WEBVTT - Tractable Thunder: Early Days of Electricity, Part 2 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:15.520 works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.000 By names Robert Brown and I'm Joe McCormick, and this 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:19.840 is going to be the second part of a two 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:24.000 part series on the weird history of electricity, different than 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.200 the history of electricity you might have learned about in 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.760 school with the the invention of the various different technologies. 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.199 Here we wanted to focus on the strange social and 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:37.279 psychic undercurrents, if you will, of the of the development 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.320 of electricity and human society and knowledge. Yeah, kind of 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:46.440 the midlife crisis of human cultures, uh, understanding and attitudes 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:51.360 towards electricity as it goes from pure mystery to the mundane. So, 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.640 if you haven't heard part one before you listen to 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:56.640 this episodes, you should probably go back and listen to 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.279 part one. But if you don't care about coming in 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.200 the middle of a conversation then and you're here, then 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:05.400 that's fine. Yeah, I mean a lot of this stuff, 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:07.600 A lot of the episodes that we discuss are gonna 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.360 you know, they can stand on their own, but we 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:11.520 do highly encourage you to check out part one. Okay, 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.120 So I'm going to start in a kind of counterintuitive 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:18.800 place for this journey of psychic electricity, and that's with 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.520 the English writer and poet Thomas Hardy. So you probably 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:26.160 remember him from from writing extremely depressing novels that you 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:27.959 had to read in high school, you know, the Return 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:30.480 of the Native Mayor of castor Bridge. What did you 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.120 have to read in high school? I guess it was 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:35.200 castor Bridge. That's the one that I feel like I'm 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.200 most familiar with. Yeah, or you might have write his 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:41.760 poems like The Darkling Thrush, which is one of my favorites, 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.560 and it contains these lines as one of the stanzas 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.640 of the Darkling Thrush. The land's sharp features seemed to 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:53.960 be the centuries corpse out linked his crypt, the cloudy canopy, 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.440 the wind, his death lament, the ancient pulse of germ 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:02.240 and birth was shrunk and hard and dry, and every 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:08.320 spirit upon the earth seemed fervorless. As I it's kind 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.560 of bleak, Yeah, But so he's talking about something that 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.200 happened in the past century. Yeah. I think one of 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.280 the early names of this poem, before it was called 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:18.920 The Darkling Thrush, was something like the Corpse of the 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.000 Past century. Or something like that. Uh. And this was 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:25.320 written around nine and that, you know, the end of 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.080 the eight hundred, So so what happened what happened to 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.840 our fervor during the century he spoke of. I don't 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:35.480 know exactly what dissipation of spirit Hardy was referring to, 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.120 but here's a stab that that I'd like to think 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:41.960 had something to do with it. It might have had 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:45.680 something to do with electricity. And so there's a great 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.280 Thomas Hardy quote that is it's quoted in one of 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:50.680 the papers were using as a source on this episode, 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:55.560 which is Life, Death and Electricity by Nicholas Ruddick. And 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:57.440 this was a great paper, by the way. Yeah, this 0:02:57.520 --> 0:02:59.120 was really good and it's uh. I think this one 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.440 was available out there for everyone to read. Yeah, and 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:05.840 it chronicles a lot about the developments of electricity in 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:08.920 the late eighteen hundreds leading up to the execution of 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.360 William Kimler, which we started the last episode with and 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:13.880 we'll get to later in this one, but it tells 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.520 the story of how hard he was quote attending an 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:23.280 electrically lit evening church service in London in May. What 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.920 was illuminated was the outdated nous of the old beliefs, 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:30.600 and Hardy wrote about it, quote, everything looks like the 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.480 modern world, the electric light and the old theology seems 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:38.520 strange companions. And the sermon was as if addressed to 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.160 the native tribes of primitive simplicity and not to the 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:46.160 nineteenth century English. Uh. Now, putting aside the you know, 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.440 racist and colonial assumptions of the metaphor hard he uses 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.640 there that is an interesting observation in line with what 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.680 we observed in the techno religion for the Masses episode. 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.720 There is something, uh, though though it has often been 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.640 sur mounted by various cults and people of varying theologies, 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:08.200 there is an inherent tension for some reason between technology 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.600 and religious belief. Yeah, because especially with an old religious belief, 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.600 there's often that sense that it's set in stone and 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.719 and this is the uh. You know, that this is 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:19.880 the truth that is buried in the earth for all 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.080 future generations to live by. And what gives it its 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.400 power is its ancient otherness. Right? And then what do 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:28.719 you do when a new otherness centers the picture? When 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:31.960 when suddenly we we know more about the what was 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.160 magic in the past, when we know we can explain 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.960 electricity or at least harness it in ways that we 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.280 had no ability to in the days that the tablets 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.680 were here were carved. Yeah, and so an observation that 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:46.359 Ruddick makes in his paper is that he's commenting that 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.000 by the eighteen nineties, as electricity came more and more 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:52.479 into our lives, you know, you you might have hundreds 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:56.680 of different interactions with electrical appliances and services throughout the day, 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.599 it was becoming increasingly difficult, he says, to talk about 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:04.800 transcendental matters in electrical terms. But before we get to 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.400 the sort of the death of the sacred ghost of 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:12.719 electricity in the the sort of mundane ravages of modern life, 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.400 I want to go back to a period where there 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.560 was still much weirdness and wonder to be had. Yeah, 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.040 we're still we're still in the time period of the 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:26.600 the experiments discussed previously where we're beginning to understand electricity 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.880 a little bit. We're exploring its properties, we're also exploring 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.400 the you know, it's dramatic side, it's entertaining side, as 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:38.200 well as it's it's dangerous and lethal side. Absolutely. So, uh, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:41.800 I want to talk about a scientist who has been 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.960 largely forgotten despite the fact that he was one of 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.160 the most famous and celebrated scientists of the entire world 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.599 in his day, and his influence on modern scientific thought 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.200 is just absolutely incalculable. And that that is the scientist 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.800 Alexander von Humboldt. Now, I recently read a book about 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:02.280 Alexander von Humboldt. It was the Invention of Nature Alexander 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:05.560 von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wolf. This is a 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.520 great book, by the way, but it talks about this 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.440 strange fact that he's been mostly forgotten about, despite the 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.760 fact that he was responsible, for example, for the scientific 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:19.120 concept of ecology, thinking about natural environments not as sort 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:24.320 of a god established domain of unchanging character, but as 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:28.840 complex dynamic systems that vary with climate and resources and 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.719 are subject to dramatic change even by altering a small variable. 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.040 If it's a if it's sort of a keystone variable. 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.920 But I want to communicate the spirit of how scientific 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:43.640 experiments in animal electricity were continuing uh in the in 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:46.520 the late seventeen hundreds in early eighteen hundreds by looking 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.120 at a couple of events in Alexander von Humboldt's life. 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:53.159 So in the seventeen nineties, Alexander von humbold actually became 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.480 friends with the rock star German poet Johann wolf King 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.839 Von Guta and Gerta was the poet who, in his 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.640 version of Faust wrote, what dazzles for the moment spends 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:08.279 its spirit? What's genuine shall posterity inherit? I always like 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.120 that cinnamon, and I think it also sort of applies 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:14.720 to some of the showmanship about electricity that we oh 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.080 yeah mentioned in the last episode. Yeah, very much so, 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.480 because I mean, at this point electricity has been a 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:25.720 show and electricity has often involved uh, dead animals, Yeah, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.080 to varying degrees. So so caten in mind as we 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.280 move forward. But Gota wasn't just a poet in his day. 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:34.800 He was also a really dedicated scientist, and one year 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:39.040 in the seventeen nineties, about three years after von Humboldt 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.240 and and Gota had first visited, they spent time together 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.400 in a city called Yugana to talk through scientific ideas 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:49.640 and conduct this long series of experiments on animal electricity, 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:51.680 which Humboldt was writing a book about at the time. 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.560 So he was interested in that that that animal electricity, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.480 that that idea that there was a specific intrinsic electrical 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.520 system to the body. Yeah, and as we discussed in 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.720 the last episode, it was later proved not true that 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.160 animal electricity is a different kind of electricity than the 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:11.120 external electricity that's in lightning and everything else. But but 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:12.960 he was still he was trying to suss it out. 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:15.520 He was trying to figure out what was going on 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.520 with the role of electricity in the bodies of animals. 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:20.880 So I want to read a quote from a section 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:25.520 of of Andrea Wolf's book where she says that Humboldt 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.080 and go To had been hanging out when there there's 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:32.480 a violent thunderstorm on this on this spring day, and 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.560 after the after humbold had been out taking in, you know, 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.760 atmospheric readings while he was watching the lightning happened during 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.200 the storm. The next day, he finds out that a 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.800 farmer and his wife nearby had been killed by the 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.200 lightning in the storm. So Wolf writes, he rushed over 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:51.120 to obtain their corpses, to obtain exactly Yeah, he just 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.920 obtained them, yeah, uh, she writes, laying out their bodies 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:57.680 on the table in the round anatomy tower. He analyzed 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.480 everything the man's leg bones looked as if they had 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:04.560 been pierced by shotgun pellets, Humboldt noted excitedly, but the 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.720 worst damage was to the genitals. At first, he thought 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.839 the pubic hare might have been ignited and caused the burns, 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:14.360 but dismissed the idea when he saw the couple's unharmed armpits. 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.240 Despite the increasingly putrid smell of death and burned flesh, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:22.880 Humboldt enjoyed every minute of this gruesome investigation. I cannot 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:27.960 exist without experiments, he said. So, so Alexander von Homeboldt 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.040 just shows up on the doorstep following the tragic event 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.599 and says, Hey, I'm Alexander von Homeboldt. I'm kind of 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:37.040 a big deal. I need to see the gruesomely distorted 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.240 bodies of the lightning strike victims. The funniest thing is 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:42.760 this was before he was a really big deal. This 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.480 is when he was an upcoming big deal. But yeah, 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.400 he I need to examine the scorched genitals for science. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.160 But Wolf also writes about one of Humboldt's favorite experiments 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.320 that he ever performed, which was when he and Gerta 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:59.880 were together experimenting on frog legs. This is uh reve 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.320 visitting the themes of Luigi Galvani right, who saw the 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.319 frog legs dance when stimulated by the electricity of the 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:10.439 lightning Wolf writes. One morning, Humbldt placed a frog's leg 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.120 on a glass plate and connected its nerves and several 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:18.040 muscles two different metals in sequence two silver, gold, iron, zinc, 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:21.680 and so on, but generated only a discouraging gentle twitch 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.120 in the leg. When he then leaned over the leg 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:27.280 in order to check the connecting metals, it convulsed so 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.880 violently that it leapt off the table. Both men were stunned, 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.720 until Humble realized that it had been the moisture of 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.000 his breath that had triggered the reaction. As the tiny 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.600 droplets in his breath had touched the metals, they had 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.600 created an electric current that had moved the frog's leg. 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:45.840 It was the most magical experiment he'd ever carried out, 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.080 Humboldt decided, because by exhaling onto the frog's leg, it 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.960 was as if he were breathing life into it. It 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.640 was the perfect metaphor for the emergence of the new 0:10:55.720 --> 0:11:00.400 life sciences. So again, this strangely religious aspect coming into 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:04.760 the relationship between between electricity and the body. Yeah, I 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.000 like that. But the breath of life, even though the 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:11.960 breath is actually just delivering moisture that helps to complete 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:14.559 the circuit. Now, another funny thing is not being there 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.440 and uh and knowing exactly what happened. It's hard to 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.720 even determine if Humboldt's interpretation of what actually caused the 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.080 twitching is correct. Yeah, I mean it sounds sensible because 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.680 it also plays into into the example we'll get to 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.120 at the end of this podcast regarding the electric chair. Now, 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.920 I want to mention one more example of electricity bioelectricity 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.800 experiments carried out by Humboldt, and this one was later 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:45.400 when he was in South America doing experiments and traveling 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.120 through the rainforest with with someone named I'm a boon Plan. 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.800 Bon Plant was his his traveling and scientific companion. I 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:56.760 believe he was a botanist. But anyway, there was an 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.480 incident where Humboldt found out from some locals in part 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.360 of Venezuela, I believe a town called Calaboso, that there 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:06.880 were a bunch of shallow pools in the area that 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.240 were filled with electric eels, and he Humble got very 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:13.640 excited about this because he was a little bit eel crazy, 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.800 and and he'd heard that eels could deliver electric shocks 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:21.600 of more than six hundred volts. Uh So, but then 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.160 he's got a problem, right, So, if an eel can 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:26.440 deliver a shock of more than six hundred volts, how 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.400 do you catch it? Especially since, as as Wolf notes, 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:33.439 the eels in these pools were buried in the mud 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:35.720 at the bottom of the pools. So how do you 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.040 get them out? Well, some of the locals came up 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.920 with an idea. They said, we'll round up a whole 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.600 bunch of horses. And so they rounded up a bunch 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.920 of wild horses from the nearby prairies, and they drove 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.440 the herd into the pond. So they had these wild 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.679 horses stomping in the mud that had electric eels in it. 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:56.720 And I want to read another section from Wolf. She writes. 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.560 As the horses hooves turned up the mud, the eels 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.880 wriggled up to the surface, giving off enormous electric shocks. 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:07.240 In tranced tumbled watched the gruesome spectacle. The horses screamed 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.640 in pain, the eels thrashed beneath their bellies and waters 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.640 surface boiled with movement. Some horses fell and trampled by 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:18.520 others drowned. Over time, the strength of the electric shocks diminished, 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.160 and the weakened eels retreated into the mud from where 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.680 Humble pulled them with dry wooden sticks. But he hadn't 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.920 waited long enough. When he and bon Plant dissected some 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.640 of the animals, they endured violent shocks themselves. And then 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.120 she goes on to describe how for hours after this 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.360 they were just doing experiments on the eels, touching an eel, 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.320 touching an eel, standing on metal, touching an eel, standing 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:43.040 on clay, touching an eel, and touching each other, both 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.040 touching eels and making out a little bit. It just 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:48.640 it almost sounds like that's part of it again. There's 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:53.200 this strangely sexual element to the union of of sharing 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.440 the electrical kiss, you know, the kiss of Venus. But 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.200 Wolf concludes the section of the book by talking about 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:04.160 how Humble began to think about electrical forces. The forces 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.839 that she writes variously created Lightning bound metal to metal 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.520 and move the needles of compasses. All flow forth from 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.080 one source, and all melt together in an eternal, all 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.480 encompassing power. M hmm. I like that. That's a very 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:24.200 poetic and and kind of supernatural but scientifically grounded if 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.160 you will, of view of electricity. Yeah, and I get 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:29.480 the impression from this book that Humblet was not a 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.240 very religious guy. Yet here's this. I mean, he's not 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:36.200 invoking supernatural entities or God's but he is talking about 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:39.200 it in this kind of vaulted spiritual language. So again 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.560 it's blurring these lines. Yeah, I mean, because they're standing 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.320 on the edge of the unknown, right, and they're they're 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.960 contemplating an unknown, allowing themselves to be shocked by the unknown. 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.000 It's like like any given astronomer. You could have the 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:56.920 most most atheistic astronomer possible, but if they're they're engaging 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.200 with the night sky and viewing up at the cosmos, 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.520 they're gonna be likely overcome by the wonder of the 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:06.040 cosmos in some form or another. Oh yeah, uh, you 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.320 know this whole story about the electric eels that reminds 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:11.800 me of my favorite Marlon Brando story. But yeah, I 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:13.680 don't know if you've heard this. I believe this one 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:16.480 has been This has been told by Ed Bigley Jr. 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:19.520 Is this a scene that was cut from on the waterfront. Um. 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:21.880 It's it's a little older Brando that we're dealing with here. 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:26.560 This is very much like the larger, um, crazier, reclusive Brando. 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:30.520 So Um. According to Ed Bigley Jr. Uh, he gets 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:32.720 he gets a call to come over to h to 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.160 the Brando household. Uh, you didn't know what it's going 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:38.760 to be about it. He drives over, presumably in an 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.480 electric car, right and uh he comes inside and Brando 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:44.840 asked him and says, hey, could I get a bunch 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:49.440 of electric eels and power the house? And uh, you know, 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.560 And so Ed Begley Jr. He's the he's the bicycle 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.440 to power your water heater kind of guy. Yeah, you know, yeah, 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.400 he's you know, he's versed in alternative energy to a 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.040 certain extent, and it's kind of a you know, you 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.000 know it has often lent his voice to some of 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:05.960 those causes. So, yeah, Brando figured he was the guy 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:08.480 to ask, and so Bagley has kind of taken aback. 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:10.400 But he says, you know, I don't think that would 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.640 be possible. I don't think it would work. And indeed, 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:16.440 it's difficult to try and empower anything with an electric 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.480 eel because for one thing, they well, for a number 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.040 of reasons. But you know, you'll see aquariums where they 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.800 have like a little Christmas tree, and the electric eel 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.680 will cause the tree to light up periodically. But the 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:33.680 eel does not admit, you know, a continuous amount of voltage. 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.200 It's just you know, quick shocks here and there. So 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:37.920 it would be it would be one of those things 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:39.760 where if you try to engineer a system that uses 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.480 the electric eels, you quickly out engineer yourself and realize 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:48.120 you're better off using some other form. But but anyway, 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.440 so Baguley says, I don't think that is gonna work, 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:53.520 and Brando just kind of gets grumpy and says, it's 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:58.520 always no with you. So I love I love that 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.720 story because it's it's just it's just a great brand 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.320 of story and a great electric eel story. Did he 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:08.359 point a gun at him? I tell me true. Maybe 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:10.359 I don't know, But at any rate, it was like 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:14.119 the audience was over at that point. It's like, all right, Bagley, 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.040 you've turned me down here on this electric eel business 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:18.399 that I had a lot of hope built up for. 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.080 So just go, just go, don't tell me not to 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:25.719 any more of my disappointed the King of Spain or something. Well, so, 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:27.800 as as you can see from the stuff we've been 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.920 talking about, experiments about electricity didn't stop in the mid 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:32.960 seventeen hundreds, where we were talking about a bunch of 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:37.280 the experiments in the last episode. They continued into the 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.040 turn of the century, the early eighteen hundreds, and uh, 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:43.200 and it wasn't It also wasn't just the known scientists 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.600 of the age who experimented with electricity. One of the 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.480 weirdest stories I came across as a story about Percy 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:53.560 Shelly Old P. B. Shelley, the poet, you know, the 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.360 author of what might you best know him from? Maybe Ozymandias? Yeah, 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.840 I would imagine that's probably the most famous look on 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.320 my work, Seeing Mighty and Despair. But actually you might 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.200 know him best for being the husband of Mary Shelley, 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.440 who wrote Frankenstein. And we talked in the last episode 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.520 about the the the impression made on Mary Shelley by 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:15.840 the lecturers in electricity and how that might have led 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.360 to ideas in Frankenstein. But but her own husband might 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:22.680 have also inspired some of these scientific terrors, because there 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.919 is a story that when he was young, Percy Shelley 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:29.440 was learning about electricity during his schooling and his tutoring, 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:32.720 and he wanted to experiment. He wanted to do some 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:37.200 electrical experiments, and he ended up just mainly. These experiments 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:41.840 were shocking his sisters, and so his sister Helen wrote, quote, 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.320 when my brother commenced his studies in chemistry and practiced 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:48.639 electricity on us, I confessed my pleasure, and it was 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.720 entirely negatived by terror at its effects. Whenever he came 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.399 to me with his piece of folded brown packing paper 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:58.320 under his arm and a bit of wire and a bottle, 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.600 my heart would sink with fear at his approach, but 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.920 shame kept me silent, and with as many others as 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.679 he could collect, we replaced hand in hand round the 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.359 nursery table to be electrified. But when a suggestion was 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.280 made that chillblaines were to be cured by this means, 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:18.159 my terror overwhelmed all other feelings, and the expression of 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.680 it released me from all future annoyance. It sounds a 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:25.199 little bit like a young monster there, YEA, yeah, it 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.000 kind of does, or at least a mad scientist. But 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:29.879 again it kind of this is still the age of 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:33.560 the the sort of gentleman science, the scientist, you know, 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:36.719 the idea that any individual of means might take up 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.040 science as a as a pastime and would engage in 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:44.160 various experiments about natural phenomenon, right, or to to impress 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.080 people or get his yah yaz out. Yeah. But the 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:51.440 pretense here that that the electricity and the shocks could 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:55.280 be used to treat Chillblaines does sort of tie into 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.560 something that we should talk about, which is the role 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:03.200 of electricity in supposed uh medical practices and even magical 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:06.840 beliefs about healing. Yeah, this is a fascinating area because 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.880 I mean, on one hand, there there's the obvious role 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.639 that electricity plays in modern medicine and in the advent 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:17.480 of modern medicine that you think you might think about defibrillation, yeah, 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.280 or even so stuff is simple as being able to 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:25.000 use electric lighting during a surgical procedure, or electrical coudroization 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:27.679 tools during surgery and stuff of that nature. Like, it 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.480 really ends up playing a role in so many different 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:35.160 thoughtts of modern medicine. But yet the idea that electricity 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:39.440 in and of itself has a healing property to it um, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.080 this ends up carrying a great deal of cultural weight 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:44.479 during the time. Sure, well, you don't have to invoke 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:48.520 medical principles to make the assumption that there's some kind 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:53.080 of power in the electrical fire that has has healing 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:56.560 potential over the body. I mean, there's always been the 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.239 idea of forces of nature like light and fire as 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.200 cleansing agent, and I think for many people electricity took 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.399 on some of these same elements. There was one claim 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:10.440 I read in a book called Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.720 edited by Mary Douglas. And according to a claim in 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:17.600 this book, in one case, uh the Bongwa people of 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:22.080 Cameroon took a child who was believed to be a witch, 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.560 and what they did to cure the child's witchcraft was 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:29.240 sent the child into an electrified region of the country 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:31.840 in the south, under the reasoning that a few months 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:37.080 months of exposure to electricity would cure the child's witchcraft. Well, 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:42.080 it seems seems plausible. I mean because because as we've 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.399 touched on before, like throughout history, humans have been encountering 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.000 electricity on one form, in one form or the other. 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:53.639 If not lightning on the hillside, then presumably just the 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:58.480 static discharge that occurs when you shock somebody. Uh, And 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.119 this was something that that interest at me. I cannot 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:05.080 but wonder why we don't see more examples, uh, particularly 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:09.040 related to this interpersonal discharge of static electricity at least 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:12.640 is a way to explain certain folk beliefs and magical 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:15.960 superstitious beliefs, you know, because at heart, that's a very 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.080 I mean, it's the same principle as uh, as as 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:24.400 two individuals touching each other while dissecting an electric fish. Right, 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:28.080 I mean you're there's this spark, sometimes visible spark between 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:32.720 two people. Well, yeah, that is. It's the literal embodiment 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.520 in reality of a thing that's often imagined in magical thinking. 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.800