July 19, 2011 • 31 mins
Jacques de Vaucanson's fabulous digesting duck was a clockwork miracle capable of reproducing the processes of ingestion, digestion and defecation. Join Robert and Julie to learn more about robotic digestion from the pooping duck to the modern day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome this stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
we've discussed in the past how robots and uh in technology,
the the emergence of both of these overtime, the evolution
(00:24):
of these technologies. Um, we go hand in hand with
the side idea that we but we look at the
human body and we eventually discover, hey, this is basically
a machine. It's a machine made out of blood and
muscles and bone and tissue of different types. But we
can look at like say the arm, and we can
be like, oh, well that moves because that pulled on
(00:45):
something there and that released there. Yeah, And it is
so on one one side, we're figuring out how the
human body works. On the other side, we're learning how
to build things. We're learning how to make little machines,
little eventually clockwork devices even And you see this as
you know, I mean way back to Leonardo da Vinci's day,
where we're creating things that can can move of their
(01:07):
own power, or can where you can manipulate and use
like a puppet or something you know, so we begin
to reach this point where we're like, Hey, the human
body is a machine and I can make machines. So
I'm gonna make a machine that is the human body,
or I'm gonna attempt to make a mechanical effects simile
of this particular um part of the human body. Right,
(01:28):
It's not enough that you would just create something in
your own image. We actually want to see how the
systems work. Yeah, I mean it's part of the you know,
it's it's part of understanding it. Let me create a
working model of that so I can better understand how
that works and at the same time, I can, you know,
live this whole Frankenstein dream a little bit of of
creating another human body. Almost. Yeah, And so to me
(01:52):
it means that we just get to merge two of
of our favorite topics, or at least for me. Yeah,
what are those robots and poop? Yes? In this podcast, Yes,
as the title UH indicates, we are going to discuss
a robotic pooping duck uh from the past. Uh, specifically
from the seventeenth century. But but having discussed this whole
(02:14):
idea that you know that we really want to mechanically
replicate different functions to the human body, it makes sense.
And within that framework, yeah I'm pooping duck. You just
hear about it, you know, just read off the cuff
and it seems insane. Yeah, it sounds like I remember
finding these. People may have seen these before, but they
used to make these little I think we're made out
of a lead or something horrible, maybe some sort of metal,
but uh, but it seems like they were probably made
(02:36):
out of lad or something. But you you would put
a little firework in it, and it looked like a
little dog. And when the firework would go off, it's
kind of like the little things that make snakes, like
these little black actions. Yeah, and they would they made
a version of it, you know, back in like I
don't know, the thirties ere or even say for like
the World Exposition or something. Yeah, yeah, I don't know,
but I mean it's the kind of thing that like
(02:56):
my dad would have played Luther when he was a kid. Um,
and you would put the fire work in the little
metal dog lighted up and then like it would look
like the dog was pooping. It would look like black
excrement was coming out of the little metal dogs behind. Yeah,
So that's an example of where the you know, the
science was making the dog do something that was funny.
It was funny that this little tiny dog was pooping.
(03:18):
Science was making a joke. So on one one hand,
the duck we're about to discuss does that. It is
amusing to see a robotic duck defecate. Um, but it
is all It also ties well into this idea of
here's a function of the human body. Uh, if the
human body is a machine, then I should be able
to create a machine that does this function. Yes, yeah, yes,
(03:39):
so we'll discuss that and and I'm jumping ahead just
for a moment, but we'll also talk about creating a
machine a machine just for the purpose of creating excrement
at some point, and then we will talk about its
true pooping robot. Yes, because this first model that we're
gonna look at is is slightly problematic. But but let's
(03:59):
go back blueprint. Yes, so let's go back to the hundreds.
All right, we're in France. Um, let's say you were
You're on the streets of France, uh, streets of Paris,
and you're just you're walking around. You get maybe you
got a little extra coin in your pocket, jingling there,
you know, maybe you're you're you're a little loaded with
(04:20):
delicious wine and and fatty foods and uh, and suddenly
you hear somebody talking about, Hey, come see the pooping
duck we have or the canal did you Oh gosh,
that was so slaughtered. But what that means is digesting duck.
The digesting duck, the fabulous digesting duck. So you can imagine, like,
you know, you go into this exhibition hall and they you,
(04:41):
you pay, you drop your coins into the bucket and
you get to go in, and then they unveil this
amazing um um example of modern technology and it really yeah, yes, automato,
which is really important to talk about too, But it
is this gleam beautiful sculpture. Basically, imagine setting up on
(05:04):
this pedestal and it's it's gold. It's a gold plated
copper duck, all right. Um. The it has gilded copper
feathers that are that are that have a little holes
in and that allows you to see the inside a
little bit, so you can tell that it's it's both
the work of art and it's and it's some sort
of a machine. It's uh. And then it's in the
shape of a duck, which is it. So it's both
(05:27):
you see both the natural world. You have the comedic
going on there because ducks are inherently funny, um and uh.
And then it's also clearly a machine of human ingenuity.
And then it's also this you know, like I said,
it's made out of gold. It's it's it has precious metals.
It's beautiful to the hole. Yeah, I mean some ofs
like it was, you know, taken down from Olympius Mount Onlympius,
(05:49):
you know, from the gods, and it has tons of
moving parts, hundreds four hundred moving parts and each wing. Yeah,
you said you were reminded of the mechanical owl from
Clash of the Titans, right, Oh, actually there's something else that. Yeah,
I often am reminded of Bibo. Yes, this reminds me
of Febo as well. But okay, so you're you're there,
(06:12):
and the things pretty awesome. And then it starts to move.
It muddles its water with its beak, it appears to drink.
It kind of sets up and sets down, and then
somebody feeds it some with some grain pellets, I believe,
and it eats it and it kind of you know,
it actually has a swallowing motion, swallowing motion and uh,
(06:32):
and then it eventually poops. Yeah, I mean this is
the big part of it, right, And this is this
is the part of the funny equation. Right again, it's
it's a duck, and it's already funny, but it's now
it's pooping. Yeah. And it's explained though that the grain
is passing through tubes to a chemical filled stomach in
the base and then on through the duck's bowels anus
and a mechanical sphincter. Yeah. And again that there are
(06:56):
parts of it where you can see you could like
part the wings and you can see the glass beneath
it and the duck's innards. So this is completely fascinating,
Like I'm here and now, but can you imagine in
the seventeen hundreds beholding such a spectacle? Yeah? It begs
the question who created this duck? Right? Who's this? Who?
What kind of brilliant and maybe slightly demented mind came
(07:16):
up with this? Right? A talented French engineer by the
name of Jacques de vi Clessan. Yeah, he was born
in seventeen o nine died two and ms French engineer.
He was really into creating these automatons. These uh, specifically
what we're referred to as philosophical toys, which are curios
that combines science and amusement, which you know, it's kind
(07:39):
of like you know, a pooping duck or or or
something to where it's the the ultimate function of this
particular automaton. It's like the iPhone of its time, well,
but the iPhone has purpose. This is more like, let's demonstrate.
It's kind of like some of these demo robots you
see today where it's like, wow, it does something amazing,
but it's kind of pointless, like it's it's demonstrating a
(08:00):
certain technological skill and it shows that, oh, well, these
guys really figured out something clever in making this, but
ultimately it doesn't do anything. Well, yes, not to him,
because he and this is from the book Digital People.
He gave an address in which he said he wanted
to construct an automat on that will quote imitate in
its movements, animal functions, the circulation of blood, respiration, digestion,
(08:22):
and the combination of muscles, tendons, nerves to understand the
different states of human beings and to heal their ills.
So he really did have a purpose beyond this. It
was about, let's create a model, working model of something
so we can understand the original, which is not unlike
what we do today when we when we are dissect
animals or we run studies and we try to figure
out how they react to their environment so and so forth,
(08:44):
so that we can then take that knowledge and apply
it to ourselves. But the model in and of itself
doesn't do anything aside from right. Yeah, now, some of
the other thing, earlier things he had done. He had
made android waiters in seventeen to serve dinner and clear
a table, yes each apparently um was some visitors deemed
this profane and ordered the workshop destroyed this one who's
(09:06):
working and more closely with the church. Yeah, but I
mean that probably did seem like some sort of weird
witchcraft right at the time. And you can imagine it
going kind of off to like uh in the Walls
and Grament cartoons, where he's always making like the automated
UH like delivery system that shoots him down to his
breakfast table, dresses him, yeah, and dresses him and drops
(09:27):
toast out and put butters the toast, and it always
goes wrong, so it ends up like getting jam fired
into his face. I like to picture that like church
officials coming and uh uh and uh vakasan um having
all these devices that just end up, you know, shooting
jelly and terrifying and they're like forget it. Yeah. But
then he also created a mechanical flute player that was
(09:48):
supposedly just really impressive too, because it was like powered
by nine different bellows, and it was this little wooden
man that would play twelve different melodies in the flute.
It had like a metal tongue supposedly that regulated air
passing through the lips. It had gloved wooden fingers that
covered the holes in the flute as required to play
these different melodies that would seal off the air. So
(10:08):
it's like this fabulous little clockwork wooden man would play
the flute and people were just really in office, and
and then he would he realized the time was right
for the duck, right, and the duck really sort of
vaulted his career quite a bit. You would think that,
you know, some people might look down in it, but no,
I mean it made him are more famous than he
already was. Yeah, he seemed to realize that apparently he
(10:30):
was quoted as saying that some ladies or some people
who is that French enough, that's kind of gone off
into some sort of some ladies or something. Now it's
it's sounding like laughing or something. Some ladies or some
people who only like the outside of animals, would have
rather seen something else. Uh, you know, he's that he
that he was. He was sort of already sort of
(10:52):
joking like this is kind of I don't know if
you're ready for this. So there's you know, he even
he realized there's sort of a freak show kind of
vibe to this. Yeah. Yeah, right, he had to kind
of put that disclaimer out there. Although we'll say the
ladies were probably most excited to see it, even if
they couldn't voice it at the time. Uh. Yeah, Voltaire
was actually he seemed impressed. Although it's it's hard to
say because this comment could be taken anyway, but he
(11:14):
said without vau consonance, duck, you have nothing to remind
you have the glory of France. Like he was a
bit of a smart alec, because it's hard to say
whether or not he really felt that way. Yeah, and uh,
I was really fascinated too by the by one particular
theory as to why he was fascinating fascinated with with
defication and UH and mechanical ducks and again it ties
(11:38):
into the whole. Let's make a working model of something
so we can understand it, um. And uh. Apparently he
was a man preoccupied by the state of his digestion.
He may have suffered from fistula of the anus um
and so this plagued him and UH, I mean, I'm
not going to go into the details of this, but
(11:59):
it's a really horrible thing to have to suffer from,
especially uh in this day, at this day and age.
And so his own focus on this machine bowels and
anus and sphincter um may have been his own reflection
on his his personal preoccupations. That makes sense. I mean,
if he especially if he's trying to solve the riddle
(12:22):
of his digestive self system for himself, and you know,
and he had the capabilities to make this this uh
piece of technology, why not do it? UM. Let's talk
a bit a little bit how it worked real quick.
It had a rubber hose meant to mimic a digestive canal.
And that's the important thing here because as it turns
out it is not really it's it's kind of like
(12:43):
a brilliant con way because it doesn't really digest food.
As far as we know, it's it's we we can't
really point to the duck today. The duck kind of
like disappeared a little throughout history and and a lot
of this is his guesswork. But but yeah, I mean,
the the hose was pretty importan because it was this
um it was an illusion, and it was said that
(13:05):
you know that you would put the chemicals down the hose,
and then of course you can peek in and you
can see something that approximates basically a digestive system, right
the small intestine or you know, intestines in any case.
But it was kind of fascinating in that sense. But again,
this was just a bit of make believe magic here
going on. As far as we can tell. The food
(13:25):
or went into a slot in the base of the
neck basically and stopped there. And then the the the
duck excrement be it fake duck excrement, uh, you know,
concocted from you know, materials around the kitchen or actual
duck excrement. I don't know, but but that would have
(13:46):
have come from a different chamber. Yeah, that was actually
a secret compartment where that was coming from. And yeah,
and someone observed that the duck kible I guess you
could call it, was getting stuck in the base of
the throat, so whatever came out on the other end
couldn't possibly be the same thing, right, So it's kind
of like a combination of magic trick and clockwork ingenuity. Yeah. Yeah,
(14:07):
and uh, if you're interested, there is a replica at
the Museum of Automatons in Grenoble, France, which I think
would be a fascinating museum to go to. And it's
really I mean, the the pooping duck has a pretty
big reputation. UM recently came up in a Radio Lab episode. UM,
it has showed up as motifs in film and art,
(14:28):
and most notably in Thomas Pinchon's novel Mason and Dixon,
the duck comes alive and terrorizes a French chef with
his belt the beak of death. So, I mean, it's
it's definitely captured people's imaginations. But having talked about that,
I think we need to return to what we tend
(14:50):
to return to all the time. I'm pretty happy to
talk about it the Cloaca first, this break. This presentation
is brought to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow. Okay,
the Kloeca shows up again and just you know, in
(15:12):
case you guys haven't checked out an other podcast about
dinosaurs having sex. I believe it's called tsur sex. Yeah,
the Kloeca is a sort of uh well, it's let
me put it this way. The Latin term means sewer,
so it kind of does double duty for everything, so
you can have sex, double duty, double duty, and you
(15:35):
can do your duty. It's the Yeah, it's it's the
naughty parts of of birds and and perhaps dinosaurs and
definitely the platypus. That was the other podcast that the
the Cloaca emerged from. Yeah, and as you can tell,
it always makes me uncomfortable because I say things like
you can have sex there. But it's important to to
bring up in this instance because there's something called the
(15:56):
Kloaca machine. Yes, and it's offying. It is terrifying, It
truly is, even though it's it's the most sterile contraption
ever made. It is uh has been created by Belgian
conceptual artists them Delvoy and it's a thirty nine foot
long machine. Yeah, and the pictures of it, it's like
it it looks like it's laid out on tables and
(16:16):
it's in this big, barren room and it's just kind
of disturbing now, I mean looking at it and knowing
what it is. Well, I mean it could be an
autopsy room too, because it's so sterile. Uh. But the
idea is that it's meant to be housed in a
room sized installation of six glass containers connected to each
other with wires, tubes and pumps. And every day the
(16:36):
machine receives a certain amount of food. This is from
art nett dot com. Meat, fish, vegetables, and pastries passed
through a giant blender and then we're mixed with water
impoured into jars filled with acids and enzyme liquids. There
they got the same treatment that's the human stomach, and
electronic and a mechanical units controlled the process, and after
almost two days, the food came out of a filtering
(16:58):
unit as something close to genuine human scat. It was
nourished by a first class chef who prepared two meals
a day in and detached kitchen. The atmosphere suggested a
hospital equipped for a strange experiment, the birth and care
of a machine that eats and defecates a mechanical baby. Hi,
it seems to say, I'm almost like you, well, I
(17:19):
don't know about that last part um, but no, no,
it does seem to drive home like two facts. A.
It definitely ties in with the whole idea of let's
make a machine that does what a human does, in
this case turning food and processing and turning into excrements.
And also there's this kind of it is kept, this
kind of frightening, the humanizing thing to it, like look
at this, this is what you basically are humans? Yeah,
(17:41):
the machine. In fact, that same article goes on to
say that there was a little girl in the field
trip and she started crying at the side of it.
Whose idea for a field trip with this kid? Like,
all right, kids, we can either go to the zoo
or we can go see the robotic cloaca at the
art museum. Um. Yeah, and it really is awful when
you you should definitely look at some videos online of
(18:03):
it because the the end part, I suppose the anus
part is squirting it out almost like a pastry. But truly,
this is this is a this is poop coming out
now it bags itself. It doesn't bag itself. Um, But
because that would be an awesome like innovation. But no,
I don't. I don't believe it does. But I know
(18:24):
that on display they had dozens of vacuum packed Kloeca
eliminations that were made during the five first exhibits of
the machine around the world, and there's apparently a waiting
list of collectors that are really eager to buy one
of those, especially the ones in the New York exhibition.
So it's pretty sought after stuff. This sounds it sounds
like a very kind of like turning the art wear
(18:45):
world on its head. Its kind of a banks kind
of thing, like I'm going to create a machine that
creates poop and then I'm gonna sell it to art lovers. Yes,
right right, which the artist I mean, he loves this, right,
and we'll get to him in a second. Um. But
the matter is, just in case you're worried about hygen,
it's irradiated with gamma rays to kill the bacteria and
(19:06):
dried and vacuum packed, um. And then after that they're
packed air tight in a plexiglass box. So there you go.
There's the Chloaca machine. UM. And then the reaction. Of course,
I think the little girl starting to cry is pretty perfect.
But what they found is that when they compared the
human created excrement to the Chloaca machines excrement, it was
remarkably similar in bacterial content. UM. And the machine also
(19:30):
seemed to suffer from constipation and stomach upsets, caused in
part by the diet that was fed to it and
the different acids the ratio is used. Well, it's hard
to follow that. UM. I mean just think good, it's
the thing that have teeth. But I do want to say,
(19:50):
just real quick, them delvoid the artist. He's completely obsessed
with Pooh pursuits. Um. He created tiles that from far
away looked like kind of like le Moorish tiles, but
when you get up close on them you realize that
it's like this curling figure and it's actually of his own. Uh.
I don't know if it's a painted on their orders
(20:11):
to photograph that's then put on there, but it's of
his own excrement. UM. And this is the same guy,
just just so you know, because obviously he's pretty much
proporcifal um. He had an x ray in which excuse me,
had an installation in which he X rayed people having
sex using sonograms. Um well, not having sex using sonograms,
but he used sonograms, mammograms, m r s, and X
(20:32):
rays and then to film them having sex and I
mean very intimate. So that guy, because I think I've
I've run across that, but yeah, yeah, I mean we're
talking about very graphic intimate scenes here. And he turned
those into stained glass church windows and he was able
to capture the images by slathering the models with barium
powder mixed with nibia cream in order to eliminate illuminate
(20:56):
the bones during X raying. Well, I'm glad he's not.
Everything he does is vow that's scatological. So it does
make me wonder. I wonder if he has like what
if there's a reason for the fixation. I wonder if
he has digestion problem. Yeah, well, well I don't know,
because there's an interview in which he proclaims he's very
proud of his experiment and he proclaims his like the
(21:16):
best smelling, the best formed, the best texture. It's like
he's like Kellogg And in that movie where Anthony Hopkins
played him, Yes, he is subccessful. Yes, he's obsessed with
goes into his toilet, are onto tile. Well he can
be proud, but nobody likes likes a braggert um. Now
there's another robotic if you might think, well, one, we
(21:38):
have one actual pooping robot, right, so that's enough. Well
there's another project that takes it much farther because the
thing about the Chloaca machine, uh, is that it is
not really creating energy from this and that's the crucial thing.
It's like, our bodies don't just turn food into poop obviously, uh,
just for the spectacle of that. I mean, the whole
purpose is I need to take the energy that is
(21:59):
in food, use it from I've harvested for my body,
turn it into more of my body, and then the
excrement is the product byproduct, the unusable parts. So the
real interest here to some robotists, specifically the robotist at
Bristol Robotics Laboratory, have been to create a truly self
(22:20):
sustainable robot. So they've had earlier projects and we're talking
about basically robot predators. They can hunt down and eat
living organisms then break them down into energy. Okay, does
that sound a little bit, Well, yeah, I guess a
little bit that can can eat. But so they have
they've had earlier products, like they had the slug bot
(22:40):
that thrives on garden because I guess they're easy pickings, right, um.
And then they've had there was the echo Bot two,
which eats flies, and they've even explored the possibilities of
a plankton eating robot for the oceans. And uh, you know,
like like some of these like you can imagine like
a gardening robot going through your garden and then at
and and not only is it there is it's kind
(23:02):
of like a rumba that eats slugs. You want to
de slug your garden, get a rumba that that eats slugs,
but instead of having to recharge itself, it just charges
itself on all the slugs it eats. You know. I
think that's the basic I actually think it's a really
cool idea. Um. But they use microbial fuel cell to
the digest that biomass, right and turn it into electricity. Yeah.
They the echo about three is the most recent one
(23:24):
and this and they've been really showing this one off
and they they talk it up as the world's first
robot to exhibit truly self sustainable functions. Uh. And it's
capable of operating with an enclosed environment for seven days,
collecting its food and water from the area environment and
by this weaning liquid food and little dishes. It's not
this one isn't actually like hunting down slugs or anything
(23:46):
quite so vigorous. But yeah. The the actual digestion is
done by a series of microbial fuel cells uh bacteria
in the south. And these cells consume the food and
produce hydrogen atoms as a by product. All right. Then
the hydrogen goes into the fuel cell itself, which generates
electricity to the powers the robot. And then there's also
it drinks water because it needs the water to keep
(24:07):
from dehydrating. B exactly. And the remaining biomass goes through
the entire cycle once more. So there's it's not just
food food to poop with this thing. It actually cycles
in another time just to make sure it gets everything
it needs out of the out of the the food,
water and uh, and then it basically goes potty. Ye.
(24:27):
What I think it's interesting about this too, is that
it's kind of like the Venus fly trap of robots,
although it doesn't quite catch its own flies yet, right right.
Then they've worked with some designs that would would enable
that will do that, but not in a very cool,
not like in a venus fly trap kind of mouth,
the kind of way. Now then there's a so so yeah,
this is an example of it catches, it catches something,
(24:48):
digest that and turns it into energy and then excretes.
And then yeah, the biproduct is, of course what you said,
the potty part right now. And then there's one more
and this this one got a little more play in
the media because it's it's called the it was part
of a DARPA concept and it was it's called the
(25:09):
energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or e a t R eater,
which uh, you know, so yeah, this one got a
lot of play because people were like, they are designing
a military robot that will eat human corpses, and so
like everybody who is into writing headlines was like instantly like,
oh my god, that's that's because it's headline gold. You know. Well,
(25:32):
but you know, like for for people like myself who
fear the singularity a bit, it does kind of seem like, oh, okay,
so that's how it's gonna go down. Humans become food
for robots, right, of course, it's one of the you
know they say, like, you know, uh, dog bites man,
that's not a story. Dog man bites dog. That's a story.
But actually, robot eats human, human eats robot. Both are
pretty awesome. So it's kind of a toss up there.
(25:54):
But this was definitely the robot eats human thing, though
the DARPA actually played that down. They're like, no, this
is not about a deadly robot, uh, you know, eating
the dead on the battlefield. But but basically the way
this would it would depend on this thing called a
Cyclone Mark five, which is uh, this company called Cyclone
(26:16):
Power came up with and it's basically a steam engine. Uh,
and most of the time it would not be uh,
it would be digesting, like burning vegetable matter that it finds,
so that that would be it's would primarily be a vegetarian. Yeah.
When we're talking about the energy too that it's getting
from these food sources, it's it's just not quite that
big of a deal yet that it could actually um
(26:40):
power these robots to the point where they would be
zooming around. Yeah, this is not as near nearly as
robust a design as the echo bot. Yeah, I mean this,
this is fairly rudimentary. So it's going to take a
couple of years before they eat us. Yeah, yeah, but no,
I think it's actually really cool because it's an alternative
to how we make and use energy. Yeah, because it's
just another way we could harness ergy. Yeah. And it's like,
(27:01):
imagine again, imagine a gardening robot that doesn't actually need
to be refueled with by plugging itself into the electrical outlet.
It doesn't have to be filled with gas. Imagine it
going around and eating like just some you know, decaying
vegetable matter and fueling itself or catching slugs or catching flies.
So I see, I see a couple of unfortunate chipmunks there.
(27:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's possible, all right. So there
again terrifying future of robots. Plus well, digestion. It depends
on how you look at it. It's like it's like
digesting itself, you know. Um. But yeah, on one hand,
we have you know, robots seating human corpses. On the
other hand, we have robotic models of human functions that
(27:44):
we would want to better understand. All right, take me
to the light to some emails. All right, Yes, we
have some emails that actually deal with ye, both of
wese deal with our mentioned and discussion of non Pho
non Cloe related topic. So Adam writes in Adam says,
I am an open nonbeliever in all religions, but belief
(28:06):
but believe that the basic ideas associated with them will
always have their place in society. And he's responding to
our religion in Space episode Don't Kill, Don't steal, don't
sleep with your neighbor's life, respect your blah blah blah,
it goes on forever. I really enjoyed the reference to
the buffet, where I said that I kind of like
the idea personally of of uha future humans taking the
(28:30):
best aspects of different religions and carrying them with them
in the future and leaving the batty stuff on the
table with human belief. He says, I really enjoyed the
reference to buffet because that's the way I have always
loved my life, and that's the way I teach my
kids to live their lives. Religion in Space would need
to be flexible so that you could effectively understand what
you discover about other people in their religion. So in
(28:51):
short of a face style religion, with tolerance being the
rack of lamb with a nice plum sauce, and flexibility
being the asparagus with shallots, and uh o blanc sauce
is the way to go. And yes, I would gladly
wear a turtle neck to the table. All right, turtleneck
Carl Sagurn reference there. Oh, yes, yes, because we were
discussing a sagan religion of the in which we would
(29:14):
all wear title. Next cool, here's another one. This one
is responding to the Memory Palace episode that we did
about the about human memory and this memory trip. That
well technique that we used that to relies on spatial um.
Spatial memory um. Anyway, Sean writes in and says, hey,
Robert Julie, I just listened to the Memory Palace episode.
I was blown away. Uh as you were talking. It
(29:37):
was almost step by step how I remember everything I
get with a lot of meetings, and it's sometimes rude
to take notes, So I just uh sit, listen and
associate where they're sitting with the words in relation to me,
and I can recall entire meeting for weeks after and
everyone is so baffled by it. But I have been
doing it since grade school. In fact, I failed classes
while I aced the finals in tests because notes are large,
(30:01):
great percentage, and I've had to retest because teachers believed
I was cheating. I love this episode. I finally know
what to call the method to my madness. Thanks Sean.
It's very cool. Yeah, that's really cool. There's somebody using
the memory palace or or related techniques in their daily
life to remember things. I have to say I've been
employing it now and again sometimes so my attention gets
(30:23):
diverted by some of the images that I come up with.
So you find yourself at the grocery store and you're like, what,
like you created this like fantastic image of like chipmunks
dressed in like tutor uh costuming and yeah, sumo wrestler
with a bikini on? Like what was that actually representing?
What that congees? Yeah? Well cool h. If you have
(30:44):
anything you would like to share with us, cool links,
cool tidbits, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter
as Blow the Mind, and you can always drop us
a line at Blow the Mind. It has to work
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Staffork's staff as we
(31:05):
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome this stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
we've discussed in the past how robots and uh in technology,
the the emergence of both of these overtime, the evolution
(00:24):
of these technologies. Um, we go hand in hand with
the side idea that we but we look at the
human body and we eventually discover, hey, this is basically
a machine. It's a machine made out of blood and
muscles and bone and tissue of different types. But we
can look at like say the arm, and we can
be like, oh, well that moves because that pulled on
(00:45):
something there and that released there. Yeah, And it is
so on one one side, we're figuring out how the
human body works. On the other side, we're learning how
to build things. We're learning how to make little machines,
little eventually clockwork devices even And you see this as
you know, I mean way back to Leonardo da Vinci's day,
where we're creating things that can can move of their
(01:07):
own power, or can where you can manipulate and use
like a puppet or something you know, so we begin
to reach this point where we're like, Hey, the human
body is a machine and I can make machines. So
I'm gonna make a machine that is the human body,
or I'm gonna attempt to make a mechanical effects simile
of this particular um part of the human body. Right,
(01:28):
It's not enough that you would just create something in
your own image. We actually want to see how the
systems work. Yeah, I mean it's part of the you know,
it's it's part of understanding it. Let me create a
working model of that so I can better understand how
that works and at the same time, I can, you know,
live this whole Frankenstein dream a little bit of of
creating another human body. Almost. Yeah, And so to me
(01:52):
it means that we just get to merge two of
of our favorite topics, or at least for me. Yeah,
what are those robots and poop? Yes? In this podcast, Yes,
as the title UH indicates, we are going to discuss
a robotic pooping duck uh from the past. Uh, specifically
from the seventeenth century. But but having discussed this whole
(02:14):
idea that you know that we really want to mechanically
replicate different functions to the human body, it makes sense.
And within that framework, yeah I'm pooping duck. You just
hear about it, you know, just read off the cuff
and it seems insane. Yeah, it sounds like I remember
finding these. People may have seen these before, but they
used to make these little I think we're made out
of a lead or something horrible, maybe some sort of metal,
but uh, but it seems like they were probably made
(02:36):
out of lad or something. But you you would put
a little firework in it, and it looked like a
little dog. And when the firework would go off, it's
kind of like the little things that make snakes, like
these little black actions. Yeah, and they would they made
a version of it, you know, back in like I
don't know, the thirties ere or even say for like
the World Exposition or something. Yeah, yeah, I don't know,
but I mean it's the kind of thing that like
(02:56):
my dad would have played Luther when he was a kid. Um,
and you would put the fire work in the little
metal dog lighted up and then like it would look
like the dog was pooping. It would look like black
excrement was coming out of the little metal dogs behind. Yeah,
So that's an example of where the you know, the
science was making the dog do something that was funny.
It was funny that this little tiny dog was pooping.
(03:18):
Science was making a joke. So on one one hand,
the duck we're about to discuss does that. It is
amusing to see a robotic duck defecate. Um, but it
is all It also ties well into this idea of
here's a function of the human body. Uh, if the
human body is a machine, then I should be able
to create a machine that does this function. Yes, yeah, yes,
(03:39):
so we'll discuss that and and I'm jumping ahead just
for a moment, but we'll also talk about creating a
machine a machine just for the purpose of creating excrement
at some point, and then we will talk about its
true pooping robot. Yes, because this first model that we're
gonna look at is is slightly problematic. But but let's
(03:59):
go back blueprint. Yes, so let's go back to the hundreds.
All right, we're in France. Um, let's say you were
You're on the streets of France, uh, streets of Paris,
and you're just you're walking around. You get maybe you
got a little extra coin in your pocket, jingling there,
you know, maybe you're you're you're a little loaded with
(04:20):
delicious wine and and fatty foods and uh, and suddenly
you hear somebody talking about, Hey, come see the pooping
duck we have or the canal did you Oh gosh,
that was so slaughtered. But what that means is digesting duck.
The digesting duck, the fabulous digesting duck. So you can imagine, like,
you know, you go into this exhibition hall and they you,
(04:41):
you pay, you drop your coins into the bucket and
you get to go in, and then they unveil this
amazing um um example of modern technology and it really yeah, yes, automato,
which is really important to talk about too, But it
is this gleam beautiful sculpture. Basically, imagine setting up on
(05:04):
this pedestal and it's it's gold. It's a gold plated
copper duck, all right. Um. The it has gilded copper
feathers that are that are that have a little holes
in and that allows you to see the inside a
little bit, so you can tell that it's it's both
the work of art and it's and it's some sort
of a machine. It's uh. And then it's in the
shape of a duck, which is it. So it's both
(05:27):
you see both the natural world. You have the comedic
going on there because ducks are inherently funny, um and uh.
And then it's also clearly a machine of human ingenuity.
And then it's also this you know, like I said,
it's made out of gold. It's it's it has precious metals.
It's beautiful to the hole. Yeah, I mean some ofs
like it was, you know, taken down from Olympius Mount Onlympius,
(05:49):
you know, from the gods, and it has tons of
moving parts, hundreds four hundred moving parts and each wing. Yeah,
you said you were reminded of the mechanical owl from
Clash of the Titans, right, Oh, actually there's something else that. Yeah,
I often am reminded of Bibo. Yes, this reminds me
of Febo as well. But okay, so you're you're there,
(06:12):
and the things pretty awesome. And then it starts to move.
It muddles its water with its beak, it appears to drink.
It kind of sets up and sets down, and then
somebody feeds it some with some grain pellets, I believe,
and it eats it and it kind of you know,
it actually has a swallowing motion, swallowing motion and uh,
(06:32):
and then it eventually poops. Yeah, I mean this is
the big part of it, right, And this is this
is the part of the funny equation. Right again, it's
it's a duck, and it's already funny, but it's now
it's pooping. Yeah. And it's explained though that the grain
is passing through tubes to a chemical filled stomach in
the base and then on through the duck's bowels anus
and a mechanical sphincter. Yeah. And again that there are
(06:56):
parts of it where you can see you could like
part the wings and you can see the glass beneath
it and the duck's innards. So this is completely fascinating,
Like I'm here and now, but can you imagine in
the seventeen hundreds beholding such a spectacle? Yeah? It begs
the question who created this duck? Right? Who's this? Who?
What kind of brilliant and maybe slightly demented mind came
(07:16):
up with this? Right? A talented French engineer by the
name of Jacques de vi Clessan. Yeah, he was born
in seventeen o nine died two and ms French engineer.
He was really into creating these automatons. These uh, specifically
what we're referred to as philosophical toys, which are curios
that combines science and amusement, which you know, it's kind
(07:39):
of like you know, a pooping duck or or or
something to where it's the the ultimate function of this
particular automaton. It's like the iPhone of its time, well,
but the iPhone has purpose. This is more like, let's demonstrate.
It's kind of like some of these demo robots you
see today where it's like, wow, it does something amazing,
but it's kind of pointless, like it's it's demonstrating a
(08:00):
certain technological skill and it shows that, oh, well, these
guys really figured out something clever in making this, but
ultimately it doesn't do anything. Well, yes, not to him,
because he and this is from the book Digital People.
He gave an address in which he said he wanted
to construct an automat on that will quote imitate in
its movements, animal functions, the circulation of blood, respiration, digestion,
(08:22):
and the combination of muscles, tendons, nerves to understand the
different states of human beings and to heal their ills.
So he really did have a purpose beyond this. It
was about, let's create a model, working model of something
so we can understand the original, which is not unlike
what we do today when we when we are dissect
animals or we run studies and we try to figure
out how they react to their environment so and so forth,
(08:44):
so that we can then take that knowledge and apply
it to ourselves. But the model in and of itself
doesn't do anything aside from right. Yeah, now, some of
the other thing, earlier things he had done. He had
made android waiters in seventeen to serve dinner and clear
a table, yes each apparently um was some visitors deemed
this profane and ordered the workshop destroyed this one who's
(09:06):
working and more closely with the church. Yeah, but I
mean that probably did seem like some sort of weird
witchcraft right at the time. And you can imagine it
going kind of off to like uh in the Walls
and Grament cartoons, where he's always making like the automated
UH like delivery system that shoots him down to his
breakfast table, dresses him, yeah, and dresses him and drops
(09:27):
toast out and put butters the toast, and it always
goes wrong, so it ends up like getting jam fired
into his face. I like to picture that like church
officials coming and uh uh and uh vakasan um having
all these devices that just end up, you know, shooting
jelly and terrifying and they're like forget it. Yeah. But
then he also created a mechanical flute player that was
(09:48):
supposedly just really impressive too, because it was like powered
by nine different bellows, and it was this little wooden
man that would play twelve different melodies in the flute.
It had like a metal tongue supposedly that regulated air
passing through the lips. It had gloved wooden fingers that
covered the holes in the flute as required to play
these different melodies that would seal off the air. So
(10:08):
it's like this fabulous little clockwork wooden man would play
the flute and people were just really in office, and
and then he would he realized the time was right
for the duck, right, and the duck really sort of
vaulted his career quite a bit. You would think that,
you know, some people might look down in it, but no,
I mean it made him are more famous than he
already was. Yeah, he seemed to realize that apparently he
(10:30):
was quoted as saying that some ladies or some people
who is that French enough, that's kind of gone off
into some sort of some ladies or something. Now it's
it's sounding like laughing or something. Some ladies or some
people who only like the outside of animals, would have
rather seen something else. Uh, you know, he's that he
that he was. He was sort of already sort of
(10:52):
joking like this is kind of I don't know if
you're ready for this. So there's you know, he even
he realized there's sort of a freak show kind of
vibe to this. Yeah. Yeah, right, he had to kind
of put that disclaimer out there. Although we'll say the
ladies were probably most excited to see it, even if
they couldn't voice it at the time. Uh. Yeah, Voltaire
was actually he seemed impressed. Although it's it's hard to
say because this comment could be taken anyway, but he
(11:14):
said without vau consonance, duck, you have nothing to remind
you have the glory of France. Like he was a
bit of a smart alec, because it's hard to say
whether or not he really felt that way. Yeah, and uh,
I was really fascinated too by the by one particular
theory as to why he was fascinating fascinated with with
defication and UH and mechanical ducks and again it ties
(11:38):
into the whole. Let's make a working model of something
so we can understand it, um. And uh. Apparently he
was a man preoccupied by the state of his digestion.
He may have suffered from fistula of the anus um
and so this plagued him and UH, I mean, I'm
not going to go into the details of this, but
(11:59):
it's a really horrible thing to have to suffer from,
especially uh in this day, at this day and age.
And so his own focus on this machine bowels and
anus and sphincter um may have been his own reflection
on his his personal preoccupations. That makes sense. I mean,
if he especially if he's trying to solve the riddle
(12:22):
of his digestive self system for himself, and you know,
and he had the capabilities to make this this uh
piece of technology, why not do it? UM. Let's talk
a bit a little bit how it worked real quick.
It had a rubber hose meant to mimic a digestive canal.
And that's the important thing here because as it turns
out it is not really it's it's kind of like
(12:43):
a brilliant con way because it doesn't really digest food.
As far as we know, it's it's we we can't
really point to the duck today. The duck kind of
like disappeared a little throughout history and and a lot
of this is his guesswork. But but yeah, I mean,
the the hose was pretty importan because it was this
um it was an illusion, and it was said that
(13:05):
you know that you would put the chemicals down the hose,
and then of course you can peek in and you
can see something that approximates basically a digestive system, right
the small intestine or you know, intestines in any case.
But it was kind of fascinating in that sense. But again,
this was just a bit of make believe magic here
going on. As far as we can tell. The food
(13:25):
or went into a slot in the base of the
neck basically and stopped there. And then the the the
duck excrement be it fake duck excrement, uh, you know,
concocted from you know, materials around the kitchen or actual
duck excrement. I don't know, but but that would have
(13:46):
have come from a different chamber. Yeah, that was actually
a secret compartment where that was coming from. And yeah,
and someone observed that the duck kible I guess you
could call it, was getting stuck in the base of
the throat, so whatever came out on the other end
couldn't possibly be the same thing, right, So it's kind
of like a combination of magic trick and clockwork ingenuity. Yeah. Yeah,
(14:07):
and uh, if you're interested, there is a replica at
the Museum of Automatons in Grenoble, France, which I think
would be a fascinating museum to go to. And it's
really I mean, the the pooping duck has a pretty
big reputation. UM recently came up in a Radio Lab episode. UM,
it has showed up as motifs in film and art,
(14:28):
and most notably in Thomas Pinchon's novel Mason and Dixon,
the duck comes alive and terrorizes a French chef with
his belt the beak of death. So, I mean, it's
it's definitely captured people's imaginations. But having talked about that,
I think we need to return to what we tend
(14:50):
to return to all the time. I'm pretty happy to
talk about it the Cloaca first, this break. This presentation
is brought to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow. Okay,
the Kloeca shows up again and just you know, in
(15:12):
case you guys haven't checked out an other podcast about
dinosaurs having sex. I believe it's called tsur sex. Yeah,
the Kloeca is a sort of uh well, it's let
me put it this way. The Latin term means sewer,
so it kind of does double duty for everything, so
you can have sex, double duty, double duty, and you
(15:35):
can do your duty. It's the Yeah, it's it's the
naughty parts of of birds and and perhaps dinosaurs and
definitely the platypus. That was the other podcast that the
the Cloaca emerged from. Yeah, and as you can tell,
it always makes me uncomfortable because I say things like
you can have sex there. But it's important to to
bring up in this instance because there's something called the
(15:56):
Kloaca machine. Yes, and it's offying. It is terrifying, It
truly is, even though it's it's the most sterile contraption
ever made. It is uh has been created by Belgian
conceptual artists them Delvoy and it's a thirty nine foot
long machine. Yeah, and the pictures of it, it's like
it it looks like it's laid out on tables and
(16:16):
it's in this big, barren room and it's just kind
of disturbing now, I mean looking at it and knowing
what it is. Well, I mean it could be an
autopsy room too, because it's so sterile. Uh. But the
idea is that it's meant to be housed in a
room sized installation of six glass containers connected to each
other with wires, tubes and pumps. And every day the
(16:36):
machine receives a certain amount of food. This is from
art nett dot com. Meat, fish, vegetables, and pastries passed
through a giant blender and then we're mixed with water
impoured into jars filled with acids and enzyme liquids. There
they got the same treatment that's the human stomach, and
electronic and a mechanical units controlled the process, and after
almost two days, the food came out of a filtering
(16:58):
unit as something close to genuine human scat. It was
nourished by a first class chef who prepared two meals
a day in and detached kitchen. The atmosphere suggested a
hospital equipped for a strange experiment, the birth and care
of a machine that eats and defecates a mechanical baby. Hi,
it seems to say, I'm almost like you, well, I
(17:19):
don't know about that last part um, but no, no,
it does seem to drive home like two facts. A.
It definitely ties in with the whole idea of let's
make a machine that does what a human does, in
this case turning food and processing and turning into excrements.
And also there's this kind of it is kept, this
kind of frightening, the humanizing thing to it, like look
at this, this is what you basically are humans? Yeah,
(17:41):
the machine. In fact, that same article goes on to
say that there was a little girl in the field
trip and she started crying at the side of it.
Whose idea for a field trip with this kid? Like,
all right, kids, we can either go to the zoo
or we can go see the robotic cloaca at the
art museum. Um. Yeah, and it really is awful when
you you should definitely look at some videos online of
(18:03):
it because the the end part, I suppose the anus
part is squirting it out almost like a pastry. But truly,
this is this is a this is poop coming out
now it bags itself. It doesn't bag itself. Um, But
because that would be an awesome like innovation. But no,
I don't. I don't believe it does. But I know
(18:24):
that on display they had dozens of vacuum packed Kloeca
eliminations that were made during the five first exhibits of
the machine around the world, and there's apparently a waiting
list of collectors that are really eager to buy one
of those, especially the ones in the New York exhibition.
So it's pretty sought after stuff. This sounds it sounds
like a very kind of like turning the art wear
(18:45):
world on its head. Its kind of a banks kind
of thing, like I'm going to create a machine that
creates poop and then I'm gonna sell it to art lovers. Yes,
right right, which the artist I mean, he loves this, right,
and we'll get to him in a second. Um. But
the matter is, just in case you're worried about hygen,
it's irradiated with gamma rays to kill the bacteria and
(19:06):
dried and vacuum packed, um. And then after that they're
packed air tight in a plexiglass box. So there you go.
There's the Chloaca machine. UM. And then the reaction. Of course,
I think the little girl starting to cry is pretty perfect.
But what they found is that when they compared the
human created excrement to the Chloaca machines excrement, it was
remarkably similar in bacterial content. UM. And the machine also
(19:30):
seemed to suffer from constipation and stomach upsets, caused in
part by the diet that was fed to it and
the different acids the ratio is used. Well, it's hard
to follow that. UM. I mean just think good, it's
the thing that have teeth. But I do want to say,
(19:50):
just real quick, them delvoid the artist. He's completely obsessed
with Pooh pursuits. Um. He created tiles that from far
away looked like kind of like le Moorish tiles, but
when you get up close on them you realize that
it's like this curling figure and it's actually of his own. Uh.
I don't know if it's a painted on their orders
(20:11):
to photograph that's then put on there, but it's of
his own excrement. UM. And this is the same guy,
just just so you know, because obviously he's pretty much
proporcifal um. He had an x ray in which excuse me,
had an installation in which he X rayed people having
sex using sonograms. Um well, not having sex using sonograms,
but he used sonograms, mammograms, m r s, and X
(20:32):
rays and then to film them having sex and I
mean very intimate. So that guy, because I think I've
I've run across that, but yeah, yeah, I mean we're
talking about very graphic intimate scenes here. And he turned
those into stained glass church windows and he was able
to capture the images by slathering the models with barium
powder mixed with nibia cream in order to eliminate illuminate
(20:56):
the bones during X raying. Well, I'm glad he's not.
Everything he does is vow that's scatological. So it does
make me wonder. I wonder if he has like what
if there's a reason for the fixation. I wonder if
he has digestion problem. Yeah, well, well I don't know,
because there's an interview in which he proclaims he's very
proud of his experiment and he proclaims his like the
(21:16):
best smelling, the best formed, the best texture. It's like
he's like Kellogg And in that movie where Anthony Hopkins
played him, Yes, he is subccessful. Yes, he's obsessed with
goes into his toilet, are onto tile. Well he can
be proud, but nobody likes likes a braggert um. Now
there's another robotic if you might think, well, one, we
(21:38):
have one actual pooping robot, right, so that's enough. Well
there's another project that takes it much farther because the
thing about the Chloaca machine, uh, is that it is
not really creating energy from this and that's the crucial thing.
It's like, our bodies don't just turn food into poop obviously, uh,
just for the spectacle of that. I mean, the whole
purpose is I need to take the energy that is
(21:59):
in food, use it from I've harvested for my body,
turn it into more of my body, and then the
excrement is the product byproduct, the unusable parts. So the
real interest here to some robotists, specifically the robotist at
Bristol Robotics Laboratory, have been to create a truly self
(22:20):
sustainable robot. So they've had earlier projects and we're talking
about basically robot predators. They can hunt down and eat
living organisms then break them down into energy. Okay, does
that sound a little bit, Well, yeah, I guess a
little bit that can can eat. But so they have
they've had earlier products, like they had the slug bot
(22:40):
that thrives on garden because I guess they're easy pickings, right, um.
And then they've had there was the echo Bot two,
which eats flies, and they've even explored the possibilities of
a plankton eating robot for the oceans. And uh, you know,
like like some of these like you can imagine like
a gardening robot going through your garden and then at
and and not only is it there is it's kind
(23:02):
of like a rumba that eats slugs. You want to
de slug your garden, get a rumba that that eats slugs,
but instead of having to recharge itself, it just charges
itself on all the slugs it eats. You know. I
think that's the basic I actually think it's a really
cool idea. Um. But they use microbial fuel cell to
the digest that biomass, right and turn it into electricity. Yeah.
They the echo about three is the most recent one
(23:24):
and this and they've been really showing this one off
and they they talk it up as the world's first
robot to exhibit truly self sustainable functions. Uh. And it's
capable of operating with an enclosed environment for seven days,
collecting its food and water from the area environment and
by this weaning liquid food and little dishes. It's not
this one isn't actually like hunting down slugs or anything
(23:46):
quite so vigorous. But yeah. The the actual digestion is
done by a series of microbial fuel cells uh bacteria
in the south. And these cells consume the food and
produce hydrogen atoms as a by product. All right. Then
the hydrogen goes into the fuel cell itself, which generates
electricity to the powers the robot. And then there's also
it drinks water because it needs the water to keep
(24:07):
from dehydrating. B exactly. And the remaining biomass goes through
the entire cycle once more. So there's it's not just
food food to poop with this thing. It actually cycles
in another time just to make sure it gets everything
it needs out of the out of the the food,
water and uh, and then it basically goes potty. Ye.
(24:27):
What I think it's interesting about this too, is that
it's kind of like the Venus fly trap of robots,
although it doesn't quite catch its own flies yet, right right.
Then they've worked with some designs that would would enable
that will do that, but not in a very cool,
not like in a venus fly trap kind of mouth,
the kind of way. Now then there's a so so yeah,
this is an example of it catches, it catches something,
(24:48):
digest that and turns it into energy and then excretes.
And then yeah, the biproduct is, of course what you said,
the potty part right now. And then there's one more
and this this one got a little more play in
the media because it's it's called the it was part
of a DARPA concept and it was it's called the
(25:09):
energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or e a t R eater,
which uh, you know, so yeah, this one got a
lot of play because people were like, they are designing
a military robot that will eat human corpses, and so
like everybody who is into writing headlines was like instantly like,
oh my god, that's that's because it's headline gold. You know. Well,
(25:32):
but you know, like for for people like myself who
fear the singularity a bit, it does kind of seem like, oh, okay,
so that's how it's gonna go down. Humans become food
for robots, right, of course, it's one of the you
know they say, like, you know, uh, dog bites man,
that's not a story. Dog man bites dog. That's a story.
But actually, robot eats human, human eats robot. Both are
pretty awesome. So it's kind of a toss up there.
(25:54):
But this was definitely the robot eats human thing, though
the DARPA actually played that down. They're like, no, this
is not about a deadly robot, uh, you know, eating
the dead on the battlefield. But but basically the way
this would it would depend on this thing called a
Cyclone Mark five, which is uh, this company called Cyclone
(26:16):
Power came up with and it's basically a steam engine. Uh,
and most of the time it would not be uh,
it would be digesting, like burning vegetable matter that it finds,
so that that would be it's would primarily be a vegetarian. Yeah.
When we're talking about the energy too that it's getting
from these food sources, it's it's just not quite that
big of a deal yet that it could actually um
(26:40):
power these robots to the point where they would be
zooming around. Yeah, this is not as near nearly as
robust a design as the echo bot. Yeah, I mean this,
this is fairly rudimentary. So it's going to take a
couple of years before they eat us. Yeah, yeah, but no,
I think it's actually really cool because it's an alternative
to how we make and use energy. Yeah, because it's
just another way we could harness ergy. Yeah. And it's like,
(27:01):
imagine again, imagine a gardening robot that doesn't actually need
to be refueled with by plugging itself into the electrical outlet.
It doesn't have to be filled with gas. Imagine it
going around and eating like just some you know, decaying
vegetable matter and fueling itself or catching slugs or catching flies.
So I see, I see a couple of unfortunate chipmunks there.
(27:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's possible, all right. So there
again terrifying future of robots. Plus well, digestion. It depends
on how you look at it. It's like it's like
digesting itself, you know. Um. But yeah, on one hand,
we have you know, robots seating human corpses. On the
other hand, we have robotic models of human functions that
(27:44):
we would want to better understand. All right, take me
to the light to some emails. All right, Yes, we
have some emails that actually deal with ye, both of
wese deal with our mentioned and discussion of non Pho
non Cloe related topic. So Adam writes in Adam says,
I am an open nonbeliever in all religions, but belief
(28:06):
but believe that the basic ideas associated with them will
always have their place in society. And he's responding to
our religion in Space episode Don't Kill, Don't steal, don't
sleep with your neighbor's life, respect your blah blah blah,
it goes on forever. I really enjoyed the reference to
the buffet, where I said that I kind of like
the idea personally of of uha future humans taking the
(28:30):
best aspects of different religions and carrying them with them
in the future and leaving the batty stuff on the
table with human belief. He says, I really enjoyed the
reference to buffet because that's the way I have always
loved my life, and that's the way I teach my
kids to live their lives. Religion in Space would need
to be flexible so that you could effectively understand what
you discover about other people in their religion. So in
(28:51):
short of a face style religion, with tolerance being the
rack of lamb with a nice plum sauce, and flexibility
being the asparagus with shallots, and uh o blanc sauce
is the way to go. And yes, I would gladly
wear a turtle neck to the table. All right, turtleneck
Carl Sagurn reference there. Oh, yes, yes, because we were
discussing a sagan religion of the in which we would
(29:14):
all wear title. Next cool, here's another one. This one
is responding to the Memory Palace episode that we did
about the about human memory and this memory trip. That
well technique that we used that to relies on spatial um.
Spatial memory um. Anyway, Sean writes in and says, hey,
Robert Julie, I just listened to the Memory Palace episode.
I was blown away. Uh as you were talking. It
(29:37):
was almost step by step how I remember everything I
get with a lot of meetings, and it's sometimes rude
to take notes, So I just uh sit, listen and
associate where they're sitting with the words in relation to me,
and I can recall entire meeting for weeks after and
everyone is so baffled by it. But I have been
doing it since grade school. In fact, I failed classes
while I aced the finals in tests because notes are large,
(30:01):
great percentage, and I've had to retest because teachers believed
I was cheating. I love this episode. I finally know
what to call the method to my madness. Thanks Sean.
It's very cool. Yeah, that's really cool. There's somebody using
the memory palace or or related techniques in their daily
life to remember things. I have to say I've been
employing it now and again sometimes so my attention gets
(30:23):
diverted by some of the images that I come up with.
So you find yourself at the grocery store and you're like, what,
like you created this like fantastic image of like chipmunks
dressed in like tutor uh costuming and yeah, sumo wrestler
with a bikini on? Like what was that actually representing?
What that congees? Yeah? Well cool h. If you have
(30:44):
anything you would like to share with us, cool links,
cool tidbits, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter
as Blow the Mind, and you can always drop us
a line at Blow the Mind. It has to work
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Staffork's staff as we
(31:05):
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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