the question, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? What is black Mirror? Uh? So we
Speaker 1: should probably take a few minutes to just refresh you
Speaker 1: on what this is. It is a is the word refresh?
Speaker 1: Would that be the word? We should shock you to
Speaker 1: the bone Alright, So Black Mirror is in essence a
Speaker 1: sci fi anthology television series, uh, in the same vein
Speaker 1: as the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, Uh, these various
Speaker 1: shows we've discussed in the past. I might call it
Speaker 1: pretty often techno horror. Not every episode is the same,
Speaker 1: but there's essentially no horror movie as scary as the
Speaker 1: scariest episodes of Black Mirror, especially really the ones that
Speaker 1: manage to take fairly plausible technological scenarios and and follow
Speaker 1: them to their logical conclusions. I mean, it's, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a show that's very good at conjuring up the worst
Speaker 1: possible nightmares of like the intersection of uh, capitalism and technology. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: episodes tend to have a technological swing to the story,
Speaker 1: and they tend to deal on some level with with
Speaker 1: contemporary anxiety about current technology and emerging technology. What what
Speaker 1: what are these technologies doing to our lives? What may
Speaker 1: they do to our lives in the future? And you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they take varying speculative leaps there, of course, since
Speaker 1: it is science fiction. But you I would say, you
Speaker 1: typically leave an episode of Black Mirror, uh, feeling a
Speaker 1: little worse about the world. I know that Netflix, their
Speaker 1: current masters, are very into the whole binge model, but
Speaker 1: I personally find it very difficult to binge Black Mirror
Speaker 1: in part because each episode, of course, is a self
Speaker 1: contained story with it with its with with characters and
Speaker 1: a plot, etcetera. But then also it's like they're often
Speaker 1: like a punch in the gut, and I just can't
Speaker 1: just sit there and take one punch after the other.
Speaker 1: Apart from one very sweet, very nice episode, there's essentially
Speaker 1: nothing that makes me feel as bad as Black Mirror. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking. I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: because there are definitely some very bleak episode. They are
Speaker 1: episodes of Black Mirror that I I admire that I
Speaker 1: will never watch again. But but then I look back
Speaker 1: at my some of my favorite episodes. My favorite episodes
Speaker 1: are probably San Junipero, The U S. S. Calister, and
Speaker 1: metal Head. Two of those one of those is still
Speaker 1: pretty bleak, but two of two of those are actually
Speaker 1: pretty upbeat, probably the most upbeat episodes of the show.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And maybe that's the reason I would
Speaker 1: come back to them, because if I'm gonna double dip,
Speaker 1: I want to double dip for optimism sake. Now, in
Speaker 1: terms that we can't talk about Black Mirror without talking
Speaker 1: about the creator behind it, the main creative individual behind it,
Speaker 1: and that is Charlie Brooker, a British writer and humorist
Speaker 1: whom the earliest thing that he worked on that I
Speaker 1: was familiar with was that he worked on Chris Morris's
Speaker 1: excellent news satire brass Ie Um. And then he also
Speaker 1: created a pretty great zombie movie titled dead Set in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, in which the zombie apocalypse breaks out
Speaker 1: uh in and around a Big Brother style reality TV production.
Speaker 1: Feel like two thousand eight was sort of like maybe
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. Two thousand eight was like peak zombie
Speaker 1: satire movie. Yeah. And the thing about this one, though,
Speaker 1: the premise sounds like a comedy, and so I acquired
Speaker 1: a copy of it, thinking, oh, this is a comedy,
Speaker 1: and this is a guy that worked on brass Ie.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be hilarious. And it is not a
Speaker 1: straight up comedy. It is a pretty terrifying film. But
Speaker 1: you see shades of that in Black Mirror. Sometimes there
Speaker 1: is a premise that could sound like a joke, but
Speaker 1: then it is taken and considered with such intensity that
Speaker 1: it works. Yeah, what if like a major tech company
Speaker 1: used eye tracking software to make sure you were always
Speaker 1: watching their ads, and if you didn't watch them, they
Speaker 1: would ring sirens in your brain and deduct money from
Speaker 1: your bank account until you started watching the ads. Again,
Speaker 1: sounds like a joke, but like if you just said
Speaker 1: take that seriously for a bit, uh and explore it,
Speaker 1: that becomes like a nightmare of of of techno sci fi.
Speaker 1: Absolutely now. Black Mirror began in two seasons and a
Speaker 1: holiday special came out and ran on Channel four in
Speaker 1: the UK. Then Netflix started carrying it, and Netflix became
Speaker 1: the owner of the main publisher of the program. However
Speaker 1: you want to look at it starting with season three
Speaker 1: in October. Of all, in all, it is thus far
Speaker 1: gone five seasons, twenty one episodes, and that's not counting
Speaker 1: the film band or Snatch, which again came out in
Speaker 1: d Member. Of these bits of publisher information will actually
Speaker 1: become relevant later on as we discussed the story, because
Speaker 1: the ideas there, because at the end we definitely get
Speaker 1: into some citiz scenarios where we have to consider the
Speaker 1: fact that Netflix is the the business daddy behind the
Speaker 1: Black Mirror, so Bandersnatch, the film the Black Mirror film
Speaker 1: was actually directed by David Slade, who I was like,
Speaker 1: where do I know that name from. He's done several things,
Speaker 1: but one of them was he did one of the
Speaker 1: Twilight movies. Yes, and I've seen that, that particular one.
Speaker 1: It was the second one, I think, and it's that's
Speaker 1: a I'm not a huge Twilight fan, but that is
Speaker 1: a very watchable Twilight movie and has a great soundtrack.
Speaker 1: It's got Tommy York on it. Oh yeah. He also
Speaker 1: directed the Black Mirror episode metal Head that I alluded
Speaker 1: to earlier, and there are some callbacks to metal Head
Speaker 1: in the band or Snatch episode. Now, I guess one
Speaker 1: thing we haven't gotten fully into so far is the
Speaker 1: fact that the Black Mirror movie Bandersnatch is it's an
Speaker 1: interactive movie, which makes it very unique. Right. This was
Speaker 1: the big selling point on it and uh and and
Speaker 1: indeed is one of the I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: key part of the way you consume it, but it
Speaker 1: is also very important thematically, like you know, true to form.
Speaker 1: The creators here really thought long and hard about how
Speaker 1: to utilize um an interactive system uh within the work
Speaker 1: and make the work comment on that system as well.
Speaker 1: The interactive system being Netflix like the fact that the
Speaker 1: user can make inputs on the movie. Yeah, basically, that's
Speaker 1: what it will amounts to. Is you you start off
Speaker 1: watching it, it it seems like a normal Netflix presentation, but
Speaker 1: then you're in my case, my Xbox one controller would
Speaker 1: suddenly vibrate and then this little the screen at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the screen. You're suddenly presented with two choices
Speaker 1: and a timer and you have to choose, Uh, you
Speaker 1: know what is going to happen with the character is
Speaker 1: going to do, et cetera. Now, this is you know,
Speaker 1: when you're just watch checking out the film, you you
Speaker 1: might not realize how much work goes into this, but uh,
Speaker 1: it took apparently a huge amount of work to shoot
Speaker 1: all these various branching paths, because it becomes a you
Speaker 1: know this this this tree, this branching system of possibilities
Speaker 1: when you start presenting the user with these interactive choices.
Speaker 1: For instance, the previously the longest episode of Black Mirror
Speaker 1: was an episode called Hated in the Nation, which was
Speaker 1: eighty nine minutes long. That's that's future length, right, what
Speaker 1: ninety minutes is usually the length you shoot for with
Speaker 1: the film. Well, when you're watching Bandersnatch. Depending on your choices,
Speaker 1: the film can run anywhere between ninety minutes and two
Speaker 1: and a half hours. And in order to make this work,
Speaker 1: as pointed out by a Jackie Strauss in the Hollywood Reporter, uh,
Speaker 1: this means they had to shoot like five hours of
Speaker 1: footage so that they could actually cover all of these
Speaker 1: various choices. And you may watch it like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the first time I watched it, there were plenty of
Speaker 1: scenes I did not see, and then when I watched
Speaker 1: it again, there were films, there were scenes that I
Speaker 1: saw the first time that I did not see, and
Speaker 1: I got an entirely different ending that I never didn't
Speaker 1: even know about. And then there of course various Easter
Speaker 1: eggs and even I've read quote golden Easter eggs that
Speaker 1: are spread throughout, things that most viewers will not find
Speaker 1: unless they spend a great deal of time going through
Speaker 1: and going back through and backing up, etcetera. With this
Speaker 1: interactive piece encouraging unhealthy obsessive behavior exactly, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is black mirror. Now, as far as the choices
Speaker 1: as you make in the in band or snatch, um,
Speaker 1: you start off making very small choices. It seemed very consequential.
Speaker 1: For instance, choosing the main characters breakfast cereal. He's presented
Speaker 1: his father shows two boxes and you decide which one
Speaker 1: he's going to have for breakfast. Yeah. I think it
Speaker 1: was what like frosted flakes or sugar puffs or something.
Speaker 1: I remember what I realized after I made that choice
Speaker 1: was I was like, oh no, I think I chose
Speaker 1: the brand that I was more familiar with. Ah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll come back to that later. That that is an
Speaker 1: important point that will come back to later on in
Speaker 1: the episode. But but at first, it's it's what kind
Speaker 1: of serial does he want? All right? It doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to matter much, and and it also gives you
Speaker 1: a chance to try out the technology low stakes. But uh,
Speaker 1: and and then also later on you choose what music
Speaker 1: is going to listen to in uh when he's on
Speaker 1: the bus, which is kind of fun. I think you
Speaker 1: get to choose between a rhythmic song and something else.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the other one. I think it's Thompson Twins,
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, and and uh, and then later on
Speaker 1: he's in a record store and you get to choose
Speaker 1: which record he's gonna buy. And this is also pretty
Speaker 1: great because one of the choices is Tangerine Dreams excellent
Speaker 1: nine four album Phaedra, which is incredible, absolutely. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was listening to that again this morning while I
Speaker 1: was doing some prep for this episode. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: excellent stuff. How However, this time around, I forced myself
Speaker 1: to choose the other album instead, the other album being
Speaker 1: a Sao Tamita's The Bermuda Triangle, which very strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very strange work, but very very good. I was really
Speaker 1: not that familiar with with with this artist or this work,
Speaker 1: which is apparently kind of hard to come by and
Speaker 1: streaming unless you just find like a YouTube full album rip.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, this is just a taste of the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: The Bandersnatch has a wonderful soundtrack, including not only these
Speaker 1: artists but also Depeche Mode, Laurie Anderson. Great stuff. But
Speaker 1: let's come back to the choices you make in this
Speaker 1: interactive system. So again, they start off seeming largely inconsequential.
Speaker 1: They start off seeming a little bit fun, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just surface level stuff like what what's his breakfast cereal?
Speaker 1: What's his musical choice? But then they become increasingly high
Speaker 1: stakes and even nerve racking to decide on. Like suddenly
Speaker 1: you're when you're controller vibrates and you're presented with this choice,
Speaker 1: and sometimes, yeah, you feel this dread because sometimes the
Speaker 1: choice is neither one is all that great. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: choices are kind of horrible. And there's at least one
Speaker 1: point where you have no choice. There's there's something to select,
Speaker 1: but there's no alternative selection, and that feels maddening as well.
Speaker 1: And and you have a time or you have like
Speaker 1: what I think it's ten seconds to choose something, and
Speaker 1: if you don't choose, Netflix chooses for you. But Netflix
Speaker 1: reports of viewers actively made choices, uh when they watched
Speaker 1: band or Snatch. Now, in my experience, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: they chose for you at random. It was that whichever
Speaker 1: one of the two options was highlighted and it was
Speaker 1: like a you know, on off toggle, Like you couldn't
Speaker 1: select neither one. You were just selecting one or the
Speaker 1: other and then you could and you could go with
Speaker 1: it or you could not go with it, and whichever
Speaker 1: one you had highlighted would just proceed. Uh. So there's
Speaker 1: this kind of um uh, there's this horrible sense of
Speaker 1: like helplessness that that imposes on you as the viewer.
Speaker 1: I have not seen it. Sometimes I'll go into a
Speaker 1: restaurant or a bar and they'll have Netflix on playing
Speaker 1: some show. I've never seen them showing band or Snatch,
Speaker 1: probably for this reason, letting all the bar patrons vote
Speaker 1: to the side, oh yeah, or just going crazy like
Speaker 1: why is nobody clicking a button? Why is nobody interacting
Speaker 1: with this? Don't let don't let that choice go through.
Speaker 1: So eventually, as you, as you interact with Bandersnatch, a
Speaker 1: warping of time occurs. You find yourself coming back around
Speaker 1: to pass choices, like a wanderer lost in a maze.
Speaker 1: And of course, befitting of a maze, there is a
Speaker 1: sort of minotaur in all of this. There is the
Speaker 1: BANDERSNATCHA is it the Bandersnatch or is it the Demon Packs?
Speaker 1: It is the Demon Packs, yeah, but I also it
Speaker 1: is also the Bandersnatch. Like it's design. Its design is
Speaker 1: roughly based on that illustration of the Bandersnatch we talked about. Okay, cool, alright,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come
Speaker 1: back we will get into the themes of Bandersnatch and
Speaker 1: into the nature of of choice and free will. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So there are a lot of interesting ideas,
Speaker 1: cool themes, historical tidbits that are thrown together, we'll not
Speaker 1: throw in together, stitched together, reassembled in band or Snatch. Uh,
Speaker 1: that that give it its unique feel. Here's just a
Speaker 1: list of some of the things. First of all, video
Speaker 1: game design circa four because that is the setting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes place in the eighties with eighties music, eighties
Speaker 1: fashion and all that stuff. But they're also programming you know,
Speaker 1: old school adventure games for like the Commodore sixty four
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah. Another huge part of it aren't choose
Speaker 1: your own adventure books? Um, which are you know, directly referenced.
Speaker 1: And then there is a book within band or Snatch
Speaker 1: titled bander Snatch that is this enormous tone that we're
Speaker 1: told is essentially a choose your own adventure type scenario. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you have any fond memories of choosehown adventure books? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with them. I loved them when I
Speaker 1: was in elementary school, and I would love them despite
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, you die in most of
Speaker 1: the endings like it imposes a kind of horrible paranoid
Speaker 1: fatalism on a shot. I think, where you know, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a book about exploring the Arctic, but almost
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, you get eaten by a
Speaker 1: polar bear or fall beneath the ice and you can't
Speaker 1: get out. Um. I guess my young brain was drawn
Speaker 1: to that kind of thing though, you know, I had
Speaker 1: that like morbid obsession with peril and danger and death
Speaker 1: and all that. But also I'm curious what is so
Speaker 1: appealing about the choose your own adventure books, Because one
Speaker 1: thing we should say is that this is not the
Speaker 1: first interactive film Bandersnatch, and previous attempts at interactive films
Speaker 1: have generally been very unpopular. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: times people don't actually enjoy the experience of choosing the
Speaker 1: outcome of a film, and I think there are reasons
Speaker 1: for that. I mean, for one thing, it's just like
Speaker 1: hard to make a story where like multiple, like so
Speaker 1: many different options of how the story could go would
Speaker 1: all be equally satisfying. I mean, there's a reason that
Speaker 1: an author writes a story a certain way, like, for
Speaker 1: for instance, one film that we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before William Assole's Mr. Sardonicus from nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: was presented. Was marketed as having an interactive element in
Speaker 1: that at the end of this you got to choose
Speaker 1: the fate for the villain. Would it be, you know,
Speaker 1: justice or mercy? And the thing is, audiences never chose
Speaker 1: mercy for this horrible villain. Of course, they always chose justice,
Speaker 1: and so there were even accusations that they never even
Speaker 1: shot the alternate version, like there was the the the
Speaker 1: idea that it was interactive was just you know, the
Speaker 1: pitch was just the marketing, but there was no actual
Speaker 1: interactive element. William Castle, I think, claimed otherwise, saying yes
Speaker 1: they did shoot the sequence. I do not know personally
Speaker 1: if if that's true or not, if if this footage
Speaker 1: has ever materialized, But what I did did read was
Speaker 1: that generally people point to nineteen sixty seven's uh Keno
Speaker 1: Automat as the first truly interactive film, but even that,
Speaker 1: I think there are only like four choices that could
Speaker 1: be made, and this ELM was also I think largely comedic. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I would say that there are many reasons
Speaker 1: why this format doesn't always work for some reason, it
Speaker 1: worked for me as a kid with the Choose your
Speaker 1: Own Adventure books. I loved those. But I mean, one
Speaker 1: problem I think is that it's hard to make all
Speaker 1: the narrative branches as good as each other. But another
Speaker 1: one is just that like, for instance, when you finish it,
Speaker 1: there's not I don't think there was ever a sense
Speaker 1: where I'm like, Okay, that's the ending I got. No,
Speaker 1: I want the good ending all. I want the robust
Speaker 1: ending you go back and do it again. It's more
Speaker 1: like a video game, so I don't want the ending
Speaker 1: where I randomly die. Like the story of Super Mario
Speaker 1: is not that he's killed by a mutant turtle, uh
Speaker 1: three minutes into the game, you know, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's not an epic tale. So in some ways, I
Speaker 1: think the Choose your Own Adventure books are sometimes better
Speaker 1: thought of as like a puzzle to solve than as
Speaker 1: like a narrative to be experienced. And another big difference
Speaker 1: I will say is that one of the great pleasures
Speaker 1: of watching a movie or reading a book, or you know,
Speaker 1: engaging in any kind of narrative with an author, storyteller,
Speaker 1: and you as the passive audience is a surrendering of
Speaker 1: responsibility for what is about to happen in your own mind.
Speaker 1: You you give up that responsibility and suddenly you know
Speaker 1: when when bad things continue to happen in the story,
Speaker 1: when characters make disastrous decisions that unfold and increase the
Speaker 1: peril and heighten the drama, you're not responsible for what's happening.
Speaker 1: You're just witnessing it. And that you know that witnessing
Speaker 1: is very fun. Is peeking through a hole in the
Speaker 1: wall and what's happening to somebody else When they make
Speaker 1: you make decisions, it introduces this horrible tension between what
Speaker 1: you want to see versus what you think you should do.
Speaker 1: You know, like, uh that, I think there's this tension whenever.
Speaker 1: A great example would be in Bandersnatch, I often felt,
Speaker 1: in a bizarre way morally compelled to make the tame
Speaker 1: or safer options, where at the same time I felt
Speaker 1: more interested in seeing the more kind of like dangerous
Speaker 1: disastrous options play out. Yeah, this was This was definitely
Speaker 1: my experience with my first viewing a band or Snatches
Speaker 1: that you know, when the when the decisions start start
Speaker 1: hitting you, like later on they become like this horrible
Speaker 1: choice or this horrible choice and becomes harder to play
Speaker 1: this game. But earlier on, there are moments where you're like,
Speaker 1: are you going to do the sensible thing or the
Speaker 1: more rebellious thing, or even the more dangerous thing. And
Speaker 1: I found myself choosing the safer thing. Like like minor
Speaker 1: spoiler here, but he is he's offered the choice between
Speaker 1: producing his dream game with this company at their offices,
Speaker 1: with their support, or or saying no to them. And
Speaker 1: so like the responsible part of me is like, yes,
Speaker 1: say yes to the this is employment, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be good for you. Like, clearly you're you're stuck in
Speaker 1: a weird situation at home. You need to get out
Speaker 1: of the house, protagonists and uh, and so that's the
Speaker 1: way I went. But it's ultimately not the best choice,
Speaker 1: and it kind of dead ends if you take that choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it almost kind of gives you a little slap on
Speaker 1: the wrist for making that choice, you know. So he
Speaker 1: So I don't want to spoil anything, but yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's like a slight shaming of the viewer for
Speaker 1: choosing the safe option. And this is very early on,
Speaker 1: so we're not really spoiling anything. Think nature. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I would do that a lot. I would say I
Speaker 1: would make safe choices, And in fact it ultimately ended
Speaker 1: up reminding me a little bit of the Space and
Speaker 1: Guild and Dune, who of course used the spice to
Speaker 1: see into the future to figure out how to navigate
Speaker 1: the dangers of space, which is helpful if you're navigating
Speaker 1: the dangers of space. But in in life and in
Speaker 1: politics and all these other choices, it's this road to
Speaker 1: stagnation for the Space and Guild because they always make
Speaker 1: the safe choice. And when we look at the narratives
Speaker 1: that we love generally, they're not about people making the
Speaker 1: safe choice after safe choice after safe choice. They're about
Speaker 1: people flying off the handles or making huge mistakes and
Speaker 1: having to deal with those. And so there is I
Speaker 1: think there's a learning curve there with Under Snatch, and
Speaker 1: and so my second viewing of it, I tried to
Speaker 1: do more of that. I tried to make choices that
Speaker 1: I felt were interesting or um or more dramatic, and
Speaker 1: that seemed to work really well, and I feel like
Speaker 1: the product rewards you for doing that. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: think that tension is definitely there with the movies, and
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's more the case in a movie
Speaker 1: than in a book, just because a movie is more
Speaker 1: sensorly visceral. The fact that you know that it's actually
Speaker 1: visually presented to you in video and audio makes it
Speaker 1: harder to just pursue, you know, your sort of lust
Speaker 1: for drama and and and weirdness and whatever it is
Speaker 1: you want to see. Um as opposed to making the
Speaker 1: safer choices. I don't recall feeling compelled to make the
Speaker 1: safer choice the same way with Choose your Own Adventure books,
Speaker 1: and that that could just be because of like the
Speaker 1: lower sensory salience of of books compared to movies. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Yeah maybe so um. I finally finally remember
Speaker 1: the Choose Your Adventure books as well, in part because
Speaker 1: they have them at the library and I could check
Speaker 1: them out. Um. But also another series that I finally remember,
Speaker 1: the Lone Wolf series. Were you familiar with these? So
Speaker 1: these there, there's a series of these. The first one
Speaker 1: was by Joe Deaver and Gary Chalk, And this is,
Speaker 1: uh there like a Choose your Own Adventure series very
Speaker 1: much fantasy Dungeon and dragon style high fantasy, but there's
Speaker 1: more of a role playing element to it. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: when you open the book, it has not only a
Speaker 1: map of the adventuring world you're taking a part of,
Speaker 1: but there's also an action chart and a combat record
Speaker 1: because you're gonna end up having to pencil in your
Speaker 1: stats as you go through the story, picking spells and
Speaker 1: so forth. It's more like a one player dn D module. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: It's like imagine, it's like a a Choose your Own
Speaker 1: Adventure book and a one player dn D module come
Speaker 1: together into this one little tone. So I finally remember
Speaker 1: are those And I might be misremembering here, but I
Speaker 1: think I did get turned off later on when I
Speaker 1: reached an artificial dead end in one of them, like
Speaker 1: there was something broken and I couldn't go back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh again, I'm my memory may not be perfect
Speaker 1: on that. If you're at all interested in this format,
Speaker 1: I do highly recommend picking up one of these old,
Speaker 1: fabulous use copies of the Loving Wolf series, and I
Speaker 1: think they've republished them again with new artwork, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. The classic artwork is exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I love. The Choose your Adventure book that I
Speaker 1: brought in today for for you to look at Robert
Speaker 1: is called You Are a Shark by Edward Packard. It
Speaker 1: has a kid turning into a shark. He's like mid
Speaker 1: animorph sequence, oh man, but he also looks like he's
Speaker 1: slipping sliding as he turns into a shark. It's very good.
Speaker 1: That's pretty brilliant to like channeling something that children, especially
Speaker 1: at that time, would have been familiar, would have likely done,
Speaker 1: and giving this fantastic spin on it. But it's The
Speaker 1: story is essentially the fingle doppling scene from Overdrawn at
Speaker 1: the Memory Bank where he just gets transformed into various
Speaker 1: different animals. Do you you know you get turned into
Speaker 1: an elephant or a seagull or of course a shark.
Speaker 1: I think I recall one death where you get turned
Speaker 1: into a squid and you're being chased by something maybe
Speaker 1: it is a shark, and you run out of ink
Speaker 1: to to disguise yourself with and you're doomed. All right. Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: coming back to bandersnatch, we mentioned the video game aspect
Speaker 1: Choose your Own Adventure books. There are another number of
Speaker 1: other elements and homages in there as well. Uh. It
Speaker 1: deals with mental illness, It deals with l s. D uh.
Speaker 1: Their allusions to Philip K. Dick. Uh. There there's mention
Speaker 1: of alternate timelines, and of course it spends a lot
Speaker 1: of time contemplating this idea of a free will and
Speaker 1: the potential illusion of choice. Yeah. I think that's the
Speaker 1: main theme of it, is is interrogating the idea of
Speaker 1: what it means to be in control of one's own actions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the basic plot is as follows. A young programmer
Speaker 1: named Stephen Butler is obsessed with a choose your own
Speaker 1: adventure style book titled Bander Snatch that was written by
Speaker 1: a the late troubled writer Jerome F. Davies, and he
Speaker 1: really wants to turn this into a computer adventure game,
Speaker 1: and he's begun work on it on his own. So
Speaker 1: he ends up falling in with this video game company
Speaker 1: called Tucker Soft and meets its lead creative, uh, this
Speaker 1: programmer named Colin Rittman. And from there it departs through
Speaker 1: these varying winding paths, reality warping, through madness and sometimes horror. Uh.
Speaker 1: And through all of it there's also this side of
Speaker 1: this feeling that there is a minotaur like monster pursuing you,
Speaker 1: pursuing our our protagonist as well. And this is the Bandersnatch,
Speaker 1: but more specifically, it is titled Packs. Its name is Packs,
Speaker 1: and it is We're told it's the Thief of Destiny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great moment where the game appears to give
Speaker 1: you an option to either deny worshiping packs or submit
Speaker 1: to worshiping packs. Oh yes, this is the game within
Speaker 1: a game. It made me want to play the game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looked really cool. So something that made Bandersnatch different
Speaker 1: from most of the choose your own adventure books that
Speaker 1: I remember reading. I'm I'm sure there are probably exceptions,
Speaker 1: but in the classic books I remember reading, the story
Speaker 1: is written in the second person. The protagonist is an
Speaker 1: unnamed you. You know. You go down the left hall,
Speaker 1: you get eaten by a swarm of Ferrell pigs. You
Speaker 1: go down the right hall, you get turned into a
Speaker 1: bowl of ice cream by magic pirate. You know that you.
Speaker 1: You explore all the different dooms on offer to you,
Speaker 1: but it's you. Yeah. Likewise, in the Lone Wolf books,
Speaker 1: as I recall you, you kind of make choices regarding
Speaker 1: how this characters put together. You have a fair amount
Speaker 1: of control. It is your character, but Bandersnatch challenges this
Speaker 1: formula a little bit. By making the protagonist a third
Speaker 1: person character with a name and pre existing individualized circumstances.
Speaker 1: You've got Stefan right. But then this is where it's
Speaker 1: starts getting even weirder. So not only is it this
Speaker 1: definite third person character with their own characteristics and not
Speaker 1: just a second person protagonist. There are moments where the
Speaker 1: options are you choose, not what Stephen does. That's how
Speaker 1: it mostly is. You know what does Stefon pick? You
Speaker 1: know what? What? What does he listened to? What does
Speaker 1: he answer to somebody who poses a question to him?
Speaker 1: It then changes and gives you the option to dictate
Speaker 1: what happens to him from the outside. The specific example
Speaker 1: I recall is what messages he believes he is receiving
Speaker 1: on his computer screen. Now, of course, if you go
Speaker 1: with the most straightforward interpretation of the story, which is
Speaker 1: that Stephan is experiencing symptoms of psychosis in a way,
Speaker 1: you're still dictating the activity of his brain, but activities
Speaker 1: of his brain that he as a character does not
Speaker 1: perceive as coming from himself, their hallucinations that he believes
Speaker 1: to be coming from the outside. And you know, this
Speaker 1: makes me wonder about the framing of how we should
Speaker 1: think about hallucinations that are generated internally by the brain
Speaker 1: but perceived to come from an external source. Are those
Speaker 1: hallucinations best understood as you or not? Um? Are Are
Speaker 1: there processes within your own brain that are, in some
Speaker 1: legitimate sense not you, even though they are your brain,
Speaker 1: they're not anybody else. Yeah, it's it's not really the
Speaker 1: voice of God. It is the it is. It is
Speaker 1: something coming from inside your brain that you are perhaps
Speaker 1: imagining or or interpreting as the voice of God. But
Speaker 1: is you more synonymous with your whole brain and everything
Speaker 1: it does, or is you more synonymous with the part
Speaker 1: of your brain that you identify as yourself. That's going
Speaker 1: to be very key to some interpretations of the basic
Speaker 1: theme explored in Bandersnatch right, And they do explore this
Speaker 1: theme amazingly well. I felt the second time I watched it,
Speaker 1: I found all these additional layers. Um. You know again,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm tempted to make the best choices for
Speaker 1: a protagonist, or at least there's still that inclination that
Speaker 1: I want to do that. And at one point there's
Speaker 1: this song playing with the lyrics doing what's best for
Speaker 1: Nigel and it's all and uh stc or I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think so. Yes, I was not familiar with that
Speaker 1: group or that this song before, but yeah, it's playing.
Speaker 1: And the whole scene is about like how his father
Speaker 1: is making choices for him, or other times it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's the therapies therapist that is giving him advice about
Speaker 1: how to how to make choices in his life. And
Speaker 1: so you have all these forces that that help him
Speaker 1: make his choices or make choices for him. And then
Speaker 1: that's also what we are doing as we interact with
Speaker 1: the product. Well, yes, and in a weird way, it
Speaker 1: kind of brings you back around to to this question
Speaker 1: of wait a minute, is he is he a third
Speaker 1: person narrator or are you supposed to identify as him?
Speaker 1: So when these choices are are in some cases things
Speaker 1: coming to him apparently from the outside, you know, they
Speaker 1: might be messages he's receiving from some kind of otherworldly
Speaker 1: source or hallucinations. Um, are you still making choices for
Speaker 1: him or not? Uh? And it leads back into this
Speaker 1: theme of whether or not you are really in control
Speaker 1: of your own actions and what does it mean to
Speaker 1: be in control of your own actions. Uh, and this
Speaker 1: we come to the subject of free will, which is
Speaker 1: a huge topic that we return to time and time
Speaker 1: again on stuff to blow your mind. And we're not
Speaker 1: going to try to encapsulate everything about that here. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked about in the past, we're talking
Speaker 1: about it today, We're going to talk about it in
Speaker 1: the future. But it suffice to say philosophies, very scientific
Speaker 1: interpretations vary, and then it drags in additional drags in
Speaker 1: just about everything about the human condition, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: moral responsibility, theological quandaries, etcetera. Yeah, I mean it's a
Speaker 1: problem that it is such a huge topic and that
Speaker 1: almost all discussions about free will that I encounter in
Speaker 1: the wild are an absolute mess. And this isn't my
Speaker 1: personal take. I notice, do you ever notice conversations about
Speaker 1: free will almost never seemed to clarify anything. They almost
Speaker 1: never seemed to provide any more focus or clarity than
Speaker 1: you had to begin with. Yeah, Like sometimes it's it's
Speaker 1: at times it feels like having a conversation with somebody
Speaker 1: in a in a swimming pool about whether water is wet,
Speaker 1: because it does get down to like, like it seems
Speaker 1: wet to me. I am in it. It seems like
Speaker 1: free will to me because I am immersed in it,
Speaker 1: and it's difficult for me to remove myself from the
Speaker 1: experience that I'm having and and all of and everything
Speaker 1: in my life that supports everything in the culture at large,
Speaker 1: that supports the idea that I am making choices and
Speaker 1: form choices about my life. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: some dilemmas having to do with free will or or
Speaker 1: like they force you to choose between two options that
Speaker 1: are both tautologies or both absurdities. And and any time
Speaker 1: you encounter a problem like that, I think there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance that the underlying disease caused that is
Speaker 1: poorly defined terms, right, yeah, and yeah, to your point,
Speaker 1: the extreme versions of this are are to tend to
Speaker 1: come off as kind of luney, like if someone is
Speaker 1: just like I am a completely free moving soul, like no,
Speaker 1: you're not dummy. Uh. You know, It's like when we
Speaker 1: discussed in the in the Thankfulness episode that we put out,
Speaker 1: you know, like everybody's life is shaped by these other factors,
Speaker 1: these other individuals in their life to some extent, and
Speaker 1: I feel like to argue against that is just lunacy.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if someone is saying I am
Speaker 1: a just a pure automaton, I mean there, you can
Speaker 1: back that argument up with some very intriguing arguments, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of those. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, does that match up with your experience
Speaker 1: of reality? I totally agree, But I think even talking
Speaker 1: about it at that level, that's already like a level up,
Speaker 1: like having accepted some terms as unproblematic more than I
Speaker 1: think they should be. So like anyway, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the main problem with free will is people aren't
Speaker 1: being clear what they're talking about before they start talking.
Speaker 1: And I'm totally guilty of this as well. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is usually the case when it comes to free will,
Speaker 1: and this happens even when we're not aware that we're
Speaker 1: being unclear. So we can't do it full justice. In
Speaker 1: the short segment, I think we will try to do
Speaker 1: better than an absolute mess. Uh. So, so to try
Speaker 1: to understand what our terms actually mean. What is free will?
Speaker 1: A common understanding is I am in control of my
Speaker 1: own actions, and I think most of the time for
Speaker 1: most people this feels true. Uh, though curiously, of course,
Speaker 1: not all of the time, and not for all people.
Speaker 1: We can come back to that, But I would argue
Speaker 1: that it only feels true in a general way, and
Speaker 1: it gets stickier and THORNI or the more you try
Speaker 1: to think about it, and the more precisely you try
Speaker 1: to deform define those terms. So, if I'm in control
Speaker 1: of my own actions, who is I? Uh? We brought
Speaker 1: this up a minute ago. Is I my whole brain? Uh?
Speaker 1: And also I think there's a good case to be
Speaker 1: made that other parts of your body gets some kind
Speaker 1: of vote in your decision? May king? So is it
Speaker 1: my whole body? Is it everything with my genome? Even then,
Speaker 1: I would say your microbiota sort of gets a vote.
Speaker 1: I think that there are questions about what the eye is.
Speaker 1: But then also what counts as control? If I am
Speaker 1: in control of my own actions, does it mean that
Speaker 1: that I make my decisions with no outside influences? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's obviously not true, as you were alluding to a
Speaker 1: minute ago. But once you accept that outside factors have
Speaker 1: some influence over whatever it is you're talking about controlling,
Speaker 1: what's to stop you from assuming that they have total influence?
Speaker 1: I mean, what part of your decision making is not
Speaker 1: influenced by pre existing factors like your memory and your
Speaker 1: physical circumstances and so forth, like what part of you
Speaker 1: can you identify that stands outside of the world. And
Speaker 1: then from the other end, paradoxically, if you were to
Speaker 1: suddenly act in a way that made no sense given
Speaker 1: your own history and memory and all of the inputs
Speaker 1: coming in that you think of as influences on you,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that action actually feel less like something that comes
Speaker 1: genuinely from you, whatever you are. Wouldn't by this metric,
Speaker 1: the most objectively free action seem like something coming from
Speaker 1: the outside. You mean, like if you go to go
Speaker 1: to a restaurant where there's, say there's a drink menu,
Speaker 1: and you always tend to order something that is made
Speaker 1: with a base of say rum or bourbon or whiskey,
Speaker 1: and instead you throw caution to the wind one day
Speaker 1: and you get a mess coal or a vodka drink.
Speaker 1: Does that actually make you feel more free or does
Speaker 1: it seem like something you know, something got into you.
Speaker 1: Where does that phrase come from? I don't know. When
Speaker 1: I do things like that, I think it does make
Speaker 1: me feel more free, because I'm like, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be the same person I've been every time.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try a different direction, you know I'm going
Speaker 1: to I'm going to get a different type of drink,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try a different type of food, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: walk a different way to the train station, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say that this just highlights that
Speaker 1: neither branch either acting in character where your character has
Speaker 1: been shaped by everything that ever happened to you, nor
Speaker 1: by acting out of character where you know something got
Speaker 1: into you. Neither way really cites the origin of decisions
Speaker 1: or the origin of actions in something that's out without
Speaker 1: outside influence. So a lot of the arguments about whether
Speaker 1: we have free will actually seem to me to reduce
Speaker 1: to the question of whether we feel we have free will.
Speaker 1: But what would it actually mean to settle the question
Speaker 1: of whether we are like physically objectively free? Uh So,
Speaker 1: maybe we should look at like a more thought out
Speaker 1: dictionary definition. So one that I found is quote the
Speaker 1: power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate
Speaker 1: or fate. Now that that brings me back to the
Speaker 1: demon packs the thief of Destiny, I find myself. I
Speaker 1: found myself with the second viewing of band or Snatch,
Speaker 1: returning to that title and trying to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what it means. Because destiny, on one hand means like
Speaker 1: the you're predestined, right, There is a destiny in place
Speaker 1: for you, and you perhaps don't have any real control.
Speaker 1: It is the thing that the gods have laid out
Speaker 1: for you. That's like one way of looking at But
Speaker 1: another way of looking at destiny is that destiny is
Speaker 1: the thing you aspire to. Like you choose your own destiny,
Speaker 1: you choose your own adventure. Right. Uh So, which which
Speaker 1: of the two is the demon pack stealing from you?
Speaker 1: Is he stealing from you the power to make your
Speaker 1: own decisions? Or is he stealing from you a predestined path?
Speaker 1: Is he liberating you from this from the same tired
Speaker 1: walk to the train station and the same tired choices
Speaker 1: on the menu? Well, the funny thing about to choose
Speaker 1: your own adventure is that even though you are making
Speaker 1: the choices on each page about which page to turn
Speaker 1: to next, somebody else wrote the whole thing. That's true,
Speaker 1: and I mean to a certain extent, like you can
Speaker 1: you can apply that to life, like as rebellious as
Speaker 1: you might seem, ordering something else on the menu that
Speaker 1: you normally don't get it's still on the menu. And
Speaker 1: other things in life are like that too, Like you were,
Speaker 1: largely you are constrained by the possibilities of your culture,
Speaker 1: of your station in life, of you know, political realities, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But even then, is the unpredictability of a behavior at
Speaker 1: all evidence of your control or your personal volition of
Speaker 1: that behavior. I don't know. I mean that those things
Speaker 1: seem perhaps unrelated to me. Actually, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: can also be predictably unpredictable. Yeah, um. But anyway, coming
Speaker 1: back to this definition, the one that's you know, acting
Speaker 1: without constraint of necessity or fate. So I think it
Speaker 1: can be hard to pin this down to a concrete claim,
Speaker 1: but I think what it comes closest to is saying
Speaker 1: that for any given action or moment in my life history,
Speaker 1: anything I do or think or say, given the exact
Speaker 1: same inputs, I could have produced different output than I
Speaker 1: actually did. Um. And this this would be I think,
Speaker 1: some way of making free will a kind of like
Speaker 1: a physical proposition. Right, If exactly the same inputs went
Speaker 1: into you, everything was exactly the same, you could have
Speaker 1: done something different than what you did. Unfortunately, I think
Speaker 1: this is just a completely untestable assumption. You know, given
Speaker 1: the complexity of brains, you can never have all of
Speaker 1: exactly the same inputs that somebody had at a given moment,
Speaker 1: So you can't experiment on this to find out what's true.
Speaker 1: That we certainly love ruminating on this in our fiction.
Speaker 1: Like any kind of time travel film, any kind of
Speaker 1: Groundhog Day scenario is exploring this subject. Yeah. Though, even
Speaker 1: with most of those time travel things where people want
Speaker 1: to go back and relive it, what they actually are
Speaker 1: imagining is they want to go back and relive a
Speaker 1: moment with the wisdom and knowledge that they have now
Speaker 1: that they didn't have them. So it would be funny
Speaker 1: to just like replay the same instance over and over
Speaker 1: again with exactly the same physics involved and see if
Speaker 1: anything different happens, without having any new knowledge or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But even then, I mean imagine maybe you could do
Speaker 1: that somehow, you know, you could just watch the same
Speaker 1: period of time play out over and over again and
Speaker 1: see if anything different happens. Even if it were true
Speaker 1: that you could have produced different outputs given the exact
Speaker 1: same inputs, would this really mean you were free? Would
Speaker 1: this be what people mean when they see free will,
Speaker 1: like they're in control of their own actions. You know,
Speaker 1: imagine there's some random dice rolling machine inside your head,
Speaker 1: or a ghost or a spirit in your brain which
Speaker 1: pushes you in different directions, even if every single iota
Speaker 1: of input is the same. Is that actually freedom? That
Speaker 1: just sounds like a different kind of impetus or control.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. You bring up randomization via some sort of
Speaker 1: technology like dice or casting of bones, because we've we've
Speaker 1: discussed that in the past on the show. How that
Speaker 1: is sometimes brought up as being like that that like,
Speaker 1: that's the purpose of these early divination um uh technologies,
Speaker 1: techniques a way to randomize chill and to sometimes force
Speaker 1: us towards a decision that we otherwise otherwise wouldn't make,
Speaker 1: like in a way to free us from these predestined
Speaker 1: paths that are before us, or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: lean us over towards a different path that we would
Speaker 1: that is available but we normally wouldn't go for. Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny, I mean either way you go there, So yeah,
Speaker 1: say you're doing the each ing or throwing bones, does
Speaker 1: either or not doing that either way is one making
Speaker 1: you more The author of your own destiny than another.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I mean, they have differences in outcomes,
Speaker 1: But does that actually change what people mean when they
Speaker 1: say when they say free will? I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you randomize your choices, you are the one
Speaker 1: that will then enact that choice, Like you're still the
Speaker 1: actor in your narrative and the randomization is still an
Speaker 1: input on you. Um So I don't know. So uh,
Speaker 1: anyway to to sort of sum it all up, I've
Speaker 1: got a theory here, and it is that I think
Speaker 1: what a lot of us are actually circling around when
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out how to articulate our concept
Speaker 1: of free will is this claim. And the claim is
Speaker 1: our consciousness dictates our choices of how we act, or
Speaker 1: in other words, we're conscious of the process by which
Speaker 1: our choices are made or by which our actions are generated.
Speaker 1: Right that that when we act, we are able to
Speaker 1: consciously be a part of the impetus to act, or
Speaker 1: consciously cause the impetus to act. And I think this
Speaker 1: one is actually testable, and we can come back to
Speaker 1: that in a minute. So this is, of course, this
Speaker 1: is one of the big riddles of the human experience.
Speaker 1: And so people have been thinking about this and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially banging their head against the wall about this. Uh,
Speaker 1: for the thousands of years. The philosophers Democratus and Lucippus
Speaker 1: saw the universe as wholly governed by natural laws and
Speaker 1: composed of you know, essentially indivisible atoms. They took the
Speaker 1: determinus view of life of one propelled down a flowing
Speaker 1: stream of events. Aristotle, on the other hand, is a
Speaker 1: great example of someone who stressed the individual's responsibility for
Speaker 1: their actions. The indeterminates view of life is a boat
Speaker 1: propelling itself through a body of water. So, yeah, to
Speaker 1: what extent are you just sailing down the river? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, at you know, with with no power on
Speaker 1: where you're going, Or are you in a boat that
Speaker 1: have in which you have the power to move about
Speaker 1: and even move upstream if you need to. On that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take one quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will start rolling through some arguments for
Speaker 1: and against free will, and then we will return to
Speaker 1: band or snatch. Alright, we're back, So let's start with
Speaker 1: some arguments against free will, because ultimately I think these
Speaker 1: are these are often easier to discuss Sure, I would
Speaker 1: say the most basic one, right, is just the science
Speaker 1: of physics. Right. Physics is very predictable. You can, you know,
Speaker 1: given given the inputs of forces and energy and all that,
Speaker 1: you can determine what's going to happen as an output
Speaker 1: of that action. And if we assume that applies to everything,
Speaker 1: then why doesn't it apply to us? Right? And it
Speaker 1: basically comes back to a democritus and lucippus, right, the
Speaker 1: the idea that their natural laws and they they are
Speaker 1: in place, and we're not above those laws. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're acting on the inputs that come in and
Speaker 1: you know that that uh, being being pushed in one
Speaker 1: way or another by our life history and our brains
Speaker 1: and all that we're going to act a certain way
Speaker 1: as physically reactive objects. Uh. Now, this is an argument,
Speaker 1: of course, is the most common argument I think against
Speaker 1: free will. But one question, is our free will and
Speaker 1: causal determinism really incompatible? Uh? Not that it settles the issue,
Speaker 1: but I think the majority of philosophers who look at
Speaker 1: this issue pretty closely actually end up becoming what are
Speaker 1: called compatible lists. They they accept causal determinism, they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we're physical objects being pushed around by physical forces.
Speaker 1: But they define free will in some way that it
Speaker 1: is compatible with that that you are a physical object
Speaker 1: being pushed around by physical forces, and the whole history
Speaker 1: of your life and everything, and yet somehow free will
Speaker 1: still applies to you. This often comes down to like
Speaker 1: an understanding or feeling of free will, like I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, like even if your actions are causally determined,
Speaker 1: somehow you feel like you have agency. And that's what
Speaker 1: we mean by free will, right right. Another take on
Speaker 1: this that I came across, and this goes back to
Speaker 1: something we're talking about earlier, contemporary British analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. Uh.
Speaker 1: Their argument is that it's that basically free will is
Speaker 1: impossible because we act the way we are right. And
Speaker 1: this argument, this argument always makes me think of of
Speaker 1: Yates in the poem No Second Troy. There's that line
Speaker 1: what what could she have done? Being what she is? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I think about that with myself, like what when
Speaker 1: I look back on past choices, what else could I
Speaker 1: have done? And being who I am? You know, without
Speaker 1: the you know, some sort of sci fi foresight brought
Speaker 1: on by time travel or groundhog day shenanigans, like I
Speaker 1: am who I am, I am influenced by all these
Speaker 1: these things in my life, and my mind is this,
Speaker 1: and then what other choice would that mind have made? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is Uh, that's a very good way
Speaker 1: of putting it, and it almost like it maybe emphasizes
Speaker 1: the fact that free will is a difficult concept because
Speaker 1: of some of the baggage brought by the word free. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to act in accordance with your nature and your circumstances
Speaker 1: is not necessarily not free, right, Like it was in
Speaker 1: my nature too responsibly come to work this morning, and
Speaker 1: so therefore I did. Uh. Could I have decided not
Speaker 1: to come into work? Could I have gone to the
Speaker 1: local I don't know, arcade or something or whatever whatever
Speaker 1: whatever one does when one skip squirk, I guess I
Speaker 1: could have. In theory, there's nothing stopping you. Yeah, nothing
Speaker 1: at all, except that is not my nature, and that
Speaker 1: is not what I did. Because of my nature. Given
Speaker 1: the circumstances of who you are and who you were
Speaker 1: this morning and what was going on this morning, you
Speaker 1: didn't do it. And that's all we know is that
Speaker 1: you know you acted the way you were at that time,
Speaker 1: because that's who you were at that time. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: that being said, yes, events could have been different. We
Speaker 1: could have had an email from our boss saying that
Speaker 1: there is going to be like a rock concert in
Speaker 1: the that's in the office today. This would never happen,
Speaker 1: and it might make me think, well, maybe I don't
Speaker 1: want to come into work today, and maybe the easiest
Speaker 1: thing to do would be just to skip. I don't know. Again,
Speaker 1: you can tease your brain all day thinking about what
Speaker 1: elf and how this would have this little detail where
Speaker 1: this other detail would affected your choices, but ultimately we
Speaker 1: only have the version of the path behind us to
Speaker 1: look back on when we we think about all of this. Now,
Speaker 1: two other basic arguments against free will. This is when
Speaker 1: I think we'll come back to Experimentation has pointed it
Speaker 1: to break downs between what feels like the moment of
Speaker 1: choice and what physically signals a choice being made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this very much complicates the idea that Again,
Speaker 1: what I think people are actually really getting at with
Speaker 1: their idea of free will is that they have conscious
Speaker 1: control over their actions and thoughts. And another one, and
Speaker 1: this is again we've been touching on this the whole
Speaker 1: episode but myriad causal influences at least guide our decisions,
Speaker 1: if not make them for us hard to deny. All right,
Speaker 1: So here are some some arguments for free will. The
Speaker 1: big one, of course, is that subjectively, we tend to
Speaker 1: feel like we have rational, reflective control over our choices
Speaker 1: and actions. Sure, I mean, I can decide to do
Speaker 1: anything that occurs to me to do right now. You know,
Speaker 1: I could throw my computer across the room if I
Speaker 1: really wanted to. Yeah, And men and the idea that
Speaker 1: the way that there are brains enable us to simulate
Speaker 1: these possibilities really, I think allows us to lean into
Speaker 1: that interpretation because it's like the choose your own adventure book.
Speaker 1: The other choice is are in there, and if we
Speaker 1: want to, we can cheat, and we can check one
Speaker 1: out and then back up. And in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't do that in real life except through our
Speaker 1: ability to simulate possible futures. And and of course that
Speaker 1: has an important evolutionary role. It has put an important
Speaker 1: role for our survival. We can think about the different
Speaker 1: ways we might try to, say, steal a piece of
Speaker 1: meat from a hungry lion and escape with food and
Speaker 1: our lives and then choose the best course of action. Um,
Speaker 1: this is this is important, but it can also lean
Speaker 1: into these interpretations that you know that certainly, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I have more choice than I actually have, or even
Speaker 1: ultimately an idea that, of course it's explored in Bandersnatch,
Speaker 1: the idea that these other alternate choices are kind of
Speaker 1: alternate timelines, that they're out there, like I saw it
Speaker 1: in my head to a certain extent, that reality where
Speaker 1: I tried to take more meat than was feasible and
Speaker 1: was killed by the lion in a way that exists
Speaker 1: because I just saw it. Unfortunately, I would say about
Speaker 1: this argument, it does often feel that way that you know,
Speaker 1: like I could have done anything a minute ago, but
Speaker 1: you didn't. You did what you did. So again this
Speaker 1: comes back to the untestability of this one, like there's
Speaker 1: just never any way to prove that you could have
Speaker 1: done differently than you did in the moment. Like if
Speaker 1: you ever had a like a close call where say
Speaker 1: you're almost in a wreck or you almost do something
Speaker 1: that could have conceivably gotten you killed. Um, and then
Speaker 1: you have that moment of reflection granted on one level,
Speaker 1: like it it may get your just just bodily. You're excited,
Speaker 1: right because this has happened and your body's on high alert.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, part of it is sort
Speaker 1: of realizing your close proximity to this other possibility, like
Speaker 1: I was just some minor choice, some minor bit of
Speaker 1: input data away from something more catastrophic. Yes, it makes
Speaker 1: you suddenly you come face to face with how dependent
Speaker 1: you are on moment to moment circumstances and awareness. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though I would say a lot of times when I
Speaker 1: get that like that, like you know, catch your breath
Speaker 1: about what could have happened. It wasn't because I narrowly
Speaker 1: avoided something really bad happening. It's because I suddenly, out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, imagined something really bad happening. Like ever, you're
Speaker 1: going down a flight of stairs and it's going fine,
Speaker 1: but you just imagine, oh I could fall and hit
Speaker 1: my teeth on that thing, and oh yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I do that. This is of course, this is one
Speaker 1: of my pitfalls, is to almost constantly, um essentially fantasize
Speaker 1: about bad things that could happen. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us do that, you know, and part
Speaker 1: of that is your your mind is exploring possibilities of
Speaker 1: what is happening or could happen or has happened, And
Speaker 1: but in doing that we can lean into the negative
Speaker 1: possibilities too much, and then our lives become this, you know, abysmal.
Speaker 1: Choose your own adventure book of most of mostly terrible ends,
Speaker 1: even though the path that you were actually on may
Speaker 1: not be leading to any of them. Um It's it
Speaker 1: seems like the curse of all this confused sh about
Speaker 1: whether we have free will or not and what that
Speaker 1: actually means could just be rooted in the fact that
Speaker 1: we can consider hypothetical alternative scenarios. The fact that we're
Speaker 1: able to imagine counter factuals is what makes is what
Speaker 1: gives rise to this whole argument. Uh So, another thing
Speaker 1: I have on the list here, and this basically is
Speaker 1: just an extrapolation of everything we're talking about right now,
Speaker 1: is Philosophers Stephen Cave and also Bruce Waller have both
Speaker 1: argued that animals evolved with the capabilities we tend to
Speaker 1: associate with free will in order to survive, such as
Speaker 1: opinion generation, deliberation, will, power to stick to a choice,
Speaker 1: and the large human brain has all of this in spades.
Speaker 1: Cave argues that the level of free will UH that
Speaker 1: we have may actually vary from individual to individual, and
Speaker 1: he argues that we could potentially even put together a
Speaker 1: method of measuring one's freedom quotient or f Q in
Speaker 1: the same way that we well roughly measure ones intelligent creativity,
Speaker 1: and other psychological factors. I do think that's possible, but
Speaker 1: I also think that that would be subject to a
Speaker 1: lot of debate about exactly what it is you're measuring.
Speaker 1: There as a lot of these actual uh, you know,
Speaker 1: human or animal quotients are I mean, when when you
Speaker 1: measure human intelligence, there's debate about what exactly are you
Speaker 1: measuring uh, And I think the same thing would be
Speaker 1: true of freedom, subject to all of these you know,
Speaker 1: crazy caveats we've been talking about so far. What what
Speaker 1: what do you mean when you say freedom? Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: take on this that I had read in the past
Speaker 1: was something that neuroscientists David Eaglemanu called the principle of
Speaker 1: sufficient automatism. And the idea here is that the more
Speaker 1: that we map the human genome and study the brains
Speaker 1: many subconscious machinations, the more it becomes clear that a
Speaker 1: free will exist. It's only a factor hitching a ride
Speaker 1: on top of enormous automated machinery. Um So again it
Speaker 1: comes there's there's plenty of ground in between automaton and
Speaker 1: self moving soul where you can you can so of
Speaker 1: move the slider towards one direction or the other and
Speaker 1: still have something that we can at least refer to
Speaker 1: as free will. But it might only be a very
Speaker 1: very little bit of something. Yeah, it might, And it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting to sort of do that, to do a
Speaker 1: little self reflection and think about that, Like, yes, I
Speaker 1: had choice in the Senate situation, but really, how much
Speaker 1: choice was there? Uh? Yeah? And I think for me,
Speaker 1: at least, some of the definition problems would still remain,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not sure that even then that that's clarifying
Speaker 1: what the concept of freedom means there. Um So we
Speaker 1: can't test whether it's possible for a person to produce
Speaker 1: different outputs given the exact same inputs. That just seems
Speaker 1: beyond the bounds of empiricism. You could believe that if
Speaker 1: you want, but I don't think there's any evidence for it.
Speaker 1: But this might not be what we really mean by
Speaker 1: free will. Maybe, as I mentioned earlier, we what we
Speaker 1: mean by free will is that we are conscious of
Speaker 1: the process by which we make decisions or generate actions.
Speaker 1: And I think the pyirical research is pretty clear that
Speaker 1: this is not true, at least not in many cases.
Speaker 1: Um So, just to look at a few studies undercutting
Speaker 1: traditional notions that our consciousness dictates our decisions or that
Speaker 1: we're consciously aware of how are all our decisions are reached?
Speaker 1: Um So, first of all, I want to look at
Speaker 1: one by a soon brass Hines and Haines, published in
Speaker 1: Nature Neuroscience in two thousand eight, called unconscious determinants of
Speaker 1: free decisions in the human brain. In this study, the
Speaker 1: authors found that they could use brain scanning to detect
Speaker 1: a person's choice between two options before the person believed
Speaker 1: that they had made a choice. So you've got a
Speaker 1: very simple setup. You're supposed to freely choose between pressing
Speaker 1: two buttons. You've got a left button pressed with your
Speaker 1: left hand. You've got a right button pressed with your
Speaker 1: right hand. Uh. The two different hands were used because
Speaker 1: this made it easier to see which hand was about
Speaker 1: to be engaged through motor control and brain imaging. And
Speaker 1: so you take your time, you decide what which button
Speaker 1: you want to press, and then you note which letter
Speaker 1: in a timed sequence is displayed on a screen in
Speaker 1: front of you. At the moment you believe you've made
Speaker 1: your decision about which button to push, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: the researchers could detect brain activity of the prefrontal and
Speaker 1: prietal cortex indicating which choice a person was going to
Speaker 1: make up to seven to ten seconds before the person
Speaker 1: believed they had made their choice. So this study indicates
Speaker 1: that at least in some cases, at the moment you
Speaker 1: believe that you have consciously made a choice to do something,
Speaker 1: machines can look at your brain and showed that the
Speaker 1: brain has made a choice before you believe you have
Speaker 1: made a choice and predict with better than chance accuracy
Speaker 1: what that choice is. This is this is a study
Speaker 1: that really intrigued me. I remember when it came out
Speaker 1: because it's basically this idea where I think that I'm
Speaker 1: the lightning, but perhaps I am the thunder, or at
Speaker 1: least my experience is that of the thunder. But then
Speaker 1: the the other question is, well, does that mean I'm
Speaker 1: not the lightning? Am I not? Both? And maybe just
Speaker 1: I'm like I have a thunder level awareness of what
Speaker 1: I am, but there is this lightning that precedes this
Speaker 1: experience of me. Well, I mean, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean the the decision is generated by the brain. So
Speaker 1: again you're back to this question of what free will means.
Speaker 1: But if it, if it does have something to do
Speaker 1: with consciously being a participant at the moment that a
Speaker 1: decision is made, that there's pretty good evidence that that's
Speaker 1: not going on. The brain is making decisions before the
Speaker 1: person thinks I have made a decision. But okay, that
Speaker 1: was two thousand eight. Is there anything since then? Sure.
Speaker 1: Here's one study with findings along these lines, but applied
Speaker 1: to voluntary mental imagery, who was published just last year
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and the open access journal Scientific Reports.
Speaker 1: It's by Kenny Robert and Pearson in I said, Scientific
Speaker 1: Reports called Decoding the Contents and Strength of Imagery before
Speaker 1: Volitional Engagement. Uh, And again this was published in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: The short version here is that the researchers exposed people
Speaker 1: to two different images. You've got a red circle with
Speaker 1: horizontal lines and a green circle with vertical lines, and
Speaker 1: then the researchers were able to correlate images of brain
Speaker 1: states with mental representation of the different pictures, so they
Speaker 1: know what it's what it looks like in your brain
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about these two images separately. Uh, They
Speaker 1: could use this brain imaging to predict, again above chance,
Speaker 1: which image subjects would choose to visualize in their head
Speaker 1: before the subjects believed they had made a choice about
Speaker 1: which one to imagine in their head, and they could
Speaker 1: make these predictions at a rate above chance and average
Speaker 1: of eleven seconds before the person's actual choice about which
Speaker 1: one they were going to imagine. So one of the authors,
Speaker 1: Joel Pearson UH was quoted in a statement I believed
Speaker 1: to medical express quote. We believe that when we are
Speaker 1: faced with the choice between two or more options of
Speaker 1: what to think about, non conscious traces of the thoughts
Speaker 1: are there already, a bit like unconscious hallucinations that comes
Speaker 1: back some we talked about recently. Um As the decision
Speaker 1: of what to think about is made, executive areas of
Speaker 1: the brain choose the thought trace which is stronger. In
Speaker 1: other words, if any pre existing brain activity matches one
Speaker 1: of your choices, then your brain will be more likely
Speaker 1: to pick that option as it gets boosted by the
Speaker 1: pre existing brain activity. This would explain, for example, why
Speaker 1: thinking over and over about something leads to ever more
Speaker 1: thoughts about it as it occurs in a positive feedback loop.
Speaker 1: And then, to quote from the study abstract, the authors say,
Speaker 1: our results suggest that the contents and strength of mental
Speaker 1: imagery are influenced by sensory like neural representations that emerge
Speaker 1: spontaneously before volition. So there are things going on within
Speaker 1: the brain that we can detect with machinery from the
Speaker 1: outside that suggests what you're going to think about before
Speaker 1: you think about it. Now. I think we should be
Speaker 1: fair that it's possible. This isn't always the case, but
Speaker 1: there's plenty of evidence that, at least in some of
Speaker 1: the at least in some cases, when people think they're
Speaker 1: consciously making a choice, the brain in a measurable way
Speaker 1: has already made a choice that can be detected from
Speaker 1: the outside. The brain has already set one course of
Speaker 1: action in motion before the conscious part of our brain
Speaker 1: is aware that we're going to choose that course. So again,
Speaker 1: kind of a thunder and lightening scenario right now. Of course,
Speaker 1: this stuff we've been talking about is is true of
Speaker 1: typical human brains. Once you start looking at a typical
Speaker 1: neurological situations. You can find all kinds of evidence of
Speaker 1: action without the sensation of conscious awareness or choice. A
Speaker 1: lot of these are things that have come up on
Speaker 1: the show before, like blind site, the fact that people
Speaker 1: can physically react to visual stimuli while believing consciously that
Speaker 1: they are blind, or that they're blind in some part
Speaker 1: of their visual field, like you can react to, you know,
Speaker 1: raise your hand to catch a ball without leaving that
Speaker 1: you have seen the ball, or you've got alien limb syndrome,
Speaker 1: where something like a brain lesion can cause part of
Speaker 1: the body to act in a way that you do
Speaker 1: not feel in control of. The hand moves on its own,
Speaker 1: it moves against your will. It picks up the spoon
Speaker 1: when you meant to pick up the fork. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: the experiences of split brain patients, which we we did
Speaker 1: a deep dive on in January of twenty nineteen. The
Speaker 1: short version is that some patients who undergo a surgery
Speaker 1: called a corpus callistotomy, in which the main avenue of
Speaker 1: information sharing between the two hemispheres of the brain is severed,
Speaker 1: can seem to show signs of the right hemisphere acting
Speaker 1: and making choices without the conscious awareness or control of
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere, which seems to be the part of
Speaker 1: the brain that can usually talk, and the last example
Speaker 1: lead to hypotheses like Michael Gazaniga and Joseph Ladue's left
Speaker 1: brain interpreter model, where they argue that part of what
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere of the brain does is generate an
Speaker 1: ongoing series of narrative explanations that reconcile past and present
Speaker 1: and give us the sense of that that we understand
Speaker 1: why we do what we do now. Of course, their
Speaker 1: model could be incorrect, but I think it's also possible
Speaker 1: that they're really onto something that the brain seems to
Speaker 1: have a major function of trying to convince itself that
Speaker 1: its behavior is coherent and has rational justifications. Uh, and
Speaker 1: if possible to convince the conscious part of the brain
Speaker 1: that it's in control. I think this is kind of
Speaker 1: like at work, when you give the boss three options.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, here are the three things we
Speaker 1: came up with, and you've got the one you actually
Speaker 1: want to go with. Uh, And then you've got to
Speaker 1: like terrible options that are designed in order to be
Speaker 1: ignored and discarded by the boss and flatter the boss
Speaker 1: and give them a sense of control, which can be
Speaker 1: a dangerous exercise. Absolutely, I'm not advising that is a
Speaker 1: good strategy. I'm just saying people do it. To look
Speaker 1: quickly at one more study I found. This was published
Speaker 1: in in p N A. S By by Darby, jouts Burke,
Speaker 1: and Fox called lesion network localization of free will. Very briefly,
Speaker 1: the authors here defined the define the neurologically relevant parts
Speaker 1: of free will as having two parts. So first of all,
Speaker 1: there's the desire to act. That's volition. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got volitional control, and then a sense of responsibility for
Speaker 1: that action, which is the feeling of agencies. You have
Speaker 1: volition and agency. And then they looked at two neurological conditions.
Speaker 1: One that is believed to disrupt each of these functions. Uh.
Speaker 1: They looked at focal brain lesions that disrupt a volition
Speaker 1: causing a kinetic mutism. And a kinetic mutism is a
Speaker 1: condition where patients are unable to voluntarily move or speak.
Speaker 1: This would of course be a disruption of the volition
Speaker 1: part of the brain. And then lesions that disrupt agency
Speaker 1: and this would of course cause alien Limb syndrome. Again
Speaker 1: Alien Lynn syndrome. That's where you've got part of your
Speaker 1: body acting or moving in a way that does not
Speaker 1: feel voluntary. It moves, but you don't feel like you
Speaker 1: did did. And then they basically found that brain lesions
Speaker 1: that disrupt volition occur all over the brain, but there
Speaker 1: within a brain network that is connected in some way
Speaker 1: to the anterior singulate cortex. And they found that lesions
Speaker 1: that disrupt agency also occur in different locations around the brain,
Speaker 1: but they tend to be defined by connectivity to a
Speaker 1: part of the brain called the pre qunus. Now, again
Speaker 1: I would note that this this acknowledges physical evidence that
Speaker 1: there are distinct brain processes involved in generating action, you know,
Speaker 1: volition versus recognizing personal agency in that action, and typical
Speaker 1: brains executing typical actions have both of these acting in sync.
Speaker 1: But brains can have either one without the other. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we could keep going here, We could keep discussing uh,
Speaker 1: free will and what feels like free will and how
Speaker 1: it matches up with with neuroscientific data, etcetera. But at
Speaker 1: this point the podcast, we probably do need to bring
Speaker 1: it back around to band or snatch and the question like, okay,
Speaker 1: given all this stuff we've talked about. What does Bandersnatch
Speaker 1: seem to be saying about all of this, Well, it
Speaker 1: does seem to be largely a rumination on the idea
Speaker 1: that we do not seem to have as much free
Speaker 1: will as we think we do. That that we can resist,
Speaker 1: but it takes considerable effort to run counter to the
Speaker 1: current that we're stuck in. I would say a thing
Speaker 1: that is a theme that has hammered home about free will,
Speaker 1: and it is the more we look at the concept
Speaker 1: of free will and think about whether we have control
Speaker 1: over our actions, the less we feel we have it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I was thinking, I was trying to list, like
Speaker 1: all the various factors and agents that are influencing Stephen
Speaker 1: in the story. I mean, we have his mental health,
Speaker 1: his past trauma, his father, his therapist, uh, the the
Speaker 1: the work and tragic life, the influence of Jerome F. Davies,
Speaker 1: his boss at Tucker Soft, his mentor slash hero, slash
Speaker 1: friend Colin Rittman, conspiracy theories, music, need, etcetera. And that's
Speaker 1: not even getting into the Specco development that there is
Speaker 1: either an actual demon entity that is the literal thief
Speaker 1: of destiny or that a power beyond himself is influencing
Speaker 1: his decisions, some sort of voice from beyond, or the
Speaker 1: machinations of a player in another world. Yeah, the story
Speaker 1: really brings home this paradox, which is that I think
Speaker 1: it is the case that the closer we look at
Speaker 1: free will and the more we uh, you know, bring
Speaker 1: bring our our sharpest scientific tools and and philosophical instruments
Speaker 1: to uh to understand it, the less it seems to
Speaker 1: make sense and the less it seems to be there.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time that we acknowledge that
Speaker 1: to feel like your actions are not under your own
Speaker 1: control is not a heightened state of consciousness, that is
Speaker 1: still a problem and it uh and I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what that signals. That maybe yet another unresolved tension
Speaker 1: in the the issue of free will, that like, the
Speaker 1: more closely we examine it, the less we feel like
Speaker 1: we have it, and yet genuinely feeling like you don't
Speaker 1: have it, the more you feel that way, the more
Speaker 1: this is a serious impediment to you living a healthy life. Now,
Speaker 1: this seems this may seem like a logical place to
Speaker 1: end the conversation, but one of the things that's really
Speaker 1: interesting here is that is that we were talking about
Speaker 1: an episode of Black Mirror that deals with free will
Speaker 1: and our choices in life. And and certainly again Black
Speaker 1: Mirror frequently comments on our uneasy regarding new technology. But
Speaker 1: then Band or Snatch itself, this show on Netflix, this
Speaker 1: this movie, this movie itself factors into some user concerns
Speaker 1: about the future of this sort of interactive viewing technology. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say one of the things that
Speaker 1: is a legitimate concern about free will, however you define
Speaker 1: it as as murky as it is. At least one
Speaker 1: thing that we want is to we want to think
Speaker 1: that we understand the incoming influences on our behavior, right,
Speaker 1: Like you'd like to think that if I did X,
Speaker 1: I can sort of make sense of that it was
Speaker 1: because I read this book, or I read this article,
Speaker 1: or I had a conversation with this person, and I
Speaker 1: connect the knowledge I gained through that or the influences
Speaker 1: of those past experiences with the decision I just made.
Speaker 1: Life starts getting more difficult when you have trouble understanding
Speaker 1: what the influences on yourself are. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we've we've discussed some of these in the past.
Speaker 1: We've discussed a number of these in the past, but
Speaker 1: technologically speaking, we have discussed advertising and we have discussed
Speaker 1: social media, which are good things to keep in mind
Speaker 1: as as we continue here, because there might not be
Speaker 1: a band or snatcher a demon awaiting you in the
Speaker 1: maze of future interactive media technology, but there might just
Speaker 1: be some highly targeted advertisements for example. Right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Two individuals that I ran across the road about this
Speaker 1: topic or or or touched on this topic. One is
Speaker 1: Matthew Galt, who wrote about this last year for Vice's Motherboard,
Speaker 1: and then Tiffany schu wrote about it for The New
Speaker 1: York Times. So Galt wrote about Michael Veal, a technology
Speaker 1: policy researcher at University College London, who utilized Europe's General
Speaker 1: Data Protection Regulation or g d p r UM law
Speaker 1: to request a copy of the data Netflix collected about
Speaker 1: him and his choices through the use of the band
Speaker 1: or Snatch program. Now they complied, perhaps in part because
Speaker 1: of vail status as a public person, but basically Netflix
Speaker 1: acquires this information in order to carry out the Bandersnatch experience,
Speaker 1: which makes sense rights it has to chart your path
Speaker 1: through this this complex system but then also Netflix keeps
Speaker 1: this information, which the company claims is in order to
Speaker 1: quote determine how to improve this model of storytelling in
Speaker 1: the context of a show or movie. And I mean,
Speaker 1: on on one level, that sounds well and good as well,
Speaker 1: except that the veal thinks that Netflix quote should really
Speaker 1: be using consent which you should be able to refuse,
Speaker 1: or legitimate interest meaning that you can object to it instead.
Speaker 1: Now in shoes article, she points to the early choice
Speaker 1: we make between uh Kellogg's Frosties and then Quaker Sugar Puffs.
Speaker 1: Now both of these are real serials, though I have
Speaker 1: to admit I thought Quaker Sugar Puffs was made up
Speaker 1: because it has this ridiculous honey monster mascot. It's like
Speaker 1: super fun, kind of a cheddar Goblin sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But it turns out this was an actual UK product.
Speaker 1: It was just a UK only products, so Americans such
Speaker 1: as ourselves were perhaps not privy to it. But again,
Speaker 1: both were real products, and neither one was a paid inclusion,
Speaker 1: so it was not official product placement or product integration.
Speaker 1: And Netflix, of course is like an ad free UH
Speaker 1: system anyway. But Shoe points to some of the words
Speaker 1: of Reed Hastings, co founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix,
Speaker 1: who pointed out during a webcast tied to an earnings
Speaker 1: report that seventy of Bandersnatch viewers selected Kellogg Frosty's over
Speaker 1: the the the Quaker Sugar Puffs. No, I did too.
Speaker 1: I feel so vulnerable right now. I don't remember what
Speaker 1: I did the first time around. The first time I
Speaker 1: watched it, I also watched with my wife, so we
Speaker 1: were voting on which choices. You know, we're having a discussion,
Speaker 1: which I guess I should have mentioned that earlier, because
Speaker 1: that has a whole another wrinkled as a scenario of
Speaker 1: making communal choices and voting on something. But on my own,
Speaker 1: I chose the Quaker thing just because I thought it
Speaker 1: looked weirder. But again, I'm in the minority for doing so.
Speaker 1: So first of all, I think this is a shame,
Speaker 1: because I think the cover and TV advertisement for Quaker
Speaker 1: Sugar Puffs is awesome and weird. Again, but more to
Speaker 1: the point, as Shoe points out, Spencer Wig, a Netflix
Speaker 1: vice president, chimed in and joked, and let's be clear
Speaker 1: he was He was apparently joking that this was the
Speaker 1: most critical data point of the quarter. Now, she said,
Speaker 1: while Netflix doesn't run commercials and has stated that it
Speaker 1: would not use bandersnatch information for anything like this, others
Speaker 1: outside the company do see the potential, namely in quote,
Speaker 1: the possibility of inserting brand name products into streaming shows
Speaker 1: based on data generated by interactive programming. Now, Shoe stresses
Speaker 1: that the technology to roll this out isn't here yet.
Speaker 1: But I suppose we have to to consider two key
Speaker 1: factors in that statement. So first of all, we're in
Speaker 1: the early days of truly you know, interactive features like
Speaker 1: this on major streaming platforms. Uh, you know assume and
Speaker 1: that is this assuming that it really catches on at all.
Speaker 1: As we've discussed, interactive cinema is not new. It's been
Speaker 1: around for decades and it has largely failed to catch on. Um,
Speaker 1: it is not like a driving force in our entertainment.
Speaker 1: You'll find plenty of examples of it. You also find
Speaker 1: a lot of computer games that that kind of fulfill
Speaker 1: this uh this niche right, I mean, um, those are
Speaker 1: also sort of failed. Yeah, um, you know, I would
Speaker 1: have there're certainly deeper dives and say the history of
Speaker 1: things like what Telltale games I think was the company
Speaker 1: that did a number of these things that were again
Speaker 1: not not really released, as they weren't marketed as interactive
Speaker 1: movies so much as they were interactive gaming experiences. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing to consider. Interest in interactive films
Speaker 1: has essentially gone up and down over the years, and
Speaker 1: again it hasn't really like ignited. Still Netflix and and
Speaker 1: also Netflix itself has only released a handful of interactive titles,
Speaker 1: mostly kids stuff. Bandersnatches their only true adult drama release
Speaker 1: in this of this product type, though they claimed to
Speaker 1: be doubling down on interactive content in the future, given
Speaker 1: you know how Netflix tends to be a little bit
Speaker 1: secretive about like what's coming out, um or at least
Speaker 1: they don't tell you a lot. I guess we'll just
Speaker 1: have to know about it when we see it pop up.
Speaker 1: But also it's also worth reminding ourselves that a great
Speaker 1: deal of work went into creating Bandersnatch as well. I
Speaker 1: think I think I've I've seen it written it like
Speaker 1: three times as much work went into Bandersnatch. Versus say, um,
Speaker 1: that long episode of the show that was approximately ninety minutes,
Speaker 1: So is it cost effective content? Are all the limitations
Speaker 1: worked out yet. For instance, I don't believe bandersnatch works
Speaker 1: on many mobile formats or older models like you have
Speaker 1: to have uh, you know, something more updated, like I
Speaker 1: tried to load it onto my phone uh, and I
Speaker 1: have an older um iPhone. I tried to load it
Speaker 1: on there to watch on an airplane, and it wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: I had to watch it through my Xbox one. And
Speaker 1: another big concern is there would need to be I guess,
Speaker 1: enough interactive content out there tuned for this sort of
Speaker 1: thing to to generate the necessary user data to then
Speaker 1: be employed. I can really see this kind of thing
Speaker 1: being used as a as a major data mining that
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. It seems very possible to
Speaker 1: get psychologically salient information through this. Now, of course that
Speaker 1: they're already getting information through all kinds of things. You know,
Speaker 1: the tech business can get your information through, uh, through
Speaker 1: what you buy online, through what websites you visit, through
Speaker 1: what you do on Facebook or other social media. Right
Speaker 1: Like a website like Netflix already knows what kind of
Speaker 1: movies you have watched, what kind you like, what kind
Speaker 1: of movies you want to like, and then also you
Speaker 1: know how you have rated things as well, and then
Speaker 1: they can serve you recommendation of what you might want
Speaker 1: to watch in the future right now. This is so,
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about this and possibly going multiple ways.
Speaker 1: One is using interactive choices in uh, in a film
Speaker 1: to gather data about you, and the other side would
Speaker 1: be giving like specially user tailored media experiences, which we
Speaker 1: already get somewhat of course on websites. You know, you
Speaker 1: get websites loading with the ads of stuff you searched
Speaker 1: for on Amazon and all that. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: we're being forced to consider what if that starts happening
Speaker 1: within the movies and TV shows you watch, So you
Speaker 1: start seeing product placement for specific products that are aimed
Speaker 1: at you individually within the show as you watch right right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, they know that were given the serial scenario,
Speaker 1: like potentially the the the master of the content being
Speaker 1: Netflix or some other company. Hypothetically, they might know that
Speaker 1: you are saying more inclined towards you know, healthy lifestyle
Speaker 1: choices and therefore some sort of granola uh, you know,
Speaker 1: health wrapped content would be ideal for you in that scenario,
Speaker 1: or they might know that that's not your your your
Speaker 1: ideal serial, or maybe they know that you have children
Speaker 1: in the house, and therefore a children's cereal would be
Speaker 1: more appropriate. Like that's the kind of information that they
Speaker 1: could conceivably have and then feed into the cereal that
Speaker 1: appears before you on the screen. Now, that would be,
Speaker 1: of course, something we're more familiar with, just like inserting ads.
Speaker 1: And you might imagine a character walking past a billboard
Speaker 1: or something in the movie like happens all the time now,
Speaker 1: except that billboard can be you know, dynamically inserted with
Speaker 1: new imagery or something. I think things start getting even
Speaker 1: creepier when you imagine something more like Band or Snatch Itself,
Speaker 1: where there are alternative versions of a film that are
Speaker 1: specially tailor do you, that have different narrative content depending
Speaker 1: on who's watching. I mean, so, one thing Robert and
Speaker 1: I were talking about briefly before we came in here
Speaker 1: is the idea that you know, we often know that
Speaker 1: movies can embody values, of course, you know that, like
Speaker 1: sometimes the values of of a filmmaker creator come through
Speaker 1: and what happens in a story, uh, and then other
Speaker 1: times they're they're sort of like cheap attempts to display values.
Speaker 1: What would often be called like pandering, right, you know,
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, cheap appeals to patriotism or something
Speaker 1: like that in a movie, or or I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess you could make an argument for Awards season
Speaker 1: Academy Awards bait as well. Right, yeah, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: just like sort of cheap attempts to exploit the specific
Speaker 1: desires or value interests of a specific target audience. Um.
Speaker 1: And and so you can imagine, okay, well, now, if
Speaker 1: a movie is made and it wants to pander, it
Speaker 1: needs to at least make a choice. Right. It's hard
Speaker 1: to pander to everybody at the same time. But you
Speaker 1: can imagine, okay, what if somebody just starts making more
Speaker 1: like a Bandersnatch kind of thing where maybe you don't
Speaker 1: make the choices, the choices are made for you based
Speaker 1: on what is known about your user profile. And so
Speaker 1: what I was imagining beforehand was you could have different
Speaker 1: versions of the movie Independence Day. You remember that speech
Speaker 1: Bill Pullman gives before they all get in the planes
Speaker 1: and go fly off and fight. Um, So it's this
Speaker 1: rousing moment where Bill Pullman gives this kind of innocuous
Speaker 1: speech that could appeal to basically anybody but you can
Speaker 1: make that speech a much more tailored, specific interest group
Speaker 1: pandering kind of thing, where you could have one version
Speaker 1: of the film that plays for somebody that that's that's
Speaker 1: very elusive. He gives a speech, He's like, humans will
Speaker 1: join arms together around the world. There will be no
Speaker 1: more nations and borders and creeds, and we all, you know,
Speaker 1: we all unite as one and standing brothers and as
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters against this. Or you could have a
Speaker 1: version where he gives a speech about American exceptionalism and
Speaker 1: how we're the first and we stand up and fight
Speaker 1: when no one else will. Or you could get you know,
Speaker 1: you can imagine a million versions of this depending on
Speaker 1: what kind of user they think you are, who are watching, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that that kind of personality profile or
Speaker 1: worldview profile would be pretty easy to acquire. I mean,
Speaker 1: basically websites like Facebook have that information, like they are
Speaker 1: They're not feeding you Independence Day UH with a tailored
Speaker 1: uh speech in it, but they are feeding giving you
Speaker 1: a feed that that that reflects your world views and values,
Speaker 1: and people are are very invested in like the values
Speaker 1: of what media they consume these days. I can imagine
Speaker 1: it being judged ay a very profitable enterprise by some
Speaker 1: studios to say, well, let's just cover all the bases.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll have way less trouble if we make
Speaker 1: a movie, you know, a version A of the movie
Speaker 1: for you and a version B of the movie for you.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be a coherent vision or picture
Speaker 1: of the world. Yeah, this is you know, I can't
Speaker 1: help but think on past films like, for instance, we
Speaker 1: talked about Conan the Barbarian on the show in the past,
Speaker 1: like that is a film that has a has a
Speaker 1: very particular view of what strength names and what uh
Speaker 1: you know, how power works, etcetera. And it's not everybody's
Speaker 1: political or philosophical cup of tea. I mean, you can,
Speaker 1: I think you can enjoy that film without focusing on
Speaker 1: all of that. But still it's definitely there um and
Speaker 1: and that's not a film, I mean, especially at the
Speaker 1: time it came out, It's not a film where you
Speaker 1: would necessarily ask for an alternate version of it. But again,
Speaker 1: it's very clear and what it's saying. But then you
Speaker 1: have films like say Patton. Patton is often brought up
Speaker 1: as example of a film that meant one thing to
Speaker 1: one part of a divided America and another to the
Speaker 1: other part of the divided America without having to have
Speaker 1: like an A B version, Right. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: could say that about a lot of like war movies, especially.
Speaker 1: I think that might be sort of true of Platoon, Right,
Speaker 1: Is that like an anti war movie or a patriotic movie?
Speaker 1: You know, you sort of have some elements of each
Speaker 1: you can latch onto what you want to see there. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm somewhat disturbed by
Speaker 1: the idea of like of of media filling up with
Speaker 1: these like personally tailored options that are designed to make
Speaker 1: a sort of like generic media template, uh, individually palatable
Speaker 1: to the user, as opposed to standing for something on
Speaker 1: its own and allowing you to judge it. Yeah, Or
Speaker 1: having some level of ambiguity like does the does the
Speaker 1: the modern audience and like the the near future audience,
Speaker 1: do they want ambiguity in their work or do they
Speaker 1: want like a clear cut view that is expressed clear
Speaker 1: cut values not only of the film but of like
Speaker 1: the creator or creators behind it, like they you know,
Speaker 1: is there is there an increased hunger for that? And
Speaker 1: and if that is the case, you could easily see
Speaker 1: a way of worming around that by taking this ABC
Speaker 1: approach to film creation, because then nobody can say, well,
Speaker 1: I like the character of Conan the Barbarian, but I
Speaker 1: think your view is is pro totalitarianism and uh and
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't know, I celebrates uh toxic
Speaker 1: masculinity or whatever the critique might be. And then they
Speaker 1: could say, well, that's all good, well and good, but
Speaker 1: you're you're only talking about one version. If you watch
Speaker 1: Conan the Barbarian, uh, you know, the the uh relaunch
Speaker 1: of the platform, then you will get what is tailored
Speaker 1: to you. Its treatment of masculinity and power will be
Speaker 1: exactly what you want to see. And I mean that
Speaker 1: opens the door to just a big question of like
Speaker 1: what art is and what does that do to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to to the role of the these narratives
Speaker 1: in our in our culture. I remember many years ago
Speaker 1: how much of like uh the new Internet and the
Speaker 1: new media landscape was being sold to us. It was
Speaker 1: so often on the selling point of customization and individualization.
Speaker 1: You know, get what's right for you, get an experience
Speaker 1: that's personally tailored for you. And somehow I just feel
Speaker 1: like we were not able to anticipate how scary and
Speaker 1: messed up that would feel when it actually happened. I
Speaker 1: like to come back to Banterer's net. The first time
Speaker 1: I watched it, I think it probably was over two
Speaker 1: hours that I spent questing after the happy ending, and
Speaker 1: I got it, and I have to admit I felt
Speaker 1: a little empty when I reached it. The second time,
Speaker 1: I tried to just again make more dramatic choices, Uh,
Speaker 1: make a choice here and there that were just different
Speaker 1: from what I did the first time. I got a
Speaker 1: bleak ending, but it it felt more authentic. Um so,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's interesting to think about, like how how
Speaker 1: choice potentially impacts our appreciation of of a work like this,
Speaker 1: especially if we're talking about increasingly interactive work in a
Speaker 1: hypothetical future. Had to find a good bleak note to
Speaker 1: end on, I think that's it. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about black Mirror, that's that's where we
Speaker 1: have to leave it. All right, Well, we covered a
Speaker 1: lot of ground in there. Um. I imagine listeners will
Speaker 1: want to chime in, certainly on Bandersnatch if they have
Speaker 1: experienced it. I'd love to hear from anyone who's like,
Speaker 1: how much time did you spend on banders such? How
Speaker 1: many viewings have you given? Did you do like Joe
Speaker 1: and go in and try and find every Golden Easter egg?
Speaker 1: I didn't get all of them, but I got a
Speaker 1: lot of them. Or did you do like me? Did
Speaker 1: you sort of go through it once and maybe go
Speaker 1: through a second time? And maybe you haven't seen or
Speaker 1: haven't read about the other endings. And of course free
Speaker 1: Will you all have it or maybe you all don't
Speaker 1: have it, but you think you have it, which however
Speaker 1: you want to look at it. You all have some
Speaker 1: thoughts about free Will. You all you all have some
Speaker 1: experience to share about this, and we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. In the mean time, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out more Stuff to Blow your Mind, you
Speaker 1: can find us anywhere you get your podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: certainly go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com
Speaker 1: and that will redirect you to a place where you
Speaker 1: can find the episodes and wherever you get the show.
Speaker 1: We just have to ask that you support us by
Speaker 1: rating and reviewing and subscribing. And don't forget we have
Speaker 1: another show out there titled Invention and Invention covers Human
Speaker 1: techno history, one invention at a time. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, who
Speaker 1: is doing a heroic quick turnaround on today's episode, So
Speaker 1: praise him, everyone, Praise him. Uh. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with with notes on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hi, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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