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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally

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Speaker 1: aired on November eleven, and this was about the Spacing

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Speaker 1: Guild of Dune, following up on the last week's Vault

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Speaker 1: episode about the Benny Jesserit. That's right, more Done content.

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Speaker 1: This one, of course, was a lot of fun to

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Speaker 1: put together and these I should also point out this

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Speaker 1: is also mentioned in these episodes, but there were a

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Speaker 1: pair of older episodes that we've done many years before

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Speaker 1: about the science of doone, where we talked about things

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Speaker 1: like still suits and sand worms. So this was kind

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Speaker 1: of a return to that series. And who knows when

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Speaker 1: Done Part two comes out in theaters eventually, maybe we'll

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Speaker 1: we'll find a good excuse to dive back into the

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Speaker 1: Done universe. Hey, maybe your listeners out there have ideas

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Speaker 1: about what we could tackle. Listen to these episodes and

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Speaker 1: let us know. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind,

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Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff

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

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And on this podcast we never stopped doning,

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Speaker 1: so it's done yet again. This is part two of

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Speaker 1: the Dune series that we started earlier this week. So

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Speaker 1: in the last episode we talked about the Bennie Jessert

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Speaker 1: and a bit about the neuroscience of pain, and today

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Speaker 1: we're here to talk about what more Bennie Jesser. Maybe

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Speaker 1: some spacing Guild stuff. Yeah, that's right. We're going to

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Speaker 1: pick up where we left off with the Bennie Jesser

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Speaker 1: and then we're going to move on to the Spacing

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Speaker 1: Guild um. And I think the place I'd like to

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Speaker 1: start is to come back to something we touched on

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Speaker 1: in last episode, and that is the idea that the

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Speaker 1: Bennie Jesser are chiefly concerned with politics right now. We

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Speaker 1: offered some caveats about that in the last episode, and

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Speaker 1: that we often hear the word politics and think of

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Speaker 1: like electoral democratic politics. Uh. The political situation in the

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Speaker 1: Done universe is is not so lucky to have democratic

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Speaker 1: electoral politics. They've got some kind of weird um hybrid

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Speaker 1: uh technological feudalism that has like an an emperor on top,

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Speaker 1: and then there are there's like an aristocracy of of

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Speaker 1: landed nobles, essentially houses who control planets as their fiefdoms.

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Speaker 1: And then there's also a pretty large input from trade guilds,

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Speaker 1: primarily the Spacing Guild, which controls the monopoly over the

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Speaker 1: the economy of interstellar travel. Yeah. So, um, yeah, if

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Speaker 1: you need a if you need a refresh. Uh, certainly

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Speaker 1: we went over the world of Doune in the last episode. Uh,

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Speaker 1: so go back and listen to that one if you

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Speaker 1: you didn't have a chance to. So. One of the

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Speaker 1: books that I was looking at for this was that

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Speaker 1: was another fun um collection of done essays. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: book titled Dune in Philosophy, and in it philosophy professor

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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Nicholas who also edited the book. He examines the

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Speaker 1: topic of the benegessriate in facing the gom Jabbar test.

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Speaker 1: He touches, you know, on the point that they that

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Speaker 1: they make in this you know conversation between Paul and

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Speaker 1: the Reverend mother that the Benigessa are concerned with politics.

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Speaker 1: But uh, Nicholas points out that that what we're talking

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Speaker 1: about here with politics is politics in Aristotle's sense of

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Speaker 1: the world. Word um. Political science one of the three

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Speaker 1: sciences he outlined alongside contemplative science, which would have included

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Speaker 1: both physics and metaphysics and practical science. So there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of talk about tripods uh in you know, in

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Speaker 1: the the order of things in Dune um and and

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Speaker 1: so in a way that kind of matches up, I

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Speaker 1: guess very loosely with with Aristotle's three prompt approach to

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Speaker 1: understanding the universe. Man, I have not looked at that

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Speaker 1: philosophy of Dune book, but that sounds interesting. So does

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Speaker 1: it get into like the what is the philosophic fickle

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Speaker 1: outlook of Baron Harconan and stuff? You know, And there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun stuff, and there's definitely some hobbs.

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Speaker 1: I know, I'll touch on some hobs here in a bit,

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Speaker 1: but there's also, um, there's also one let's see what

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Speaker 1: is it? Uh? I think it's something like, you know,

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Speaker 1: basically like one article walks through the various houses and

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Speaker 1: factions and talks about how they would have been thought

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Speaker 1: off by uh, say Socrates or whoever. So it's it's

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Speaker 1: a fun read. So, you know, one of the things

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Speaker 1: about Aristotle is is that there is a there's a

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Speaker 1: quote that's often attributed to him, uh, pretty famous to

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Speaker 1: the Aristotle quote man is by nature a political animal. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I think this is an interesting quote, partially in

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Speaker 1: how I think it is often misunderstood because I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of times people take that quote to mean

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Speaker 1: that that Aristotle was saying that man is the only

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Speaker 1: political animal, which he does not mean. He actually mentions

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Speaker 1: other animals as political animals as well. Yeah. He he

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Speaker 1: also refers to, you know, use social insects and so

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Speaker 1: forth as as being political animals. Again, one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons this is interesting to come back to this is

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Speaker 1: because the benegestent that are big about talking about the

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Speaker 1: difference between humans and animals, and given their focus on politics,

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Speaker 1: we can't help it go in this direction. Okay, But

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Speaker 1: so what did he mean by saying this? Then? Well,

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Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit more about this, and

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Speaker 1: apparently this is this is an area where you can

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Speaker 1: get into some amount of debate and we're not going

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Speaker 1: to go, uh, there's this a certain amount of philosophical

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Speaker 1: back and forth on this. But I was looking at

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Speaker 1: a paper from Cheryl E. A Body, Uh, And it

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Speaker 1: was the article Higher and Lower Political Animals published in

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Speaker 1: the Journal of Animal Ethics in two six and she

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Speaker 1: writes that that Aristotle considered man's impulse towards partnership with

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Speaker 1: others to be the most important, and that it is

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Speaker 1: only through these partnerships that happiness is possible. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: I mean it sounds to me like, you know, that

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Speaker 1: means that the benegestion are all about happiness obviously, um

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Speaker 1: right right right right up there out And uh Aristotle

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Speaker 1: broke this down across the different dimensions um of of

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Speaker 1: our interactions with other people, at the household level, at

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Speaker 1: the village level, and then at the what he considered

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Speaker 1: kind of the ultimate level. The Polish a collection of

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Speaker 1: human beings who lived together through the creation of laws

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Speaker 1: allowing them all to survive and flourish. And this is

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Speaker 1: where we get politics. As the word politics. I think

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Speaker 1: there's a pretty good case to be made that the

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Speaker 1: Aristotle is onto something here about the fundamental nature of humankind,

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Speaker 1: that sort of um that what makes us really special

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Speaker 1: is our ability to cooperate with one another. And it's

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Speaker 1: not that other animals lack the ability to cooperate with

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Speaker 1: one another. I mean you might say that is say,

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Speaker 1: like a youth social insect colony coordinates their activities even

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Speaker 1: better than humans can. But humans have have much richer

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Speaker 1: ways of cooperating with one another than even say, you

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Speaker 1: social insects do, because we have things like language, which

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Speaker 1: allows us to very very minutely coordinate our behaviors and

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Speaker 1: cooperate in ways that are have levels of complexity you

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Speaker 1: couldn't really imagine without something like language. Yeah. So, Nick Nicholas,

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Speaker 1: coming back to his paper, rights that Aristotle considered politics

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Speaker 1: a place for human practical reason to flourish. So it

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Speaker 1: is the ideal place, not for everyone, but for the

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Speaker 1: best minds to busy themselves. And um, you know, thinking

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Speaker 1: thinking again to the Done universe. It's easy to to

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Speaker 1: focus on all the uh at times dystopian aspects of it,

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Speaker 1: and the war and the intrigue, but you know, it

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Speaker 1: is a pretty cooperative interplanetary empire when you look at

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Speaker 1: it from a certain perspective. You know, I mean, they

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Speaker 1: have managed to not annihilate each other with atomic weapons.

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Speaker 1: They have this uh this, you know, this this, um,

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Speaker 1: this treaty in place. Um. Even though there's a great

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Speaker 1: deal of inequality in the Dune universe. Um, they're all

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Speaker 1: all these factions are working more or less together. Well yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I think you can see those dualities all throughout

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Speaker 1: real history as well. I mean, look at any number

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Speaker 1: of empires you can think of the Roman Empire or

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Speaker 1: the British Empire. I mean, all of these are at

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Speaker 1: the same time kind of marvelous achievements of cooperation and

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Speaker 1: coordination at the same time that they are brutal engines

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Speaker 1: of oppression. Yeah. Now, a body discusses the same thing

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Speaker 1: that you mentioned that you know, some that we've discussed

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Speaker 1: just a second ago. That you know, some take Aristotle

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Speaker 1: to mean that non human animals cannot be political. Others

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Speaker 1: see it as the view that humans are merely more

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Speaker 1: political than any non human animal. But again, Aristotle puts

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Speaker 1: a great deal that emphasis on language. Um and uh

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Speaker 1: yeah it is. Language is key to the human realm

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Speaker 1: of politics. Um in in good ways and bad ways. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: a language allows for a complexity of coordination. That is,

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Speaker 1: uh that that of course can serve both good and

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Speaker 1: bad end. So it allows for extremely complex coordination to

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Speaker 1: service of the greater good and helping one another, but

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Speaker 1: also to uh, you know, ever richer layers of deception

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Speaker 1: than than could be imagined by any other kind of animal. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I've seen him pointed out that one of

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Speaker 1: the things that our language does is it allows us

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Speaker 1: to share uh particular points of view with others, perceptions

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Speaker 1: of of of what's working, what's not working, of what's

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Speaker 1: bringing us pleasure and what's bringing us pain. Now, I

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Speaker 1: want to come back to the Benigested distinction of humans

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Speaker 1: and animals again. This is you know, they're very much

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Speaker 1: of of the mindset. Don't be an animal, be a human? Uh.

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Speaker 1: And the reverend mother tells Uh Paul that the test

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Speaker 1: is about seeing if he is human or not UM

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Speaker 1: and the Beniegestor training seems to a larger degree revolve

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Speaker 1: around the high application of reason in a way that

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Speaker 1: overpowers animal instincts. Again that the example that has thrown

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Speaker 1: out as the animal choose its leg off if it's

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Speaker 1: cotton a trap, but the human, the political animal par excellence,

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Speaker 1: plots and practices politics over the fact of it's entrapment. Well,

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Speaker 1: in fact, the very example she gives is one of deception.

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Speaker 1: Remember that he would feign death in order to attract

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Speaker 1: the trapper and then and then strike out and kill him. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and of course this is uh in a way this

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Speaker 1: foreshadows what is to come. Uh. In the novel Dune,

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Speaker 1: because the trades acquisition of Aracus is widely seen as

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Speaker 1: a trap, and and Paul's father um to To as

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Speaker 1: not not entirely by his own choice, ends up in

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Speaker 1: the position of the animal that must strike out from

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Speaker 1: the trap in an attempt to punish his oppressor. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It ends up not quite working, but it's it's again

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Speaker 1: one of the great scenes in the book. And and

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Speaker 1: I thought a wonderfully um recreated scene in the recent

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Speaker 1: film adaptation. Now coming back to the philosophy of of

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Speaker 1: Dune book, Nicholas uses the com Jabar awareness test to

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Speaker 1: make a point about the current state of humanity in

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Speaker 1: our world, the real world, in particular the environmental pair

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Speaker 1: al we face. Um. He says, you know this, this

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Speaker 1: is the trap. We are the trap, but we are

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Speaker 1: arguably not actually human enough, not aware of our place

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Speaker 1: in the world and our connections to one another. Uh

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Speaker 1: to act in the best interests of the city. Uh. Quote.

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Speaker 1: Herbert's philosophy of the human warns against two things, being

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Speaker 1: animal and being a slave. As animals, we may be

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Speaker 1: enslaved by our animal desires, but there is a different

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Speaker 1: slavery being a slave to the machine. The Butalerrian Jahad

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Speaker 1: freed humanity. It freed beings from enslavement to machines, and

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Speaker 1: it freed us to develop our human talents. Herbert isn't

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Speaker 1: asking to abandon our favorite playthings iPod, computer and game systems.

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Speaker 1: He's challenging us to find out how to use those

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Speaker 1: toys to live a human life. The warning is not

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Speaker 1: to stagnate. Now, if we're thinking about environmental catastrophe, you

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Speaker 1: know it. It may also seem counterintuitive to think of

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Speaker 1: politics as the answer, obviously, but but you know, there

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Speaker 1: are more than enough examples in our modern world of

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Speaker 1: political barriers to environmental action. But of course it is

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Speaker 1: through politics, certainly in the Aristotle sense of the word,

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Speaker 1: that anything has done for the greater good of humanity. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and a very crude since I think this analogy works.

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Speaker 1: Doing something about, say, environmental problems which will eventually cause

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Speaker 1: harm to do lots of people or to everyone may

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Speaker 1: require some kind of initial investment. It's it's sort of

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Speaker 1: like the marshmallow test, but for you know, but for

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Speaker 1: people as a whole, like, can can you actually do

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Speaker 1: the thing that's going to get you a better outcome

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Speaker 1: in the long run? If it hurts you a little

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Speaker 1: bit in the short run, A lot of times the

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Speaker 1: answer is no. Now, right after I UM was looking

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Speaker 1: at this material, I just happened to be watching a

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Speaker 1: ted X talk for for other reasons, UM, and it's

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Speaker 1: one from Jill Bolt Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight,

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Speaker 1: a brain scientists personal journey. UM. I think we've mentioned

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Speaker 1: her on the show before. She had this UM this

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Speaker 1: journey to recover from a stroke and wrote about it

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Speaker 1: quite interesting. But this particular talk was the nero and

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Speaker 1: anatomical Transformation of the teenage brain from and Taylor's main

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Speaker 1: points in this concern what happens to the teenage brain,

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Speaker 1: but also just the development of the brain in general,

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Speaker 1: and I thought some of her points lined up with

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Speaker 1: a lot of this Benedjester at thinking in the concept

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Speaker 1: of Aristotle's politics. She points out that we are feeling

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Speaker 1: animals that think, not thinking animals that feel uh, and

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Speaker 1: we are we are all neuro circuitry. That's something that

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Speaker 1: she drives home. And as such, we think thoughts, we

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Speaker 1: then feel emotions based on those thoughts, and then we

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Speaker 1: run physiological responses to those emotions and for sustained or

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Speaker 1: recurring psychological responses such as anger. We wind up running

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Speaker 1: the same thoughts over and over again to reproduce those

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Speaker 1: same results. And she drives something that you know, we

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Speaker 1: have we have an ability to pick and choose what's

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Speaker 1: going on inside of our heads. Uh. And she sums

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Speaker 1: it up by saying, you know, again, we are we

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Speaker 1: are feeling creatures who think, uh, we tend to be

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Speaker 1: more concerned with the me rather than the we. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and in this we fall short of the idea

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Speaker 1: of that polus of the of the city uh that

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Speaker 1: Aristotle writes about. So I think it's interesting to think

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Speaker 1: about like political action coming together, communal responses, planning towards um,

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Speaker 1: you know, future problems. Is that these are things that

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Speaker 1: on one hand, they're difficult for individuals to do at times,

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Speaker 1: but on the other hand, like this is this is

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Speaker 1: something that humans do excel at. I mean, we're not

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Speaker 1: we're not, you know, we don't have the same level

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Speaker 1: of efficiency compared to you social insects certainly, but um.

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Speaker 1: But it is one of the strengths of humanity that

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Speaker 1: that you know, virtually anything that we consider great in

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Speaker 1: in human culture, uh, you know, and and um and

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Speaker 1: in the history of our civilizations, it has been is

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Speaker 1: due to people working together and bringing things out of that.

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Speaker 1: But it's also interesting the way that um, the use

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Speaker 1: of politics and the Benny Jesser it since I guess

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Speaker 1: reflects both types of both ways of thinking about the words.

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Speaker 1: So on the one hand, you have them sort of

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Speaker 1: executing long term plans through massive cooperation of they're they're

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Speaker 1: they're coordinating activities on a galactic scale, uh, to try

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Speaker 1: to serve some goal in the end. But you could

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Speaker 1: also see them as I think quite accurately, ruthless power

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Speaker 1: seekers within a ruthless system, and that those are both

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Speaker 1: true at the same time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, they're

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Speaker 1: they're definitely you know, engaging in shadow government conspiracies. They

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Speaker 1: are they're manipulating uh, pretty much anyone they come into

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Speaker 1: contact with to certain degrees. But then then they also

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Speaker 1: have these goals of creating some sort of a human

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Speaker 1: supercomputer that will you know, bring about some sort of balance,

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Speaker 1: uh and if you know, long term success for the

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Speaker 1: human species. But then again, I guess that's that is

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Speaker 1: often if you if you if you look at at

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Speaker 1: today's politics, I mean that is often the case, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's you'll see politics who yeah, have some

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Speaker 1: sort of a particular aim or goal that they talk

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Speaker 1: about that lines up with other people's estimations of what

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Speaker 1: could make the world a better place. Um, but then

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Speaker 1: they've also got to play that political game. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: you can, I can, you know, you can argue, well,

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Speaker 1: they have to play that political game in order to

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Speaker 1: to do this thing or to attempt to do this thing.

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Speaker 1: But then you also wonder, like, what is the actual

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Speaker 1: driving force is it? Is it the the good thing

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Speaker 1: you want to do for the world, the change you

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Speaker 1: want to you want to enact, or is it that

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Speaker 1: game and that that's that continual you know grasp for power. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know. On on on one hand, I uh, I

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Speaker 1: feel a draw towards optimism, you know, I want to

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Speaker 1: be optimistic about that kind of project. But I also

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Speaker 1: think that people's real motivating priorities are often determined largely

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Speaker 1: by their habits, by what they do day after day.

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Speaker 1: And so if you get in the mindset of well,

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Speaker 1: I gotta play the game in order to achieve some

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Speaker 1: lofty goal that would be for the good of humankind

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Speaker 1: or something. I mean, in a way, I guess that

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Speaker 1: is what people must do if they want to achieve

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Speaker 1: those goals through say, mass action, which has to be

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Speaker 1: coordinated through politics probably, But there I think there's always

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Speaker 1: a risk of by playing the game, your real values

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Speaker 1: become the playing of the game. What is in furtherance

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Speaker 1: of playing the game, because that is what you have

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Speaker 1: to do day in and day out, right, right, And

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Speaker 1: so like in the doone University, you're a member of

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Speaker 1: a great house. You you you don't want to just be

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Speaker 1: trying to assassinate your rivals just for the sake of assassination.

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Speaker 1: It's just because it's just this is the way politics works.

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Speaker 1: But if that is what you spend day after day

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Speaker 1: doing all the time, I think that ultimately will end

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Speaker 1: up defining your main priorities. You know, when when you're

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Speaker 1: forced to choose between one thing and another, you'll probably

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Speaker 1: choose what's in service of the projects you pursue day

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Speaker 1: after day all the time. All right, well, why don't

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Speaker 1: we move along to the Spacing Guild and to uh

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Speaker 1: to set the stage, I thought we might do uh

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Speaker 1: one of these little readings here. Perhaps we can drop

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Speaker 1: a little ambience into the audio bed here, and uh

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Speaker 1: we'll hear from the Spacing Guild Handbook. Any path that

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Speaker 1: narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans are

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Speaker 1: not threading their way through a maze. They scan a

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Speaker 1: vast horizon filled with unique opportunities. The narrowing viewpoint of

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Speaker 1: the maze should appeal only to creatures with their noses

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Speaker 1: buried in the sand. A point of order, wouldn't burying

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Speaker 1: your nose in the sand actually be a good way

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Speaker 1: to inhale significant amount of spice and thus proud horizons. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's why I thought this is a great quote to

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Speaker 1: start with, because on one hand, that's the sand, that's

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Speaker 1: where all that spices, and uh, you know, that's that's

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Speaker 1: what the Guild is all about. And then on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, the thing they're saying don't do is the

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Speaker 1: main thing that Paul accuses the Spacing Guild of doing

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Speaker 1: of you know, of of not considering the vast horizon,

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Speaker 1: but but considering the narrow viewpoint of how to avoid

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Speaker 1: catastrophes in the near future, and of course, how to

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Speaker 1: maintain that spice. You know, this quote actually reminds me

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Speaker 1: of something that's brought up in in an essay I'm

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Speaker 1: going to get into in a bit by by a

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Speaker 1: NASA JPL navigator who has written about the Guild navigators

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Speaker 1: in UH in Dune, and one of the concepts he

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Speaker 1: talks about in his essay is the difference between UH

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Speaker 1: calculating a solution to a problem in a best fit

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Speaker 1: fashion or in a first fit fashion. UH. You know,

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Speaker 1: these are very different approaches you can have. So one

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Speaker 1: says you you keep trying to solve the problem until

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Speaker 1: you find the first solution that actually works, and the

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Speaker 1: other is you keep trying to solve the problem, going

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Speaker 1: through all possible solutions until you have identified the optimal one.

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Speaker 1: And of course people think, well, you know, going for

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Speaker 1: the best fit path has got to be better, right,

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Speaker 1: because some even some successful paths are better than other

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Speaker 1: successful paths. But he outlines the fact that for a

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Speaker 1: lot of real world type scenarios, even if you have

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Speaker 1: supercomputers involved, calculator best fit pathways is sometimes such a

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Speaker 1: monumental calculation task that it's functionally impossible. So you know,

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Speaker 1: they're saying, we'll be aware of all possibilities, but there's

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Speaker 1: also the possibility that being aware of all possibilities puts

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Speaker 1: you in a paralyzing state of inaction and in decision,

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Speaker 1: because you can never finish doing all the calculations, and

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Speaker 1: maybe you would be better to just sort of bury

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Speaker 1: your nose whenever you figure out one path that works,

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Speaker 1: just do that. Anyway, I guess we can keep that

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Speaker 1: in mind as we talked about the Spacing Guild. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well,

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Speaker 1: let's let's refresh though in the Space and Guild, um

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Speaker 1: be because certainly you haven't read the book in a while,

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Speaker 1: you might have forgotten some of this and the Spacing

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Speaker 1: Guild that they are present in Dune Part one, the

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Speaker 1: movie that that just came out last month, but they're

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Speaker 1: not maybe not in the forefront of things. So first

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Speaker 1: of all, as we mentioned earlier, um, this is one

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Speaker 1: of the great mental physical training schools, uh, the Spacing Guild,

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Speaker 1: and we're told in Dune that they constituted one leg

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Speaker 1: of the political tripod, maintaining the Great Convention. This is

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Speaker 1: the truth among all the great Houses and the Imperium

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Speaker 1: that banns atomic weaponry and permits these kind of formal

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Speaker 1: wars of assassination against rulers and key figures. So that way,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's members of great Houses that get strategically

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Speaker 1: murdered as opposed to whole populations and planets due to

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Speaker 1: you know, a catastrophic use of weapons of mass destruction.

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Speaker 1: The other legs of the tripod are the Imperial House

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Speaker 1: and the Landstrade. The Landstrade is the body representing all

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Speaker 1: of the great houses. Now, by the time of the

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Speaker 1: of the events in the novel Dune, the Spacing Guild

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Speaker 1: is immensely powerful. They control a monopoly on space travel

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Speaker 1: and transport, as well as interplanetary banking and so some

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Speaker 1: elements you know, you know, like everything and doing. You

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Speaker 1: can easily think of parallels in history. Uh for instance,

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Speaker 1: the non military aspects of the Night Templars is there,

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Speaker 1: as well as of course that the East India Company,

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Speaker 1: the Dutch East India Company, um and and various other

402
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Speaker 1: monopolies you can you can turn to like what happens

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Speaker 1: when one group controlled something absolutely or near absolutely. So

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Speaker 1: there's something interesting about the fact that the Spacing Guild

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Speaker 1: has this monopoly on interstellar travel in the Dune universe,

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Speaker 1: which is that, if I understand it correctly, this monopoly

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Speaker 1: is handled in a way that that's different than a

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Speaker 1: lot of real world monopolies which are maintained in some

409
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Speaker 1: cases by by force, you know, by by like military

410
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Speaker 1: or paramilitary force, saying like no one else may may

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Speaker 1: try to compete with with us, or sometimes by just

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Speaker 1: like wealth inequality, by saying like, you know, we're the

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Speaker 1: only kind of company that that can afford the infrastructure

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Speaker 1: to do this. But in the Done universe, it seems

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Speaker 1: to be that the monopoly is maintained not by any

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Speaker 1: of these conventional methods, but by having a monopoly on

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Speaker 1: the Navigators themselves, a monopoly on expertise, right and uh,

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Speaker 1: and I guess the depending on how you look at

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Speaker 1: the like the nature of the Guild Navigators the Steersman, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like the secrets and the knowledge of their creation, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, to whatever extent they are engineered, or to

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Speaker 1: whatever extent they are like a product of mass spice consumption.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there are there are you know,

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Speaker 1: elements there as well as like it's it's about access

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Speaker 1: to the spice, um, and the Guild definitely values its

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Speaker 1: access to the spice. But one thing I was really

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Speaker 1: thinking about when putting together notes for this episode is

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Speaker 1: the power of the Guild is um, you know, just

429
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:41,920
Speaker 1: as everything in a sci fi futuristic world is kind

430
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 1: of uh you know, blown into into into greater proportions

431
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and all like the basically, their

432
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,439
Speaker 1: power is such that if a great house chooses to

433
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 1: surrender their planet in one of these these squabbles and

434
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: wars of assassins, um they and they want to flee

435
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:05,760
Speaker 1: beyond the imperium, the Spacing Guild will supply that house

436
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: with just such a far flung planet or you know,

437
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:11,919
Speaker 1: some territory on a far flung planet that's called a

438
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 1: two pile. And this is actually referenced in the novel

439
00:25:15,560 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: when the Trades are trying to figure out what to

440
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:22,480
Speaker 1: do about this hearkening trap that they've found themselves caught in,

441
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 1: and one of the options, which they don't really entertain,

442
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 1: is oh, yeah, we could buy the you know, do

443
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 1: the rules of uh you know, of of these various treaties.

444
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: We can just go to the Spacing Guild and they

445
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:33,920
Speaker 1: will take us away to a planet that no one

446
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 1: else can get to. Um And and I love that

447
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:39,679
Speaker 1: love this because it reminds us that for the Guild,

448
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:42,400
Speaker 1: this is a true monopoly. And they're also that their

449
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 1: space beyond the imperium. But since the Guild are the

450
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: ones who control movement and mapping. They kind of have

451
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: control over the shape of the physical universe for human beings, uh,

452
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:57,240
Speaker 1: their access to secret worlds and outside space. It almost mirrors,

453
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:01,679
Speaker 1: you know, theological concepts. That's really interesting and and I

454
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:05,560
Speaker 1: mean this would essentially be a an unprecedented state of

455
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: affairs in the history of human politics because normally, you know,

456
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 1: if you get exiled, you have to go somewhere where

457
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 1: you could be found, and there are probably already going

458
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 1: to be some people there anyway. But in this case,

459
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: you can get exiled to a place where there's nobody

460
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:25,560
Speaker 1: there to begin with, and nobody's nobody can ever find you. Yeah,

461
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: it's it's weird how in this case it's like a

462
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: place is not real unless the Guild permits you to

463
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 1: go there. And and in having this two pile option,

464
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 1: it allows people to to basically pass out of the

465
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: world of human beings in the imperium and UH and

466
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: exist in in another state, almost like they've entered into

467
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 1: an afterlife or something. That. Yeah, that's fascinating. So how

468
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: did the Guild come to learn of the use of

469
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 1: spice and navigation? Well, I was reading about this in

470
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: the Dune Encyclopedia, of course, and they outline a few

471
00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 1: different possibilities, but the basics seems seemed to be that

472
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:02,439
Speaker 1: they were perhaps just casting around in the wake of

473
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,560
Speaker 1: the Great Revolt in the Great in the wake of

474
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 1: the Balarian Jahad, looking for just anything that could aid

475
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: them in navigation. You know, what can we do to

476
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: enhance human mental capacity in order to help us handle this?

477
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: And then they discovered the spice or it's also suggested

478
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 1: that perhaps the Benegester it has something to do with

479
00:27:19,520 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: this and introduced the spice to them. Um, now, how

480
00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:26,159
Speaker 1: do they use the spice? Well? As we come to

481
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:29,880
Speaker 1: learn in the Dune series, the steersman or Guild Navigators

482
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: consumed just massive amounts of milange, so much that they

483
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: have been altered into a kind of aquatic mammal that

484
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: breathes and drinks milange. Now, we in the first novel

485
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: don't really get a lot of insight into the Guild navigators,

486
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: Like we don't really see them up close or get

487
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,359
Speaker 1: their perspective. But that's not true in the sequels, right,

488
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:53,439
Speaker 1: Like I think in the second book, one of the

489
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: main characters is a is a guild navigator am I

490
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: right right right, the the Guild Navigator that we we

491
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: actually see in David lynch Um adaptation, they basically pulled

492
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: the Yeah yeah, they Edric, they pull him out of

493
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,399
Speaker 1: the sequel um and uh, you know, that's probably one

494
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:13,200
Speaker 1: of the most memorable sequences in that entire film, with

495
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:19,639
Speaker 1: these very very mutinty um gothy spacing Guild members bringing

496
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: out this great tank in which floats this creature that

497
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: is actually just a human being, but a very exotic

498
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: form of human being brought on by this intense relationship

499
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: with the Spice. Yeah. I love I've always thought that

500
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: was a great choice by Lynch. So he's like, Okay,

501
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: I'm adapting one of the weirdest novels ever into a

502
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: big mainstream motion picture, and uh, I think the thing

503
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do is insert a scene that's even weirder

504
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: than anything in the book, that is not in the book,

505
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: and put that right at the beginning. As I love it. Yeah,

506
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: I mean it's really clear here in the latest adaptation

507
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 1: that uh that the director old d V there he um,

508
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 1: he really likes the weird uh and he he he

509
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: likes to linger on on these beautiful weird moments just

510
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: in the first half of the first novel. I really

511
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 1: hope he gets to make Dune Messiah as well. Um,

512
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 1: which he has said he would like to do. Is

513
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: sort of a way to round out the trilogy because

514
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: there's so much weird stuff and in Messiah, because that's

515
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: where you start seeing things like like a guild steersman,

516
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: and um, there's also a face dancer. Uh. There, there's

517
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: wonderful stuff in there. Now. I was reading about the

518
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: Steersman in Um, the Dune Encyclopedia, and I wanted to

519
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:44,959
Speaker 1: read this wonderful quote. Whatever faults the Spacing Guild may

520
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:47,959
Speaker 1: have had when the day of the Steersman ended, a

521
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 1: real beauty passed from the universe. The experience of the Steersman,

522
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 1: breathing and drinking milange, rocking to the beat of space

523
00:29:56,440 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: and time, swaying with the music of the spheres, lad

524
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: in their dance by the pulse of life around them,

525
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: alive to every note in the pivan, both composed and

526
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: played by their quartet, is beyond the power of words

527
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 1: to describe or the imagination to conceive. And so the

528
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 1: Dune Encyclopedia I think is pretty pro space and Guild

529
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 1: they take a side in the factional struggles. Well and

530
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 1: this this, I mean, they're really like, look, you know,

531
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: whatever you have to say about the Space and Guild.

532
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:30,479
Speaker 1: Those Steersman they were they were doing great. They they

533
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: were just uh And I guess I like the idea

534
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 1: that it you know it It kind of answers the question, well,

535
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: why would why would it would you want to be this? Like,

536
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: why would uh would this be an okay state? Because

537
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: certainly in the Lynch film, you know, it looks kind

538
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,400
Speaker 1: of like a nightmare. It looks like some sort of

539
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: like well, just this horrible state. But if you imagine uh,

540
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: the Guild navigator just you know, feeling so alive on

541
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: the spice in that tank, then I guess it makes sense.

542
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: But in the uh, the New Dune movie, the Villeneuve

543
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 1: when so, I wasn't aware when I was watching it

544
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: that there was a scene where we saw the Guild steersman,

545
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: but you you identified that actually they do show up.

546
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 1: They're the guys towards the beginning of the movie that

547
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: are dressed in what looks like a combination of papal

548
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: vestments and e v A suits. Yeah, and one of

549
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: the big Tail Tale signs, of course, is that they

550
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: have these orange domes over their head, orange, you know,

551
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: implying the spice UM. But yeah, it's easy to miss.

552
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: In fact, I I had noticed that there were, you know,

553
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 1: some people online responding to the film and they were like,

554
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 1: where was the Space and Guild um and and yeah

555
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:42,000
Speaker 1: you can. You can watch it and think that they

556
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 1: don't show up at all, but they they are here

557
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: and uh and I think they'll they'll have a bigger

558
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: role in part two. Thank thank thank All Right, well,

559
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:57,479
Speaker 1: I thought we should talk maybe a bit about the

560
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: science of deep space now vacation and how that would

561
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: apply to the Spacing Guild. And as one of my

562
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: sources here, I was looking at another essay in that book,

563
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:08,920
Speaker 1: the Science of Dune we mentioned in the last episode.

564
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:12,959
Speaker 1: This one is called the Spacing Guild, and it's by

565
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: a guy named John C. Smith who worked in spaceflight

566
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:21,200
Speaker 1: navigation at NASA JPL the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his

567
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 1: bio says that he worked on missions too. I'm not

568
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:25,959
Speaker 1: sure what to make of this to Venus, Mars and

569
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:29,960
Speaker 1: Earth um and that he was part of the Cassini

570
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 1: Huygens mission to Saturn and its Moon Titan. I guess

571
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: you could argue that that, like the various satellites that

572
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: help us study Earth science, our missions to Earth, that

573
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: we have to we have to go into orbit to

574
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: gain that kind of perspective to study our own world.

575
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:49,000
Speaker 1: I wonder it might mean return missions like attempted probe

576
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: is coming back. That's true, because that that too is

577
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: a navigational feat. Sure. Now there's one thing that Smith

578
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: actually mentions right at the end of his essay that

579
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting. I'd never consider heard this,

580
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: but it's a piece of historical context that might help

581
00:33:04,440 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 1: us understand a little bit better what was going through

582
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: Frank Herbert's head when he framed deep space navigation in

583
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: the way that he did in these novels. So remember

584
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: that Doune was originally published in nineteen sixty five, which

585
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: again is kind of it's hard to believe, like it

586
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 1: always feels further in the future than that. Yeah, to

587
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: imagine that this this novel came out before with stock

588
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:31,960
Speaker 1: you know, h yeah, Yeah, it's strange. But Smith writes quote,

589
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: during the time period Dune was written, humanity's exploration of

590
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: the moon and planets was in its infancy The first

591
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: successful fly by ever of another planet was NASA's Mariner

592
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: too craft, which encountered Venus in late nineteen sixty two.

593
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, Mariner four became the first craft

594
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: successfully navigated to encounter Mars. But here's the thing to realize,

595
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 1: these were not the only two missions launched at this time.

596
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: Smith discount is that these two probes, the Mariner two

597
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 1: arriving at Venus in nineteen sixty two and Mariner four

598
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:10,360
Speaker 1: reaching Mars in sixty five, were up to this point

599
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: the only two fully successful interplanetary missions out of twenty

600
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:20,399
Speaker 1: that had been attempted. Wow, so that's that's that's impressive. Yeah,

601
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:22,720
Speaker 1: So because you also have to we also remind ourselves

602
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 1: of like, why do we have Mariner one and Mariner two.

603
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,239
Speaker 1: It was because it was considered so risky that you

604
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: we better just make two of them and send them

605
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: both out because there's a high probability we're going to

606
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:35,839
Speaker 1: lose at least one of them. Right. So, so, at

607
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 1: the point Herbert was writing, even navigating simply between the

608
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: planets within our own Solar system was a venture characterized

609
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: mostly by failure. And so we today, you know, being

610
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: able to look back on many decades now of of

611
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: successful missions. I think in a kind of uh, in

612
00:34:55,560 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: a kind of shortsighted way, take interplanetary travel at least

613
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: of of unscrewed probes kind of for granted, and in

614
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 1: a way that we really shouldn't like, not realizing how

615
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: difficult this technology was to develop and how much intricate

616
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 1: calculation has to go into uh missions like this to

617
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:18,320
Speaker 1: make them possible. So all that to say, basically, I

618
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:21,839
Speaker 1: think there's a reason that in nineteen sixty five this

619
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:25,320
Speaker 1: would have seemed like something you know, in interstellar navigation,

620
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: would have seemed like something that required an almost supernatural

621
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: mechanism to explain that. Once again, that the interesting thing

622
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: being that in most cases science fiction that you know

623
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 1: that mechanism is the is the is the thrust generation

624
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 1: or the travel technology on the ship that allows it

625
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,720
Speaker 1: to go so fast. I think that's sort of taken

626
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:51,320
Speaker 1: for granted in Dune, and instead the real magic seems

627
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 1: to come in and the question of navigation. Yeah, I mean,

628
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 1: it's it's a situation where the spacing Guild and the

629
00:35:57,080 --> 00:36:00,839
Speaker 1: steersman they don't you know, it's it's just that they

630
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:03,399
Speaker 1: can you know, travel through hyperspaces, that they can come

631
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: out the other side, that they can do so successfully. Now,

632
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: this might the the idea and the dune novels is

633
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: that they travel through what they call fold space or

634
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: folded space, which I think introduces its own hypothetical dangers.

635
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: But even if we just stick to the problems we

636
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:24,240
Speaker 1: would expect to encounter traveling through real space. The the

637
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: the problem of navigating deep space is is more complex

638
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,799
Speaker 1: and interesting, maybe than a lot of people would have imagined,

639
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: because um, it's it's fundamentally different and much more difficult

640
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: a problem than navigation and say a car. Right, some

641
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:42,880
Speaker 1: of the differences are obvious. For example, if you're driving

642
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: on a road, you don't really have to plot a

643
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: course at all, right, the course is already determined by

644
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 1: the road that has been built. You just have to

645
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:54,719
Speaker 1: know which roads to follow and how far to follow them.

646
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:57,560
Speaker 1: But even if there were no roads where you were going,

647
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:00,319
Speaker 1: so you were just driving a dune buggy over over

648
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,879
Speaker 1: desert wilderness, you would still have a much easier time

649
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: because you'd be able to note the direction of your

650
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 1: destination and more or less just drive straight to it.

651
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:12,919
Speaker 1: I guess circumnavigating any obstacles you encounter along the way.

652
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: You know, you might hit a mountain or ravine or

653
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: something and you have to go find a way around it.

654
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:22,240
Speaker 1: But basically you're just traveling in a across a fixed map.

655
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: And this is really a blessing with travel, right the

656
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: fact that you know, if you're if you're driving from

657
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:30,879
Speaker 1: one place to another, your car is the only thing

658
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: that is moving in that scenario relative to the reference

659
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 1: frame of the surface of the Earth. It's not like

660
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 1: your starting position and your destination are usually also moving.

661
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: But when you're when you're navigating in space, everything is

662
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,960
Speaker 1: moving and moving within their own reference frames. So to

663
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,840
Speaker 1: travel to one planet or another, you can't just aim

664
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 1: at the planet and then turn on the thrusters. Right,

665
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: if we're trying to fly to Mars, you can't say

666
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,240
Speaker 1: where is Mars now, Okay, I'm gonna aim dead center

667
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:01,280
Speaker 1: at that and and I'm going to burn the rockets.

668
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:03,879
Speaker 1: You can't do that, of course, because by the time

669
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 1: you got there, Mars would be gone. Mars is moving

670
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 1: really fast, it's an orbit around the Sun, and it

671
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: would be somewhere else. So instead you essentially have to

672
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: plot an intercept course it's not like sailing into a port,

673
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 1: but like sailing to intercept another ship that is also moving. Yeah,

674
00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: it's not a journey to where the target planet is.

675
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 1: It's a journey to where the target planet will be. Now, Fortunately,

676
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,920
Speaker 1: the paths of objects like planets are strongly predictable that

677
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: they follow an orbital course established mostly by gravity and inertia.

678
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:39,800
Speaker 1: And we've got good enough information about the orbital pathways

679
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: of planets that we can predict with pretty high accuracy

680
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 1: where they're going to be too arbitrary points out in

681
00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 1: the future. Though, of course, the farther you try to

682
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: predict the motion of anything into the future, the the

683
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: more inaccurate your predictions will get because of the you know,

684
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 1: the the cruel of of tiny, tiny inaccuracies building up

685
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: over time. But then there's a second problem. Okay, so

686
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 1: you can mostly predict where a planet's going to be

687
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 1: in the future, so you can plot a course to

688
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 1: intercept it. You know where it's going to be, you

689
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: go to where it's going to be instead of where

690
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,839
Speaker 1: it is now. But but there comes in a second problem.

691
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 1: Given the vast distances involved in space travel, even tiny

692
00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 1: inaccuracies in the initial calculation of a baseline trajectory can

693
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: end up sending you off course. Uh. And for a

694
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,759
Speaker 1: crude analogy to understand this, imagine you are shooting an

695
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:33,839
Speaker 1: arrow at a target three feet away. If you're off

696
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: by like one degree of difference, when you're trying to

697
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,959
Speaker 1: hit the target dead center, that's not going to matter

698
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: very much if it's three feet away, But if you're

699
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,959
Speaker 1: trying to hit a target two hundred feet away, being

700
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:46,719
Speaker 1: off by a little bit is going to make a

701
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: big difference. And so this is one reason that when

702
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: we we send out uncrewed space probes to do a

703
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:56,280
Speaker 1: you know, inner the orbit of another planet or intercept

704
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: a comet or something like that, you can't just aim

705
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:02,360
Speaker 1: them at where that planet or object is going to

706
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: be and then shoot them off and let them go.

707
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: You will have to perform repeated course corrections. You'll have

708
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: to check the position of the probe periodically while it's

709
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:15,880
Speaker 1: on the way to the destination, figure out, you know,

710
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: figure out it's it's updated course heading based on the

711
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: new information you have about where it is, and probably

712
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:25,280
Speaker 1: perform a new burn to correct the course heading because

713
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: it will be slightly off just because there's always going

714
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 1: to be some level of inaccuracy that will build up

715
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:33,799
Speaker 1: over time, and uh and and there there's no way

716
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: to be perfectly accurate when you're charting a course through space. Now,

717
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 1: there's one other thing worth noting, which is that while

718
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: real world space agencies now have plenty of experience with

719
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:47,240
Speaker 1: deep space navigation, basically all of that experience is found

720
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: not in piloting ships from inside the ships, but in

721
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 1: programming navigational instructions for uncrude probes. So all of the

722
00:40:56,760 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: space missions with with onboard human pilots have been really

723
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:03,080
Speaker 1: close to home, you know, a few trips to the

724
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:05,880
Speaker 1: Moon in the sixties and seventies, and then a bunch

725
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:08,960
Speaker 1: of runs between the surface of Earth and low Earth orbit.

726
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: And as far as crude ships go, that's it, you know.

727
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: We we haven't had a somebody pilot a ship from

728
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:18,359
Speaker 1: inside that ship to Mars or anywhere else. And there

729
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: are some differences in this regard. The steering of uncrewed

730
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: robotic probes introduces additional difficulties. For example, the distance between

731
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: Earth and the probe will always create time delays. These

732
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: would be you know, limited by the fact that radio

733
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 1: signals can only travel at the speed of light. So

734
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:37,920
Speaker 1: if you're trying to land a probe on the Martian

735
00:41:37,960 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 1: moon Phobos, it's going to take some number of minutes

736
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 1: for the information to travel each way. So you send

737
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 1: an instruction to the probe and it might take who knows,

738
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: you know, ten minutes for it to get there, and

739
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:52,920
Speaker 1: then you gotta wait another ten minutes for it to

740
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: send you feedback and for you to find out if

741
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: your maneuver worked or not. But then there's another problem,

742
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 1: which is that Smith has a section of his essay

743
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: in in the Science of Dune about the process of

744
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: determining where a spacecraft actually is, which is crucial because

745
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 1: to know how to steer, you have to calculate a trajectory,

746
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: and you can't calculate an accurate to trajectory if you

747
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:22,279
Speaker 1: don't know where you are. So to establish the position

748
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 1: of a spaceship with accuracy, you need some kind of

749
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: external landmark to reference, kind of similar to how you

750
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 1: would use landmarks to recognize where you are on a

751
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:35,800
Speaker 1: journey by car, except of course, this is over vastly

752
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:39,240
Speaker 1: greater distances without roads, and with need for much greater

753
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 1: precision because of the distances that will be covered on

754
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:46,640
Speaker 1: the journey. So Smith writes that we usually calculate the

755
00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: position of space probes in our solar system with reference

756
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: to landmarks such as the Earth's north pole or He

757
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: also mentions a reference point that is the intersection of

758
00:42:58,520 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: Earth's equatorial and orbital planes on January first, two thousand,

759
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,839
Speaker 1: which is of course everybody's favorite landmark. Um. But then

760
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,680
Speaker 1: you know, uh, so what you've got, You've got places

761
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:14,720
Speaker 1: like that, and you can determine uh, the probe's position

762
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: by say, checking the time delay on a radio transmission.

763
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: Uh and especially if you can triangulate that with multiple

764
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 1: receiver dishes, so you've got different dishes around the world,

765
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 1: and they can check how long it takes a radio

766
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: signal to reach them. You calculate the difference between the

767
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:34,880
Speaker 1: different dishes on the Earth's surface, and you can get

768
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea with with a pretty high level

769
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 1: of accuracy, where the probe is. And then you can

770
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: also calculate its velocity by measuring the Doppler shift in

771
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:48,359
Speaker 1: the in the radio transmissions as they as as they

772
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:51,440
Speaker 1: are received back on Earth. So again the Doppler shift

773
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:54,400
Speaker 1: is you know. The common example is how the the

774
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: pitch of an ambulance siren changes as the ambulance is

775
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:02,840
Speaker 1: moving towards you or away from you. Wave lengths of

776
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 1: different types of waves tend to get higher pitched and

777
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 1: become more compressed if the sources moving towards you, and

778
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,480
Speaker 1: then they tend to stretch out and get lower pitch

779
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 1: as the as the sources moving away from you. And

780
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: by measuring the amount of Doppler shift in the signal,

781
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 1: you can actually tell how fast something is moving away

782
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:24,279
Speaker 1: from you. But then, so here's another thing I thought

783
00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: was interesting. So again, in order to calculate a spacecraft's

784
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: current position and path, you need to know the last

785
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 1: best guess of where it actually was, and then from

786
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:39,399
Speaker 1: there you need to predict forward in time using mathematical

787
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 1: models of all the different forces acting on it. And

788
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: in a way, it's a kind of dead reckoning you

789
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 1: need to do. You say, Okay, at this time, I

790
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:49,400
Speaker 1: know the ship was here, and it's been traveling in

791
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:53,040
Speaker 1: this direction this fast with these forces acting on it.

792
00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:55,879
Speaker 1: And so when I read that, I was like, wait

793
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 1: a minute, the forces acting on it? Would that include

794
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: something other than inertia, other than the ship's initial velocity

795
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:08,120
Speaker 1: and the answer is yes, absolutely. It includes other forces

796
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: much the same way that if you're trying to predict

797
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 1: the path of a bullet you imagine, you know, somebody

798
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: shooting at a target. You can't predict the path of

799
00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: the bullet if you just imagine it travels forever in

800
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: a perfectly straight line out of the gun barrel. You

801
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,760
Speaker 1: need to take into account other things like gravity pulling

802
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: the bullet toward the ground, and atmospheric drags slowing the

803
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:35,280
Speaker 1: bullet down over time. Something very similar is true of spacecraft.

804
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 1: So to get a spacecraft's position and to calculate its

805
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,759
Speaker 1: future trajectory, you need to know not just where it

806
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: started and its initial velocity, but other forces acting on it,

807
00:45:46,280 --> 00:45:51,160
Speaker 1: including things like gravity. Uh. Gravity is Smith says the

808
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:55,239
Speaker 1: most important of these forces in the familiar interplanetary missions

809
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,800
Speaker 1: that we have experience with, and this would be gravitational

810
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 1: attraction exerted the objects in our solar system, the Sun,

811
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: the planets, moons, and other objects um. But actually it

812
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: doesn't even stop at the influence of gravity. The course

813
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:15,320
Speaker 1: of a spacecraft is diverted by other things, including well,

814
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 1: one would just be variations in the way gravity is

815
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: exerted even by known objects. So the the example Smith

816
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: gives is that gravity is not perfectly symmetrical in the

817
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:32,320
Speaker 1: way it's exerted by objects like planets and moons, because

818
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: these objects sometimes are kind of lumpy and so they're

819
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 1: gravitational influence is slightly asymmetrical. There might be more gravitational

820
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: influence in one part of the object or in a

821
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 1: certain direction than in other parts or in other directions.

822
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 1: But then on top of that, you've got radiation pressure

823
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 1: from the sun, you know, so the solar wind might

824
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:54,439
Speaker 1: be at the back of a of a probe that's

825
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: traveling and that's actually throwing off its trajectory from what

826
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:00,239
Speaker 1: you would imagine just if you calculated, you know, it's

827
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 1: initial velocity from from the rocket burn and then uh,

828
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: and then maybe the gravitational influence of nearby objects. You've

829
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 1: got to take radiation pressure into account. Uh, if an

830
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:13,520
Speaker 1: atmosphere is nearby, Smith says, you need to note drag

831
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:17,800
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere and so forth. And Smith even gives

832
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: a very strange and interesting example of a trajectory input

833
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 1: that was once considered a real mystery. It was the

834
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 1: so called Pioneer anomaly. I don't think I was familiar

835
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: with this before, Rob, have you ever read about this?

836
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 1: I don't remember. So this concerned the Pioneer probes, which

837
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:39,960
Speaker 1: you know, traveling off into deep space there, you know,

838
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 1: on on a long interstellar trajectory now, but navigators kept

839
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 1: finding that their predictions for the course of these Pioneer

840
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: probes was a little bit off, even after accounting for

841
00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 1: all the known forces that that they could think of.

842
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,839
Speaker 1: So the question is could this be an indication of

843
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:03,319
Speaker 1: something unknown, some some unknown force or unknown property of

844
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,800
Speaker 1: physics that hadn't yet been discovered. And the solution to

845
00:48:06,880 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: the mystery was was not that tantalizing, but but it

846
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting. Nonetheless, it turns out it's probably

847
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: not anything spooky about physics. The deviation from expected acceleration

848
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: was probably due to radiation pressure exerted by the power

849
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:28,279
Speaker 1: source on board the Pioneer probe. So inside, yeah, they've

850
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:31,240
Speaker 1: got they've got a little internal power plant, a radioisotope

851
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 1: thermoelectric generator or RTG, and this was creating anisotropic radiation

852
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: pressure that was sort of meaning So I think the

853
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: pressure generated by the waist heat from this thermoelectric generator

854
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 1: was actually exerting a pressure that changed the course of

855
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:52,399
Speaker 1: the probe as it flew through space and changed it.

856
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:54,399
Speaker 1: It didn't you know, the radiation didn't just go out

857
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 1: in all directions. It was sort of uh, it was anisotropic,

858
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: so it was going in one direction more than the

859
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:06,160
Speaker 1: other directions. And this was creating an accelerating force. Yeah.

860
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:08,680
Speaker 1: And and like like you said, when you're dealing with

861
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: with long distances like this, uh, just that little nudge,

862
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: especially if it's unaccounted for and unexplained, is enough to

863
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 1: send you completely off course. Right, And then Smith writes,

864
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 1: and as I say that interstellar travel would probably involve

865
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:28,120
Speaker 1: even more forces acting on a spaceship to cause it

866
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 1: to deviate from its course. And these influences would have

867
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: to be understood and modeled mathematically if you were going

868
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:38,720
Speaker 1: to navigate accurately. But another question would be again, you remember,

869
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:42,799
Speaker 1: you need those reference points within the environment to calculate

870
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 1: your position. If you're traveling through space, you need to

871
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: know where you are in order to calculate a trajectory.

872
00:49:49,600 --> 00:49:52,319
Speaker 1: So what would those external landmarks be if you are

873
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:57,720
Speaker 1: traveling between stars, if you're an interstellar space well Smith

874
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:02,000
Speaker 1: suggests the possibility of using pulsar um. Pulsars are highly

875
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 1: magnetized stars that spin around very fast, shooting out beams

876
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 1: of electromagnetic radiation out of their magnetic poles. And because

877
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 1: they rotate so fast, and because they shoot these beams

878
00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:18,759
Speaker 1: in selective directions, you know, it's not omnidirectional beaming. It's like, uh,

879
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 1: beams just coming out of the magnetic poles. They appear

880
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 1: from the at the external observer's perspective to pulse or

881
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: blink at these regular intervals, sort of like the you know,

882
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: the spinning light in the lighthouse, and the intervals of

883
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,759
Speaker 1: these pulses can be used to identify what pulsar you're

884
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:41,239
Speaker 1: looking at. In fact, the pioneer plaques, remember those, uh,

885
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:43,640
Speaker 1: those plaques that were designed to go on board the

886
00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:46,680
Speaker 1: probes in case an alien ever looks at this and says, hey,

887
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: who made this? Um? They used triangulation by pulsars of

888
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: specified intervals to show the galactic location of our solar system.

889
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 1: They're like, here's where Earth is. Though, I think to

890
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: be fair, I recall reading at some point that the

891
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: pulsar map on the plaque will no longer be accurate

892
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,120
Speaker 1: in the future. I'm not sure about that one though. Yeah,

893
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:09,560
Speaker 1: you got to read the fine print at about on

894
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: the plaque limited time offer. But pulsars are not the

895
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: only option. I was actually reading a piece about this

896
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: question in space dot com from one by an astrophysicist

897
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:25,240
Speaker 1: named Paul Sutter who is at UH Sunny Stony Brook

898
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 1: and the Flat Iron Institute in New York, and he

899
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:31,720
Speaker 1: was talking in this UH piece about about a paper

900
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: showing that you could use pairs of stars to establish

901
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:39,080
Speaker 1: position in interstellar travel. So I think in theory it

902
00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:41,560
Speaker 1: could be done. But uh, there there are a lot

903
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 1: of challenges probably ahead if we actually do become an

904
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: interstellar traveling species. Uh, you know, there's a lot we're

905
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 1: gonna have to figure out, and we may not have

906
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,880
Speaker 1: spice to aid us by by creating pressunts that allows

907
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:54,880
Speaker 1: us to predict the future, but there is going to

908
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 1: be an awful lot of of highly precise calculation involved.

909
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're gonna have to We're gonna have turn

910
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 1: to computers until you know, we decided we should. We

911
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:13,279
Speaker 1: can't use computers anymore right than now. I'd like to

912
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 1: come back to the philosophy and outlook of the space

913
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 1: and Guild. UM. I was reading in the Philosophy of

914
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:22,520
Speaker 1: doone and there's a there's an article titled A Universe

915
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:26,799
Speaker 1: of Bastards by Matthew A. Bkas and Um. In it,

916
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 1: Budkas describes the Guild as um as having quote a

917
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 1: parasitic relationship with political power. So in this what he's driving,

918
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 1: what he's pointing out, is that the Guild wields tremendous power,

919
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:43,800
Speaker 1: even power over the emperor, but they never actually rule.

920
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 1: They can't actually rule, they can't risk disrupting the flow

921
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 1: of spice. They depend on it absolutely. You take the

922
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 1: spice away and the Guild cannot do the thing that

923
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 1: gives them the power. And he yeah, he points out

924
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:00,720
Speaker 1: again that the Guild has no armies, but it doesn't

925
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 1: need to because it absolutely controls transport and trade between worlds.

926
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: And I found this quite interesting because it made me

927
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:11,360
Speaker 1: think about, you know, historically, what's what's one of the

928
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: things that armies do. Um. You know, one huge role

929
00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:20,279
Speaker 1: is disrupting trade. Um. To besiege a walled city is

930
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 1: to cut off its trade and travel and starve it

931
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:27,759
Speaker 1: into submission. UM. I was treading about sieges a while back,

932
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: and that's that's a you know, in the cinematic sense,

933
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 1: we often think, well, the siege is about like breaking

934
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 1: down walls, getting in there and then taking over the city,

935
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 1: But generally it's it's more about strangling the city until

936
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:42,440
Speaker 1: the people who live there, or the and or the

937
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:46,879
Speaker 1: people who rule there give in and open the doors themselves. Yeah,

938
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:49,000
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of the same could be

939
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 1: said about navies. A lot of the history of navies

940
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,560
Speaker 1: is also about interrupting trade, you know, trying to block

941
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:58,680
Speaker 1: access to ports or trying to intercept trade vessels. Yeah,

942
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:01,120
Speaker 1: and so the interesting thing about the Guild here is

943
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about blockades or besiegement, they have this

944
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:07,840
Speaker 1: power already, like it's they don't need an army to

945
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 1: do it all that because they they are the only

946
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:15,640
Speaker 1: ones who can operate movement between worlds. Um So by

947
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 1: its very nature, the Guild is in a constant state

948
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:23,239
Speaker 1: of besiegement or potential besiegement with every planet in the imperium. Now,

949
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 1: Buckus goes on to compare the politics of Dune to

950
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:31,440
Speaker 1: Thomas Hobbs work Leviathan, in which the author quote establishes

951
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 1: a theoretical state of existence in which there is no

952
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:37,799
Speaker 1: centralized authority, but rather a collection of individuals looking out

953
00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 1: for their own interests. Now, um, you know, you might say, well,

954
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 1: isn't there an emperor in Dune. Well, yes, there is

955
00:54:43,120 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: an emperor in Dune. But again the Emperor's in the

956
00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:48,719
Speaker 1: Emperor's house is part of that tripod and it's all

957
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: in this this uh, this political balance. So it's not

958
00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: like the emperor actually does have absolute control over everything.

959
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:00,920
Speaker 1: Again talking about the the emperor that is present during

960
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 1: during the first Dune book. Um, So when Dune, it's

961
00:55:06,840 --> 00:55:10,799
Speaker 1: not individuals but factions uh that are that are the

962
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: ones looking after their own interests. Uh, their fights, their feuds,

963
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: and these fights and feuds ultimately can threaten the stability

964
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 1: of everything. And that comes back to the way that

965
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:24,040
Speaker 1: the Guild operates itself again, because the Guild very much

966
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: wants stability, at least so far as its spice goes,

967
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 1: they don't want to do anything to threaten that supply.

968
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 1: So another interesting aspect of the Space and Guild is

969
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 1: to is to come back to the way it makes decisions. Um. Again,

970
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 1: we're envisioning the Steersman, these augmented and or mutated humans

971
00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 1: who literally breathe spice in order to generate the sort

972
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 1: of of limited uh UM precedents necessary to travel through

973
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 1: space and hyperspace, and a big part of this entails

974
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 1: seeing what the most immediate dangers are and dodging them

975
00:55:55,680 --> 00:55:58,640
Speaker 1: and so subsequently, one of Paul's biggest insights is that

976
00:55:58,719 --> 00:56:02,880
Speaker 1: the Guild commands you know, such power over everything and

977
00:56:02,880 --> 00:56:06,120
Speaker 1: their dependence on They depend on spice for their power,

978
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:08,680
Speaker 1: so they end up making all of their decisions in

979
00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:12,720
Speaker 1: a similar fashion. They always choose the safe immediate path.

980
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:15,799
Speaker 1: And while this ensures survival in the short term and

981
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:18,919
Speaker 1: it keeps keeps the spice flowing for them, it will

982
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:22,960
Speaker 1: eventually in the long term lead to stagnation for you know,

983
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:26,200
Speaker 1: the entire human endeavor. Oh, this is back to the

984
00:56:26,239 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: first fit versus best fit uh time. So it's interesting

985
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 1: to think about this in terms of cognitive bias to

986
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:36,440
Speaker 1: sort of reverse the Leviathan scenario and go back from

987
00:56:36,440 --> 00:56:39,879
Speaker 1: the faction to the individual um. As pointed out by

988
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:43,320
Speaker 1: Lauren and Grishma in the safety bias published in Behavior

989
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 1: Change in Risk Avoidance, is one possible mechanism by which

990
00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:53,239
Speaker 1: personality characteristics may be linked to anxiety pathology. And we

991
00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:56,680
Speaker 1: see risk perceptions factor into a number of cognitive biases,

992
00:56:56,719 --> 00:56:59,719
Speaker 1: including zero risk bias, in which there's a tendency to

993
00:56:59,719 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: try do eliminate eliminate a particular risk while other options

994
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,520
Speaker 1: would produce a greater overall risk reduction. Okay, So in

995
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 1: a sci fi scenario, if I understand that, right, that

996
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:12,719
Speaker 1: would be saying like, Okay, we're going to design a

997
00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:17,760
Speaker 1: spaceship that cannot possibly be destroyed by the biplasma canons

998
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: from from another spaceship, but in fact that spaceship is

999
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:24,120
Speaker 1: very prone to uh to like toxic build up of

1000
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: of c O two in the you know, atmosphere processors

1001
00:57:27,160 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: or whatever. That you're just like overly focusing on one

1002
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: type of risk while ignoring others, right. Um. I think

1003
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:37,320
Speaker 1: things like you know, the War on Terror are sometimes

1004
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:39,720
Speaker 1: brought up as an example of this too, like laser

1005
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 1: focusing on one particular threat, when some might argue that

1006
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:46,920
Speaker 1: if that same amount of energy went into other things,

1007
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:50,439
Speaker 1: then you would have you know, it would it would

1008
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:53,680
Speaker 1: result in greater safety. Um, and perhaps in a more

1009
00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:58,440
Speaker 1: meaningful sense. Right. There's also risk compensation theory, which holds

1010
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:01,520
Speaker 1: that people adjust their behavior your in response to perceived

1011
00:58:01,680 --> 00:58:04,800
Speaker 1: risk levels. If they feel protected, they tend to be

1012
00:58:04,960 --> 00:58:08,880
Speaker 1: less careful. The more risks they perceive, the more careful

1013
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:12,920
Speaker 1: they become. Um, And I was I was reading that,

1014
00:58:13,040 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: like one interpretation of this has to do with um,

1015
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 1: you know, like like safety gear and things like skydiving

1016
00:58:19,480 --> 00:58:27,120
Speaker 1: where uh like skydiving from a methods and material since

1017
00:58:27,200 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: it has become increasingly safer to do. But that means

1018
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:35,200
Speaker 1: people feel safer skydiving and they're more likely to take

1019
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 1: certain risks that sort of thing. It also reminds me

1020
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 1: of insights that I've read about climbing, where like, like

1021
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: you know, mountain climbing, where the danger is not the

1022
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:48,600
Speaker 1: part where you're you're hyper focused on every little thing

1023
00:58:48,640 --> 00:58:52,440
Speaker 1: you do. It's when certain actions become kind of automatic

1024
00:58:52,880 --> 00:58:54,560
Speaker 1: and you kind of I guess to a certain extent

1025
00:58:54,600 --> 00:58:57,880
Speaker 1: you feel safe. Um, you know you're going to be

1026
00:58:57,920 --> 00:59:01,080
Speaker 1: more careful if you feel the danger. But but coming

1027
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:04,439
Speaker 1: back to this, this idea of a risk compensation theory,

1028
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 1: I was wondering how it might equate to the guild.

1029
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:11,000
Speaker 1: So via their abilities, they're constantly not only confronting simulations

1030
00:59:11,040 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: of possible doom, which of course us normal humans do

1031
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:17,520
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, we engage in in um

1032
00:59:17,520 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: in simulating possible outcomes uh that are positive, but also

1033
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:23,080
Speaker 1: ones that are negative, and that can lead into a

1034
00:59:23,120 --> 00:59:27,760
Speaker 1: sort of fantasizing about potential doom. But the Guild they

1035
00:59:27,800 --> 00:59:30,280
Speaker 1: seem to go beyond that. They have actual visions of

1036
00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 1: dooms that they have to cleverly dodge as they navigate um,

1037
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 1: either you know, through space travel or politically. So do

1038
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:41,640
Speaker 1: they end up giving into these visions of doom and

1039
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 1: grow increasingly careful, or at least in some cases, do

1040
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:48,560
Speaker 1: they feel safe and protected by their use of the spice?

1041
00:59:50,160 --> 00:59:52,360
Speaker 1: I think I think probably with the Space and Guild,

1042
00:59:52,360 --> 00:59:55,400
Speaker 1: we're talking about the overly careful side of things here.

1043
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:57,600
Speaker 1: That seems to be in keeping with the safest path

1044
00:59:57,640 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 1: of the Guild and so forth in the way they're characterized.

1045
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:03,560
Speaker 1: But perhaps the comfort afforded by the spice allows them

1046
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:07,040
Speaker 1: to engage in some bolder maneuvers, at least so far

1047
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:11,080
Speaker 1: as it doesn't threaten the supply of spice um. It

1048
01:00:11,080 --> 01:00:13,640
Speaker 1: seems to be a constant. Anything that threatens the spice,

1049
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:17,280
Speaker 1: that's just a no go, like like almost zero zero

1050
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:21,080
Speaker 1: risk can be taken when it comes to that supply chain. Right.

1051
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:24,200
Speaker 1: So it's interesting with the Beni Jester in the Space

1052
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:28,040
Speaker 1: and Guild um because on a very basic level, and

1053
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the great things about done

1054
01:00:29,760 --> 01:00:31,720
Speaker 1: is that you can look at it at different levels.

1055
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 1: On one level, it's like these are just the sci

1056
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 1: fi magic versus sci fi science, right, it's which is

1057
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:41,680
Speaker 1: versus um techno wizards of a sort you know, um.

1058
01:00:41,760 --> 01:00:43,920
Speaker 1: But then it also it goes a lot deeper than that.

1059
01:00:43,960 --> 01:00:47,440
Speaker 1: It gets into like the ways they think, um, you know,

1060
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: short term and long term thinking and how they engage

1061
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:53,400
Speaker 1: in risk, etcetera. Yeah, I didn't think about that. So

1062
01:00:53,720 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 1: you're setting up the contrast that the Beni Jess being

1063
01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:59,720
Speaker 1: concerned with politics, are very they're very much engaged in

1064
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:04,320
Speaker 1: long term strategic thinking, whereas the Spacing Guild being very

1065
01:01:04,680 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: immediate task oriented or just like they're thinking one step

1066
01:01:08,320 --> 01:01:11,919
Speaker 1: ahead always. Yeah, like the Been Adjustment, for instance, we're told,

1067
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:14,600
Speaker 1: you know that they will actually make sure that things

1068
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:19,520
Speaker 1: are inserted into native religions on various worlds. Uh. That

1069
01:01:19,640 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 1: give them an out that like like oh yeah, well,

1070
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:24,680
Speaker 1: in our in our traditions, it does say that if

1071
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 1: a um, if a strange woman from another planet shows up,

1072
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:32,480
Speaker 1: we're supposed to give her a spaceship. You know, um

1073
01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:34,920
Speaker 1: come in handy a thousand years from now. Yeah, it

1074
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:37,000
Speaker 1: might come in handy a thousand years from now. So

1075
01:01:37,040 --> 01:01:40,080
Speaker 1: we're going to do it. Um. Whereas the Guild, they

1076
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:42,240
Speaker 1: would be asking different questions. They're like, well does that

1077
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:46,000
Speaker 1: what does it mean for our survival one minute from now?

1078
01:01:46,320 --> 01:01:49,360
Speaker 1: And what does it mean regarding our supply of the spice?

1079
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:52,080
Speaker 1: And I saw some papers online. I didn't really get

1080
01:01:52,120 --> 01:01:53,840
Speaker 1: into these so much, but there was one I noticed

1081
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:56,800
Speaker 1: that was looking at themes of addiction in Dune and

1082
01:01:56,920 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. Um. You know, because they both

1083
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:01,920
Speaker 1: deal with I guess addiction to some extent. You say

1084
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:04,720
Speaker 1: that that the Ring is an addiction, the power that

1085
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:06,880
Speaker 1: comes with the Ring as an addiction. And of course

1086
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:10,000
Speaker 1: the Guild is in a very real sense addicted to

1087
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:15,240
Speaker 1: the spice. Um but um and and and makes its

1088
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: its choices in the way that I guess could be

1089
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:21,400
Speaker 1: comparable to some sort of personal addiction level. Uh. Any rate,

1090
01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:24,120
Speaker 1: there's just another example of all the different levels at

1091
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 1: which you might engage with Dune. Got to engage them all,

1092
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:31,920
Speaker 1: all right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close it

1093
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:34,440
Speaker 1: out there. I think this will be it for for

1094
01:02:34,520 --> 01:02:38,560
Speaker 1: this journey into the Done universe. But hey, when Dune

1095
01:02:38,600 --> 01:02:40,640
Speaker 1: Part two comes out, maybe we'll dive back in. Maybe

1096
01:02:40,680 --> 01:02:44,240
Speaker 1: it'll be something else we get a hanker in to discuss. Oh,

1097
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:46,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be more, and of course we'd

1098
01:02:46,520 --> 01:02:48,600
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. You have insight

1099
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:51,520
Speaker 1: into any of this based on your own experience with

1100
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:54,200
Speaker 1: the the Done universe, no matter which path that ends

1101
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:57,920
Speaker 1: up taking. You know, the original novels, the sequels and prequels,

1102
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:00,280
Speaker 1: the movies, the video games. It didn't even into the

1103
01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 1: video games. Oh yeah, there's like a Commanding Conqueror style game,

1104
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 1: but it was Dune. Yeah, various real time strategy type things.

1105
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: I never actually played any of them, but but I've

1106
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 1: remember looking at stuff about them and they look cool. Um.

1107
01:03:15,960 --> 01:03:18,439
Speaker 1: There's also a big board game presence. There's, of course,

1108
01:03:18,480 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 1: the classic Done board game, which I I Um, I

1109
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:24,600
Speaker 1: got a copy of Man and I got it during

1110
01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: the pandemic, so it's it's never been played, and they're

1111
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:31,560
Speaker 1: they're a couple of of newer Doune board games that

1112
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:34,080
Speaker 1: also look very exciting, especially since they both have a

1113
01:03:34,160 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: single player modes, which you know is certainly a little

1114
01:03:37,560 --> 01:03:40,880
Speaker 1: easier to achieve, if maybe not as socially engaging. Anyway,

1115
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,680
Speaker 1: whatever your experience, if you have thoughts right in, we'd

1116
01:03:43,680 --> 01:03:46,080
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. In the meantimes. You'd like

1117
01:03:46,120 --> 01:03:48,160
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1118
01:03:48,560 --> 01:03:50,320
Speaker 1: you can find them in the Stuff to Blow your

1119
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:53,959
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed You'll get that wherever you get your podcasts.

1120
01:03:54,760 --> 01:03:57,480
Speaker 1: We have core episodes on two season, Thursday's Listener, Mail

1121
01:03:57,520 --> 01:04:00,480
Speaker 1: on Monday's Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday we do

1122
01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:03,080
Speaker 1: a little weird house cinema. That's our time to set

1123
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:05,720
Speaker 1: aside most of the serious concerns and just talk about

1124
01:04:05,800 --> 01:04:09,360
Speaker 1: a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent

1125
01:04:09,400 --> 01:04:12,520
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

1126
01:04:12,520 --> 01:04:14,840
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

1127
01:04:14,920 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or

1128
01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:19,720
Speaker 1: just to say ooh, you can email us at contact.

1129
01:04:19,760 --> 01:04:29,919
Speaker 1: That's Stuff to Blow your Mind podcasts. Stuff to Blow

1130
01:04:29,920 --> 01:04:32,480
Speaker 1: Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more

1131
01:04:32,520 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

1132
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows