CLASSIC: Real Life Super Powers Part II

Does someone have real-life superspeed? Can people telepathically control machines? When the guys originally began investigating real-life superpowers, they had no idea how many extraordinary abilities they would end up discovering. Tune in for the superpower sequel, with all new powers (and a few abilities that might be more like a curse).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the show, fellow conspiracy realist. This evening, we're
returning to you with a very oh gosh, oh Matt,
I'm always just so fascinated by this one. Real life superpowers.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, we've all dreamt about it. We've been thinking about
it since we picked up that first comic book. What
if any of this could really be true? It? Could
I do it?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Literally? Any of it like a picture? You know, some
not all X Men have the same level of powers
in the Marvel universe. There are Omega level mutants, and
there's everybody else. But even like the nerdiest X Man
like Cipher, who just knows every language, even that's really
cool power. So for quite some time you and I

(00:47):
were were just compelled to look through all the reports
of extraordinary abilities across the real world and determine whether
or not any of them are true.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, could there be a real life night Crawler? And
could he be me?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And does he BAMF? Does he BAF? Is the question?
What does the band?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Does that mean?

Speaker 1 (01:10):
BAMF is the automotive pya, it's the it's the sound
effect when night Crawler teleports, it's BAF BAMF.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
So unfamiliar with with all these like terms you know
that are used. I thought I really thought it was
just some kind of slang term. I didn't understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
It was just a weird Twitter acronym. Well, at this point,
this is coming to us from twenty eighteen as the
humans reckon the calendar. So tune in, let us know
what you think, and then let us know what sound
effect your superpower would have. From UFOs to psychic powers
and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You

(01:48):
can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't
want you to know.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noman.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Deckett. Most importantly, you are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. A
sequel episode to an episode that I think we all
enjoyed much earlier when we did it for the first time.
How long ago was that.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
I was gonna ask the same thing? A couple of.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Years, It seems like it was a while back. Yeah,
it was our episode on real life Superpowers. Now, as
we live in the age of superhero movies, the comic
book movie renaissance, you could call it. We know that
more and more people are familiar with the concept of

(02:50):
the extraordinary abilities that we call superpowers, and there are
a few that even if you hate Marvel and DC
movies and comic books in general, there are a few
of these abilities that are totally familiar to everyone, like
flying without the need of a plane, a helicopter, a
glider or so on. Right, that's that's one of the
oldest ones, right, absolute even in ancient myths, gods can fly.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
You know, I've never thought about this until now, but
since most of the superheroes that fly don't have any
kind of wing structure support, I conjecture that it is
a psychic based ability. It is almost like a telekinetic
ability control themselves.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, that's absolutely right, because I went through a phase
a while back when I would ask people what three
superpowers they could have, and I think we've all had
this conversation off air.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I think we did in the last Superpowers episode.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
We probably did. Yeah, And that's flying is one that
people don't think through all the way because flying sounds
cool unless it's a physical thing like swimming. Because if
you can just because you can swim doesn't mean you
can swim across town. It would have to be something
that doesn't exert muscle energy.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
But I think that tele kinesis now would fold a
lot of things into itself. Right, tell kinesis you could
make yourself fly and then you have that one checked
off the list, and you could also, you know, throw
knives at people in the air.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I disagree on both counts. Guys. All you have
to do is master the matrix, and once you've got
that down, you can do anything.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Well, that's just bending the code.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Did you take the red pillar? The blue pill?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
The red pill? Dude?

Speaker 3 (04:23):
You know that's like a weird like neo Nazi thing
getting red pilled.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
It gets a massage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
It stands for a lot of things now.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, but specifically I heard that it was sort of
like a way the alt right are able to explain
the way they started believing that the Jewish people controlled
the universe.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
It also stands for the in cell stuff, the involuntarily
celibate movement.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, I take the red pill for other reasons, all
you groups out there, and it has to do with
the matrix.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
The original reason. Yeah, talk about being misused, but the
writers of the Matrix are pissed about that. One. Another
skill that people are familiar with would be the idea
of extraordinary strength. As we explained in the last episode
on real life superpowers, these come in these strength. Powers
come in two real life variations. The first is hysterical strength,

(05:13):
which is a real thing. A parent sees their child
run over by a car with a heavy weight on them,
and they are able to in a way that does
damage them. They are able to temporarily lift much more
weight than they could normally. The second, and perhaps more
disturbing one is a genetic mutation that's been found in

(05:35):
to date one cow and one boy in Europe, and
it's a mutation that removes the limits on their ability
to build muscle mass. And these are just a few
of the powers we covered in our previous episode. Each
each case in that episode and in this one, each

(05:56):
of these cases have been scientifically verified. And while no
one can fly unaided yet, our species is capable of
some pretty amazing things, and so many in fact, that
we decided to do this long awaited sequel because we
found powers that didn't make it into the first episode.
If you have not checked out Real Life Superpowers Part one.

(06:19):
Please go ahead and do so now because you will
want the context to this, and honestly, you won't want
to miss the first powers we discovered in that one,
because these other powers are a little different. So go
ahead and pause this now, give that one a listen
and come back. We'll wait.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Okay, you're done listening to the Avengers episode. Cool?

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Good The Avengers.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, that's that. Last episode is basically the Avengers.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Right, We've got a supersite, super strength.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Temperature, and regulation.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, that's always my fair massive endurance. So those are
the Avenger level powers. This one is maybe for fans
of comic books out there, and please write to us
and let me know if you get this reference. This
is more the Great Lakes Avengers episode to deep cut.
You can also google Great Lakes Avengers if you want
to chuckle.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
I can kind of put it together in my head.
Is it sort of just like the workaday Joe Avengers
kind of like doing their stuff out words?

Speaker 2 (07:17):
No, No, this is a this is a superhero team.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
It's their job.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
But they're out in the Great Lakes, so I'm picture
of them being like good old Salt of the Earth
types you know, perhaps.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
I like where's at but you gotta you gotta check those.
I think you will enjoy reading about Great Lakes.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I look forward to it. Not too many spoilers, but
definitely search the thing that Ben told me to search,
which is doormn one one word door man.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Is he literally a door man like an hotel?

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Well, I don't. I don't want to spoil it for
the listeners, so I'm not going to say it on air,
but I think everybody writes in will will enjoy the
Google search.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
How have I not heard of this? Is this like
a parody? No, it's a real thing.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
But I get I'm not going to I'm looking at
it right now and it's yeah, please, we'll check this out. Yeah,
let's see if it Let's see if it's a correct comparison.
So here are the facts. Most of those extraordinary abilities
that we discussed today fall into a few distinct categories.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, first, you got the kind of what we spoke
about before, some kind of genetic mutation that allows the
human body, for one reason or another, from some small
change at the genetic level to allow just a tiny,
a minuscule amount of human beings on the planet to
do something greater than we usually could. We're talking about

(08:39):
what people who can see colors. Most people can't see
tetrachromats exactly.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
That one the kind of the opposite of being colored
efficient or color blind. They're all women due to the
way the genetic expression works, and they can see way
more colors than we will ever ever get to see.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, can't even fathom them. Even if you're looking at
one of those massive color wheels, it's not on there.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
They can also determine imperfections in colors that we would
otherwise think are the same. So, if anything, it's kind
of an irritating superpowerful. Can you imagine being a tetrachromat
and trying to paint your house?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Ooh yeah, that'd be crazy.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
And so Second, and this is good news for a
lot of us listening here. Second, there are learned superpowers,
such as people with blindness who have learned to practice echolocation.
We all know what echolocation is, right, It's like how
a lot of bats get around, or dolphins, dolphins more particularly, right.
I think dolphin would be the more correct use of it,
wouldn't it.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
I know bats are right up in there.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
And so are a couple of people who have gone
full on daredevil in. And then there are people like
you mentioned in the beginning, Matt, people who have learned
to control otherwise involuntary bodily functions through meditation.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
That's pretty awesome. It's kind of like the matrix.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
It is kind of like the matrix.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
It is.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
And there's one there's a thing that I thought would
interest you particularly, knowl There's a fascinating audio file that
we will get to later in today's show. It's it's weird.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
I don't even know if it's useful, but I think
it's cool. I think I think we'll all like it.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Not fil e as in an audio file at Phil right.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, yes, he can make audio files with his head,
which would actually be incredibly useful for us.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
He's got like a little USB drive right at his
temple and he just pops in a stick and then hands.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
It to you. Forty eight K waves whatever.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, uh nerds. But third, there are there are people
who have already acquired certain extraordinary abilities through kind of
the Iron Man Batman route. They've used technology, or what's
known as wetwear biohacking, to give themselves a couple of
extra things that you would not ordinarily have as a
member of this species. And this is interesting, this third one,

(10:57):
because this technology and biohacking, coupled with genetic research, forms
the basis of current superpower research. And without spoiling things
just yet, we're going to end by looking at the
future in this episode, So stay tuned because we want
to hear what you think about some of the strange
and I think earlier we described as potentially huge, but

(11:21):
I'll just I'll say what it is, potentially catastrophic changes. Yeah,
there's just a couple of decades out from now. So
enough preface, right, let's get to the powers. That's why
we're all here. We'll briefly describe them and we'll follow
up with some speculation on their usefulness.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, some of them are more usable than others. So
what's first, Ben.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Oh, oh, that should always be first.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Well, it's a little I think it's weird because it's
a little early in the episode. Right, So super throws,
super throwing. We've all thrown stuff.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, most of us. You can huck a I don't know,
a cantalope fairly far, which is difficult to do because
my hand isn't big enough to palm a cantelope. But
it's fun to attempt to throw in really far after
it's gone bad.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
You've got above average sized hands, I would say, Man, really, yeah,
oh thanks dude, and a problem.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Man, Can I be your lawyer?

Speaker 1 (12:17):
That's worth it? That's worth it. God, that character is
so creepy, but I love them, I know.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
So who are you talking about.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
We're talking about Charlie's uncle in Always Sunny. Yes, yes, yes,
it's very worried about the size of his hands and
what qualifies as art. Oh boy, So this super throwing
maybe a thing. Some people will tell you it is.
And it all goes back to polydactly, which is the

(12:46):
fancy word for being born with extra digits or one
extra digit on your hand or.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
On your feet, fingers and or toes.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Fingers and toes. Yeah, not like a little baby hand
growing out of your regular hand. And so it's the
second most common congenital hand disorder. And what we're talking
about specifically is something called radial polydactyle. So, for everyone
who's seen our new logo, what you're gonna tell people

(13:17):
do it? No, we shouldn't spoil the beans. No, it's
too late. We've said too much. Spoil the beans. Spoil
the beans, spoil the beans. I like it. So this
this radial polydactyle stuff one in every three thousand live berths.
And when this occurs, you'll see something where it looks
like someone has an extra pinky maybe or even more

(13:39):
extra digits, And.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
So it goes off that side of the hand, not
not on the side of the thumb, off the.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
It can go okay either way. But but the thing
that's crazy about it is that many, many more people
have been born with this condition than you might imagine.
Often people when they're when they're born with extra tiny
fingers or something, there's no way for the doctors to
tell whether those are going to be functional later in

(14:05):
life or just awkward looking, so you kind of have
to just wait. So well, often they get cut off
at birth. Oh so it's quite possible that you know,
some of us listening may have been born with that
condition and the doctor just snipped off that extra thumb jeez,
because they didn't know if it was going to be
just hanging around.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
You wouldn't leave a mark, though, some kind of telltale sign, right.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Good question. Look, would it leave a line of a
scar right here along the base of your hands under
your pinky. The thing is it would have that cut
would have occurred so early that the scar would become imperceptible.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
You know, it's kind of cool. There's a lot of
stuff in folklore and various cultures from around the world
about how extra digits and toes are actually a sign
of some kind of providence. I suppose, like, like you know,
they're have a red places saying that Atam, you know
of Adam and Eve fame who possibly had six fingers,

(15:03):
And in the Chaco Canyon area of New Mexico, the
ancient Pueblo culture have all kinds of cave paintings of
six fingers and six toad sandals and things like that.
And it's this polydactyle has been considered to be revered
as some kind of great prophet or some kind of

(15:24):
great warrior, or some kind of imbued with some kind
of power.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, it's considered auspicious. The highest rate of occurrence is
in the Indian subcontinent, But if you think about it,
one out of three thousand people is pretty common as
far as these sorts of conditions go. And this means
that most cultures through antiquity would have been familiar with it.

(15:48):
In some cultures it was seen as a sign of
the devil or demonic origin, but in other cultures it
was seen as a very very auspicious thing. In the
case of Antonio Alfonseca, it was a weird piece of
trivia that always got included with descriptions of his career
as a baseball pitcher. You see, Antonio was born with

(16:10):
six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.
He had a great sinker, the type of pitch who
was known for his teammates called him el Bulpo or
the polpo, the octopus, and he was he was uh.
It was called this because of his six fingers on

(16:31):
each hand. And yes, we know that's not technically correct,
that's twelve digits. But he did not have these removed
at birth, unlike a lot of other people. And so
when he was pitching, people began to credit his pitching
ability to some sort of perceived better grip on the ball.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Interesting and certainly be different than the standard, sure, sure.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
But then also we could say the same thing about
someone who sit friends since had fused fingers and only
had three fingers, right, they would have a different grip
as well. But the problem is that his extra digit
was if you look at it, it's kind of an
extra pinky and it didn't seem to at least from
what he said, it didn't seem to come into contact

(17:19):
with the ball when he's actually holding it. So usefulness,
I don't know. We'll have to wait for a polydactyl
person to maybe take up piano or some other instrument
like maybe a sitar or a harp, something with a
lot of strings. And additionally, for it to be a
benefit to them, they'd need extra digits to work independently

(17:41):
like their other fingers, and that's not as common as
just straight up polydactyl cases. So there you go.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
There you go a little bit more on alfon Seca.
He played for the Braves for I think one or
two seasons. I definitely remember seeing his name floating around
in the Braves roster for a while. Oh wait it
was yeah, it was two thousand and four. Okay, so
it was a single season, two thousand and four. But
you probably remember him if you do, if it is
ringing your head from his years with the Florida Marlins.

(18:13):
That's right. Look, I have a very limited baseball memory,
but I actually do. I looked up his name and
I saw his face. I was like, oh, yeah, I
do remember this. Yeah, I don't remember that part. Yeah,
that's really interesting. I don't remember him being like amazing though.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
No. No, he was just a competent pitcher. Yeah, that's
the thing. It's not. It's not as if he were
like the Lebron James of pitching or something, you know,
but it was just a I think it was a
good story for slow news days often.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Are there any more impressive examples of super throwing of
super throwing?

Speaker 1 (18:54):
No, but there are examples of There are examples of
things that you could call super catching.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
A little line interesting.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, so we've we've shown one that's we're kind of
debunking that one. It's possible, for instance, that you know,
we're all familiar with the film Gadiga. It's possible that
there could be in the future a polydactyl person who
is just an amazing piano player. Oh, I imagine is
that one scene in Gadigo where you see that they've

(19:25):
grown people to have extra fingers?

Speaker 3 (19:26):
I mean surely they don't have the same amount of
dexterity in their extra digits as they do in there.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
I mean you know what I mean, like not in
most cases. This is just saying yeah, not in most cases.
Most cases, it's kind of it's kind of just hanging there.
It's not a it's not an again, it's not a
digit that could move independently. You know, and even for
most people, if you've ever tried it, most people cannot
raise their ring finger by itself. Have you Have you

(19:54):
ever tried to do that?

Speaker 2 (19:55):
I cannot do that.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
It's like a it's a learned skill.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, you have to just practice a muscles and this
is the best I give you.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
It's like, whoa, that's really good, Matt.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
No, it's not good. Actually that's yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Let us know if you could do that, send send
proof because I don't want to be too cynical, but.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
I won't let hands physically.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
I don't know anyone who can do it. You know.
Here's here's something that's a little bit more useful, but
it takes us to a really dark time in human history.
The Black Plague, right fun, Yeah, one of the uh,
one of the greatest hits in the stories of pandemics,
you know, so waves of disease. The Black Plague is

(20:42):
an umbrella term for several distinct waves of disease that
completely Paul, you might have to edit me here, that
completely fkp Europe in ways that still echo today. That's
one of the disasters that, when portrayed in film, is
actually not exaggerated, is maybe softened a little bit because

(21:07):
they have to have their main characters in the fictional
story lived to the end of the story or live
through part of it, and most people didn't. It was terrible.
It was so bad. It fundamentally changed the course of
human history, and it also provided a certain segment of
the population with a superpower. It turns out that evolutionary
pressures applied to the Black Blade may have resulted in

(21:30):
immunity to HIV for about ten percent of the current
European descended population, which counts you guys as well. So
it's quite possible. I mean, don't go gambling on this one,
don't bet on it, because your odds are not great.

(21:51):
But it's possible that we in the studio and you
out there listening, we could be immune to HIV, not
HIV resistant, not less likely to get it straight up
immune to the disease.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Wait, is there a connection between the plague and HIV?

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I'm glad you asked. Yeah, it's a mystery, but there's
some pretty good science behind it. So the individuals who
currently now carry this genetic immunity to HIV have a
mutation known as CCR five dash A thirty two, and
this prevents the HIV virus from entering the cells of

(22:31):
the immune system.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
And that's Creden's clear Outito revival five.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Right, right America thirty two. Yeah, and this immunity made
national news in two thousand and seven, which I think.
Let's see, Matt, this was like right before we started
working together, correct, And I remember we talked about this
years ago. There was an individual who was having a terrible,

(22:55):
terrible time in life. This person was infected with HIV
and additionally they had leukemia. Luckily, they were in a
place that had a European approach to modern medicine, so
they didn't die due to a bank account problem. They
received a bone marrow transfusion and this not only treated

(23:17):
his leukemia, it also, to everyone's surprise, cured him of HIV.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, it's incredible and he went.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
They didn't believe it for the first couple of years.
Five years later, he still doesn't have HIV. They don't
really know what's going on until they figured out it
appears that the bone marrow donor carried that immunity, that
mutation and successfully transferred this to the leukemia patient. In
following years, other patients in similar situations exhibited the same results.

(23:48):
And to your question, for a long time, scientists couldn't
understand how this could work at all, because not only
did the mutation develop way before the rise of a
but if the Black Plague was bubonic plague, if it
was bacterial in nature, it wouldn't make much sense because
HIV is a virus. It's viral in nature. So two

(24:12):
professors who worked on this, Christopher Duncan and Susan Scott,
wrote a book called Return of the Black Death, which
is a great book. I'd also recommend if you're interested
in light reading Norman Canters In the Wake of the Plague.
These professors said that the concepts of the Black Death
were were incorrect and that the plague sweeping through Europe

(24:35):
from thirteen forty seven to sixteen sixty were in fact,
a continuing series of epidemics of a lethal viral hemorrhagic
fever that used this CCR five that we're talking about
as an entry port into the immune system. So it's
kind of like this mutation shuts the door for both

(24:56):
this virus and HIV to get in. And around the
time time that the plague hit, according to their mathematical models,
the mutation occurred in about one out of twenty thousand people,
and pressure from the plague alone brought this number up
to something more like one in ten or ten percent.
So again, that's amazing. That is an incredibly powerful thing. Yeah,

(25:20):
it's incredible and earned through the death of millions.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Now we just have to figure out how to transfer
that into everybody.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Right right exactly, And there have been some promising breakthroughs
in HIV research just this year as we record this.
Of course, the origins of HIV remain a contested topic,
which I think we did an episode on.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Here's another awesome thing. Let's say you're traveling somewhere in
the world where you may have to worry about contracting malaria.
There are several places in the world where this is
a real danger. Here is a very strange thing, and
maybe it's just it's just something that has come through
evolution to the human body because of the way another

(26:10):
thing functions within the human body, and that's sickle cell anemia.
If you happen to have that, it appears to, or
seems to in many cases, you probably have some form
of inborn resistance to malaria. Pretty pretty sweet, right, that's
a cool thing. Having sickle cell anemia. Not good at

(26:30):
all because this is a very dangerous medical medical condition
and there are a lot of side effects from having it,
and it's not fun whatsoever. However, it's some weird little
trade off of having a weakness you also have this
superpower and or well maybe it's it's both, I.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Guess yeah, and it's We can go into the science
of it maybe in a in a different episode it
just without going to in the weeds. The way it
works is that the effect that sickle cell anemia has
on your red blood cells that it makes them abnormally shaped,

(27:11):
and it doesn't doesn't provide protection against infection by the
malaria parasite. Instead, it prevents the disease from taking hold
after the organism, or in this case, the person has
been infected so it's still a bad condition. Yeah, but

(27:32):
in the right circumstances, at least according to evolution, it's
better to have sickle cell anemia than malaria.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
So that's strange. That's I would say the HIV immunity
is a little bit less dangerous to have since there's
not such a trade off. Or I guess the trade
off was surviving. Again, I can't you. I'm trying to
think of a word stronger than horrific. One of the
worst things that happened in history, Yeah, the plagues. But

(28:06):
that's that's that's a useful one. We're trying to vary
between the useful and unuseful. I found one that I
thought I wanted to hear. You guys take on. You
remember seven? Did you guys? Like seven?

Speaker 2 (28:20):
The film?

Speaker 1 (28:20):
The film? No, just the number, if you remember that number.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
It's a great one about Lucky number seleven.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Oh, it's a movie with Yeah, what's his name, Diehard?
Bruce Willis. I have seen assassin named sleven. Oh, it's
called Lucky Number sleven. Oh, geez.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
In this one, I think we're talking about a serial murderer. Well,
he's a torturist, maybe a torturer. He doesn't necessarily kill
all the time, but he has someone else do the killing.
Without spoiling too much of the movie seven.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Or well, it's past the statute of limitations.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Right, it's Kevin Spacey, you guys, who is.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Not building the movie? Okay, let's go ahet. You want
to do a spoiler countdown for everybody?

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Three?

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Two, it's Kevin Spacey.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Yeah, it's Kevin Spacey. He appears in the very last
act of the film, uncredited because he did not want
to quote ruin the surprise. But one of the ways
in this story, one of the ways that he gets
away with all these horrific acts that are meant to
echo the ten Commandments or the violation thereof, is that

(29:28):
the seven Deadly Sins. Yes, thank you, that's the name
of the movie. Yes, good save he gets away with
or he's not apprehended for a while because he has,
through a very painful process, removed his own fingerprints. It
turns out some people just don't have fingerprints genetically.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
And just for the record, you guys, I wanted to
throw that Kevin Spacey bit out there in case you
watched the movie. For the first time, not knowing that
he was in it, and then you would have been
super pissed by the end of it when he came out,
and you're like, I didn't want to watch a Kevin
Spacey movie. That guy sucks. So I saved you from
that moment. So you're welcome.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
But in this case, he plays the villain that you're
rooting against doesn't matter. So in some way maybe it's
I don't.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Know, and I don't think he's getting much money for
that film. I think that's mainly Brad Pitt and the
other guy. But yeah, Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Can he also a bit of a me too guy?
Didn't he do some bad stuff too?

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Morgan Freeman?

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah, there was a me too moment for Morgan Freeman.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Oh I heard that. I'll look that up.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
As Michael Ja said at the Emmys just the other night,
Hello to all of you famous rich people in Hollywood
who haven't been caught yet.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, true, too, true, So lack of fingerprints. In two
thousand and seven, there's a Swiss woman in her late
twenties who ran into a really irritating Kafka esque problem.
She could prove who she was in every way, in
every way that mattered, except for one. Customs agents at

(30:59):
the US border could not confirm her identity because despite
the fact that everything in her passport matched, including her
photograph and all that jazz, all that slow jazz, when
the agent scanned her hand, they found out she had
no fingerprints. And it turns out, instead of being some
master criminal or some insane sadist, she has an extremely

(31:21):
rare genetic condition known as a dermatoglyphia lack of fingerprints.
We're just we're throwing out the fancy words today.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
A dermatoeglifia A d E r M A t O
g l y p h I A A dermatoglifia.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, there you go. That's a nice voice for that, Matt.
So this condition mainly makes immigration and travel so such
a pain in the ass that one dermatologist researching it,
doctor named Peter Eiden, called it the immigration delay disease.
Nice so usefulness. It could have been useful in the

(31:59):
days before we're GPS tracking and DNA testing, like you
could have been a master thief or of some sort,
maybe in the forties through the fifties or sixties. Definitely,
so that the heyday of that fingerprintless crime mob as
coming gone.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
If you had that coupled. Oh, it's a it's a
terrible disease that a lot of people suffer with where you.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Lose all of your hair, alopecia.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Alopecia in your entire body. If you had alopecia, and oh,
I've already lost it in the outline and there's no
way I'm gonna be able to say it again.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
A dermatoglyphia, thank you.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
If you had both of those in the nineteen thirties, forties,
really anytime before the nineteen sixties, Yeah, you were You
could have been a master thief.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Dare to dream, dare to dream. So the next one
is really the next one's a weird one. It's super strange,
and I think it warrants it's an episode.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
So well, why don't we Why don't we hear a
quick word from our sponsor before we get into it?

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Okay, Imagine a world in which humans might be able
to smell with the sophistication of a dog, run with
the burst of a cheetah, stay underwater as long as
a seal or a whale, or sleep with one half
of each brain at a time, or a Heck, how
about just we're growing a limb, or you know, growing
an extra one just for funsies. That would be That's

(33:31):
the world comic books present to us when we think
of human animal hybrids. And we're still pretty far off
from that sort of stuff, but we're closer than you
might think.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
We're talking about some island of doctor Moreau type stuff.
Ben more like some Sabertooth stuff.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Ideally it would be Sabertooth, but you gotta go through
Moreau to get the saber tooth.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Right, Yeah, you gotta break a few eggs to make
a cheat up.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah. Did you ever read the actual book?

Speaker 3 (33:59):
No, but I saw the incredible film and the documentary
about the.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
About mar Val Kilm totally insane. Well, in the.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Oh Man, there's his voice.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
There's so many stories about Marlon Brando without getting too
far into him. The thing that's interesting about the book
is that when the book was written, the the doctor,
the namesake of the film and the namesake of the story,
he is using purely surgical methods, so he's not using
any genetic methods to increase the cognitive abilities of these animals,

(34:36):
these hybrids, these chimaras he's instead just cutting them up
so they walk like men.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Yeah, sort of like that movie Tusk. Did you see
that horrible monstrosity. It's a Kevin Smith movie where he
turns a podcaster into a walrus. It's awful.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
It just doesn't make any sense to me, Like the
motivation of the guy. The the fact that spoiler alert
three two one, the fact that the the protagonist and
Tusk or the main character also loses his mind, but
nothing's really done to his mind other than you know,
intense psychological torture, like he's a lot lobotomized or anything.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
I don't know, man, I'd lose my mind if I
was turned into a walrus.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
I think I think I would have the presence of
mind to ask for some people to help me with surgery,
to at least get me closer back closer to my
original form, you.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Know what I mean, being in a wildlife part.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
This fight. You know. Sometimes I feel sometimes directors or
screenwriters get carried away with one image and it's just
they'll like spend hours try and rationalize that image that's
for a different show. That's for a different show, I'm sure,
But yeah, like that, like like Moreau on the Way
to Sabertooth. We're already this is the biggest spoiler. We

(35:54):
as a species are already quite capable of making several
types of human animal highhybrids, but in many cases it
might be more accurate to call it an animal human hybrid.
In twenty seventeen. Just last year, scientists announced that they
had created the first successful ones, and they weren't entirely

(36:14):
accurate in that claim. Their project proved that human cells
can be introduced to a non human organism and they
can grow within that organism. But what they what they
didn't say, is they were doing legitimate ethical science. In
decades before this experiment in twenty seventeen, people have been

(36:34):
doing plenty of legitimate unethical science. There are all these
rumors we covered in earlier shows about a so called
human z which is genetically speaking, completely possible where it's
close enough, you know what I mean. It would be
probably very hard to bring it to term, and the
creature would live a very cursed and happy life probably,

(36:57):
but it's technically possible, just not ethically advisable. And in
China there's this I guess you would call it a
story by two researchers because there's not a lot of
proof to back it up. Right before the Cultural Revolution,
there was a successful experiment with a human chimpanzee hybrid

(37:18):
and they had a female chimpanzee carrying essentially human fetus.
It was about three months pregnant. But then all the
research was destroyed along with the individual. So and then
that's say of going into the Russian experiments, which were
much have much better documentation. And then in two thousand

(37:39):
and three, the first successful human animal hybrid was made
in a lab in Shanghai. Some scientists fused human cells
in rabbit eggs and they created the embryos of new
creature that would be half rabbit, half human, never born again.
These things officially have never been born. You.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
And the whole point of that study, at least back
in the day, according to San Francisco Gate, was to
create a essentially a place where you could grow human
stem cells. Yes, yeah, within the rabbit creature that they're
creating human rabbit thing.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
And that's why when they destroyed the embryos, they harvested
the stem cells, right exactly. Yeah. So in the present day,
we started really really going into this with pigs we've
made pigs that are technically chimaras, organisms that are part

(38:34):
human part animals. The scientists at the Salk Institute found
that they could inject a certain type of human cell,
things called pluripotent cells stem cells with unlimited changeable potential.
They could implant these cells, and if they allowed the
cells to develop to a specific degree, these cells could
survive in pig embryos. They had to find sort of

(38:57):
a Goldilocks zone to put this alien, alien organic material in,
and they went on to create one hundred and eighty
six embryos chmeric embryos that survived. Each only had about
one in one hundred thousand human cells, is their ratio. Currently,
we're capable of making sheep that are about point zero

(39:18):
one percent human cells. The ultimate goal here is not
to make a race of pig people or sheepfolk. It's
to use these animals as a harvesting ground for organs,
which means within our lifetimes, if any of us needs
to get a heart transplant, we may well end up

(39:38):
with the heart of a pig.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Which is currently what happens now. If you get a
valve replacement, it can be bovine, it can be poresine.
It can be from some other animals. A lot of
times it's a bovine valve.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, I mean so we're already doing that, but it's
not a human hybrid version of it, or a full
on human one that was grown inside of a cow.
It's really interesting stuff.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
I mean, that's it's interesting. Though Ethically that would be
less egregious to a lot of people than using a
human heart, right.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Sure, well, yeah, I guess it depends. It depends.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
But then growing an animal and dedicating its entire life
to having its organs harvested a lot of people to
have problems with that. They would also maybe talk about
those problems while they were eating a hamburger.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah it yeah, I agree, it does. It is an
interesting thing. It feels like maybe they're going about it
the wrong way, but I see the leap here. Who
am I to say, by the way, old boy Matt
over here trying to tell science what to do. But
it does feel like we're getting closer to a point
where we'll be able to grow an organ almost like

(40:47):
three D print and organ out of genetic material, rather
than having to grow one physically in a creature.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah. Yeah, we are getting closer. The problem is making
the moving parts. Yeah, you know what I.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Mean, absolutely, But yeah, it just feels in a way
just that it's still even happening in twenty seventeen. I'm fascinated.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
I know, it feels like a sort of sorcery, doesn't
it to mold living material in that manner? And also
this could make an episode all its own because this
doesn't even touch on This doesn't even touch on what
the nature of humanity is like? Is it a simple

(41:29):
ratio of cells? Is it once once more than half
of the cells in the animal's body by weight or whatever.
Once those once they reach over fifty one percent, does
that animal become human? That's a good question, right once?
Or is it just the type of cells? If all

(41:50):
of its cells are human, but it has the brain
and the nervous system of a different animal, is it
not human? You know what I mean? Where the line
is it at the brain? Is it at the ratio?
What makes what makes a living thing human? Or what
makes it sentient? Right? Like this, this is a question
that we will eventually as a species have to answer.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
It's like do animals have souls right right?

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Or do they have legal rights?

Speaker 3 (42:18):
What even is a soul? What even our legal rights?

Speaker 1 (42:21):
How do we define this stuff? You know?

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Conspiracy at HowStuffWorks dot com. Send in your thoughts.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
And are there any shaman or lawyers out there? Let
us know what you think or both if.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
You're If you're a shaman lawyer, I would love to
love to hear your what what would that be? Litigious divinations?
That's genius, man, We could do that, right we We
also aren't mentioning, you know, Matt, We are not mentioning
how scientists have grown an ear on the body of
a mouse.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's something we can do.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
As an ear replacement. Oh no, it's true, it's true.
Done it Would you do that? Would you if you
were missing an ear? Would you take a ear grown
from a wrote it?

Speaker 3 (43:00):
It's irreplaceable, That's.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
What That's what I was feeling. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
No, uh, we we come up with these live folks.
Let us know we're working live for you. But these
these are so far just pretty much organic things. Right.
I propose that we pause for break from our sponsor
and come back and we talk about technology. All right,

(43:33):
So we are back. The four of us are definitely
not extraordinary time travelers. But what we could be is biohackers.
What the hell are biohackers, you may be asking, Well.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Yeah, it's people who already have an Apple Watch that monitors,
you know, their heart rate, how much they sleep, exactly
what they're eating, what their bowel movements look like, and everything.
But they just want to know more about what their
bodies do, and they want to have a little bit
more of a more apps that they can use in
the real world, more applicable things. What you call wetwear, right, yeah,

(44:10):
except instead of just wearing it on your wrist, why
not put it in your wrist or in your head?

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Yeah, your brain?

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, yes, m We have the We have the means,
like in the old, the old beginning of the six
Million Dollar Man television show, which I've never seen them.
Just seeing the YouTube clip of the intro, I thought
that was cool. We have the means to build ourselves
faster and stronger. And wetwear, yes, is implanted within your body,

(44:41):
so technically like a pacemaker would be wetwear. This stuff
is already much more familiar to us, so much more
common than we think. The folks we call biohackers today
are making these implants themselves and often in many cases,
implanting them in themselves without medical supervision all the time,

(45:02):
which drives some people just bananas. And they you know,
you you can give yourself certain abilities. Yeah, we'll probably
do an episode on this too, but.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Like crazy abilities.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Okay, okay, the ones we have, the ones that we
found and listed, are maybe not super amazing, but they're
they're getting there right now. They're there to prove a point,
like their ability you can insult things to monitor your
temperature pretty much an Apple watch.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
Yes, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
It's inside the ability to sense magnetic north? Though, is
that one is actually a patch?

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, to sense magnetics magnetic north. That's cool.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Well, all it does is they recommend that you put
the patch high on your chest and then you get
like a like a buzzy itch thing when you're facing
magnetic north.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Isn't that nice? Just every time you look north?

Speaker 1 (45:58):
And who doesn't want yet another unscre agible itch.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, I mean that could be amazing if you're lost
in the woods.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
True, that's a really good point as long as yeah, no, no,
that's really it's good.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
It's really good we're a desert.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yeah. Then the idea of implanting all kinds of stuff
in your fingertips, right, I think we did we talk
about this another who is no only I think maybe
you and I were talking about this stuff, right, the
one where you can sense magnetic fields if you're close
to them.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Oh, you mean, like the with the radio quiet zone
and stuff like. People that have sensitivity to electromagnetic fields.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Oh, yeah, they could do that. I wonder if they
would be the type to have that implant though.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
No, Well, they would probably want something to shield them
from said transmissions.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, maybe detecting them would help them do that. But
some some biohackers have put small sensors in their fingertips,
or even put magnets in their fingertips, which seems neat
but really inconvenient on a dated basis.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
Just if you if there's an on off switch somewhere
in your neck maybe or in your upper arm, then cool.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Yeah, that's that's the other question, right. I mean, currently
these implants are capable or they're more like proof of
concept things. Yeah, no one's magneto yet, is what we're saying.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Well, at least magneto hasn't shown up in the middle
of New York City or Gotham or wherever else Magneto
can show up. Please don't show up in Gotham, Magneto.
That would be really cross world and weird. Actually, it
might read might help help the DC universe.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
So maybe maybe it will, but uh, actually it would
help them out a lot, at least in the film adaptations.
But this is just the beginning of something, you know,
And that's that's the argument they're making. They're paving the way.
They see themselves as pioneers who are the vanguard for
something that may become much more common and much more

(47:56):
powerful in the future.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, because it does feel like at some point, and
you listening out there, what do you think about this,
But it does feel like we're getting closer and closer
within the next few hundred years of becoming a lot
more of a synthetic species. Yeah, transhumanism, right, Yeah, And
I don't think that necessarily means biohacking in the way
that it's being pursued right now. I think it's going

(48:20):
to mean something completely different, much more synthetic than an
synthetic addition to a biological entity.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
I see what you mean. Yeah, Yeah, something human plus right, yeah,
or is Noah, you've all Harari calls it homodeis anyway,
so speaking some of you completely different. This is when
we put in just because I don't know, it's an ability?

(48:49):
Is it extraordinary? We're talking about globe luxation two words,
globe space luxation, lux at io it what is this exactly?

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Well, first of all, you should go ahead and search
it on YouTube. That's probably the best way to do this.
It is safe for work, it's fine. Yeah, you'll be okay.
It's the thing where you've got eyes and then you
could do this other thing where the eyes kind of
go pop out a little bit or push out.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
You mean, just like bug out or literally pop out
and hang by the optic nerve.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
No, and you don't pop them out, but they just
kind of the partially partially bug go out.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
They're bugging Yeah, yeah, they're bugging out.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
There's a Guinness Book of World Records measurement for this
for the degree to which people can lux eight perhaps
would be the word to make their eyes pop out
of their skulls.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Ooh, maximum luxation.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
I think that could be a T shirt. But that's
the question, you know, is it useful. It doesn't seem
particularly useful. It's interesting, but.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
I mean like it could psych out your enemy. Sure,
you know, if you were like in a street fight
or something. That's what I just thought of when you
said that. Yeah, Matt, it's like you have achieved maximum
luxation and that's like you know your opponent and then
it causes the guy you're fighting against to freak out
and then you punch him in the nuts.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah, like the Maori practice of hakka, you know, the
ritualized dance.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Oh if you could, if you could hakka and a
luxeate and now you're onto something haka luxation.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
So while we're talking about eyes, m M, this is
what we found that's very interesting. We have a couple
more guys. It's I guess we would call it super
record reading. It's a very very very specific type of
super site. You see, there's a medical diagnostician in Philadelphia
named doctor Arthur Linkin, and doctor l over here can

(50:55):
do something very weird. He can identify the music on
a phonographic on a vinyl record just by looking at
the grooves on its surface. He doesn't have to listen
to it. He can look at it and he it's
like he can hear the music.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Wow, he doesn't even have to feel it or anything,
because it's just such a tactile medium. With the grooves interview,
I thought in my head when we were looking into
this it, I like, I would imagine him feeling the grooves, yeah,
and almost knowing that way, but just by sight. That's impressive.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Well. The claim was tested and verified by James Randy Wow,
who depending on what side of the fence you fall
on on our show, you either love or hate yeah,
or in my case, pity. But the now he's done
important things, I just feel bad for him. But doctor

(51:50):
Lincoln has a couple of caveats for this. He says
he can only identify post Beethoven classical music if it's
fully orchestrated. He cannot identify spoken word recordings or the
works of contemporary classical composers who are relatively unknown. It's
kind of like he has to already be somewhat familiar

(52:12):
with the song.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
I don't know about this, because I mean I always
have been fascinated by, you know, cutting records and like
what that entails and the fact that it is somehow
physically making that sound because you can like have the
record player the electronics turned off, and you can turn
the record, rotate it under the needle and you'll still
actually hear a faint you know, recreation of the sound.

(52:37):
I would want to know a little bit more about that,
but I don't know. Like it's sort of like looking
at a wave form of audio, right, so you could
maybe identify the peaks and valleys of what a waveform
looked like and be able to correlate it to a
particular piece of music if you knew it super well. Yeah,
you could say, here's those stabs of dun dut dut duh,
because those are the peaks, and then it gets quiet
and you could identify that. But I don't know that

(52:58):
the grooves on a record quite correlate in that same way. Listeners,
let let us let me know if I'm wrong. But
I don't know. Maybe maybe it's just a matter of
familiarizing yourself with it and just learning the language of
what the grooves look like.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
But I think that's what it has to be. Because
there's a great article on him in the La Times
from nineteen eighty seven about the test that Randy gives him,
and they have a different they have like various records.
Let me see they had They had some controls, like
they had two different recordings of Stravinsky's Las Acre du

(53:33):
pretem and an Alice Cooper recording and has spoken word recording,
and then they had other stuff that fit into what
he should be able to read, like the Planets by
Holst eighteen twelve, overture by Tchaikowsky, Mozart symphonies, and a
couple of other things. And here's here's the way he

(53:55):
does this. He's a very very near sighted guy, super
thick glasses. So they shuffle the recordings. He takes one
off the pile, he takes his glasses off, He places
his eye at the edge of the recording and slowly
rotates it.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Hmmm.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
As he's watching it, he's slowly rotating it, and.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
He's looking at it like straight on, like a cross.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
They're they're not, I haven't seen video of it. Yeah, interesting,
but they just said the edge of it. And then
he said when he made his guess, he said, I
think that this is Beethoven's sixth Symphony. However, there's an
extra movement in here that I can't understand. Is it
a strange recording? And Randy says, you know, I can't
tell you. We got this whole test thing going on. Yeah. Yeah,

(54:38):
So the guy keeps reading it, reading this record, and
then he says, yes, it is the sixth Symphony, but
it also contains an additional overture that I will guess
is the Prometheus overture. He was correct, wow, just from
looking at this stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
And then he did he also he figured out that
one thing he was looking at he was like, oh man,
this thing is Sherman or He's like, this thing is
really weird. It's like disorganized, it's like gibberish. I don't
understand what's happening in this record? What is this thing?
And it turned out to be an Alice Cooper record.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Yes, that was he He didn't say that's totally Alice Cooper,
but he did say it was jibberish. Yeah. And then
he was also able to differentiate between like the nationalities, yeah, orchestras,
which is just insane. I'm tempted to think, I don't know,
maybe he just spent so much time, like as we

(55:31):
said earlier, maybe you spent so much time listening to
records and memorizing their movements and stuff.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
But it does mean he's looking at records.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
A whole lot a ton.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
At the very least, it's a very interesting way to
pass the time.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
And also he said he listens to them too. Do
you think he enjoys music or is he's just sort
of like this highly neurotic record viewer.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
I don't know. He I think he has to listen
to them because then his because then his mind is
associated two senses to kind of confirm what's happening. So
he's watching the thing and in his head he's hearing
the song.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
But see, my thing is this, like if I knew
what record, if I knew intimately the look of a
particular record, I could tell because there's thick lines between
the songs, right, and there's only like some records you
can't fit enough on one side that there's a lot
of empty space in the center, right, So there's like
a portion of the vinyl in the interior that's blank
and a smooth So I would argue that if you

(56:28):
just memorized the look of a record, like in terms
of how many tracks were on each side and how
much empty space there was and what it looked like,
you could have like a signature in your head of oh,
this is what the planet looks like. This is what
Houses of the Holy by led Zeppelin looks like. You know,
you could totally file that away in your mind without
actually being able to interpret magically through sight, you know,

(56:48):
the sound of the look of the records.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
But that's I mean, the only that's that's where I
think I'm at as well, the only, And that's what
Randy concluded, by the way, something like that, but a
little more. The language uses a little different, but it's
more or less the same thing. The big test then
would be whether doctor Linkin could look at a record

(57:12):
from a song you never heard and then sing along.
That would be that would be showing this ability. He
would be a human record play.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
That would be the next level. That would be sure.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, absolutely, But there is another form of supersite that
is a lot more useful. This is very interesting, But
I don't think I don't think super record reading qualifies
for Avenger level, but supersite just might.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Okay, so super site, now we're not we aren't necessarily
talking like eagle Vision or laser site or cyclops stuff
going on in this in this world, in this version
of our superheroes. We're talking about a will just supersite,

(58:01):
amazingly good seeing Veronica Cedar Sider of Stuttgart, Germany. She
holds the record of having the absolute best eyesight in
the world. So I have I'm terribly nearsighted. I don't
know about you guys, if you have any of that
stuff going on, but my visual acuity is nowhere near

(58:23):
twenty twenty, which is considered average good, that's what human
vision should be. But she has been measured around twenty.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Two twenty slash two, yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Not twenty twenty twenty two. This means she can identify
people from more than a mile away. Yeah, she can
identify tiny little people.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
So would be a great sniper.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Right, Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
And that's strange because surely there's a genetic component to that.
But how do we how do we find that gene
how do we isolate it? How do we expel us it?
I was looking ardently too, for someone with super speed,
like a flash. Yeah, like a flash. So not in

(59:10):
Hussain Bolt, who is very fast over short distances, but
someone who's very fast running at one type of speed.
But it was looking for something that was just super
speed in general, and the closest I could find was
what we I guess we could call super reflexes. There's

(59:31):
a there's a guy who holds a very very specific
record for this in the Guinness Book of World Records,
which is admittedly not the not the most solid source.
But his name is Isau Machi and he is from Chiota, Tokyo, Japan.
He is fast enough with his sword that he can

(59:53):
cut BB pellets in half and the let's see, I
think there's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
A video you can watch of this. I remember seeing
this on Reddit slash videos.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
And that says that that to me, it seems to
indicate that his reaction time is much much quicker than
the average bear or the average sword wielding bear. Absolutely,
so this this seems neat. Now this is a question
for the audience. Is this something that has learned or

(01:00:28):
is this something genetic? You know what I mean? Aside
from the technique you have to learn to wield a sword.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, there are a lot of proper techniques that take
a long time to learn that I think he's yeah,
probably had to have mastered to be able to do this.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
But like, okay, here's the question. If you were playing
Whack a mole or something. Would he be the world
champion of that too? Would he just be like maybe
because he would react so quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
It's a good question.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
We should put him in front of on those machines.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
We should write to him. He set the record in
twenty thirteen. He's probably still around. Oh yeah, and you
know what I Betty replies to emails very quickly. Oh
that was not worth it. But these are some of
the powers we collected today, and yes, some of them
may seem more useful than others. But it leads us

(01:01:23):
to a big question that I don't think we quite
answered in our first episode of this series, and that
question is why does this actually matter? Right so far,
it sounds pretty inspiring or at least interesting through various means,
certain parts of the human population, As you said, Matt,
very small parts of the human population have acquired fascinating

(01:01:44):
and at times supremely useful abilities, and people will even
argue that certain things, their genetic disadvantages, are themselves extraordinary abilities.
I'm partially colorblind, but if someone was like Ben, what
are you going to do with this amazing ability to
not see all the colors. I would shrug because it's

(01:02:05):
it seems relatively useless, right, But at this point, there's
no threat of an ascendant superhuman class, right, a race
of superior.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
People, thank goodness.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Kind of there's kind of not the billionaires, but there is. Yeah,
that's the thing. There is a threat of this happening
because as we speak, as we record today, in twenty eighteen,
three countries have been conducting extensive research on human enhancement
projects that touch on almost every single ability we mentioned
in this series, with the exception except for globe luxation, yes,

(01:02:43):
and maximum luxation thank you. Yes, the Pentagon is not
as concerned with that yet. But we know for a
fact that not only three countries doing this, but they
have been doing it for years, for possibly decades, well,
definitely decades now it's twenty eighteen. Back in the nineties

(01:03:04):
and late eighties, the US, particularly the Pentagon, began investing
huge amounts of money and research in the creation of
super soldiers, individuals enhanced through technology, drug use, and nowadays,
in the future the very near future, genetic alteration to
make them impervious to pain with superhuman stamina, super strength reflexes.

(01:03:25):
That put is how Machi to shame and even superhuman
intellect and no need to sleep. But here's the frightening thing.
The US government claims that they started doing this because
China and Russia, for the Soviet Union at the time,
were already operating enhanced human programs for similar purposes to

(01:03:45):
build super soldiers. And the implied threat here is that
other nations do this without following the same ethical constraints
as the US does in theory on paper, but you
know whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
That is really freaky, especially when you think about some
of the efforts that Germany was making back in the
day to you know, make the uber bench and actually
I guess non genetic manipulation, but some breeding stuff that
was going on and some of the there was some
creepiness going on in Germany. And to think that it's
spread out amongst all these other superpowers, now.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Yeah, right, because the Soviet Union in China survived World
War Two but Germany did not, just a lot of
its scientists. Yeah. So yeah, and then even in the
recent years, you know, news came and went about China's
alleged eugenics program for basketball players, which has a surprising

(01:04:42):
amount of sand to it. So that's the conclusion today.
The scary thing is the superpowers themselves want superpowers, and
they're not going to stop researching them. People, most likely
soldiers and analysts with extraordinary abilities, are on the way,
and the only debate now is who will get them
and how these powers will be used. People who are already

(01:05:04):
arguing this violates the Geneva conventions, but there's not really
I mean, there's not really a compelling way to stop this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah, even to get it on the books anywhere. If
it's happening beneath the black budget of let's say a
Pentagon or some other you know, more secretive budget.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, what do you think
is it already I this is just my opinion, but
I feel like it's already gone too far, and the
possible medical benefits are so attractive and have the potential
to help so many people that they will always be
used as a rationalization to build like these unsleeping, unfeeling

(01:05:43):
murder machines.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
I think it's not needed anymore. For the same reason
that I don't understand the biohacking, wetwear stuff. All of
that kind of research has been switched over to artificial intelligence.
And drones and robotic that because you don't need a human,
you don't need to breed a human, you just build
a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Yeah, but you don't think it's sort of an extension
of like extreme body modification culture and kind of fads
or whatever, like the idea of being the complete architect
of your own physicality.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Oh no, no, I see that. I see that. I'm
speaking specifically to superpowers, the national countries, the superpowers trying
to create super human soldiers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Oh sure, I'm just saying it seems like the time
for that is past.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Well, I mean, it's still there, and it's creepy that
they're doing it. They're probably still doing it because why
would you stop. It's just there's probably not as much
money going into it as there is going into the
AI cheap drones kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Well, it also depends on the nature of the military.
So one of the greatest resources that the military of
China has is a massive population. So is it at
what at what point is it more cost effective to
modify those people versus manufacturing a drone. It's a weird

(01:07:08):
way to think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
It's a good way to think about it. It's brutal
not good. It's I mean, yeah, because to some and
at some point in some society, perhaps the cost of
human life is cheaper than the cost of good tech.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
And then there's also the AI problem, which is right now,
most of what we think of as AI is not
a machine consciousness. It's something that is able to solve
certain problems very well or maybe find certain patterns right
very quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Think about it this way, though, to grow an effective
combat ready human being, it takes what fifteen to eighteen years.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Hmm, yeah, that's a good point too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
So to make a you could mass produce a drone
I mean pretty easily and pretty cheaply at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Yeah, yeah, we have to be privy to some numbers
that would be pretty frightening, yeah, to make the call
on that. But I bring up the AI because would
it be better to enhance. So AI doesn't have the
capability and in some cases it's ethically constrained from making
some decisions, right, It doesn't have the ability to make

(01:08:14):
all the nuances of analysis that a human can at
this point. So if we're warmongers, right, if we're war leaders,
do we make an imperfect AI, or do we bend
the rules of ethics and hook someone up such that
through implants they can communicate directly with a drone or

(01:08:35):
with a machine. And then, hey, while we're in their brain,
why don't we put in an implant that we'll be
able to deliver systemized instructions to them or turn off
emotional reactions, both of which are.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
Possible, or you know, explode it they try to run away.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Both, you know what I mean. Make it a one
stop shop. Let's just let's go for it. I could
see that happening, and I could see people signing up
to don't jay at the korams and so on, don't
listen to him.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Well, what do you think? Let us know, there's a
lot to chew on here. This has been a fun one, Ben,
You're right. These were a little different than the ones
in our part one episode. And I get the connection
to the Great Lakes Avengers now because some of their
powers are a little, shall we say, underwhelming. But wrapped
up in some of these slightly useless and underwhelming powers

(01:09:25):
are a lot of good thought experiments and interesting ideas,
and the notion of what it means to be human,
I think is really at the forefront of these discussions.
So I'm really into it and I thought it was
a fun one.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Yes, and that's the end of this classic episode. If
you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you
can get into contact with us in a number of
different ways. One of the best is to give us
a call or number is one eight three three std WYTK.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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