Silent Running

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, of course, we're
going to be doing a movie episode. That's right. We've

(00:20):
been trying to do one of these a month just
because there's so many, so many films we love, and
so many films that either have wonderful tie ins to
scientific and cultural topics that we've discussed on the show,
um or you know, they allow us to discuss new
things and new angles. It wouldn't necessarily necessitate an entire
episode on their own. Alright, So what's on the docket today, Well,

(00:42):
this month we're looking at really one of my I
have to say, it's one of my favorite films. Uh,
you know, in terms of thinking about films you saw
at a definite point in your life that had an
impact on your your your outlook. Uh. And the film
is ninety two is Silent Running. I saw it for
the first time this weekend. Yeah, I've never seen it before.

(01:03):
I'd seen like stills from it. I think I've seen
stills of the robots because it's a very robot heavy film,
despite being one obsessed with nature and environmental themes of
the robots getting awful lot of screen time they do. Yeah,
I think if you're having trouble picturing the film, if
we just mentioned like Judesic Gnomes in space with with

(01:24):
forests and them Bruce Dern and then three domain diminutive
robots that kind of shamble around, that's that's silent running
in a nutshell. Now. This was directed by Douglas Trumbull, right,
who was like a visual effects guy for many years. Yeah. Yeah,
he he provided special photographic effects for such classic sci
fi films as two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,

(01:45):
one of the best close encounters of the third kind,
Star Trek, the motion picture Blade Runner, and then later
on The Tree of Life. Uh. And then it was
in the family too, because his father was a special
effects pioneer who worked on ninety nine The Whiz of Oz.
You can really feel the spirit of the sixties in

(02:05):
this movie from seventy two, but maybe you can also
feel the despair of the seventies, and it is both
of those spirits come crashing together in Silent Running. Yeah.
I thought about I've been thinking about this a lot recently,
in part because we're researching episodes about psychedelics and about
psychedelic research, and then the the decades in which actual

(02:27):
medical research regarding psychedelics just completely languished. And it always
makes me think of Hunter S. Thompson's commentary about the
the the wave of the of the nineteen sixties crashing
and falling back. Uh and and once again, I think
you know that ties into to this film as well.
Before we continue, though, let's let's have just a quick

(02:49):
audio sample from the original trailer for Silent Running, just
to remind everybody a little bit about what we're talking
about here. A space convoy on a strange voyage carrying
a rare cargo. The forests, the plants, the growing things

(03:12):
doomed to extinction on Earth. We have count received orders
to abandon that nupler, destruct all the forests, and returned
our ships to commercial So we're going you blow up discourse.

(03:35):
Thank you now more. Volga Silent Running characlysm in outer space,
every moment bringing its own danger as man explores the
mysteries of an unknown and limitless universe. Valiport volliport, little wrong,

(03:59):
You will be out, you're accelerating. I got a premature,
so I think we have a taste in that that trailer.
This is a very ranty film, oh man. A lot
of the movie also, and besides the scenes with robots
just kind of hanging out and not really executing much

(04:20):
uh much having to do with furtherance of the plot,
just moving around and doing things, there's also a lot
of Bruce Dern chastising the camera and giving sermons to
other characters about their lack of appreciation for nature. Yeah,
so it's it's a very it's a very weird movie
in that regard, and you know that, thinking of you
talked about how you watched it for the first time

(04:40):
just the other day. I watched it for the first time,
probably like in a Sunday afternoon on cable TV in
the nineties when I was like in junior high. I guess,
uh and and you know air on a any just
like matinee showing of it, and I just like turned
over to it and was just sucked in by this
film that doesn't have much in the way of action.

(05:01):
There's there are a few key action scenes, but it
is not an action film. It is a it is
an environmental science fiction film. I mean I'd also say
it's not even really a very plot heavy film. There's
basically a situation and that situation comes about and then
that's about it. I mean, the huge swaths of the

(05:22):
runtime are just characters kind of hanging out. Yeah, and uh,
it benefits I think from three major factors. You know,
if we're just sort of pull these out and then
realized it's complicated when you try and like pull the
key elements out of a picture when everything needs to
essentially be a cohesive hole. And then I think in
this picture is but you have Bruce Dern's performance, which

(05:43):
is fabulous. I mean, Bruce Dern is was and is
an acting treasure. I mean, often relegated to the villain
rolls for sure, but capable of much more. And I
think we see, uh, we see a little bit of
that in this film. And then the other key aspects
of this are they the sets look fabulous, Um, the

(06:03):
models look fabulous, The effects are all wonderful. Uh, and
you have you have some wonderful music in the film too.
So again, this this film is a product of the
late nineteen sixties spilling over into the early nineteen seventies, uh,
and and it is it's for several reasons for stars.
The studio apparently decided to give more first time directors

(06:23):
a shot after the success of nineteen sixty nine is
Easy Rider, which is directed by Dennis Hopper, said Dennis
Hopper's first director red directorial feature and uh. In anyway,
the films to come in the wake of that included
Silent Running. Also the music, so Joan Bayaz uh submitted

(06:44):
like to two songs for this film, Silent Running and
Rejoice in the Sun, both of which are prominently featured.
And for anyone not familiar with Joan Bayazz, first of all,
go look up Joan Bayazz and and these songs in
particular are currently on streaming services. But she was a
major social and political musical force of the nineteen sixties
and beyond playing at the original Woodstock. And she's always

(07:08):
advocated civil rights, environmentalism, and human rights including l g P,
d q I A plus rights. Um. So I mean,
all these elements I think really give it a feel
that that sets it apart from everything else. Like so,
if you were watching looking around for any kind of
science fiction on TV in the in the late nineties

(07:29):
like this stood out. This was a different type of
space and robots film. It's from another dimension. I mean,
it's got it really does have this feeling of the
sixties and seventies culture coming together. But also it's a
very weird combination of elements. It's got these robots, but
the environmental themes. It's got these great special effects and
like practical miniature effects, you know, which watching movies like

(07:53):
this really just makes me simmer with rage at the
c g I age. You know, I'm so sick of
all the c g I space ships. I wish they'd
bring back the miniature models and you know in the
backdrops and the painted sets and everything. Oh yeah, I
mean yeah, they were so good, and those skills still exist. Uh,
they're just not being employed for the most part with
motion pictures. Yeah, but then you've got that, and so

(08:14):
those like sci fi special effects are clashing with just
really in your face Joan Baya's musical numbers. Uh. It's
it's a strange, unique kind of movie. I don't I
can't think of another thing I've seen like it. So
let's talk to just a little bit about the plot,
just to remind everybody who's seen it before and refresh
everyone else. We're gonna I guess I think we're gonna

(08:36):
avoid any real spoilers here in terms of the end
of the film. But you know, if you want to
go into the film spoiler free, pause this, uh this podcast,
go watch it and then come back. So the basic synopsis,
it's the future. The planet Earth is essentially dying. A
great dying has ravage botanical life on our planet, and

(08:56):
the remaining shreds of botanical life and some animal life
now thrive solely within a series of geodesic domes that
are affixed to a spaceship called the Valley Forge, and
the Valley Forges orbiting just outside the orbit of Saturn,
and here a four person crew tends to things. That
includes botanist Freeman Lowell, who's our our main character, played

(09:18):
by Bruce Den, and three helper robots named Huey, Dewey
and Louie Well. Originally, no, originally they have robot names.
They're called like Drone number one, that's Drone number two,
and then Bruce Den, in a in a moment of
sort of magical thinking, names them. And it said that
moment that they seem to acquire personalities that they don't

(09:38):
seem to have had before. Yeah, the end this occurs
later when it's when it's just a durn. So how
does it just become a situation of only Bruce Den's
character in Three Robots. Well, basically, one day an order
comes down, uh that all the forest have to be
jettisoned and detonated with new clear ball with nuclear weapons. Yes,
and then the and the rest of the crew just

(09:59):
take this and stride. They're like, all right, it's time
to go home. Time to ditch these uh these forests
and head back. But Lowell is very upset by this
and finally breaks and betrays his fellow crew members to
save one of the save the Last Forest pod and
uh he ends up faking a malfunction and then takes

(10:20):
off through Saturn's rings with the World's Last forest and uh.
You know what follows is a story of of survival loneliness,
thus the naming of the robots and the bonding with
the robots. But then also you know this this environmental message. Yeah,
and it's clear that the orientation of the film is
a pro environmentalist one, though it's not quite clear exactly

(10:42):
how much we're supposed to agree with everything Durn says.
I mean, Durn's character gives these monologues where he excoriates
his crew members for being satisfied with this horrible synthetic
existence that they're living where you know, they only eat
this pre package freeze dried junk, that that they got
his rations from Earth. Whereas he picks you know, living

(11:05):
fruits and vegetables from the forest, he picks cantle opes
and he sits there eating cantle open and just like
attacking them for putting that garbage in their mouths uh,
and and talking about how they don't care about the
trees and they don't care about the forest, and they
really they don't seem to care. They're just not bothered
by the fact that Earth doesn't have any forests anymore.
They just want to get home, and seemingly, uh, you

(11:27):
are led to believe that they would be happy with
the life of sort of bland synthetic consumer existence and
entirely artificial environments with no exposure to plants their animals.
So in a sense, it's it's like Bruce Tern's character
is the spirit of the nineteen sixties speaking to these
denizens of the nineteen seventies and saying like how can

(11:47):
how can you do this? Like how can you abandon
these principles? Um? And uh? And in doing so? Yeah,
Bruce Tern's character, his performance is very abrasive at times.
You know, he comes off as a real curmudgeon. Uh.
And uh, you know they're also an idealist and it's
it is kind of an interesting experience experiment to sort

(12:08):
of take that apart and figure out, well, what's why
is he so abrasive? He is, he's supposed to be
so abrasive. How are we supposed to feel about him? Um?
Is part of this just what happens when you cast
a character actor like Bruce Dern in this role. Bruce Dern,
who had just come off this was just on the
heels of the film The Cowboys, in which he killed

(12:29):
John Wayne's character by shooting him in the back. Yeah.
I mean it's like the ultimate dishonorable scumbag move in
the Western genre. Yeah, except maybe cheating by drinking clean water. Yeah.
He played a real real villain in that picture. Uh.
And interestingly enough, I was looking around at reviews from
when this came out, and Dern's casting is it seems

(12:50):
to be a divisive aspect of the film, so some
critics thought he was great. Like critics who maybe were
a little lukewarm on other aspects of the film were like, well,
Bruce Dern's terrific and though while others said, hey, it's
really difficult to empathize with this character. Uh, and that ultimately,
perhaps during his performance ends up hurting the message of
the film. I don't. I don't think I would go

(13:11):
that far. But you know, obviously he's an actor who
already had a career based on playing at times dislikable
characters and uh, and he's still going strong in that
department today at age a D three. I wonder what
the equivalent of this casting would be today, Like, who's
somebody that you would cast in this role where they

(13:32):
wouldn't be like this divine messenger of environmental hope but
would come off maybe a bit abrace it. I would
like to see a movie that's got an environmental conservation
message where the champion of the environment is Michael Ironside,
and that's even more difficult to picture. You can't destroy
these forests. Ironside is clearly an actor that was made

(13:56):
to play the sort of character who gets who gets
Jettis and a board and the forest and exploded, not
so much the savior of the of the Pods. But
they're different types of villain actors, right, I mean, I
feel like Michael Ironside is the classic heavy He's the hinchman,
the tough guy, the tough bad guy. Bruce Dearn is
more kind of the scumbag. Yeah he played. Yeah, he

(14:18):
did play a lot of like like sniveling scumbag characters
in his in his life, in his life. So yeah,
this is something that I still don't have a firm
answer for, like how how I feel about his performance.
But I feel like one of the reasons I connected
with the film so much as a kid is that like,
here's this guy who he is a loner, you know,

(14:39):
and and like here I am, you know, as a
junior high kid who's you know, hasn't seems to have
nothing in common with anybody else in my school, and
and you know, I can, I can connect with him
on some level. And his only friends their robots. I
would love to have had robots as friends, you know,
at the time, and and so you know that kind
of that that spoke to me as well, and of course,
he's an idealist. He's trying to he's doing this thing

(15:00):
that is that that he sees as very heroic, and
I feel like everybody at that age especially connects with that,
and uh yeah. And then as as as you grow older,
I think a role like this you keep coming back to,
and maybe you end up being more forgiving of of
of the character's faults because you're like, you agree with
the basic idea. Maybe you don't agree with his use

(15:20):
of murder, right, but still you're you you agree with
his his basic ideology here that you know, the forests
are worth saying, that nature is worth saying, that that
connection is is vital and human. Well, it really does
ask you to think about something that that becomes more
profound the more you think about it. What is the
inherent value of nature? And this is something we'll come

(15:43):
back to as we discuss more about the movie later
on in the episode, But we often today think about
environmental conservation in terms of the material benefits to humans
provided by the by environmental conservation, you you don't want
to destroy natural habitats, you don't want to deforce the
landscape and all that kind of stuff, because it does

(16:03):
lots of bad things when you know they're they're cascading
negative effects throughout the world when you do that. Um.
But there there's also a deeper questions, like what if
there was just one forest left and a dome out
in space and it wouldn't affect anybody on Earth, whether
or not that dome state alive, would you fight to
save that forest? Does the forest have value in itself? Anyway?

(16:28):
We can return to that. So I thought maybe we
should explore the sort of pure scientific question of growing
plants in space. Could you grow a forest in space
inside the geodesic dome on a space ship? If so,
how would you do it? And do scientists who think
about space colonization take this idea seriously? What kind of
challenges do they expect? So, just because it's a recent

(16:49):
example that I read about, I want to talk for
a minute about the the Chinese moon lander. I hope
I want to pronounce this right. I think it's the
chung U for yes, this is named for the goddess
who who resides on the moon, uh, the the wife
of the great Archer. Right. So, the the archer Ye
shoots down the nine surplus sons, leaving just the one son.

(17:09):
As a result, he gets the elixir of immortality and
his wife, Chunga is I think there are different versions
of the story about how she drinks it, but she
ends up drinking it and then goes to the Moon
to live there. Um And so of course that's that's
a good name for a lunar lander, right, And there
have been four of these, now, these these four different
lunar missions from the Chinese Space Program. This is the

(17:30):
fourth in the series, and in January of twenty nineteen,
the Changa four lander set down on the far side
of the Moon, at the side that always faces away
from the Earth, of course, because the Moon is tidally locked.
So it landed in this massive impact basin on the
far side of the Moon called the South Pole Aitken Basin,
specifically within a crater called Von Carmen. And one of

(17:53):
the experiments brought along on the Chongo four mission was
a biological payload of cotton seeds inside a tiny biosphere
which was supplied with soil, water, a small contained atmosphere chamber,
and a heater, and after the spacecraft landed, the seeds hatched,
and the Chinese Space Program even published a little photo

(18:15):
from the inside of the chamber with green sprouts on
the far side of the moon. And it's pretty cool.
I've got a picture here for you to look at, Robert.
It looks like a little jungle of spinach underneath the
plastic net. Yeah, and then the plastic net kind of
looks like one of the domes from the from Silent
Running Clear Bias. But of course it was not to be.

(18:35):
It would not last very long. The heater in the
little biosphere did not hold out, and so when the
night set in on the far side of the moon.
Of course, the moon has you know, longer days and
night cycles because of its tidal locking with the Earth.
When the nights set in on the far side of
the moon, local temperatures reached about negative fifty two degrees
celsius from negative sixty two degrees fahrenheit, and the cotton

(18:57):
sprouts froze and died about a week after or the
experiment began. And furthermore, the Chinese media reported that the
cotton seeds were not the only species within the biosphere
which also contained rape seed potato A rabbidopsis, which is
a brassica plant that is often deployed in space missions
and uh experiments with growing plants beyond Earth, as well

(19:19):
as fruit flies and yeast, and apparently nothing except the
cotton registered any growth. So it can be hard to
grow life in space. And and this was in a
sealed container on the relatively nearby Moon. Like, wouldn't the
problem get even harder if you're talking about trying to
grow a whole ecosystem, an entire forest in a ship
in deep space. It seems like an almost impossible problem,

(19:42):
right right, Yeah. And of course in silent running like
we begin with the forest being situated further away from
the planet, and then developments in the plot just lead
it to greater distances exactly. So the Chung of four
experiment was by no means the first attempt to grow
plants beyond Earth. I think it was the first attempt
to grow them on the Moon. There have been many

(20:04):
experiments over the decades with growing plants in space. Lots
of early space missions involved simply carrying seeds into space
and then bringing them back to Earth to see if
they would grow normally. I think there was concern about
how primarily radiation, but perhaps other space conditions, maybe micro
gravity and so forth, how these would affect the seeds,
you know, would they grow normally if you just brought

(20:26):
them back and planted them. And in general, the seeds
taken into space seem completely unaffected. You bring them home
and they're fine. In fact, all throughout the United States
you can visit so called moon trees. These are trees
planted in public spaces from seeds that were taken into
orbit around the Moon by the Apollo fourteen command module,
and they grew fine. You can actually like look up

(20:47):
lists of these and see if you can visit a
moon tree near you. But the first plants actually grown
from seeds in space were of the species A rabbit
Opsis thaliana, which is one of the same plants that
Chinese lander brought this year, but which did not sprout.
And this was aboard the Russian space station the Salute
in nineteen two, and since then lots of plant experiments

(21:09):
have been conducted, and astronauts regularly experiment with cultivating plants
on the I S S. So I guess the question
is what have we learned from all these experiments? What's
it like to grow plants in space? So a few
takeaways as noted by Dr Anna Lisa Paul, an investigator
on the Advanced Plant Experiment or APEX experiment UH number one.

(21:29):
Of course, seeds taken into space and then return to
Earth consistently grow and don't show any changes. But if
you let the seeds germinate in space, there are differences
in how they grow. At first, we expected, like the
trophic patterns, that the growth patterns in plant development to
be different because of gravity. Right, you would think that

(21:50):
the well gravity pulls the roots down and that's how
they know to grow downward. But actually that's not entirely
what we find. Some experiments have found that that some
plant are extremely sensitive to even very very tiny amounts
of gravity and can detect very very weak gravitational fields
and be manipulated by them. But also plants tend to

(22:11):
just grow toward light, with their roots generally growing in
the opposite direction from the light, but with individual patterns
determined by their genes. Also, the directionality of light is
very important and determining growth patterns for plants in space.
If there's a clear light source from one direction, like
the sun would be on Earth, the plants tend to

(22:31):
grow toward that. But if the light sources diffuse, like
the sort of lighting the you know, the soft lighting
you would get in a closed room. Then their growth
patterns are often very different and can be altered from
what you would normally see on Earth. Now, despite the
fact that we've discovered that healthy plants can grow in
the absence of gravity, the lack of gravity and a
space station environment can still present a lot of problems

(22:54):
for growing plants. If you just stop and think about
it for a second, you can probably imagine what some
of them are. Like. Think about this. You couldn't have
a regular forest with a soil floor in micro gravity
because the soil would float off everywhere, the water wouldn't
sink into the soil when it was applied correctly. You'd
have to have some kind of like you know, controlled

(23:16):
surface or like sometimes when astronauts grow plants on the
I s s, they grow them out of these sort
of packets of soil that it's almost like a package.
You see this that's closed, but it's got something inside
of It's like cat litter that's got fertilizer in it. Um.
So you could maybe do something like that, but you
couldn't have a totally natural forest type environment in the

(23:38):
absence of gravity. So in order to have something like
depicted in Silent Running. You would absolutely have to have
artificial gravity, and you know from our previous discussions no
magic fixes allowed here. Right as far as we know now,
you would have to simulate gravity through acceleration. And you
can go back to our artificial gravity episode for more
on how that might work. But I'll just say, short story,

(24:00):
your best bet would probably seem to be some kind
of huge rotating cylinder with the forests inside it. On
the other hand, that does present additional problems for energy. Right.
Forests need sunlight to grow, and if you can't simply
angle them towards the sun, because you know they'd have
to be on the inside of the cylinder to benefit
from the effects of gravity, then you need an appropriate

(24:22):
artificial light source, or at least some sort of complex
reflective system like something that would that would would give
them the cost of sunlight they need. Right. However, if
you don't care about simulating a full natural environment with
a whole equal ecosystem and a soil floor and all that,
your options really do expand to include hydroponic containers and
packet contained soil beds with growth via exposure to artificial

(24:45):
grow lights and all that, but then again, also some
of the benefits might be reduced by some of those limitations.
And this is useful for a lot of reasons. Researching
plants in space is not just sort of a lark.
I mean, it's useful for one thing, because knowledge about
how plants growing space can actually be useful for agriculture
back on Earth. You can isolate variables in space that

(25:07):
you can't isolate on Earth. But it's also useful for
long term space mission planning because, as Silent Running argues,
we really can't live without plants. Like any truly long
term space colonization efforts, if they're ever going to be
realized there, it's it's gonna be really hard to do
them entirely in metal boxes with prepacked rations. Those things

(25:30):
eventually expire. Rehydratable or radiated or thermostabilized. Shrimp cocktail is
only going to take them so far. At the very least.
Long term astronauts or Mars colonists need to be able
to grow their own food. And that's just food. That's
not even talking about uh, you know, holy ecosystems, in
the environmental benefits they bring beyond growing crops. This is

(25:53):
just about what potatoes am I going to eat tonight? Uh?
And I was reading a twenty nineteen article by Marina
Corrin in The atlant Antic. Uh And I don't think
I knew this fact before. Astronauts actually have been allowed
to eat plants that they grew on space station. Apparently
the Russian cosmonauts have been eating stuff on space stations
for a long time, since around two thousand three. I

(26:14):
think they've been allowed to eat half the crops they
grew in their experiments, including early crops of a type
of lettuce called missouna, which is I think a type
of Japanese mustard greens. They've been allowed to eat peas
they grew there. I think they tried to grow tomatoes
but the crop failed. Um and and there have been
others since then. In twenty fifteen, I believe it was yeah, yeah,

(26:36):
to read from Marina's article quote, astronauts have already made
a space salad. In astronauts on the space station were
allowed to try the leaves of a red romaine lettuce
that was cultivated in NASA's first fresh food growth chamber.
They added a little balsamic dressing and took a bite.
That's awesome. The NASA astronaut KELLN Lyndagrin said, then tastes good. Uh,

(26:58):
And I love red romaine. It's my favorite for salads
at home. So that's a good choice there. Yeah. Well,
a lot of the foods that we we gravitate towards,
like the artificial ones. Uh. You know, the argument is that,
like a potato chip is so satisfying because you know,
it's fatty, it's salty and all this, but it also
has a Christmas to it, as if we have discovered

(27:19):
in the potato chip bag a crisp vegetable like lettuce
that is ready for our consumption. Well, one of the
things when you look up these pictures of like the
lettuce screens growing on the I S s, they look
like really high quality to me. Maybe maybe I'm just
hungry while I'm looking at the picture or something, but
I'm like, yeah, I want to eat that. They don't
look like, you know, limp and sad produce, the kind

(27:42):
of limp and sad produce you sometimes find at the
grocery store when it's already been picked over. Uh. They
look like really good, like the best stuff you could
find in a really good farmer's market. Now, in mentioning
the I want to go back to gravity for just
a second, because I want to make it clear that
what we see in silent running what is depicted there.
There's no attempt to depict any kind of rotation or

(28:02):
acceleration basis. It's just magic gravity. And ultimately, in science
fiction we're off. We were often very forgiving of that.
I mean, ultimately sure, this picture is based in the
sort of the more the metaphorical scenario here of here
is a portion of the world's dead forests sustained within
an artificial environment. They're just kind of attached to the

(28:24):
sides of the valley forge. Yeah, in many ways, a
science fiction film can, even a good one, can be
kind of like a science experiment. You know, they isolate
variables that they're not always gonna spend a lot of
time getting every detail accurate. They're more like focusing on
some key themes and they want you to contemplate a
scenario to you know, have you see what you think

(28:45):
about it? Uh, sci fi films, I think are often
like they're they're like the thought experiments that people do
in philosophy classes. You know, when when you ask about
the philosophy class like, wait, why was Donald Davidson walking
in the swamp when he got turned into the you know,
by the lightning strike turned into the swampman. Well, that
detail is not important. Just ignore that. And I think
the gravity and silent running is kind of like that.

(29:07):
It's just like a detail that they don't want to
be bothered with. Uh they you know, some some audiences
do get bothered by those things. Even so, and we're
gonna bring up Carl Sagan in a minute, and that
will be uh, that'll be a point that sticks with him,
I think. But anyway to sum up about growing plants
in space, so I would say that summary is learning
how to grow plants in space is very important for

(29:29):
the future of space travel and uh and even just
for knowledge that we can apply in the present day
on Earth. Plants do seem to grow just fine in
microgravity conditions, but they sometimes need a lot of special
care because of those conditions. Uh, special growing habitats, plenty
of the right kind of artificial light, special applications of
water and nutrients, atmospheric management because of course they need

(29:51):
access to c O two to grow their bodies. Uh.
And never forget you know that this is sort of
a tangent, but you when you breathe out the you
two in your breath is later taken in by a
plant and made into leaves and wood plants are made
of your breath. And we'll get back to that a
little later as well. But also, you know, growing entire

(30:13):
ecosystems that simulate Earth ecosystems, like a full forest. It's
not I would say, I don't know of any facts
that make it impossible in principle, but you would encounter
a lot more challenges related to energy and gravity and
environmental chemistry and the atmosphere and all that. And finally,
just to point out, a lot of the future of

(30:33):
extraterrestrial botany research is probably going to be focused on
how to grow plants on Mars given those specific local conditions,
rather than in microgravity. Because if you're going to Mars
and you want to grow plants there, you can just
like freeze seeds and take them with you. You don't
have to be growing plants all the way there, right,
And uh, you know, based on you know, some of
the recent discussions that I've I've been been been privy

(30:56):
to regarding like traveling to Mars, like it's we we
could pack enough. I mean, it's kind of a you know,
that's a there's a lot of thought that goes into
exactly how much you would need to bring and then
how you're going to sustain yourself when you when you
when once you get there. But the trip to Mars
is the sort of trip in which we yes, you
could surround yourself with the plant, with the food and

(31:19):
water that you would need, and actually surrounding yourself with
the food and water would help protect you from potentially
protect you from radiation. That's right, a hazard suit made
out of sandwiches, yeah, made out of shrimp cocktail essentially, Yeah,
or made out of water, I guess. And and the
food's got a lot of water and yeah, yeah, but
basically have food, food and water is protecting you. So

(31:41):
don't eat too much of it, don't. All right, we
should take a quick break and then we come back.
We'll we'll talk about Carl Sagan in Silent, Silent Running. Alright,
we're back. Yeah. So one of the benefits of this
being a major science fiction film that came out in
the early nineteen seventies is that Carl Sagan around to
see it himself and to comment on it. Yeah, and

(32:03):
he he mentions it in an article that was published
in The New York Times on May nineteen seventy eight
called growing Up with Science Fiction. Now, this article isn't
focused on Silent Running, but he devotes a paragraph to
it in the article, and more generally he talks about, uh,
science fiction. And it's a great article, I think. Yeah.
It's collected in Broca's Brain, Reflections on the Romance of Science,

(32:24):
which was published in nineteen seventy nine, still very very available.
I picked up a copy of this in the last
couple of years and read it. The whole book is
an excellent read. And yeah, this particular chapter, this particular
paper discuss his works that he both admires and criticizes.
And yeah, it's not only a great read in and
of itself, but I would say it's also a wonderful

(32:45):
place to get some fresh reading ideas, fresh in terms
that they haven't been updated since the late nineteen seventies.
But still he mentions a number of important works of
science fiction. Uh, you know, stuff that he grew up
on as a kid, stuff that he learned about later,
stuff that he thinks what he thought was really solid,
and stuff that you know, he had other, you know,

(33:06):
decent things to say about it, like I I have
at times thought what we really need like a Sagan
sci fi book club in which we just used this
particular um chapter in the book as a guideline. Uh
and just read everything that Sagan's discussing here, including the
stuff that he was critical off. He recommends Doon by
the way there uh so say yeah. Sagan tells the

(33:29):
story of how he fell in love with science fiction
at the age of ten, and how his adolescent adoration
for science fiction actually in the end led him to
real science. Like he tells stories of how there were
these sci fi stories with unanswered questions and inconsistencies that
he wanted resolved because they were intriguing, and found real

(33:50):
science is basically is a way to get to the
bottom of them, to get real answers to the questions
posed by science fiction. But he also talks about his
frustration with science fiction stories where characters don't know scientific
facts that it makes no sense for them to be
unaware of. And one example he gives his silent running
so yeah and to to to drive home what he's

(34:13):
talking about here, though the lower character in Silent Running
played by Bruce Dern is supposed to be a botanist
and an ecologist. Yes he's Yeah, so he's a space botanist.
He's space low Ax. Uh. I don't know if anybody's
called him that. Space low Axtleax and Dr Seuss Lotleax
is also you know, he speaks for the trees in
the environment and is perceived as being abrasive and obnoxious

(34:35):
and in the way of of you know, of the
the advancement of the corporate world. Right. Uh so, So
Dern is a botanist who takes these plants out and
he's flying them out into deep space farther and farther
away from the sun. Uh, And the forests are dying
and he doesn't know why, and he's trying to figure
it out. And I guess this is a semi spoiler,

(34:56):
but it's a moving from the seventies. Eventually it's revealed that, oh,
the problem was they need sunlight and they weren't getting
enough sunlight because he, I guess, flew them too far
away from the sun. Right. Even forgiving the character a
little bit and thinking, well, he's recovering from an injury,
he's super lonely and maybe you know, there's some mental

(35:18):
health issues that are arising out of that, and perhaps
he's being bombarded with with cosmic rays. Still, that's a
big one to miss as a botanist. Yeah, I would
say so, and and uh Sagan thinks that too. So.
Quote in Douglas Trumbull's technically proficient science fiction film Silent Running,
the trees are dying in vast space born closed ecological

(35:39):
systems on the way to Saturn. After weeks of painstaking
study and agonizing searches through botany texts, the solution is
found plants. It turns out needs sunlight. Trumbull's characters are
able to build interplanetary cities, but have forgotten the inverse
square law, and that refers to the fact of radiation
becoming exponentially we acre as he gets farther away from

(36:01):
the source um and that has to do with the
three dimensional nature of space. But also, he continues, I
was willing to overlook the portrayal of the rings of
Saturn as pastel colored gases, but not this. Uh So,
he's really bothered by the fact that that the Dern's
character would not have been aware of this. It just

(36:21):
he can buy a lot, but he can't buy that,
you know. And I suspect that I was reading about
the origins of the story for Silent Running, and I
think part of this might have to do with the
fact that the the the original story like starting off
early versions of the screenplay apparently didn't have the protagonist
as a botanist, and he he basically like broke free

(36:43):
and ran off with the forest, not because he cared
about the forest, but because he just want to be
left alone. He didn't want to go back to Earth,
which doesn't sound nearly as interesting. But I wonder if
this is a case where you know, the story evolves,
and as it evolves, it doesn't you know, completely um removed,
or it creates some problems that might not have been

(37:03):
there originally, such as this, like you have to have
this character run away from the run further away from
the Sun and then encounter problems, but it's complicated by
the fact that now you've made him a botanist. I mean,
I would think that by the time you're at the
orbit of Saturn, you're already sufficiently far away from the
Sun for those uh, those solar rays to really not

(37:25):
be helping your your forests like they should. So it's
from Sagan especially, this is a this is a solid
criticism of the film. I do also think it's always
interesting just as a little thing about each individual person's personality.
What's the breaking point for you in a suspension of
disbelief scenario. You're you're engaging with fictional narrative and you're

(37:46):
okay with this, but not with that, And everybody's got
those little things that they're not okay with. What is
it about about the character lacking this important piece of
knowledge that's the breaking point for Sagan, whereas these other things,
the fake artificial gravity and all that aren't. Yeah, I
mean part of it is like there are certain things
that are just so universally broken in our science fiction

(38:09):
that we just don't think about it, Like they're being
sound in space, like just open sound in space, or
or or certainly the magical gravity scenario like those that's
just all over the place and you just you just
come to expect it um. But with this, yeah, maybe
it's just a part of it just being more crude
central to the plot. Now, certainly this is not something

(38:31):
I thought about when I watched it in junior high
and uh and and and I'm very forgiving of the
film I think overall, but in retrospect it does seem
like a major blunder. Just a couple other notes from
Sagan's article, just because I thought they were interesting and
I wanted to mention them. One fact he points out

(38:51):
is that science fiction authors are often quicker to adapt
to new scientific knowledge than supposedly true accounts of space are. Uh.
I just want to read a quote here. It is
satisfyingly rare to find a science fiction story written today
that posits algae farms on the surface of Venus. Incidentally,

(39:12):
the UFO contact mythologizers are slower to change, and we
can still find accounts of flying saucers from a Venus
which is populated by beautiful human beings in long white
robes inhabiting a kind of Cytherian garden of Eden. The
nine degree fahrenheit temperatures of Venus give us one way
of checking such stories. I do think that's kind of interesting.

(39:32):
People intentionally weaving clearly fake narratives that are meant to
be fiction are often quicker to adapt to new information
about the planets and stuff than people trying to tell
supposedly true stories are I wonder if if this is
part of the reason that the John Carter movie Um
didn't do so well at the box office. Did you

(39:53):
ever see this when it came out? No? I didn't.
You know it's it's based on the work of Ed
Grice Burrows was a to say Williams, which has been
very been a very different film, but it's it's an
entertaining film, but it is bit is based on this,
this older, pulpy sci fi vision of Mars. And indeed

(40:14):
it's based on books that Sagan discusses um in Uh
in the paper that we're discussing here. Sean loved them
when he loved him when he was a kid, and
he he mentions how he came back to them later
and he was like, oh, this just is not working
its magic on me anymore. But he still makes the
case for the for the usefulness of science fiction, and
not just in wedding the appetites of young people for

(40:38):
education about real science. That that is part of it.
I want to read a couple of quotes here quote
the greatest human significance of science fiction maybe as thought experiments,
as attempts to minimize future shock as contemplations of alternative destinies.
This is part of the reason that science fiction has
so wide an appeal among young people. It is they

(40:59):
who will of in the future. No society on Earth
today is well adapted to the earth of a hundred
or two hundred years for from now, if we are
wise enough or lucky enough to survive that long, we
desperately need an exploration of alternative futures, both experimental and conceptual.
And later he says, quote, I think it is not
an exaggeration to say that if we survive, science fiction

(41:22):
will have made a vital contribution to the continuation and
benign evolution of our civilization. I love that. I want
to touch briefly on the concept of future shock. We
have a couple of older episodes of Stuff to Blow
your Mind that dealt with this that I recorded with
Julie Douglas back in the day. But this is referring
to the book, the nine seventy book Future Shock by

(41:43):
Alvin and Heidi toffler Um. I think Alvin alone had
credited on the original publication, but his wife wrote it
with him, and they had co author status on subsequent books.
But it was a very influential book that is talking
was talking about just the idea that technology was a
dancing and is advancing, you know, so swiftly that it

(42:04):
it kind of reduces one to a state of shock,
and it's uh, it's a little more nuanced than that,
but that's the basic idea. There's also they're also also
a wonderful TV documentary version of it, narated by Orson Welles. Uh,
that is tremendously entertaining in its in its own right,
but also kind of you know, hypes everything up a

(42:24):
little bit. Uh, this is funny from the nineties seventies, right,
you know, from our perspective, it seems like technology is
only accelerated since then, you know, especially in the realms
of consumer technology. You know how much our individual lives
have been changed by especially communications technology. Yeah, but I
mean the concept of future shock, I think, you know,

(42:47):
a few years ago, like basically when I recorded that
episode with Julie about it, I I kind of viewed
it more as something that was archaic or something that
was maybe maybe didn't match up with modern reality. But
now years later, uh, now that I'm I'm forty years old,
I I feel future shock a lot more yeah, like
there's a there's enough advancement going on that I'm like,

(43:09):
WHOA hold on a little bit. I think sometimes I
feel like things are moving a bit too fast. Not
to criticize technology in the right of technology, but I
wonder you have future shock to whatever extent it exists.
Also depends on just how how long you've been in
the stream of time. You know, in what level of
technology you kind of grew uh comfortable with. Well, one

(43:32):
thing that I do think is interesting about Silent Running
is that it in this main character. We've got a
character who is a fierce sort of prophet of the woods.
He is a priest to the forest and an advocate
of the pure, undisrupted environment and and ecology. But at
the same time he's not technophobic at least not like

(43:53):
he he enjoys the company of the robots, even you
can see him being technologically proficient, like he reprogramm ms
the robots himself and messes around with them. And I
feel like in a lot of nineteen seventies visions of
the future, I think you would probably see these two
tendencies paired against each other. You would have the people
who have an affinity for technology and the people who

(44:16):
have an affinity for nature and that that's what's in opposition.
But the movie actually identifies a different kind of opposition.
It's just it's just the preservation of the environment versus
the destruction of the environment. And that's that's not really
related to whether you also like technology or not. Like,
can't you easily imagine the Horrible remake of this in

(44:38):
which the humans have to protect the forest from the
robots who have the program to destroy the forest, right,
because they wouldn't want to be controversial, And I mean
i'd see it probably chopped chopping mall meets silent running
um in space, of course, but but i'd watch the
Terrible in its own right. Well, that does set way

(45:00):
into another thing that I want to talk about with
regards to this movie, which is the way that environmental
conservation and preservation is presented as a public issue in
a public debate. So I think one maybe quibble I
would have with this movie is that it seems to
embrace a narrative um that I think unwittingly, But it

(45:22):
does sort of fall into this common narrative, especially of
past decades, that says human economic prosperity on the one hand,
and the preservation of the natural environment on the other hand,
are goals at odds with one another. And Dern's crewmates
are fine with the world without forests. And they say

(45:43):
why they're fine with it. They basically say, because industry.
You know, the industrialization of the world has made resources
plentiful for everybody, and everybody has a job, and and
you've got everything you need, right, So there's like economic
prosperity on the one hand, but then you've got the
preserve vation of the forests as this thing in conflict
with that, And Dern resists it. He takes a qualitative

(46:07):
view that defends nature for its own sake and revels
in the aesthetic qualities of nature over the synthetic landscapes.
You know, it's all these qualitative judgments. How do you
put that crap in your body? You know, when you
eat that, you want to go back to that, You know,
landscape where you never see a tree. It's all qualitative,
it's all aesthetic. And I don't think this classic narrative

(46:30):
about environmental conservation versus economic flourishing is actually a very
accurate diagnosis of what the what the risks and benefits
of environmental destruction are now obviously there are cases where
you can say, increase the efficiency of a business by
dumping waste into a river rather than paying more to

(46:51):
dispose of it, you know, in an environmentally friendly way.
But these tradeoffs are they're almost always I think temporary.
They're like temporary individual ways to leverage destruction of the
natural environment for personal gain. I don't think that overall
destruction of the natural environment leads to widespread long term
economic flourishing in general. It's more just sort of a

(47:14):
temporary way for you to cheat, right, And I mean
it basically comes down to a question of how far
down the road are you kicking the cane is are
you are you going? Is it going to be like,
you know, five years, ten years, is it one generation?
Is it two or three generations? Yeah? What is the
what's the cost? Yeah? And and so this is because

(47:34):
destruction of the natural environment, of course, as we talked
about on the show all the time, at least all
kinds of costs and losses that are unpredictable and that
everybody has to bear. Just to to go back to
the example of you know, dumping industrial waste in the river,
imagine every factory upstream says, Okay, we can increase profits
if we don't have to dispose of this stuff properly.

(47:55):
We just dump it in the river. They dump it
in the river. But now the farmers downstream can't use
the river water to irrigate their crops, so they have
to get their water in a way that's more costly
and inefficient, or maybe they can't grow their crops at
all or something. And here is a net maybe a
net economic loss actually from this, even disregarding all of
the environmental devastation, this is just a loss to what

(48:18):
what kind of wealth people are able to produce? Uh.
And So for the specific example of deforestation used in
the movie, because in the nineteen seventies, I think this
was sort of the big environmental issue, right that people
talked about the most. It was the destruction of the forests,
and that's why the forest geodesic domes or what the
movie is all about. Luckily, we've got that all taken
care of. There's no more forestation. No, it certainly is

(48:41):
still a problem, but for some reason, it's not like
the main problem that comes to mind when people think
about environmental problems. Now. I think it's probably been supplanted
by the global issue of climate change, I guess. But
any of this is also part of the problem, right,
because because they're related, Yeah, they're related. But also the
messaging of the forest is so so much easier because
there's an emotional connection to a definite physical location. You

(49:04):
can basically say, hey, you like going to the forest,
don't you You like it? Even if you don't want
to go in it, you're probably like looking out the
window at it. Well, imagine if all that went away
like that is a mucher. That's far easier for us
to wrap our hands it heads around, versus the realities
of climate change. That as though some of the the
the the ramifications of climate change you know down the road,

(49:26):
I mean when they are described, when you're talking about uh,
you know, rising ocean waters, I think that still creates
some scenarios that definitely should have an emotional um uh
you know impact on anyone who hears them. Yeah, But
the forest, I mean you can talk about today. It's
a thing you have now. I mean people people feel
losses more than they feel the loss of potential gains. Right,

(49:51):
that's a psychological problem. And if you if you say, uh,
sometime in the future there could be economic opportunities that
would be lost because of you know, things about climate
change is harder to picture. You can say, if you're
in a forest right now, imagine this forest is gone.
Like that's that's immediate, it's visceral. I think it reaches
people in another way though, I mean, yeah, I think

(50:11):
you could make the same argument, like you're saying about
about sea level increase if you're in a coastal area
or something. Um. But yeah, just giving the example of deforestation, Uh,
this is something that of course I would say. You know,
there are sort of like maybe aesthetic and even people
might call them spiritual reasons to value nature for its

(50:31):
own sake. But imagine you don't and you're just you're
like a Dern's crewmates who only care about economic flourishing.
They just want there to be resources for everybody, and
everybody has a job and all that. I mean, even then, deforestation,
I think reeks devastating effects on those kinds of things.
So deforestation leads to soil erosion. Roots you know, they

(50:52):
hold soil in place, and then if you have deforestation,
you get all these exposed surfaces everywhere without plant life
to hold the soil in place, the soil of roads
during exposure to weather and water, and that soil run
off drains into waterways and clogs them and you know,
washes away the good soil that you could be using
for agriculture. And um, it's just so there's a lot

(51:14):
of economic catastrophe right there. There's disruption of the water
table that happens through deforestation. There's like deforestation can lead
to widespread flooding. You know, economic catastrophes from flooding, destruction
of habitats and extinctions of course, which can lead to
downstream effects like the you know rise of new zoonotic
diseases and things like that. Oh yeah, increasing like boosting

(51:36):
the diseases that we're gonna have in the future, while
at the same time removing various biological agents from the
world that you know, which we could find potential cures
and new antibiotics to help us battle those very diseases. Yeah.
And then of course, not to mention the way that
the big thing, the way forests can help contribute to
atmospheric dynamics. Of course, deforestation contributes to climate change, global warming.

(51:59):
I mean, I think it's it is not accurate to frame.
Deforestation is an issue of like, well, you've got wealth
gains on the one hand, and you've got protecting the
environment on the other hand. Like protecting the environment is
a is a crucial investment in the future of human
kind and economic investment. You destroy those forests and there

(52:20):
will be so much lost wealth and economic potential from that. Yeah, exactly.
But then again, I don't want to discount the of course,
the you know, the inherent value of nature for its
own sake. Now, to place this film in the context
of US environmental history, uh, which I think is is interesting. Uh.
President Richard Nixon had only just created the US Environmental

(52:44):
Protection Agency, the e p A in Nino and Uh
it's interesting too. I was reading a little bit about this.
I was looking at there was an Atlantic mini article.
Actually it's a gallery why Nixon created the e p A,
which is the interesting read. And in the Science History
out Org has Richard Nixon in the rise of American environmentalism,
because we tend not Nixon comes up a lot recently.

(53:07):
There are a lot of parallels being made today between
our current in a political um uh situation and UH
and Watergate and Nixon etcetera. So we tend not to
think about environmentalism and Nixon. But but it is interesting
to look at this time because, you know, given how
tragically politicized climate change has become in the United States,

(53:29):
it's almost staggering to realize that the the National Environmental
Policy Act enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support, uh, you know, and
and politicians were responding to a very real pressing and
environmental danger at the local and national level level, or
dangers I should say. Was it in nineteen sixty nine
that the Cuyahoga River river caught fire? Yes? Yeah, there

(53:49):
was actually heard a piece on NPR just this morning
talking about that. And then of course you're talking about
how that falls into this this whole situation with the
creation of the e p A. Yeah, it's also interesting
if you go back and look at exactly what was
being said, even by Nixon himself and speeches and so forth,
and there was there was kind of this holy reverence

(54:10):
there for nature, even at times in Nixon's own words.
Not to say that Nixon himself actually felt any of this, uh,
you know, he was very much and he and his
people were very much responded just for the zecheist of
the time and something that was again a bipartisan um issue.
But at times Nixon cast such environmentalism as being in
the tradition of Republican Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah. Well, I mean

(54:34):
I think it was, yeah, and I mean the Republican Party,
I think has changed changed a lot between the time
of Teddy Roosevelt in the nineteen seventies. Yeah. Absolutely, But
but I think it is you know, it is I
think helpful to to realize that environmentalism and environmental concerns, um,
you know, have at plenty of times in our country's

(54:55):
history been a bipartisan issue and something that we can
all agree on, is something that matters. And I think
there's a huge case to be made that that's that's
a part of of the American dream, you know, that
is a part of some of the best of America,
is what America has done, uh to sustain bits of

(55:16):
our natural environments, such as with the National Park UH services.
It would be amazing if someone could figure out a
vast sort of psychological program to just de politicize environmental issues. UM.
It's really tragic the way they've taken on a partisan
cast and of course that you know, that leads to

(55:36):
these bit just obvious solutions to environmental problems becoming these
impossible political battles. You know, one of the interesting things
about Silent Running is that they don't spend a tremendous
amount of time describing what life is like on Earth.
Now they allude to it, you certainly never really see it.

(55:58):
And uh and it's I think that's tantalizing, and it
makes this wonder what this world is like? What does
this world become? Uh? And I think that the film
is at least in part, you know, they're pushing the
notion that humanity separated from nature is inherently sickened and
it is lessened by that separation. And the other crew
members don't mind eating tasteless feud cubes and nuking the

(56:19):
world's less forest because they have no connection to nature anymore. Um.
You know, per a discussion we had earlier over email,
you know, there's a there's a lot more focus in
modern environmental discourses on you know, framing the production of
the environment in terms of its material benefit to humans, which,
as we were just talking about, I mean, environmental conservation

(56:40):
is not without material benefits to humans. But you notice
that that's what people who advocate environmental conservation tend to
talk about these days. They're thinking, like, no, it's in
your interests to protect the environment. This was a different time.
I mean, the film presents a very inherent case for nature.
It's this like that the forest in itself is a

(57:01):
holy and beautiful thing that must be protected for its
own sake. Yeah. The film, though, is is kind of
pushing this more of a spiritual connection with it um
which made me think of the microbiome in some ways.
The micro microbiome and the effect you know, getting into
the microbes that live inside us and their connection to

(57:22):
the outside world. The interplay between us and our natural
environment and it's microbiome. You know, a lot of this
can feel kind of spiritual and kind of magic at times.
So I was reading about this a little bit, and
we've certainly covered this on the show but in the past.
But you know, with our growing understanding of the microbiome,
you know, we realize that there's this interplay between our

(57:43):
internal microbial legions, uh, and our exposure to the natural
world for us and fields if we can get them,
but even access to a pet animal that has access
to the outside can provide some level of this natural connection.
You know. One of the things we often talk about
with Charlie at home is that he brings us dirts
your yeah, your dog, Charlie. Yeah. And that's something that's

(58:05):
touched on in the book Never Home Alone by Rob Dunn,
a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University.
In that book, he points out that, you know, we
still have a lot to learn, but it seems as
if families and urban environments with dogs tend to have
kids who are less prone to allergy and asthma because
the dogs may actually be serving as this kind of vehicle,

(58:26):
this kind of connection for the natural world, microbes that
the humans used to live in. So you know, we're
not getting out as natures into nature as much as
we should. But if we're letting the dog do it,
if the dog's really getting its nose into nature, then
it's kind of rubbing some of that that that natural world,
some of that microbiome off on us. Good reason to

(58:48):
let the dog in the bed, right and you know,
naturally there are microbes in the natural world to do
his harm, others that are beneficial or at least seem
kind of benign and the grand grand balance of things,
And that's something we've discussed in the show before as well.
You know, our bodies are, our beings are a vast
multi cellular system inhabited by microbial legions. And you can

(59:09):
even make the argument that we are those microbial legions
and they're us. Yeah, we might not share the same
d n A as them, but they are in a
sense part of us, right and they play into the
like our our emotions and our our wants and needs.
Like this, this manifestation of self that we you know,
have wrapped up an ego and think of as being

(59:30):
separate from the world and separate from nature is all
a product of of this interplay um in our artificial
environment's mess with that balance, and and that's today here
on Earth. So imagine a world such as the Earth
of Silent running with with an even more severely damaged ecosystem,
you know, one in which vegetation has been pretty much eradicated.

(59:51):
And now imagine that world spacecraft. Because even if Lowell
and the Box continually track in dirt, and even as
they they distribute plants around on the place and thrust
melons at the other crew members. You know, it's uh,
you know, it's it's still you know, a very artificial
world outside of the uh, the the farm, outside of

(01:00:11):
the forest that they've sustained there. Well, I mean, I
don't think this was envisioned by the filmmakers, But one
thing you could say to interpret the film is it's
long been a question of how would our microbiome be
messed up by space travel? Uh and by being confined
to environments in space or on other planets. Even if
we bring along a lot of our soil and plants

(01:00:32):
with us, you know, there might just be some ways
in which the gravity environment, maybe the atmospheric difference, whatever,
the the different artificial environments somehow changes the microbial loads
that were exposed to and that we take into our bodies.
And this could this could change us. It could change
who we are. It could make us sick, It could
affect our mental health, It could do all kinds of

(01:00:53):
things that we can't anticipate fully yet. And so I
wonder if maybe that's getting to Durn's character a little bit,
like Durn's yelling people about a cantaloupe because he's even
though he's the one out there in the forest. The
forest and the dome in space doesn't have exactly the
same kind of microbes that would back on Earth, and
his his microbial his microbiome is off and he's he's
getting a little antcy. Oh wow. So this is it's

(01:01:15):
almost like the idea of say a people who once
had you know, an actual uh you know, visual or
audible connection with God and then when that goes away,
that you have to sustain faith and faith alone because
there is no direct, visible sign of the Almighty and

(01:01:35):
that could that's kind of what he's doing. He is
a profit of the natural world that that via the
loss of the biome, the microbiome, uh, microbiome, biomedic connection Uh,
must now rely on faith. He has faith in the fruit,
faith in the cantaloupe, but that actual connection to nature
is gone. All right, we need to take one more break,
but we'll be right back to finish up the discussion.

(01:01:58):
Than alright, we're back. Uh. You know, this film also
made me think a lot about you know, Wilson's biophilia hypothesis. Uh. This,
we did an entire episode on this in the last
couple of years. But this is basically the idea is that,
you know, we we have this innate tendency to focus
on life and lifelike processes and uh in in the

(01:02:21):
more extreme versions of the hypothesis, there might even be
a genetic component to that. Yeah. So he basically says, like,
we're wired to want to be in and around nature
and living things that completely synthetic environments are not are
not what our minds crave. That there's an inherent predisposition
against that, and it's not just cultural. Right. So if

(01:02:44):
if biophilia hypothesis is true, and I think it would
be great if it were, and and EO. Wilson is
and and and has been one of the I think
the greatest minds writing and communicating about our connection with
the natural world. But but if that we're not. You
can see that in the way he shoves his hand
into a mound of fire, ants, yeah, look at them

(01:03:07):
biting me. Yeah. And also an unlike Lowell in the film,
like he's he's very believed, like you, you're like, yes,
this this guy is not abrasive about it, like you
just totally bindo everything he's saying. But if bio philiate
hypothesis is true, it's difficult to imagine a species with
such an innate connection to nature reaching such a fall

(01:03:29):
in place as you see the world in Silent Running.
You know, because most of the characters that with most
of the humans we meet in the movie, and then
presumably most of the humans on Earth are totally okay
with this, or they've become totally okay with this disconnection
from nature. Now, another way you could argue it is
that Again, I don't think this was necessarily intended by

(01:03:50):
the filmmakers, but you could also argue that Lowell's crewmates
maybe are only they're they're only so happy to disregard
nature because cause they are the few humans that are
exposed to it, Like they're the fact that they can
be walking through these forests or actually they generally tend
to drive through them on little go karts, but that

(01:04:12):
they can drive through these forests and be exposed to nature,
that is what makes them feel like they don't need it,
you know, because you don't appreciate what you've already got,
and that maybe all the people back on Earth are miserable.
We don't hear from them, We don't know what life
is like from from their point of view. But perhaps
these other crewmates are just like there and and not

(01:04:33):
appreciating the how lucky they are to be one of
the like five humans who gets to walk among the trees,
you know. And this this brings us to another question
that I had in thinking about the films, something I
hadn't really thought about much in the past with past
viewings of it. But I started wondering, like this, this
earth that we're told about, an earth where like the

(01:04:54):
vast majority of or if not all, botanical life it
is over Like what would that even? Like? Uh? You
know what? Because as we've discussed the connection between the
botanical world and and the human world and the world
of animals, uh is essential. How would a planet exist
without that? What would a world without plants be? Right?

(01:05:16):
And I ran across a couple of sources on this.
There's an article from New Scientists from two thousand seven
titled I have all the oxygen producing plants disappeared suddenly?
How long would it take for us to die? And
then I also found a really good source on the
website for the university. You see Santa Barbara at U, C. S. B.
Dot E d U and Uh. Both of them get

(01:05:39):
into it. They start breaking down the numbers and there's
no like definitive answer for this because you end up
having to You're talking about an entire planet's worth of atmosphere,
and uh, you know, and then the the interplay between
the entire botanical world and the entire animal world and
and other factors as well. Um, basically, the big take
home is that of course, ultimately we would die, all die.

(01:06:01):
It would be it would be a catastrophic That's that
much is for certain. I mean, the basic school grade
explanation still applies. Animals breathe oxygen and excel c O two.
Plants need the C O two and produce oxygen. We're
in balance all of us and humans do not have
a private privileged status in all of this. According to UCSB,
if all the plants went away, just like magically they're gone, um,

(01:06:26):
you know, it wouldn't be an end to oxygen on Earth.
We'd still have an atmosphere's worth of oxygen. And that's
roughly two quintillion pounds of oxygen remaining. It sounds like
plenty of right, But of course it's not just us, right,
there are all these animals that need it to So
to simplify it, okay, let's go ahead and go off
all the animals, because it's not expressly stated in Silent Running,

(01:06:49):
but we might well imagine that most of not all
of the animals are gone as well. Why Okay, so
if all the animals were gone as well, that would
leave the human species with one thousand and four year's
worth of oxygen. Okay, that's one take on it. But
they also break it down so that we might be
looking at more like one thousand, two hundred years of
breathable oxygen. But then the increase in C O two

(01:07:12):
would elevate global temperatures and other concerns would also probably
bring this down even further, and we'd be talking more
like one to four centuries of breathable oxygen. Now, another
take is that we have several thousands of years worth
of breathable oxygen because of the vast pools of oxygen
in the atmosphere, the origins of which stem from microorganisms
to begin with. Plus, there would be reserves of oxygen

(01:07:36):
locked up in H two O and in carbon dioxide
that we can conceivably, you know, breakdown using our technology.
Certainly we have the technology to send for us into orbit.
Then maybe they also have the technology, uh, you know,
to do some widespread breaking down of ocean waters into
breathable atmosphere. But another huge issue, a huge issue, is

(01:07:57):
that without plants, the entire food pyramid essentially collapses. Right,
What would anything eat? Yeah, so I would. I would
sure hope that those disgusting food food cubes that the
crew members are eating on the valley forge are tasty
and that they don't require plants or animal life. I
don't know what they'd be made of. I guess they
could be made from what nutrients gained from microbial mats

(01:08:17):
or Sanda bacterias like that. But but otherwise there's a
there's a very strong argument to be made that we
would starve before we ran out of oxygen um. Now,
other uh and estimates really kind of vary. James Lovelock,
for instance, originator of gaia hypothesis, estimated we'd be looking
at half a million years UM And then that New

(01:08:40):
Scientist article I mentioned, they threw out a few different
estimates by different folks, ranging from a few hundred years
to a few thousand years. Again with the food concerns
and possible poisoned air concerns as well, Right, because we'd
also be breathing out c O two and pumping CO
two into the atmosphere of VR machines that would be
not getting processed. But and of course all of this

(01:09:01):
again is is just very broad and big, big picture
and not getting into all the other challenges that would
occur if all the plants died. How does this square
with the sci fi Earth that is alluded to in
Silent Running? You know, could the leaders of such a world,
could the people and the institutions actually allow uh, such
a cataclysm to come to pass and then scuttle the

(01:09:24):
key plan to correct it? Surely not. People would never
let anything like that happen. Yeah, I will, that's the thing,
you know, you would, You would hope not certainly. And
I remember as a kid thinking, well, you know, at
some level, like, surely they wouldn't do that. Why would
they do this, because there's never a real great reason given, right,
They're just like, oh, well, we've got to put these
uh the spaceship back into commercial use, So we're just

(01:09:45):
jettisoning all these forests, even though presumably they're up there
because they want to bring botanical life back to Earth
in the future. So um, yeah, details of how we
managed to destroy all botanical whole life on Earth side.
In this stuff film, I think we can well imagine
us as a people, as a species, continuing on, satisfied

(01:10:09):
with assurances from the more optimistic estimates that give us
you know, many centuries or even you know, thousands of
years to correct the problem. They'll fix it down, they'll
fix it down the road. Look at these new technologies
are talking about. You know, essentially, we just kicked the
can down that that road for our children, for our
grandchildren to solve. We take comfort in the pending technologies
of orbital for us and life on other world's oxygen

(01:10:32):
extraction and whatever you know process produces those mucky little
food cubes. You know. We so we'd grow complacent, we'd
refuse to change, and one day someone might be in
a position to say, you know, these space for us
are incredibly expensive. Why are we we dealing with this? Uh,
let's just get rid of them. And I think all
of that line falls in line with how we have

(01:10:54):
been thinking about our environment, just despite you know a
lot of tremendous environmental progress. Uh, you know, certainly just
since you know, the since the nineteen seventy uh and
despite all the you know, the very passionate voices and environmentalism. Uh,
you know, I think, you know, collectively, we can still

(01:11:16):
make these kinds of errors. You know, the world of
silent running, which is presented as a cautionary tale. It's
not a it's not presented as a hey, what would
happen of all the forest died? Uh sort of thing.
It's like saying, here is what we do not want,
but here is a here is a you know, an
exaggerated circumstance that is in many ways very much in

(01:11:36):
keeping with how humans think about the environment, or can
think about the environment if they don't listen to the
lolls of the world. I mean, we're obviously facing problems
like this right now. I mean, the most pressing global
environmental problem now being climate change. And like it's one
of those cases where it's it's pretty clear what steps

(01:11:58):
we need to be taking right now, or you know,
really need to be taking yesterday, what we absolutely need
to be taking right now, and people that people just
don't want to deal with it. They just rather I mean,
you've got some people, I think, who managed to delude
themselves into thinking nas you know, it's all a hoax
or whatever. It's Chinese hoax or it's whatever. It's just

(01:12:20):
a bunch of alarmism. And then I think you've got
a lot of other people who they don't really know
of any reason to disagree with the science. They just
rather not think about it, you know, they just rather
kicked the can. And the day is a kick in
the can, even as a as an opportunity grow mighty short. Exactly. Yeah,
I mean, I've I think it was. It was actually

(01:12:41):
Alan watts Um, the Canadian science fiction author who you
know who, who pointed especially to the nineteen seventies as
being like the time when you know, we should have
gotten really serious about environmentalism, and if we had gotten
really serious about environmentalism, we could have avoided the even
tensor scenario we find ourselves in today. Um, but here

(01:13:05):
we are, but like the scenario in Silent Running, all
the forests have not been jettisoned into space. Yet. We're
we're we're we're nowhere near there. Just yet we need
a Joan Bias song to get everybody on the same
page here. I know, I wish we could actually play
one of those Joan Bias songs on the podcast, But
I think that would be problematic. I found some some

(01:13:28):
some music that has subtracts a similar vibe that perhaps
we can lead out with here at the end of
the episode. So often we want to play a song
on the podcast, but it all lies behind the door
of the the intellectual property jail that we cannot free.
The only place we would be able to play it
would be in orbit bord. No, actually, probably not, because
I think a lot of these these uh, the legal

(01:13:50):
documentations for I P like they talk about the entire universe.
I remember the first time I saw that. I'm like,
really with the entire universe, Like I would go to
Mars and I still couldn't play this Joan Baez song. Um.
You know, even if Joan Bayez gave me the thumbs
up like a record company would be, would would just
say no, I'm sorry. The label says the entire universe.

(01:14:10):
So unless send a robotic probe to serve you, you
would have to extend into an alternate universe in which
the rights were different. Commander Lamb, you've been served, all right.
Well there you have it. A silent running uh still
one of my favorite films, very influential at this without
this film. We wouldn't have Mystery Science Theater three thousand either,

(01:14:31):
because clearly modeled on ye. Joe Hodgson is is very
up and forward about that that like he saw it
in college and it was a huge inspiration to him.
And uh, and that's how we ended up with a
human and three robots in space watching terrible movies instead
of tending to forest. The film is a yeah, films
out there. It's available wherever you get your movies. Uh
and uh, you know we're gonna go ahead and call

(01:14:52):
this episode, but again, we're trying to do one of
these a month. We've had some wonderful suggestions from listeners
already about what films we should consider covering in the future,
but we want to continue to hear from you. And
also if you have thoughts about Silent Running, did you
love it? Did you hate it? Uh? Did it? What
role did it have in your your own upbringing? Uh?
Share your thoughts with us. Did you see in the

(01:15:14):
theater when it came out? I would love to hear
about that experience as well. In the meantime, heading over
to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, Uh, that
is that's the Valley Forge of our operations here. That's
our mothership UM. It has links out to our very
social media accounts, and it also has a module on
it that, instead of being a forest, is our discussion
module UM on Facebook. That's just just a discussion group

(01:15:37):
where a lot of folks hang out and discuss the show.
It's the one lovely green place on Facebook. It is. Yeah, long,
may it not be jettisoned into the black avoid of
social media emptiness. But anyway, those are all wonderful things
to to check out. If you want to support the show,
just make sure you rate and review us wherever you
have the power to do so. Leave us some stars,
leave a nice comment. It really helps out the helps

(01:16:00):
out the show when it comes to the almighty algorithms
that rule our world. Huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer, Tori Harrison. If you'd like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just
to say hello, you can email us at contact at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow

(01:16:29):
Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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