Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: I think we can both agree to One of them
Speaker 1: more troubling things to shamble out of the nineteen was
Speaker 1: the possible human zee. Oh yeah, very very sad case
Speaker 1: of a chimpanzee, sweet animal, very sweet, cigar smoking upright, walking, bald,
Speaker 1: bald ish chimp that people thought was very is like,
Speaker 1: eerily humanlike and and some people even thought that he
Speaker 1: might have been the missing link between humans and great apes.
Speaker 1: And Jim, yes, we hear about the missing link all
Speaker 1: the time. And in the nineteen seventies genetic testing that
Speaker 1: people were just so unnerved by this this little creature Oliver,
Speaker 1: that I thought for sure that there wasn't part of
Speaker 1: him that was human. And they saw it in his face, right,
Speaker 1: they saw it in the way that he appeared to
Speaker 1: walk around on two feet right right. And and supposedly
Speaker 1: the smell as well, there's some accounts that say that
Speaker 1: he didn't smell like a chimpanzee, ship that he smelled
Speaker 1: like a little bit like a man and a little
Speaker 1: bit like a chimp. Yeah, well, here's okay, here's the context.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventies, some a couple raises chimpanzees, uses them for
Speaker 1: entertainment purposes, meaning you know, in commercials or parties or whatever.
Speaker 1: They get this one peculiar chimpanzee, Oliver. Turns out that
Speaker 1: nobody really wants to use them in commercials because he
Speaker 1: is really unsettling, because he looks very human, and because
Speaker 1: he keeps walking upright, like consistently. You see chimpsy this sometimes,
Speaker 1: but this particular chimpanzee was you know, even though his
Speaker 1: hips were splayed out, he would still walk up right.
Speaker 1: People like, that's kind of weird. Um, And so they
Speaker 1: began just to annotally say things like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the other chimps don't like Oliver because he must have
Speaker 1: a bad smell or they don't recognize a smell. So
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure exactly what the deal was
Speaker 1: with Oliver, but but they felt weird about using him.
Speaker 1: They didn't think he looked like like star chimp material,
Speaker 1: and and maybe just maybe they they found that he
Speaker 1: looked at he was a little too human. That's the
Speaker 1: problem that that it felt really weird to take this
Speaker 1: this sort of human looking animal, uh and uh put
Speaker 1: it in a cage, take it out of the cage,
Speaker 1: make it run around for a commercial, and then reward
Speaker 1: it with a carrot and a cigar. Well, especially especially
Speaker 1: if it sits down next to you and start smoking
Speaker 1: a cigar and maybe even making a pass at you,
Speaker 1: because apparently this is something that he would do when
Speaker 1: he turned sixteen and his hormones were raging. I guess um,
Speaker 1: but he in fact was not a humanzy as much
Speaker 1: as people wanted to believe or thought that he was.
Speaker 1: Later on they did gitetic testing on him, they found
Speaker 1: that he was, you know, chimp. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: people uh still aren't fascinated by the idea that you
Speaker 1: could create half man, half ape. Right, It's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it is a troubling idea, as we uh,
Speaker 1: it's the title of this podcast suggest you know. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's the the idea that there is this bridge
Speaker 1: between us and the animal. It but blurs the line
Speaker 1: between what it is to be human and what it
Speaker 1: is to be this this other. And of course this
Speaker 1: is something that we've explored in horror and science fiction
Speaker 1: many times in the past, especially of the the end
Speaker 1: of the eight hundreds beginning of the twentieth century, you
Speaker 1: saw a number of very important stories that came around
Speaker 1: that they really signified this. I mean one as early
Speaker 1: as one you had the Murders in the Room Morgue
Speaker 1: by Edgar Allan Poe, which you know spoilers. It involves
Speaker 1: an orangutant with a straight raders there stuffing girls into chimneys,
Speaker 1: and the idea that this this ape is going around
Speaker 1: committing crimes against humans. So it's it's pretty troubling. But
Speaker 1: but then it really kicks in a little later. Um
Speaker 1: of course you have uh the Island of Dr Moreau,
Speaker 1: um classic novel. Which movie are you referring to? Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: the ninety six version, which you still have to admit
Speaker 1: is pretty fun because you have you have Marlon Brando
Speaker 1: and that whole get up apparently acting with a headset,
Speaker 1: like barely acting like reading lines that are right. And
Speaker 1: then he has the little The whole idea of the
Speaker 1: mini me originates with the with the little person that
Speaker 1: he had addressed up like him. Um Ron Perlman running
Speaker 1: around as in an animal costume. You had Val Kilmer
Speaker 1: doing god knows what, and uh it was kind of
Speaker 1: a disaster. But there was also a nineteen seventies seven
Speaker 1: film version that had Bert Lancaster and Michael York and
Speaker 1: that one was always a favorite of mine because it
Speaker 1: was like when I was a kid, I would watch
Speaker 1: like like Grandpa Monster would host this like Saturday Morning Afternoon.
Speaker 1: You know, he was a daytime horror TV host, and
Speaker 1: he would host these awful movies that I was watching.
Speaker 1: This was before Mystery Science Theater three thousand Stugs, But
Speaker 1: but I would, I would. I would always check it
Speaker 1: out and and they would, you know, show stuff like
Speaker 1: them with the giant ants and and I particularly remember
Speaker 1: being really into that seventy seven version of Dr Moreau.
Speaker 1: All Right, I need to check that out. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in case you guys haven't guessed out there,
Speaker 1: we're talking about humanities, and we're gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more later about what we have already done in
Speaker 1: the lab in terms of creating hybrid creatures of ourselves
Speaker 1: and other animals. But first we should probably talk about cameras, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: the camera. For you Greek mythology junkies, this was of
Speaker 1: course a a monster with the lion's head, a goat's
Speaker 1: body at dragon's tail. It breathes fire. It was born
Speaker 1: in Lycia, on the southern coast of what's now modern Turkey.
Speaker 1: And it would sweep down in the evenings and it
Speaker 1: would carry off women, children, and livestock. It would literally
Speaker 1: their bones all over the mountains. And uh, so you
Speaker 1: know what, what are you gonna do? You gotta get
Speaker 1: a hero to take care of this, this monster that's
Speaker 1: made from different animal parts. So you bring in Bill
Speaker 1: Eraphan And uh, of course he can't really just walk
Speaker 1: up there and take care of his A. He needs spear,
Speaker 1: and B he needs a pegasus. So I find it
Speaker 1: amusing that um that he defeats the chimera mainly by
Speaker 1: using a chimera, because the today that the word chimera
Speaker 1: is often used to refer to any animal that has
Speaker 1: two or more different sets of genetically distinct cells working together. Okay,
Speaker 1: and so again this will bring me about two movies
Speaker 1: and Clash of the Titans, right, yes, everyone, everyone's modern
Speaker 1: understanding of mythology of course based and clash of the
Speaker 1: type of course, right. But of course we actually do
Speaker 1: have hybrids in nature, not necessarily like medusa like creatures
Speaker 1: or otherwise they're generally not quite that facts. Yeah, yeah, minotaurs,
Speaker 1: sirens on the banks calling you forth. But we've got
Speaker 1: dogs and wolves not that exciting, but they have made
Speaker 1: it right, lions and tigers, ligers a mule, which is
Speaker 1: the progeny of a male donkey and a female horse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get the all the value of a donkey, but
Speaker 1: the size of a horse. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we've seen inner species love happenings in their products of
Speaker 1: their love happenings. But I don't know why I'm choosing
Speaker 1: to say it that way, that this is what happens right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're related, um enough that they can actually breed with
Speaker 1: one and they and produce the offspring that most of
Speaker 1: these cases, though, cannot then breed with with other animals.
Speaker 1: The mule for instances is generally sterile. Yes. And then
Speaker 1: we have cross species in the lab. Right man made
Speaker 1: three different types here that you'll see. One is called
Speaker 1: the hybrid, and this is created by breeding across species,
Speaker 1: and hybrids are generally the result of combining an egg
Speaker 1: from one species with firm from another to form a
Speaker 1: single embryo and hybrids contain recombined genetic material throughout their
Speaker 1: genome and throughout all the tissues in their body, because
Speaker 1: that's important to note. And then there's transgenics that's the
Speaker 1: result of gene transfer, and typically transgenics contains transferred or
Speaker 1: manipulated genes in addition to the host nuclear and mitochondrial DNA.
Speaker 1: One exception may be a transgenic embryo comprised of the
Speaker 1: entire complement of nuclear DNA from one organizing organism fused
Speaker 1: with an inunculated egg cell from another, and this will
Speaker 1: become all sort of crystal clear, and we talk more
Speaker 1: specifically about what's being created here. And then third cameras
Speaker 1: right right and their number of cool lab grown examples
Speaker 1: of this. Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Second Medical University
Speaker 1: successfully fuse human cells with rabbit eggs. A year later,
Speaker 1: there was a successful Chinese camera experiment where reachers that
Speaker 1: researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota announced that they
Speaker 1: created a pig with human blood pumping through its veins.
Speaker 1: We made a sheep with human livers, a mouse with
Speaker 1: the human liver, a stapler with the human liver cat
Speaker 1: not really at the state cat human hybrid proteins, mouse
Speaker 1: with a human brain, well with human with one percent
Speaker 1: of its brain was the human brain cells. So but
Speaker 1: anyone gets any crazy secret in them ideas there, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a technology that's it's been around the block
Speaker 1: a few times already, and these are all issue point
Speaker 1: that people are not just making like sheep with human
Speaker 1: livers just I think it's awesome, or they want to
Speaker 1: sheep that can really hold its liquor. This is about
Speaker 1: figuring out ways to potentially grow new organs for organ
Speaker 1: transplants for humans. To better understand some of these systems,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're definitely medical, uh goals in mind
Speaker 1: here are trying to understand life threatening diseases UM. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, British researchers created a human pig hybrid.
Speaker 1: So this is where the egg comes from a pig
Speaker 1: and then nucleus comes from a human and the idea
Speaker 1: is to implant the nucleus of an egg from a
Speaker 1: human being with a disease UM so he's something like
Speaker 1: heart disease, and then you can watch how the DNA
Speaker 1: from a person with this condition instructs cellular development in
Speaker 1: its earliest stages, and so scientists really hope to find
Speaker 1: out more about the inner workings about what's going on there, um,
Speaker 1: specifically with heart disease. So yeah, there's all these different
Speaker 1: examples of how we have tinkered with nature in order
Speaker 1: to observe our maladies or even just how we have
Speaker 1: progressed as human beings. So all this leads inevitably to
Speaker 1: the tale of a Russian biologist by the name of
Speaker 1: Iliya Ivanov who was doing that most of his work
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, and uh, really wasn't all that
Speaker 1: heart about by the modern public until around and that's
Speaker 1: when a number of Soviet documents became unclassified. The British
Speaker 1: tabloid The Sun got ahold of some of this, and
Speaker 1: they started running stories about the Red Frankenstein, who was
Speaker 1: supposedly it traveled to French Guyana on a Bolsheviks sponsored
Speaker 1: quest to bread a human ape hybrid to create some
Speaker 1: sort of super mutant to aid Stalin and his conquest
Speaker 1: of the world. Yeah, right, this was the Red Apeman
Speaker 1: Army that they talked about, um, which you know, it's
Speaker 1: probably good to note that Ivanov was working way before
Speaker 1: the Russian Revolution began. And there are certain aspects of
Speaker 1: this story that you can see they might have been
Speaker 1: taken out of context. And uh, and it's a great
Speaker 1: fun idea to run with this half man, half ape
Speaker 1: army that Stalin wanted to defeat the world with. But
Speaker 1: that is not in fact what happened, right, That's not
Speaker 1: exactly what ivan Off was after the At the down
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, ivan Off was already a pretty
Speaker 1: famous dude in his field for his pioneering work and
Speaker 1: artificial intamination. Respected, yeah, well respected. He had done things
Speaker 1: like he created a z donc which was a zebra
Speaker 1: donkey hybrid, a zubron which is a European bison cow crossover. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he was he was creating mashups with animals
Speaker 1: like and kind of you know, islanded Dr morou wish,
Speaker 1: I guess if you want to really take it and
Speaker 1: run with it. But but he was well thought of.
Speaker 1: And his next big thing was he wanted to see
Speaker 1: about improving the bloodstock of Imperial Russia, so um around.
Speaker 1: He puts in proposals with the government despite the disapproval
Speaker 1: of the scientific establishment. He got to go ahead, and
Speaker 1: the funds most important to mount a expedition to Africa
Speaker 1: to collect apes so that he could see about creating
Speaker 1: a hybrid between a human and its closest relative. That's right.
Speaker 1: And he was getting his funds from the Soviet Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences and part and uh, and there was a
Speaker 1: little crossover at the time, so he's working with a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are really respected in their fields.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, the problem was that, uh, it
Speaker 1: was a little bit diabolical, right, I mean, his his
Speaker 1: idea here, yeah, his his best we can tell his
Speaker 1: his real idea. His his notion here was not to
Speaker 1: create a super soldier and thing stupid like that. But
Speaker 1: he was a big believer in the theories of Darwin
Speaker 1: that the idea that man evolved from these previous forms,
Speaker 1: that that evolution was the driving force, natural selection was drive,
Speaker 1: which is right. Yeah, But he he thought that the
Speaker 1: way to really prove it, to just really just settle
Speaker 1: the case once and for all, and the whole evolution
Speaker 1: versus everything else, versus religion, you name it, was to
Speaker 1: actually create a human chimp hybrid and then introduce you
Speaker 1: to the world. And then people would say that he
Speaker 1: would be like, what what's that? You got something else?
Speaker 1: There's something about religion, eat my humansy his name is
Speaker 1: Oliver and uh proof, Yeah, your entire argument is nil
Speaker 1: at this point. So so he had you could say
Speaker 1: he had a noble um, you know, scientific goal in mind.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a I mean still kind of a
Speaker 1: helish moves. He's kind of wants to stick it tip
Speaker 1: to everyone, but it's still he has a definite goal
Speaker 1: in mind. Here his his means of pulling an offer
Speaker 1: just a little suspect. Well, yeah, it's in the execution, right,
Speaker 1: So he decides that, um, he is going to try
Speaker 1: to inseminate three females, right, which he does. Um, he tries,
Speaker 1: I should say, and these are African women and uh
Speaker 1: but then you know, eventually he's forced to abandon the
Speaker 1: project because it's just not going that well. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have a tent of support behind it, right, and he
Speaker 1: has really had to try to get those ten dollarge
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Financial Commission. He's really had to work
Speaker 1: very hard at it. This it's not something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people want to write. And it was kind
Speaker 1: of touch and go, Like he went to Paris first
Speaker 1: and then he went to French Guyana because they had
Speaker 1: some chimps over there, but then they weren't yet old
Speaker 1: enough to breed, so to come back to Paris. Nothing
Speaker 1: was working in his favorite right and he gets really desperate,
Speaker 1: and so what does he do? Something completely unconsciousable. He
Speaker 1: decides that he's going to inseminate African women with the
Speaker 1: chimpanzee sperm without their knowledge. Okay, so he's trying to
Speaker 1: get forward with this is as much as possible, and
Speaker 1: he's found out, and of course everybody starts to reject
Speaker 1: this plan, and he spirals out of his his professional field.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, yeah, he starts hanging out
Speaker 1: with the celebrated surgeon Sergey Voronoff, who at the time
Speaker 1: was was really in fashion because he had a quote
Speaker 1: unquote rejuvenation therapy that he would perform in which he
Speaker 1: would graf slices of ape test ees onto those of
Speaker 1: rich and aging men who were hoping to regain some
Speaker 1: of their former vigor. And let's just all positive for
Speaker 1: a moment think about that. Yeah, it's I mean, on
Speaker 1: one hand, anyone who's ever read The Adventures of Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes is probably thinking of the Adventure of the Creeping
Speaker 1: Man from nine three, which follows the same logic. The
Speaker 1: idea you have somebody that's taking some sort of ape
Speaker 1: or monkey related product, but in this case it's changing
Speaker 1: him and making him crazy uh or possibly changing them
Speaker 1: into a monster is one of the more sci fi
Speaker 1: of the Carli Homes tales. It's important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind that that Vornoff is not the only one doing
Speaker 1: this uh in the twenties, this rejuvenation tests on your
Speaker 1: cheek therapy. Yes, yes, he became notorious for performing in Algeria.
Speaker 1: But at the same time several US surgeants were were
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. There was Dr Victor D. Less
Speaker 1: Pennises uh professor of genature urinary surgery at Northwestern University.
Speaker 1: He was treating impotence with the use of glandular extracts
Speaker 1: and then grafting slices of human cadaver tests uh in
Speaker 1: into the rectus muscles for them that it meant which
Speaker 1: but but again this was he was just human cadavertive
Speaker 1: to humans, so there wasn't anything fishy going on. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and certainly what we do a lot of
Speaker 1: today with a lot of transplant of an organ as
Speaker 1: a cadab or twite. So so I don't want to
Speaker 1: scandalize that too much. But then you had this guy Dr.
Speaker 1: Leo Stanley, who between and this is another American, between
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty two, he injected six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six prisoners at San Quentin Prison with tests
Speaker 1: in an attempt to slow a reverse aging. But he
Speaker 1: used the testicles of goats, rams, boars, deer. He essentially
Speaker 1: purade them like I assume in like a big smoothie
Speaker 1: blender um purade the testicles so that they he could
Speaker 1: put them in a needle and inject them under the
Speaker 1: skin of the abdomen subcutaneous tests is what I'm hearing,
Speaker 1: testy like slurpy, and and of course, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's not much you can really say about that, but
Speaker 1: he reported that that that he had some success with it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, ultimately, you have a situation where a
Speaker 1: dude is performing horrible human experimentation. Uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: within the walls of a prison. But back to ivanof all, right,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's interesting to note that that
Speaker 1: was the environment that Ivanov was working in. Say, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's working in environment where, and certainly not everybody thought
Speaker 1: that Ivanov was great. There were there were some scientists
Speaker 1: that came to sort of investigate and poke around what
Speaker 1: he was doing, because even I mean everyone, not everyone
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, totally inject some people with ape stuff.
Speaker 1: That's that's a great idea. Now, some some people were concerned,
Speaker 1: but there was enough of it going around that not
Speaker 1: as many eyebrows were raised. These were all hormonal approaches
Speaker 1: to treating impotence made prior to the discovery of testosterone,
Speaker 1: before the emergence of modern hormone science. So you cut
Speaker 1: him a little slack there. I guess as far as
Speaker 1: the mindset goes, not as much as some of the
Speaker 1: actual acts that were performed, because certainly the stuff that
Speaker 1: happened at San Quentin was indefensible. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: Ivanov sort of did get his uh come up. And
Speaker 1: so I guess you could say for his ethical transgressions,
Speaker 1: right with trying to impregnate women with chimpanzee sperm without
Speaker 1: their knowledge. He was spanished to Kazakhstan, right, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: French governor and guyana Um said none of that, get
Speaker 1: out of here. Yeah, And then he tried to he
Speaker 1: had plans to carry out more experiments in Russia, but
Speaker 1: it was a pain to try and ship all these
Speaker 1: these animals back all the way from Africa. They're dying
Speaker 1: on the way, They're dying once they get back. It's
Speaker 1: just a huge zoological headache. And yeah, indeed, he eventually
Speaker 1: is sent to Kazakistan and he really he's released the
Speaker 1: next year, but he dies soon after, which I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand yet sad, but then also but he
Speaker 1: was kind of off the rails at that point. It
Speaker 1: seems like in any case that we've looked at, there
Speaker 1: there comes this moment where you look up your mad
Speaker 1: you're essentially a mad scientist, but you you look up
Speaker 1: and you realize that you would you would think you
Speaker 1: would realize you've become a mad scientist, like whether you're
Speaker 1: ivan off and you look up and you realize, wow,
Speaker 1: I've lost all my funding, and uh, I have notes
Speaker 1: here on how I'm going to um secretly impregnate a
Speaker 1: woman with chimp steamen. Or you're someone like like Lily
Speaker 1: the dolphin guy, and you're living in a flooded apartment
Speaker 1: with dolphins and taking LSD in your isolation chamber. You
Speaker 1: think you might realize, man, my funding was just cut
Speaker 1: and I'm doing all this crazy stuff something that maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not on the up and up anymore. Maybe I've
Speaker 1: become Yeah, well was Isn't there some sort of phrase
Speaker 1: about when you're living in the monkey house, you can't
Speaker 1: smell the pooh. I've never heard that that that that
Speaker 1: sounds basically here he was literally living in the monkey house.
Speaker 1: Uh well maybe not literally, but but he was trying
Speaker 1: to keep a monkey house uh in Russia and carry
Speaker 1: out these experiments. So then that of course leads us
Speaker 1: to the question couldn't actually be done? And we will
Speaker 1: talk about that right after this message. All right, we're
Speaker 1: back one more thing about ivan Off before we move
Speaker 1: on there. We mentioned that his whole thing was to
Speaker 1: prove Darmond right to stomp out religion, and that the
Speaker 1: the humanity would be the icon of this h of
Speaker 1: his victory. But there are also some theories that the
Speaker 1: the aging Bolsheviks in in particular were very interested in
Speaker 1: financing his research because they were aging men in an
Speaker 1: age when there were some scientific minds that were that
Speaker 1: that thought that you could slower reverse aging by injecting
Speaker 1: things like like like puade tests into the body. You know,
Speaker 1: that they thought that this was if not if these
Speaker 1: techniques weren't working, they were at least leading to in
Speaker 1: the right direction. So there's there are some theories that
Speaker 1: state that while he while Ivanof was definitely um, you know,
Speaker 1: go go dar dar when we're gonna prove religion wrong,
Speaker 1: some of the Bolsheviks might be thinking, oh, let's get
Speaker 1: this guy some money. Maybe he'll hook me up with
Speaker 1: the sweet sweet injections and I can live forever. Okay.
Speaker 1: So so they had their own little hidden agenda maybe
Speaker 1: right again, Ivanof, you know, not under the direction of
Speaker 1: Stalinik to raise this eight man army. So could we
Speaker 1: do it? Could we could be well, this is kind
Speaker 1: of an open question, um, because it's it's this was
Speaker 1: this period we're talking about, like the nineteen twenties, you know,
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century. This was the time to get
Speaker 1: funding for this experiment. And and certainly as people managed
Speaker 1: to get or at least one man managed to get
Speaker 1: some funding, and it didn't come to fruition. So the
Speaker 1: environment in the world today is certainly not such or
Speaker 1: certainly in most places thankfully that this kind of thing
Speaker 1: is going to get green lit. Yeah, that's right. Robin Bernstein,
Speaker 1: the assistant professor of anthropology at George Washington University, says
Speaker 1: that in a lab setting with a scientist, it's possible
Speaker 1: to fertilize an egg with genetic material from a chimp.
Speaker 1: But to your point, she says, who's going to fund
Speaker 1: it and who's gonna be going to sanction it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to I mean, you know, let's
Speaker 1: let's not kid ourselves. As a scientist, tend to be
Speaker 1: pretty bright people, but they are existing in a and
Speaker 1: they're also existing in a culture of of their particular science.
Speaker 1: So you would have to have someone in a culture
Speaker 1: that advocated or tolerated, uh, this type of experiment. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're there have been. People often point to
Speaker 1: the Second World War and you know, the experiments of
Speaker 1: Joseph Mangela, you know, and the you know, the horrible
Speaker 1: things that went on uh there under the regime because stuff,
Speaker 1: because it was a situation where stuff was tolerated. You
Speaker 1: release a gas and in a room and it will
Speaker 1: eventually fill that volume of air. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to have the space that will tolerate a certain level
Speaker 1: of unethical science or more more, you know, outright evil,
Speaker 1: however you want to raise it. So yeah, for for
Speaker 1: this kind of experiment to to come around again, for
Speaker 1: somebody actually make a go at it, you would you
Speaker 1: would have to have that environment that that that culture
Speaker 1: that tolerated this kind of scientific experimentation among actual scientists. Well,
Speaker 1: and even though you know, the scientific community is largely
Speaker 1: pretty self governing, there are people who are still worried
Speaker 1: about it. Biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin said in a two
Speaker 1: thousand interview with The Guardian, chimps shared percent of human genome,
Speaker 1: and a fully mature chimp has the equivalentental abilities and
Speaker 1: consciousness of a four year old human using human and
Speaker 1: chimpanzee embryo, which researchers say is feasible. This is him
Speaker 1: saying this could produce a creature so human that questions
Speaker 1: regarding its moral and legal status would throw four thousand
Speaker 1: years of ethics into chaos. Would such a creature enjoy
Speaker 1: human rights? Would it have to pass some kind of
Speaker 1: humanness test to win its freedom? Would it be forced
Speaker 1: into doing menial labor or be used to perform dangerous activities?
Speaker 1: It's interesting I was reading some stuff by Richard Dawkins,
Speaker 1: and he was making pretty much the same argument that
Speaker 1: if we were he was letting out some some various
Speaker 1: situations that could come about that would change the way
Speaker 1: we think about things. And he was arguing that if you,
Speaker 1: if you were able to create a successful hybridization of
Speaker 1: a human nish and fancy this this humanzy um, you
Speaker 1: you would basically change everything that like his his argument
Speaker 1: is kind of like ivanovs that if you had this creature.
Speaker 1: So if he's not advocating the creation of it, but
Speaker 1: he's saying if he's saying, could it be done? Maybe,
Speaker 1: and if it were done, it would it would change
Speaker 1: the way we think. I don't we were talking about
Speaker 1: this earlier. I don't know if we actually agree with
Speaker 1: that right right, because we we were actually pointing to
Speaker 1: our podcast about the science of arguing and how sometimes
Speaker 1: even when we have all the facts before has sometimes
Speaker 1: and mostly this is ego driven usually, uh, we tend
Speaker 1: to ignore those facts and still go with whatever it
Speaker 1: is that we're rooting for. We're arguing against UM. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it's possible that UM it wouldn't necessarily change
Speaker 1: our idea of how the world was made, how we
Speaker 1: came into being. If we were to create this creature
Speaker 1: for some people, it would write, I mean, but someone
Speaker 1: who firmly believes in intelligent design, they're very much set
Speaker 1: in this mindset this is the right way, and the
Speaker 1: rest it's just some sort of like liberal agenda. If
Speaker 1: said liberals were to to roll out humansy, it's not
Speaker 1: like they would drop everything and be like, well, what
Speaker 1: have I've been wasting my time with this whole intelligent
Speaker 1: design stuff, because there is the proof of the humansy.
Speaker 1: They would say, no, that's just some weird monkey you found,
Speaker 1: or any number of ideas that would just refute that
Speaker 1: any any possibility that this is what they said it
Speaker 1: was right. And you know, just just in case anybody's
Speaker 1: worried about out this coming to fruition, Stewart Newman, a
Speaker 1: developmental biologists sponsored UM by, of course, the biotech activist
Speaker 1: Jeremy Rifkin, actually sought to preclude the creation of a
Speaker 1: humanity by attempting to patent the relevant to technology so
Speaker 1: that they would be able to restrict its use and
Speaker 1: then promote an ethics debate UM, you know, on the
Speaker 1: on the world wide platform UM. Because they felt like,
Speaker 1: we just want to go ahead and bring this issue
Speaker 1: to the forefront because people really aren't thinking about it. Um.
Speaker 1: Even though the patent was rejected, they felt like it
Speaker 1: was successful because now they had people talking about the
Speaker 1: question about it. They the people were discussing the possibilities
Speaker 1: and the ethics of creating said hybrid. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I mean and in a sense, the government reacted the
Speaker 1: way it was opposed to write, because it's not really
Speaker 1: supposed to give a patent to anybody, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily know someone's agenda, right, So they rejected this
Speaker 1: pen on the grounds that although the Patent and Trade
Speaker 1: Office UM has been permitted since the Supreme Court decision
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty to issue patents on living organisms. A
Speaker 1: major ground for the rejection was their claim to have
Speaker 1: no guidance from Congress as to how human an organism
Speaker 1: can be before it is not patentable by the Thirteenth
Speaker 1: Amendments prohibition of slavery. So you know, there's there's it's
Speaker 1: still very much a gray area. And as rifkin Head
Speaker 1: brought up, you know, at what point are we human?
Speaker 1: What is humanness? What is you know, what are we
Speaker 1: creating here? So, yeah, I mean, it's it's possible to
Speaker 1: create this creature. But should we Yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: not saying yes we should, I'm just saying yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all good stuff to think that. It also brings
Speaker 1: to mind another tale from this uh, the same sort
Speaker 1: of legacy I was discussing earlier with the Adventures of
Speaker 1: the Creeping Man and I wanted Dr Moreau. You had
Speaker 1: an HP Lovecraft story titled Facts concerning the late author
Speaker 1: German and his Family, which is one that I I
Speaker 1: always liked, um when when I was, you know, reading
Speaker 1: a love Craft. But it's, uh, it's ultimately a it
Speaker 1: it sort of brings the mind some of Lovecraft's racial paranoia,
Speaker 1: which can at times be a little off putting. Um.
Speaker 1: But what's amazing about the story, it's it's very much
Speaker 1: just set in this post Darwinian world. So the story
Speaker 1: involves a man coming, uh, a man who came back
Speaker 1: from exploring in Africa, and it comes to light that
Speaker 1: while he was there, he fell in love with a
Speaker 1: white ape princess. You know think uh, I think the
Speaker 1: movie Congo, the crazy gray apes that had the big
Speaker 1: pet stone paddles that they bashed people with. Well, he
Speaker 1: found this uh individual finds out that his uh uh
Speaker 1: that a member of his family had had gone to
Speaker 1: Africa have fallen in love, and that he was actually
Speaker 1: descended partially from this white ape princess. So I just
Speaker 1: find that a fascinating tale because it really it brings
Speaker 1: to mind a lot of the problems that would come
Speaker 1: to light if if we had a humans, the idea
Speaker 1: that it would really rock our boat and make us
Speaker 1: think long and hard about these differences between what it
Speaker 1: is to be human and uh and what it is
Speaker 1: to be this other and if there is and how
Speaker 1: how firm that distinction really is? Of course in the
Speaker 1: Lovecraft toy, it's just a little more, a little more horrific. Well,
Speaker 1: and to bring up Richard Hawkins right selfish gene He
Speaker 1: talks about how our genes are selfish. If all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you do have genetic material that is created
Speaker 1: with a chimpanzee and you have that offspring, how do
Speaker 1: you feel towards that, right? Because that is part of you? Right?
Speaker 1: You're do you you have a completely different idea of
Speaker 1: of what it is to be human, to be sentient?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, I think that about wraps it up.
Speaker 1: Let's have the robot bring over some mail and we'll
Speaker 1: read a quickly. Alright, this is from a listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Tony, says, Hi, Robert and Julie, Greetings
Speaker 1: from Melbourne, Australia. Enjoy really enjoy your podcast. I was
Speaker 1: listening to your Bug Diet episode today when on my
Speaker 1: way to meet some friends to lunch in our Chinatown district,
Speaker 1: when I happen to pass a restaurant called Ant's Bistro.
Speaker 1: Uh and that's spelled A and T Foster vs. I
Speaker 1: had to take a photo and send it to you, guys.
Speaker 1: I'm yet to sample their signature dish, but it's a
Speaker 1: con except you could catch on. Here's the photo. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work. So yeah, we asked people for
Speaker 1: examples of bug related cuisine and uh in their own
Speaker 1: experiences and uh we had a few different people right
Speaker 1: in and that was that was one of them. And
Speaker 1: let's see what else we have here. We heard from
Speaker 1: a listener by the name of Timothy. Hi, Robert and
Speaker 1: Julie just wanted to weigh in on on the argument's episode.
Speaker 1: Robert had mentioned philosophy and I wanted to stress how
Speaker 1: important it really is and how sad it is that
Speaker 1: philosophy isn't taken more seriously in American society. Ego is
Speaker 1: like a colored lens. We may not even be aware
Speaker 1: we are wearing. The argument is a fantastic opportunity for
Speaker 1: someone else to point them out. Philosophy helps you learn
Speaker 1: to look for those heirs yourself. I believe philosophy is
Speaker 1: a large part of why my girlfriend and I are
Speaker 1: able to turn our occasional argument into meaningful conversation. We're
Speaker 1: both willing to be wrong because we both mind the
Speaker 1: rational solution we agree upon to be much preferable to
Speaker 1: a selfish win. I love the show. Uh, And for
Speaker 1: the record, Julie, the male robot most definitely is not argumentative.
Speaker 1: Oh you say that, but have you ever been stuck
Speaker 1: in the break room with Arnie Now pretty he's in
Speaker 1: there to talk to the robotic coffee machine. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can pay have a thing going. Yeah, well, all right,
Speaker 1: if you have something you want to share with us
Speaker 1: about past episode on bugs or arguing, or if you
Speaker 1: have something some interesting stuff to share about this episode
Speaker 1: on humansies, do let us know. There were a number
Speaker 1: of I had other things in the notes, so I
Speaker 1: didn't get around to mentioning. So I'm sure some of
Speaker 1: you guys have some cool ports of fiction to bring
Speaker 1: up and i'd i'd love to highlight them hand or
Speaker 1: the exposed to them for the first time. Uh and
Speaker 1: if you want to find us, you can find us
Speaker 1: uh a on Facebook where we're Stuff Below your Mind.
Speaker 1: You can find us be on Twitter, uh where or
Speaker 1: we are Blow the Mind and uh see where else
Speaker 1: can you find us? You can find us at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at Discovery and take note of that new
Speaker 1: email address please Discovery dot com. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.