From the Vault: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. It's Saturday. Time
to venture into the vault, this time for a movie
episode that originally aired August. This was our episode about
the science of two thousand one Space Odyssey. Yeah. This was,
of course a tremendous amount of fun. It's one of
the greatest movies ever made, um based on a fantastic book.

(00:28):
And this was also like really our first, our first
true movie episode. Getting into this pattern we've we've kept
up over the past year where every month or so
we'll devote an entire episode to a particular movie and
then pick apart the science that is attached to it.
I remember this one very fondly, so we hope you
enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from

(00:52):
how Stuffworks dot com. Are you welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And Robert, do you remember just about seventeen
years ago how disappointing it was that the year two
thousand one was not like the year two thousand one

(01:13):
in the movie two thousand one Space Odyssey. Well, certainly
it did not resemble the night film two thousand one
of Space Odyssey. It did not resemble that that vision
of the future, not exactly. We were not uh, we
were not traveling. We did not have a moon base.
I want my milk carton of corn to suck through
a straw well that can be arranged if if that's

(01:34):
if that's the definite uh uh, you know, futuristic experience
you're looking for. But yeah, this is this is a
classic science fiction film, perhaps the classic science fiction film.
I mean, you can you can certainly make a case
for other pivotal works of sci fi cinema, but Stanley
Kubrick and Arthously Clark's two thousand and one is a

(01:56):
film that has stood the test of time. Uh, inspired
just countless other sci fi visions and uh and yeah,
that definitely gave us this this sort of benchmark to
look for in the future. So the reason we're talking
about two thousand one of Space Odyssey is because this
year that movie is actually fifty years old. It's hard

(02:19):
to believe it half a century old. It was released
in April of nine eight, and so because of the
fiftieth anniversary, because the movie is so endlessly fascinating to
talk about, we thought we would devote today to a
discussion of two thousand one, the film itself, it's ideas,
and its legacy. Robert, how old were you when you
first saw two thousand one? Oh? You know, I saw

(02:41):
it when I was pretty young, so I don't have
a very um concrete memory of it. I think my
dad he either he had had a VHS copy of
it playing, or it was on TV. I'm not sure,
but i'd say who Maybe I was eight or something.
I'm not sure, but I remember it being a very
interesting film to watch because it what It has this

(03:02):
dreamlike quality to it, that is there, no matter what
level of of awareness you're approaching it with as a
view or you know, whether you understand the more complicated,
uh science, fictional or philosophical aspects of its message, there's
still this this hypnotic quality to the film that draws

(03:23):
you in. I have a weird question about it. I
wonder if a kid for whom the plot pretty much
goes over their head actually understands the movie better than
an adult who can grasp more of the content of
the plot. Do you think about that? I mean, because
the movie is. In many ways, it's almost like a

(03:44):
more like a painting or like a you know, a
work of art that is radically open to interpretation, where
the stuff that the characters do, I'm not so sure
that it matters as much as more the kind of
like visual themes established the questions raised by you know,
the spectacle before your eyes. Yeah, yeah, the spectacle is

(04:07):
is a huge part of it. I I actually was tempted.
I thought we should I let my six year old
see at least part of two thousand and one and
just see what his take is on it. And I
did not quite get around to performing any a test
of that sort um, but I have a feeling he
would be drawn in by the visuals for sure. Just

(04:28):
thinking about the visuals alone, it's hard to believe this
movie is half a century old. Like we were saying
a minute ago, it still feels so weird and so
fresh and so intellectually adventurous. Apparently, you know. When it premiered.
One of the things about the movie is that it's
mostly silent. There are only actually very limited parts of
it where characters are speaking to each other, and according

(04:50):
to the stories about the premiere, the first audience is
just hating. Not everybody. There were some people who saw, Okay,
this is revolutionary, something very different and new, an original
is happening here. But a lot of the Hollywood hot
shots who were in attendance just hated it. There were
tons of people walking out of the theater. Allegedly, Rock
Hudson walked out saying out loud, will someone tell me

(05:12):
what the hell this is about? Yeah, it's interesting because
it is a film in which a lot of stuff
does not happen, a lot happens. It's a film that
that that that kind of sums up the ascent of
humanity and where humanity might go beyond beyond our planet.
But at the same time, every time something seems to

(05:34):
be happening, we kind of get a cut, you know,
the scenes where characters are having pivotal discussions about what's happening.
It's becomes just sort of a staple of so many
other films, Like most films are missing. The murder that
occurs to in the film is not actually seen, so
it when you're watching two thousand one of Space Odyssey,
there is almost this sense that someone is messing with

(05:57):
you by removing these key bits of him from nation
that should tell you what you're supposed to think about. Well,
I can understand people hating it at first because it
is in a way an intentionally challenging film. It's it
goes against narrative conventions in a very deliberate way. Another
thing about it is just I'm not usually a person

(06:18):
to call out special effects first as a thing to
love about the movie, but the visual effects in this
movie are just unparalleled in so many ways. They look
astonishingly realistic. For for you know, a time in the
nineteen sixties when we hadn't even been to the moon
yet when this movie was made, we had not been
to the moon or space. Photography was very limited, so

(06:39):
it's amazing they could get something looking as accurate to
the experience of outer space as as they did. But
then at the same time, it's so derealized and so
unreal and uh, it has almost kind of a Dario
Argento kind of quality, though of course it predates Argento,
but I mean, like the you know, the strange lights

(06:59):
and the way the colors color our moods. It's so good. Yeah,
I'm glad Argento did not direct it, by the way,
it could have been a very different film then The Monk,
The The The the Dawn of Man sequence might have
been similar, but uh yeah, the special effects in this
film are just so breathtaking. I feel like if anyone

(07:20):
out there is wondering, what does it like to watch
two thousand and one Space Obessee with Robert Lamb, it's like,
every five minutes may sang aloud, why can't we make
why don't we make movies that look like this? Now?
You know, why can't why can't why don't spaceships look
like this anymore? In films? And basically they don't look
this good in anything else. For instance, nineteen seventy two
Silent Running, another one of my favorite sci fi films,

(07:42):
was directed by Douglas Trumbull, who worked on two thousand one,
worked on the effects, and Silent Running looks fabulous, but
it's not as pressed pristine as two thousand and one,
And obviously you can point to a lot of different
reasons for that. But then there's you know, you can
you can say, well, these others were not directed by Kubrick.
They maybe they did not have the budget, they didn't
have the right key artistic people in place. Uh, this

(08:06):
kind of perfect storm of creativity and intent. But but
but you end up with this film that you had
just looks so unlike anything else. And every single frame
of this film I feel like you could you could
print out, and you could put on the wall and
and no one would question the choice. It's also somehow
a movie that many people I think have tried to

(08:27):
copy and been unable to. It's a movie the style
of which is uncopyable. Uh My. I've talked about this
a good bit with with my friend Dave. He often
points out that you have the sequel to the film
two thousand and ten, uh which which did not did
not direct, came out in the eighties. Oh who was

(08:48):
the guy who directed two thousand ten? Who he's the
same amount gentleman and directed Outland as I Alo Cahol,
Peter Hyams, and not just Outland. He made Time Cop.
The guy who made thousand and ten made Time Cop. Well,
it's interesting just if you just look at the trailers
um between the two and you see just the stark
difference because on one, on one hand, you have the

(09:10):
again that the pristine white um, you know, almost hermetically
sealed edible U seeming like you feel like you could
just bite into the white chocolate goodness of the spaceships.
In two thousand and one of Space hodysty and then
by two thousand and ten everything is industrial and grimy,
and not just the sets the order of the day

(09:31):
it was, but but not only the sets but also
the character interactions, because suddenly it's not this this very
subdued performance, limited uh interaction, limited discussions between characters. No,
you have Roy Schider run and center, mayor not Mayor
of Amity from Jaws Chief of Police, Chief Rody. Yeah,
Chief Rody is just right up front getting into you know,

(09:53):
loud discussions with with all available characters. We're gonna need
a bigger spacecraft before we keep going. And let's let's
actually just listen to an excerpt from the original theatrical
trailer for two thousand and one, millions of years ago,
before the human race existed, an adventure began, an adventure

(10:17):
that ultimately leads man to confront his own destiny in
anticy of Exploration. Sounds great even without those impressive visuals.
I feel like you still get you still hear that,
and you just sucked in. Oh yeah. The music is

(10:38):
a big part of the movie. In fact, they're they're
segments of the movie where the screen is black and
it's just music, and I think that's a very important
part of the experience as well. So if you've never
seen the movie and you don't want it spoiled, I
don't know if that really makes sense with this movie,
you might want to pause this and go watch it.
Now we're about to talk about what happens in the plot.
But I would say this is not a movie that

(11:00):
is that is really going to be spoiled by you
knowing what happens in advance. That's not really the point
because it again, it leaves so much for interpretation and
it's so visual. I would urge you definitely if you
have the ability used to get the blue ray on
this one, because this is a film where the higher
definition available the better. So the movie is basically broken

(11:20):
into four parts. Would you say that's fair? Would you
say three or four? Um? I would say it's broken
into four parts kind of three separate movies that are,
and it will feel like that you're like, oh, I
guess we're done with this section. Now, Uh, let's follow
this character. So the first section you get a title card.
It says the Dawn of Man, and you've got this
group of early hominids. I think it's suggested, well not,

(11:42):
I think it is definitely suggested that these are our ancestors.
That you go back some number of millions of years,
and they are these sort of desert savannah dwelling ap
like creatures, and they are hanging around eating plants, hiding
from a leopard that attacks them, and fighting with another
band of apelike creatures over access to a puddle of water.

(12:04):
And then one day they wake up and find this
great black rectangle, this rectangular box that's known in the
in the story is the monolith. Yea, this slab of
matter that is unlike anything in their natural habitat. It's
not only unlike anything they've seen, it embodies interesting mathematical
characteristics like the dimension ratios are one four and nine,

(12:26):
so it's nine units high, four units wide, and one
unit deep. Of course, one four and nine are the
squares of the first three integers one, two, and three.
And so after first being frightened by the monolith and
they kind of scream at it and do territorial displays,
one of them gets the courage to go up and
touch it, and then they all begin to touch it,
and the encounter somehow triggers something in human evolution, and

(12:49):
the mechanism is not explained, but something happens to these
apelike creatures, right, yeah, they they this amazing sequence. They
be one of them, in particular, I believe this is
Moon Gazer Uh as he's referred to in the book,
picks up the bone of one of these taper creatures
that they're living among and realizes that he can wield

(13:10):
it as a tool and wield it as a weapon. Right,
Grabbing the femur of one of these tapers gives you leverage,
and that extra leverage makes all the difference in the
world for these creatures, who now suddenly have the ability
to kill the tapers and eat the meat and to
fight off the predators, right exactly, to fight off the leopard,
to defend, to win in territorial disputes with the other

(13:30):
with the other ape like creatures over the water puddle,
and so in victory, then one of the ape like
creatures throws this bone up in the air and then
we get one of the most fantastic cuts in all
of movie history, where the bone immediately cuts to a
spacecraft above the Earth. It's like a five million year
smash cut. It's also the reason that in Mystery Science
Theater three thousand, the satellite of Love looks like a bone.

(13:52):
Oh really, yeah, they said that explicitly, Joe Joel Hodgson
says that explicitly. But its shaped like a cartoon bone,
like the two little lobes on each side, or like
a dog chew toy bone. And then of course after
this we're in the age of space exploration, which is
where the rest of the movie takes place. You've got
this middle section that is not given a title card,

(14:12):
so it doesn't let you know explicitly this is a
different part of the story. But a character named Heywood
Floyd is flying around in space travels to a space
station and then to the Moon to investigate an anomaly
that's been discovered on the surface of the Moon, where
researchers on a moon base have discovered an underground object
generating a strong magnetic field. So they dig it up

(14:34):
and it's another monolith. Right. I should also add that
it's only in this sequence that we get any dialogue.
We go and what feels like an astounding amount of
time in the film without any characters speaking to anyone,
no narration, nothing, and it's beautiful. It's just hypnotic. Uh.
The scenes of the of the Taurus space station rotating

(14:55):
there with the classical music playing behind it. Absolutely, and
that the whole thing about space stations in the sequence
is a really interesting and deliberate filmmaking choice on Kubrick's part.
I think, um, because very often what you want to
show in in sci fi of the time. You know,
if you had the sci fi of the fifties, sixties,
Flash Gordon type stuff, you you would have wanted to

(15:17):
show spaceships as an exciting, fast moving, powerful thing. But
instead spacecraft in this movie are are presented as a
thing as a kind of like slow moving, very careful,
behemoth technology. Yeah. And uh, and I also love how
the station itself that we see is unfinished. Yeah. So
there's not this sense of this pristine sense of all right,

(15:40):
humans have done it, they're in space now, they've got
it all worked out. No, there's this sense that even
though everything this this technological world is is so advanced
compared to what we had then and also what we
have now in many respects, yet it is still unfinished.
It is still work in progress. We will definitely come
back and talk more about the about the technological reality

(16:01):
of the space travel sequence later. But um, so, what
happens in the plus so they find this monolith on
the Moon. It emits a powerful radio signal when sunlight
touches it, and it seems to indicate that there's something
else for them to find in orbit around Jupiter. You know,
I thought we're rewatching it for this episode. This was
the first time I realized that without that sequence, um,

(16:23):
the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders at the Lost
Ark would have been very different, because clearly that's where
Steven Spielberg got the inspiration for the way the arc
is presented. You mean the opening scene at the end
of the movie. Yes, yeah, don't look at it, yes exactly.
You know, that scene I think takes a page from
two thousand one in multiple ways. There's the sort of
staging of the scene which is clearly esthetically derived from

(16:44):
two thousand one. But I think also the mystery of
the scene, how it's not really fully explained, how Indie
No is not to look at it, you know, yeah, yeah,
I agree. Interesting bit of Hollywood gossip trivia. But during
the filming of Raiders, Uh, the art in the monolith
we're actually dating. Not many people know that. It should

(17:05):
have known better than to trust an arc and Arkell
break your heart every time. So then we go to
the next sequence, the third sequence of the movie, which
is a crude mission to Jupiter in a spacecraft called
Discovery one. So you've got several crew members who are
in hibernation, and then you've got two astronauts named David
Bowman and Frank Poole who are awake, and the Discovery One,

(17:25):
we find out, is controlled by an onboard artificial intelligence
called HOW nine thousand. It's always been fun to point out,
especially years ago when I was wrestling with the sluggish
IBM for eighty six, that, of course HOW as an acronym,
is just one letter removed from IBM HL. I actually
never put that together before. I don't know if that

(17:46):
was intentional. I assume it was. But How advertises the
fact that he, you know, he's an artificial intelligence. He
has conversations with people. He sort of presents himself as
in many ways a person. He straight up says that
he has consciousness, kind of off handedly. But uh, and
He also advertises that he is perfect and that he
is incapable of error, and of course, when How begins

(18:08):
to appear to malfunction, Bowman and Pool are really troubled
by this, so they secretly decide to take How offline
and complete the mission under human control without the artificially
intelligent computer. How becomes aware of their plans and tries
to kill them. Uh. He believes that if he's deactivated,
it will put the mission in jeopardy, so How kills
Frank Pool during a spacewalk and then tries to kill

(18:29):
David Bowman, but Bowman manages to get inside the ship
and deactivate the computer. And as he's doing this, there's
this long, strange sequence where How begs for his life
and I forgot how how unnerving that whole sequence is,
while where the computer is begging not to be killed,
while the while the astronaut is taking out its memory. Yeah, yeah,

(18:53):
just the what are you doing day? We tend to
I feel like I tend to remember just a little
bit of it that it does. It goes on for
a while as he's slowly removing he well, first as
he's gaining access to the chamber, and then slowly removing
each of those cards, and then in the final sequence
of the movie, Bowman reaches the destination on Jupiter and
discovers another monolith there in orbit around Jupiter, and this monolith,

(19:16):
unlike the others, which were just solid objects, appears to
be some kind of doorway or gateway, which begins this
surreal sequence that ends the movie, where Bowman is apparently
taken across vast distances and shown incomprehensible sites. We it's
it's hard to know exactly how literally to take the
things that he appears to be seeing. We're showing a
lot of things, apparently from his perspective that are just

(19:39):
colors and hard to understand. Yeah, there's this sense that
is definitely an acid trip vibe to it. I mean
some of the visuals so where we see these sort
of cosmic explosions taking place like those are are are
films of like oil, uh that are very similar to
some of those, like those oil projection patterns that you
see in like sixties musical performances, whether you know, projected

(20:02):
on the on the screen or on the band itself.
It reminds me of like stand brackage movies like if
you've ever seen a Dog, Starman or anything like that,
Experimental films that have a lot of things like close
ups of liquids being pressed between pains of glasts and stuff. Yeah,
that sort of thing. So you're you're left wondering, is
this is this the gateway that were as we're seeing it,

(20:23):
Is this just like the the crazy um psychedelic experience
that is that is happening to Bowman as he's kind
of like squeeze through the fabric of reality and you know,
with space and time warping all around him. Is this
essentially Stephen King's the Jaunt because he looks like he's
jaunting and some of those skills that we see, Yes,

(20:44):
so like his visions seem to be intercut with these
stills of his face being blurred and warped and like
he's losing his mind. And then Bowman finally ends up
in a strange room that has like a glowing floor
and neo classical furniture and decorations, and a lot of
people have argued over what this scene means, but he

(21:06):
essentially sees himself other versions of himself and then becomes
them as an older and older version of himself. It
seems to sort of suggest that many years passed with
him living in this room, but it's not exactly clear.
And then finally he's laying in bed, apparently near death,
and another monolith stands at the foot of his bed,
and he appears transformed into some kind of glowing newborn

(21:28):
baby with these creepy adult eyes. Adult eyes on a
baby is just the most horrifying side. But it's this
new form of humanity shown. And then he has finally
shown hovering back over Earth, and a lot of people
have argued, what does this mean? Has he come back
to Earth to what has he been transformed? Is he
back here to share some kind of knowledge with us?

(21:50):
Is he back here to do something to observe us,
to destroy Earth? Yeah? Or indeed, I mean it's also
open to interpretation. Really, like, how literally should I take this? Is?
I mean, how much of the later portions of the
film are just purely uh, you know, metaphoric. Am I
supposed to really think about him becoming a giant star
child and orbiting the planet um? And certainly there's a

(22:13):
lot of evidence of support that you are. But then
on the other hand, I always feel like any kind
interpretation is always an equal opportunity game. I feel like
you can equally say, well, this is this is all
happening within the head of Bowman, or this is just
kind of this is kind of pointing the direction for
the future evolution of of human civilization now that they

(22:35):
have essentially made contact with this higher power. One of
the things I love about two thousand one is that
I think it is a movie that is deliberately made
to have extremely compelling symbolic significance, but symbolic in the
in the original true sense of the word symbolic, meaning
something that is not just a sign pointing to one

(22:57):
correct interpretation, but an intention all in valid way accused
to lots of different themes like that, there are there
are many I think legitimate differend interpretations of two thousand one. Yeah,
Like when I watch it now, I definitely get a
sense of like he becomes a baby at the end,
so as an adult and as an adult with with

(23:18):
a child, it's like, I see, this is a new beginning,
like this is all, you know, a new possibility for
Bowman and or the human race. But when I think
I do remember watching it as a child, and that
last section of the film was like just you know,
super confusing as one would imagine. It was just dream
like but also hypnotic. Like I said, but when he
becomes a baby. Watching it as a child, I was

(23:40):
kind of like, oh, he's he's dead. You know, this
is this is a reduction. You know. It's like he
was this capable, grown up astronaut hero dude, and now
he's a star baby. We've taught a horrible fate. We've
talked about that before, like, why is it that when
you're a child, the greatest insult is to call something
a baby, you know, like that that seems like a

(24:02):
really horrible thing when you're a kid. But now, of
course there's adults you would like, no, wait, I want
another life. Yeah, let me go back. Yeah. And plus
you know he's in he's orbiting in space, and and
uh and some of the sequel material and the literary
material accompting a demonstrate he has powers beyond well beyond
that of a normal child. But but that's outside of

(24:23):
the movie itself, and we're largely just talking about the film.
There is one thing that has always stood out to
me about the movie in a way that makes it
almost completely unique among stories I can think of, and
that is that the human characters are dull, I mean dull,
and it's great anyway. In fact, I think it's great

(24:44):
because they're dull. And so let me try to explain
what I mean. Uh, no human character really says almost
anything of interest in the movie. Most of the movie
is without dialogue, and when the characters do talk, almost
everything they say is banal. And so I want to
say something about the movie that I would scoff at
in pretty much any other context. And so I think

(25:06):
the characters are boring on purpose and it works. Now. Normally,
if a movie had boring characters and somebody who liked
the movie tried to defend it by saying, oh, but
it's that way on purpose, I'd be like, oh okay,
because I mean, you know, if you've been in a
creative writing class, you've heard that kind of excuse. Somebody's like,
your story doesn't make any sense of right, it's not

(25:28):
supposed to make any sense. It's like, well, congratulations, good job.
I mean, most of the time that's just excuse making
for a failure of somebody to you know, create something
in a compelling way. Um, but two thousand one is
a big exception. I think the human characters are boring.
I think it's that way on purpose, because judging from
Kubrick's other movies, we know he could create characters that

(25:49):
were interesting, and somehow the movie is better because they're boring.
It makes us feel the movie's themes in an even
more powerful way. And I think the reason is that
this is a movie where the individual characters are not
the protagonists. The protagonist is somehow the meta organism of
the evolving intelligence of the human species. Uh, It's like

(26:12):
the abstract entity of human civilization and human potential. And
it's hard to tell a story like that and make
it interesting without sort of anchoring it within some character
who symbolizes everything you're talking about. But Clarke and Kubrick,
I think did it here. Like in the face of
the Cosmos, each individual human is vanishingly insignificant and banal,

(26:33):
but the potential of an intelligent civilization is vast and unimaginable.
That's a good read. I like that. Um yeah, these
these cars, so they're they're sort of two levels to
my interpretation on it. On one, I can't help but
look at it now and certainly as a Night is
a film from the nineteen sixties, and this is uh,
this is a predominantly white male movie. Yeah. Uh, there

(26:57):
are some waspy characters and and they are they are
dull to your point. So it's it's interesting to watch
it and kind of tear that apart because on one
level you're thinking, oh, well, this is just speaking to
the zeitgeist at the time, and then how much of
it is this intentional process? Uh? And and I do
agree with you, I think it is intentional. We have

(27:18):
those scenes, um, where the crew members are interacting with
How and how is so much more interesting than the
more human character like I know How far more than
I know Bowman. Um. Likewise, I know a moon Gazer
more than I know most of the characters in the
film that we we see that that ape in particular,

(27:41):
like struggling through stuff, figuring stuff out, and you get
arguably you get more of a sense of of of
his values as opposed to the values of Bowmen. A
moon Gazer is definitely a more interesting character than Heywood Floyd. Um.
I want to say one more thing about the just
the pace of the film, and uh, this film is

(28:02):
it is a rarity compared to so many other films,
because it does have this lethargic well, I wouldn't say lethargic,
I would say quo ludic of pace where everything is
is hypnotic and chill, but also just really drawn out,
or at least as far as my movie going experience goes,
I I do not become impatient with it um. But
it's it's having those spaces, having room to breathe in

(28:25):
the film that allows you to think more about what's
going on, to contemplate the symbols. And I think there
is also something to be said for the spaces that
are afforded by the absence of uh, you know, a
bunch of of of of are being arguably unnecessary conversation
among the characters, or character development or emotional resonance with

(28:47):
these characters. By by keeping them so slim and kind
of abstract, I'm forced to think more about them like
this is I think one of the reasons that I'm
so drawn to terrible science fiction films as well, right
are just bad or mediocre ones, because in those films,
you know, they may have the same frenzied pace of
any other action movie. They might you know, and they

(29:09):
might not even have that much intelligent content to them,
but the spaces are there in the quality of the film. Uh,
And I'm for and you know, they don't give me
enough to play with as far as characters go or plot,
But I'm but I can set there and just think
about something interesting on the set. I so you and
I've had this conversation before, and it's definitely true that

(29:31):
this is part of what draws me to bad movies
as well. For some reason, I find a lot of
bad movies thought provoking in the way that a lot
of competent movies are not. Because a competent movie will
get you sucked into the plot more than a bad
movie will. And when you're sucked into a plot, there
are a lot of pleasures in that as well. Like
I enjoy being sucked into the plot of a movie.
It it gets you into that flow state you sort

(29:52):
of like forget yourself and you just become awareness of
this other narrative. That's all great and great fun, but
they're a different kind of great fun and stimulation to
be had. And the way you watch a story or
a movie that does not arrest you in constant plot
developments and and the character's emotions, and two thousand one

(30:12):
does that in a in a very different way than
a bad movie does. Two thousand one is a movie
full of breathing room. Like you're saying it. It's constantly
allowing you to think about what you're seeing, rather than
just being pulled along by it. The late Roger Ebert
has an essay about two thousand one from his Great
Film Series where he talks about the the appeal of
the movie and one of the things he says, I

(30:34):
just wanted to quote. He says, quote. Only a few
films are transcendent and work upon our minds and imaginations,
like music or prayer or a vast, belittling landscape. Most
movies are about characters with a goal in mind who
obtained it after difficulties, either comic or dramatic. Two thousand
one of Space Odyssey is not about a goal, but

(30:55):
about a quest, a need. It does not hook its
effects on specific lot points, nor does it ask us
to identify with Dave Bowman or any other character. It
says to us, we became men when we learned to think.
Our minds have given us the tools to understand what
we live and who we are now it is time
to move on to the next step, to know that

(31:16):
we live not on a planet but among the stars,
and that we are not flesh but intelligence. Oh that's good.
I think that says a lot of what I feel
about the movie. Yeah, this is one of those cases
where I definitely agree with Leebert. I find that I
either completely agree with what he said had to say
about a film where I strongly disagree. Oh yeah, well,
I mean, the best kind of critic is the critic

(31:38):
who you like reading even when you fully disagree with absolutely.
All right, Well, on that note, we're going to take
a break, and when we come back, we're gonna talk
some more about two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,
about how it came to be and many of the
fabulous sci fi but thoroughly stuff to blow your mind
ideas that are utilized in the film. Thank alright, we're back.

(32:00):
So Supposedly, two thousand one of Space Odyssey was developed
by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark on the basis of
an idea from an earlier story by Clark. Right, yeah,
a story known as The Sentinel also known as the
Sentinel of Eternity. Uh. This was published in nineteen fifty one. Basically,
it's a story about an alien artifact in the form

(32:21):
of a mineral pyramid buried on the Moon, and Clark
has apparently complained that the story contains so little of
what's in two thousand one that it really shouldn't be
said that two thousand one is based on it. But
I don't know. I mean, it seems like it's there.
There's a monolith on the moon. It might not be
shaped the same way, but that that's already a compelling idea. Right,
we go to the Moon and we find something they're

(32:43):
waiting for us. Though there's an interesting, all alternate take
on what the function of that object on the Moon
could be. There's the idea that what if aliens left
behind some kind of technological intelligence detector alarm that recognizes
a certain point of technological development in the human species

(33:05):
and then sends a signal back home saying like, oh
now watch out, these guys are coming. Well that yeah,
it's kind of yeah, cosmic security alarm. Yeah. I've also
read that there there's at least one earlier Clark's story
that closely resembles the Dawn of Man segment, and one
thing to keep in mind here is of course, that
the Clark was a was a prolific writer. He wrote

(33:28):
a number of sci fi stories. By the time two
thousand and one came into production, he had established himself
as a major sci fi writer and also experienced success
as a science writer, often dealing with topics related to futurism,
computer space travel. Uh. So he he already had a
career in which he had gotten to explore so many

(33:48):
of these concepts, so it makes sense that two thousand
one would be a further refinement of those ideas. Yeah,
and Clark was known as a as a writer of
what it might be a silly word, but what's often
known as hard science. Not not like space pirates and uh,
space fantasy, but science fiction that's based on some reasonable

(34:09):
appreciation of the laws of nature. Right and uh. There
is a novel, two thousand and one, but it's worth
noting that he wrote it concurrently with the film, so
the film is not based upon two thousand and one
of Space Oudissey the book, but they both emerge from
the same process, and the book is worth checking out.
I especially enjoyed the Dawn of Man portion of the book,

(34:30):
because you do get to spend more time with those apes.
And they have names. They have names, yeah, such as
moon Gazer. Yeah. Now, of course, Stanley Kubrick was well
established as a respected filmmaker by the time he made
two thousand one. Right. His previous film, uh, you know,
prior to this was Dr Strange Love from sixty four.
He directed the excellent Spartacus in nineteen sixty ninety seven

(34:53):
Paths of Glory. But nothing, nothing prior to two thousand one.
I would say, really, you know, points towards this as
like the next logical evolution of Kubrick's uh filmography. I mean,
Kubrick experts may discrew with me on that there, and
maybe you can, you can, you can point to examples
to that, but for the most part, like this is

(35:15):
this is suddenly a sci fi epic, a space epic, uh,
from someone who has not really dipped their toes in
any kind of genre material previously. Well, I mean, I
think it makes sense that his career would take a
turn like this at this time. This is night, I
mean this, this is a year of change for the
modern world. It's often recognized as this this pivotal turning

(35:38):
point where you know, modernity becomes whatever the world is
now that there's some kind of upheaval, changing of culture,
changing of values, a rebellion against the old ways. And
in two thousand one is definitely that in terms of
many aspects of filmmaking. Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, it's
almost as if in sixty eight a crazy space Break

(35:59):
came to be all touched it right. Yeah. Now, of
course we we know from Kubrick's later films, you know
he would he would definitely explore more, you know, genre territory,
weirder territory with works like seventy ones, Clockwork, Orange Nighties,
The Shining Um. But but those are still far more
narrative and traditional films compared with two thousand one. Two

(36:20):
thousand one stands out even in a filmography such as Kubricks.
And of course we also have to recognize that Doulas
Douglas Trumbull, who I mentioned earlier, the visual effects Wizard,
largely responsible for the many amazing lasting effects in the film.
He also went on to work on Blade Runner, another
great looking movie, Yeah, Star Trek the motion picture, And

(36:41):
also he was at least in an advisory capacity on
A Tree of Life. I never saw it yet, Oh
it's good. Yeah. Uh And and of course, as I mentioned,
he directed one of my favorite sci fi films of
the era, V two, Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern. I
don't know if I've asked this before, but which came first,
Silent Running or the Lorax? Oh? Well, let's see, Laura

(37:03):
is one and influence on the other. Well, I'm not
sure enough, Han, I'd have to ask you to look
up when when the Laura emerged from his stump. The
Laura X was published in ninety one, one year before
Silent Running. Maybe they kind of emerged from the same stump.
I mean they're both emerging from. Again, we we have to,
like you pointed out in sixty eight, we have to
think about this the various changes that were occurring there

(37:26):
is revolutions that were occurring in uh in in the
in the zeitgeist, in the way people were in interacting
with their world, and certainly the environmental movement was one
of those. Uh. And both the lo Ax and the
Silent Running, you know, echo those sentiments. Well, Robert, are
you ready to drill down and focus on some individual
elements in the movie. Let's do it. So we wanted

(37:47):
to just look at some aspects of different parts of
the film, ideas explored there, what's interesting or what's scientifically accurate,
what's not um And so I guess it would make
sense to first start with the Dawn of Man segment,
the the segment with the ape like creatures that are
exposed to the monolith and somehow learned to use tools,
which are, by the way, some of the best looking

(38:08):
ape suits you will find in any motion picture. I mean,
Hollywood history is replete with ape suits great, great and small,
and and good and bad, and man, I love a
bad ape suit, like I love the movie Robot Monster
or the Aliens that invade Earth, or like it's a
guerrilla suit with a fish bowl on the head. But
but yeah, these are some good suits, good suits, and
great performances to you had a very physical mime performances

(38:32):
that brought these to life based on the movements of
actual primates. And then of course we have actual primates
and the scenes as well, because you have actual chimp
uh like young chimps standing in as the young members
of this tribe. And the weird thing is, you don't
necessarily even think about it when you're watching it, Like
everything works so well in that scene, you're not thinking, oh,

(38:53):
we have people in ape costumes and actual apes. That's
a good point. So I was wondering, you know, is
there any way of looking at this and saying, how
how realistic is this? I mean, obviously we don't know
everything about our ancestors from this period, and that that
part of the movie does not say exactly how long
ago it is, though in the middle part Heywood Floyd

(39:15):
says that the monolith on the Moon is four million
years old, So if they're all roughly the same age,
if they would put there at the same time, that
might put this scene on Earth around four million years ago.
So I was wondering what were our ancestors like then?
And supposedly the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
lived sometime between about ten and about four million years ago,

(39:37):
and the hominids depicted in this scene appeared to be
would you say, semi bipedal, like not standing upright but
often perched in a crouch on two legs and uh
able to stand up, but often sort of hunkered near
the ground. Yeah, I would definitely say that. But then,
of course, when the one hominid gains the use of
a bone tool. This one finally begins to stand upright

(39:58):
in a full fighting posture. And as best I can tell,
there's still vigorous debate in the scientific community about the
origins of human bipedalism. This is not a settled question.
Used to be commonly assumed that human ancestors began to
walk upright on two legs when they moved down from
the trees, down from an arboreal environment onto the grasslands

(40:19):
and the savannah, and so they stood up, you know.
The classic explanation was stood up to see over the
grass but for whatever reason, down on the savannah, that
that's when we started going by peedle. And this was
still a dominant explanation in the nineteen sixties when two
thousand one was made. But this idea, I think is
has largely fallen out of favor in the past couple
of decades for several reasons, one of which is evidence

(40:41):
that seems to show that humans were still primary tree dwellers,
or at least highly adapted to climbing and living in
trees after they became bipetle So that's a strange kind
of upset of the picture. A lot of people have
of human evolution. But there's evidence, say from from ancient
Hamay skeletons like Australian epithesnes, that at the same time

(41:04):
our legs seemed to show that we had upright posture,
we also still had shoulder blades and hands adapted for
living in a tree environment. So the picture of this
movie paints was probably more uh was more a feature
of the dominant theories of the time and wouldn't be
quite so accurate today. But the picture it paints of
the the origin of tool use, I think has always

(41:26):
been a really fascinating thing. Earlier I mentioned that essay
by Roger Ebert about the movie in his Great Movie
Series and and he says this. Also. He says, quote
in the in the first movement of the film, quote
prehistoric apes confronted by a mysterious black monolith, teach themselves
that bones can be used as weapons, and thus discover
the first tools. I have always felt that the smooth

(41:48):
artificial surfaces and right angles of the monolith, which was
obviously made by intelligent beings, triggered the realization in the
ape brain that intelligence could be used to shape the
objects of the world. I think that is fascinating because
so he's saying that it's not necessarily even something magic

(42:08):
about the monolith. You know, that it did something physical
to their brains maybe, but that it literally could have
just been a form, like a form that they observed
that they've never seen before, and by simply seeing this
form it triggered something in them, just kind of like
mere inspiration to say, oh, shapes like that are possible. Yeah,

(42:30):
and I wonder, I mean, I do wonder if something
like that is, but not so much that aliens put
a thing on the earth. But I mean you always
have to wonder about those moments, like we don't know
the answer of what triggered the evolution of hominid intelligence
millions of years ago, which eventually led to language and
tool use in human civilization and all that. But one
is tempted to imagine individual on the ground scenarios like,

(42:54):
obviously we've got an intellectual capacity to make and use tools,
but to some extent there had to be moments of
proto cultural and technological transition, right, a moment when an
ancient hominid suddenly understood that an inanimate object like a
stick or a bone could be used as a tool.
To do something or could be used in a different

(43:16):
way than it had been used before. And it's it's
just amazing to wonder what did that moment look like?
What did she see or hear or feel that allowed
that jump across the chasm of of how an object
can be manipulated and used. Yeah, and indeed it was
probably not so cinematic R and I. It's easy to imagine, uh,

(43:39):
you know, an individual making a discovery like that and
then either not utilizing it, uh and treating it as
a curio or dying before they can pass it on.
And then someone else, another individual has to make the
same discovery years later, and maybe that one picks up.
Maybe it doesn't, um, but certainly it works. I feel

(43:59):
like the scene itself in the film works as a
great illustration of this overall movement. I almost feel like
this is something that, you know, I want evolutionary anthropologists
to think about, like, is is there a site that
could have been seen somehow away, a way of mimicking
something seen in the environment that could produce the inspiration

(44:22):
for tool use. But we'll have to have to maybe
look into this, because two use among animals is always
a fascinating topic, and it's something we continue to learn
more and more about, particularly thinking about the but believe
they're largely German experiments taking place with with the tool
using birds and observing how into what degree they'll use uh,

(44:44):
you know, sticks on various tasks. Oh yeah, we've done
We've done whole episodes on bird intelligence, and yeah, there's
extensive tool used by birds. Crows and corvids show really
startling kinds of tool use, you know, on the level
of what you'd you'd expect to see from an ape. Right, yeah,
so yeah, what what did it look like the first

(45:04):
the first crow to to actually pick up a twig
and use it as a tool. What might that have
looked like if we've had kind of a like a
god's eye view of the whole process. All right, let's
throw this bone in the into the air Joe and
move on to the age of space travel. You know,
one of the best things I think about the technological
accuracy of the movie is that they don't have magical

(45:26):
gravity plating on the floors. And this was standard in
the science fiction of the time that you know, you
have a spaceship and people just walk around in it,
because why not, Oh, and it's and it's largely standard afterwards,
like you'll find some pretty you you'll find some some
sci fi that that's pretty serious about its science. But
when it comes to gravity on the ship, they just

(45:47):
they just go ahead and just assume there's magic gravity.
It's like, ultimately easier to just go ahead and chalk
that one up to magic so we can talk about
other things. Um. I mean, it's one of the reasons
that I really like the Expanse uh the television series,
book series as well. And they don't cheat. They don't
cheat on the gravity. I mean, there may be some
case to be made for some level of cheating, but

(46:07):
for the most part, they take the gravity seriously and
it's a part of the plotting as well. Yeah, and
so all of the artificial gravity in two thousand one
Space Odyssey is created by real forces, by by rotating force.
So just like we've talked about in our artificial gravity episode,
you've got a space station that's a rotating wheel. This

(46:28):
uses the angular momentum of the rotation to create a
downward pressure on the floor inside the wheel where people
can walk around. Uh. And even in the spaceship in
the Discovery one there's like a big spherical kind of
command area that has a segment of it with artificial
gravity in it. Uh, that's created by rotating a sort

(46:48):
of ring around the middle. Now, I have read some
analysis that says one problem with the discovery one artificial
gravity is that, given what we're looking at in the movie,
it is not big enough and would have to spin
too asked to create a realistic artificial gravity environment because
there would be excess Coriolis forces. Yeah, I believe we
went into this a little bit on our artificial gravity

(47:09):
episode that yeah, you would. You would probably need a
bigger wheel. Yeah, you probably would. So the brief refresher
the Coriolis forces is basically just uh strange counterintuitive movements
that happen when you're within a rotating frame of reference.
So if you imagine uh, people sitting on a merry
go round like horses going around, and one of them

(47:31):
tries to throw a ball to the other one is
not going to be so easy, right, because it's rotating.
It's not moving in a straight line. So you try
to throw a ball to somebody and you are maybe
throwing the ball to where they would be if they
were moving in a straight line, but they're rotating, so
the ball appears to curve off path. It doesn't seem
to make any sense. Before we move on, I should

(47:52):
also point out the other big obvious um aspect of
the presentation of space travel in this uh, in this movie,
and that is that there is there is no sound
in space. And they adhere to this in a way
that virtually no other film does. Yeah, like even pretty
smart film, even films and properties that will go ahead
and try and be realistic with gravity. They're like, Nope,

(48:13):
if we're having a space battle, nobody's gonna watch it
unless they're explosion noises, right. Uh. But there there are
noises for the astronauts, but they're internal noises. That's fantastic.
Like when the astronauts go out for e v A,
there is this almost deafening hiss of life support systems
within their suits. And I was reading a little bit
about what astronauts do actually here when they're on their spacewalks, uh,

(48:36):
and apparently, yeah, they mainly hear their own life support systems.
They hear like pumping and fans and stuff like that
within their suits. But it's kind of creepy to imagine
because imagine trying to do mechanical work with tools when
you can't hear anything you're doing. Yeah, it's it's a
it's it's a different reality than we're used to dealing with.

(48:57):
You normally, you should be able to to hear your tool,
and even if you're not, you're not consciously thinking about it.
It's part of your your your sensory experience of the
of of of the activity. Yeah, I mean, I imagine
to be deeply unsettling to go and loosen a bolt
and I just hear nothing. It's completely silent. But they
have to. Astronauts on spacewalks have to do things like that.

(49:18):
That's why you gotta have those explosive bolts joke, because
just push the button and you're done. No, no sitting
there cranking them around. Oh, there's some good explosive bolts
in the movie too. Uh. And there was one part
where I thought I caught a mistake in the movie.
I thought I caught a gravity mistake where there's a
scene where they're flying in a moon shuttle to a
thing on the surface of the Moon. And we just

(49:38):
did an episode about coffee and space. Heywood Floyd and
his buddies. They're pouring out a caraff of coffee to
pour coffee into cups, and I was like, hey, that
wouldn't work. But then I realized, oh, wait a minute.
Now this shuttle is presumably not actually in a zero
G environment. It's flying over the surface of the Moon, right,
so it would be something more like imagining be in

(50:00):
an airplane. But then again I thought. I came back
on that and I was like, well, but an airplane
wouldn't work on the Moon because airplanes have to generate
lift by creating a differential flow of air under the wings,
you know, so you can generate forward thrust, and then
there's a differential pressure of of flow of air above
the wing and below the wing, or the aerofoil, whatever

(50:22):
it is, and then that lifts the plane up. On
the Moon where there's no atmosphere, you couldn't do that,
So how would you even have air travel on the moon. Well,
as far as the coffee aspect of this problem goes,
they do. The cooper does have make the factulous choice
of simply cutting away before we see coffee actually poured,
So we we end up having a lengthy discussions later

(50:44):
on about how that coffee might have worked, but the
magician doesn't reveal his trick well. But there's a huge
amount of attention paid in general in the movie too,
allowing life to continue in microgravity or zero gravity environment food,
for instance, either being stuck through the straw or scraped
off of that trade that wonderfully appetizing green paste. It

(51:06):
looks like like the worst possible store bought guacamole, a
thing like the not the cool kind of guacamole we
can get now, the kind of store bought guacamole that
you could only either you've got in like that the nineties,
I would say all the food now you're talking about
the scene on the Discovery one, but that's in a
simulated gravity environment. But it's still disgusting. It is disgusting. Yeah,
they it looks like to me, it looks like what

(51:26):
they're eating is different colored versions of the the I
don't know whatever that stuff is on the top of
a lemon bar, you know what I'm talking about, Like
that just kind of gelatinous consistency stuff. It just kind
of scraping it off with that with the device. It
kind of looks like the thing that the Romans used
to scrape their skin in the bat in the baths,

(51:47):
except I guess it's you know, this is like corn
beef flavored lemon bar. But yeah, so so you've got
the space travel scenes in in the zero G space
shuttles in the middle section of the movie, where they're
eating and drinking out of like corn cartons. I guess
liquid corn liquid carrot seems kind of gross. The the
flight attendants have these grip shoes that allow them to

(52:08):
walk around by gripping the floor. I guess it's some
kind of velcro like thing. Yeah, yeah, you might have
missed it in the film because they only spend like
a half hour establishing this technology. But I say that
it's not a not a second off. It's boring, but
they do firmly establish how they're walking around. An amazing
comic relief moment is the moment where Haywood Floyd is

(52:30):
on the flight and I think he's just been sucking
up some some corn carton, you know, like a corn
through a straw, and then the next thing we see
is him staring at the instructions for a zero gravity toilet.
It says like passengers are advised to read instructions before
use and then there's this massive column of text. He's
like biting his knuckle. But that does also play on

(52:52):
on some real space issues, like you've talked about before
with the the emergencies of of bladder control in zero gravity.
Oh certainly, Yeah, that the how the bladder doesn't fill
up from top to bottom, but from all sides in
and then suddenly it's the last second and you've got
to go potty. Um. Yeah, A tremendous amount of research
and development has gone into creating a better bathroom experience

(53:15):
in space, and for for a great reason. I mean,
this is a basic aspect of how the human body
works and when you absolutely need to maintain hygienic control
off in a microgravity environment. Do you know how the
early space command design did not take that into account,
Like in his first orbital flight, Alan Shephard, Well, actually

(53:36):
I think not while he was in flight. I believe
it was before liftoff he had to he had to
pee in his space suit, and he was They did
not give him any anything to deal with this. They
just figured, you know, the flight would be so short
that he could hold it. But then there were launched
delays and so he's there in his suit for hours
and hours and he's got a pee, so he just

(53:56):
went and it shorted out some of his sensors and equipment.
It's kind of an embarrassing story that they were like, Oh,
we don't need to worry about that. Isn't this scene
presented in the right stuff the motion picture? I don't
recall it, is okay, unless that's a false memory. I
seem to recall this this scene taking place. Well, if
it does, apparently that's a true story. But but more

(54:18):
about the way the movie deals with space travel, space communication,
all that beyond just the toilets. Uh So, one thing
that it does correctly acknowledge is the time delay between
signals received and transmitted between say a ship en route
to Jupiter and the Earth. Like there's a part where
the astronauts on the Discovery one going to Jupiter they

(54:39):
do an interview with the BBC and the BBC guys
like we had to edit out the seven minute delays
between questions and answers. But also once they actually do
the interview, when you're thinking about that, it seems kind
of like, what because there are parts where the interviewer
asks such dumb questions if you're not going to get
an answer for seven minutes. It seems like he should

(55:00):
have been more concise. Yeah, you think you would think so. No.
One thing the movie demonstrates that that I think we
have not yet figured out from a scientific perspective is
the idea of hibernation, human hibernation on board spacecraft. So
on the Discovery one, you've got two astronauts who are
awake and sort of minding the store, and then you've
got a whole other crew of astronauts who are in hibernation,

(55:22):
and it says sarcophagus looking devices. It's very creepy. Yeah,
and like some of the like I think I can't
remember if it's Pool or Bowman, but one of them
is drawing them while they're in hybernation. And how is
is commenting as that it looks very good days. It's
really been working on your your skill. That's great. But
they say the hibernation is like sleep. They breathe once

(55:44):
a minute, the heart beats three times a minute, and
body temperature is three degrees integrade. And as far as
I know that, they don't explain in the movie really
how this works. And as far as I know, this
is not possible, right, I mean, certainly hibernation continues to
be of of key interest to researchers for a number
of reasons. I should have said not possible yet, right, yes,

(56:05):
but but it's one of the reasons that we keep
looking at hibernation, hibernation in actual organisms because I mean,
there are a number of different health potential health benefits there,
but also the ability to use this for long term
space travel is is very attractive. Now. The explanation in
two thousand one is that it's not so much of
a spacist situation, so they're not traveling between stars or anything,

(56:27):
but rather it's about raining in consumption of air, water,
and food for the travel portion of the mission. So yeah,
you don't need the doctor until you get there, or
you know, an astrophysicists or whatever the specialists are. You
don't need them on the way. So why feed them
and water them and give them, uh, the finite portions

(56:47):
of the atmosphere rations until you get there? Right? And
hibernation would seem to be the biological process to look
to here, because I mean it's uh, we've seen examples
of in true hibernators of greatly decreased metabolic activity, ability
to withstand extreme cold and uh, and resistance to muscle
atrophy while they're under uh. That's that's one of the

(57:07):
amazing things about like any hybernating species. But if you're
gonna look at something even it's like a hibernation light
arguably like like various bears, the fact that they can
essentially be a mobile for such a long period of
time and get out and all their muscles still work.
You know, it's it's it's amazing. Well human perspective, muscle

(57:28):
atrophy is a problem even from the point of view
of active astronauts and nunberduced gravity. I mean, if you're
on the space station, you've got to exercise vigorously uh
to try to maintain some of your your bone density
and muscle strength because what you don't have a floor
to push against. Yeah. Now, one thing I sort of
take issue with, and again this I'm I'm not nitpicking

(57:50):
here too much, but it's said that the hibernation is
like sleep. But I've read accounts that sleep the sleep
light aspects here might not match up with with reality
all that much. I've seen the hibernation of Arctic ground
squirrels compared to a kind of awful insomnia where the
where the creatures actually have to extend a fair amount

(58:11):
of energy to heat back up so that they can sleep.
That sleep is perhaps something that is um, it's not
possible why you're truly hibernating, which which which is fascinating
to think about. So it also does remind me of
of another science fiction work of Orson Scott card Is

(58:32):
Um he had he had an older novel titled Hot Sleep,
and the idea here was that that suspended animation was
kind of like an awful boiling insomnia. It was that
one experienced while they were in transit to another place.
Sounds bad, but I always think of that when I
read about this idea that hibernation is not sleep, it

(58:55):
maybe more like hot sleep. Now we're back to the jaunt. Yes, yeah,
there's uh, that's another one. I feel like Stephen King's
The John might not have been possible without two thousand
and one. Yeah, I wonder. But well, speaking of sleep,
there's another thing that I thought was worth mentioning maybe
is there's a scene on The Discovery One where it
appears that the astronaut Frank Pool is I could be

(59:18):
mistaking what's going on in the scene, but he appears
to be doing some kind of light bathing, like he's
in his underwear and he's laying on a slab under
a bunch of lights um And you know, I wondered,
is that supposed to be what's going on there? And
it would make sense because light regimes matter to astronauts.
What kind of light you're exposed to does have an

(59:40):
effect on your body, on your circadian rhythms, on everything.
I mean, I've read about reports of astronauts sometimes having
trouble sleeping on space stations, and the different kinds of
light and exposure to different kinds of light at different
times could help alleviate that problem. Like if you're exposed
to a fluorescent light that's putting out blue frequencies, this

(01:00:01):
could lead to trouble getting to sleep, and you might
need to turn on an led some kind of different
kind of light if you want to maintain your daily
cycles correctly. Yeah, I like the circadian rhythm interpretation of
that scene. Otherwise he's just bored and decided to strip
down and hang out, you know, totally unrelated to what
we're just saying. Well, actually, no sort of related to

(01:00:22):
sleeping in space. One thing I love it predicts is
that there are hotel chains on the space station. So
I love heywood Floyd gets up to the space station
on the ring module, you know, with the artificial gravity,
and he's walking around and we see like a Howard
Johnson's and a Hilton. It's such a that whole station.
It's just so stylish. Just I just I just want
to be there. Yeah. And if I was there, I

(01:00:46):
could just check into the hotel and it'd be good
to go. Well, I don't necessarily think that's all that implausible.
I mean I wonder about commercial hotel chains getting into someday,
uh space stations. I mean, we've already seen at least
I can think of at least one company the working
on space station habitats, like a big Low Aerospace which
has been working on orbital habitats. I think the guy

(01:01:09):
behind that company was like a like a hotel or
motel chain guy. Yeah. I think we will get to
the point where there will be there will be orbital hotels. Now,
will they have bed bugs? I don't know, it depends
what will the will you know, cosmic radiation and occasional
solar radiation swells due to those bed bugs. Maybe they'll

(01:01:29):
become the giant mutants rampaging through the the the orbital wheels.
The answer is yes. But what is a space holiday
in without some mutants? That's true, I would hope that.
I mean, we're basically doing all the legwork here for
future sci fi riders taking note. Yeah, helliday in in space,

(01:01:49):
that'll be. That'll be the franchise. All right, Should we
take another break and then come back talk a little
bit about how an Ai And that's right, we should
all right, we're gonna We're gonna be right back. Alright,
we're back. So before we get into talking about how
I do need to point out that we do see
some scenes where it looks like the the the crew

(01:02:10):
members the Discovery are using iPads. They have these wonderful
flat screen devices, and that's just one of those those
moments where you're like, oh man, this film totally got
it right. I mean, they missed iPads. Uh, you know,
they were a little early on the on the prediction,
but there it is. So maybe everything else in the film,
it's just a matter of time. Like most other things, though,
I think they did not correctly predict miniaturization. So everything

(01:02:33):
is very big. So obviously, as we were talking about earlier,
one of the huge themes dealt with in this movie
is the concept of artificial intelligence, especially if you consider
it a story about intelligence itself, you know, biological intelligence
and then machine intelligence. This is this is one of
the key features of the story. And as we said before,

(01:02:53):
How nine thousand, the computer is somehow the most interesting
character in the movie, Like, it has much more interest
things to say than the people do. Yeah, and I
feel far more for him when he essentially dies than
the actual human characters who die only one of whom
we get to know at all and then very barely.

(01:03:14):
And I've probably feel more about how is death than
I do about you know, the nameless nameless eight that's
beaten to death. You know, I wonder if exactly what
you're feeling their empathy for a computer more so than
your felly human being is uh. I have to wonder
if maybe that's intentional to and supposed to make us
a little worried. Well, like I said earlier, we do

(01:03:35):
not even see that one human death. We see the
the how controlled e V a pod moving towards him,
and then the next shot is are the are the
pod and the human that the corpse just tumbling through
the void. Well, I mean even the characters say in
the movie Pool, the character who gets killed by how

(01:03:55):
says at one point in this BBC interview from the spacecraft,
he says, he's just like a six member of the crew.
You very quickly get adjusted to the idea that he talks,
and you think of him really just as another person.
And I think that that is in a sense quite literal,
that there is this risk that we think of machines
as people, and research is born that out. I mean,

(01:04:16):
there have been tests that if a machine talks, if
it uses language, if it uses social conventions, do people
start to treat it like a person. And I haven't
read this research in a while, but last time I
checked in on it, I mean it seemed like the
consensus was, yes, we very easily, quite readily start attributing
human characteristics to inanimate objects if they just talk and

(01:04:39):
stuff like that, If they they look like an animal
or a person, smiley face on it, yeah, and you
begin to feel bad if somebody gives it a kick, Yeah,
that's a person, Noel, I mean, think about uh, if
you ever watched those Boston Dynamics videos where there are
these four legged robots that walk around in the parking
lot and stuff, and somebody coming by kicking. Yeah, somebody

(01:05:00):
kicks it to see if it can keep its balance,
because they're they're testing its locomotor capabilities, like can it
stay on its feet if somebody tries to throw it off?
But when I see that, I'm like, what a mean person?
How could you kick that animal like that? And it's
a robot. This is a huge blind spot for the
human mind. And it could be that they were anticipating
this kind of research, I mean before it was really

(01:05:22):
even out that that Kubrick and Clarke may have been
trying to make a point that like, we very easily,
uh fall victim to thinking of machines as people if
they even resemble people in the barest sense, such as
speaking like a human, or or seeming to think like
a human, or just having that one focal point, that

(01:05:42):
red light that seems to be an eye, yeah, just
giving it the eye. If it didn't have the red
light and just talked, I wonder how if we would
feel the same way. Another thing about how that that's
kind of disturbing is that how describes itself himself. However
you characterize, I don't know. I think he sort of
presents himself as male gendered. I guess how says that

(01:06:05):
he is quote by any practical definition of the words
fool proof and incapable of error. That seems like a
bad impression to give an AI. You know, you shouldn't
teach him to think that way. When people think that way,
or express themselves that way, or tweet that way, we
we instantly say there's something wrong with that person. Yeah.
I mean you would think that any good computer program,

(01:06:27):
especially one is complex and difficult to understand as a
conversational AI module, should have debugging features like it should
be aware of the fact that it can malfunction, and
should have built in processes for rooting out malfunction and
fixing it. Yes, um, I mean. The only other scenario
I can think of is that if it is important,

(01:06:47):
as it is on this discovery message, where it's in
charge of looking after everyone's life, then perhaps it is
advantageous to lean into sort of the godlike qualities of
how that how, of course how didn mistakes because of
how it makes a mistake, then we're all dead. But
I think Hal is actually a very good early vision
of AI. I mean that this again, this was back

(01:07:09):
in the sixties and computers were not like they are today.
It might have been harder to imagine they would ever
get there. But there's a lot that's smart about the
way How is characterized as an AI that goes an
AI that goes off the rails and becomes murderous because
they don't go the terminator direction. It's like, you know, oh,
I've got to I've got to eliminate humanity. HOW is

(01:07:32):
just trying to do its job. But we're also and
we're also not privy to like all the read like
How didn't set there and saying, look, yeah, I killed him,
but this is why I killed him, This is why
I killed all these these individuals as well. Like it's
it's left for us to try and guess at what
the what the what the full you know, rationale there
is in the computers thinking or at least and that's

(01:07:53):
the thing that's explored more in the book. But but
but I love how it isn't in the film because
there is this this sense it was like we can
we can try and imagine what it is, what is
going on? In how's mind. But then ultimately, to what
extent does that match up with the computer process that's
taking place the actual compute. Well, this is a great question,

(01:08:13):
the question of AI psychology, because normally, in order to
understand a computer program, what you would do is you'd
want to go and look at its code and see
what its code is doing. But obviously a program as
complex as a conversational artificial intelligence is not. You can't
really analyze it that way, right because it's probably been

(01:08:33):
I mean, I don't know if they knew this at
the time, but based on the way that we train
machines like this today, they go through like machine learning,
through say like deep neural networks, which produce rules that
generate outcomes that match the outcomes you try to train
them toward. But eventually these the rules they generate are
kind of opaque to us, like it's hard for us

(01:08:55):
to understand why they're doing what they're doing. They can
train themselves to produce the kind of output we want,
but you know, they're sort of a black box to us,
just like other minds are in a way, like you
can't see inside somebody else's mind and understand what's happening.
You can only judge by their external behavior, and so
we have processes like psychology where we try to understand

(01:09:15):
people's motivations. And at some point you've got to wonder
if the best way of understanding and artificial intelligence will
not be through looking at its code and what it's doing,
because it's just too complex for us to understand and
we don't get what the rules are. Instead, you'll have
to make inferences based on machine psychology. I'm sure there
are some wonderful examples of this. I'm gonna put this

(01:09:36):
out to our sci fi readers out there, but I
wonder has there been is there? Are there? Are there
fictional like AI psychologists that pop up in sci fi? Oh? Absolutely?
Uh in I robot? Oh of course, how could I
forget all of them, all of them robots. What's her name,
Susan Calvin? Is that right? I think she's a robot psychologist? Yes,

(01:09:57):
I remember I read all of these when I was
in junior high and I was was one of these
times where like now, I don't do this, but at
the time I always would make a distinctive choice in
which actor I was casting as uh as a given part,
and so I always chose to cast her as Sigourney Weavers,
so oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I mean
it also shows my limitations of of casting out uh

(01:10:21):
stories in your mind when you've only seen, you know,
so many different sci fi films as a kid. Well,
I think she would make a great doctor Susan Oh yeah,
but yeah it is Susan Calvin, that's her name. Yeah,
and she's a robot psychologist. So no, this has absolutely
been explored in science fiction before. I mean, I wonder,
I'm wondering if this will literally be at some point
the best way we have of understanding what an AI

(01:10:44):
is doing, because it'll be too complex and too opaque
to try to understand it a mechanistic level. We have
to understand it like get the get the gestalt in
the same way that a psychologist would from interviewing a person. Yeah.
So I guess what I'm trying to imagine here and
again this is or have something that does exist in
a sci fi story somewhere. Would you have a situation
where you have a lengthy space flight and you have

(01:11:07):
on one hand the AI that is managing the people
and looking for psychosis or any other kind of mental
problems in the humans. But then you also have to
have a human or a portion of the human population
whose whole job is to just watch the AI and
make sure the i AI isn't my malfunctioning, And so
you end up having to have this careful balance of

(01:11:28):
both sides looking for signs of essentially mental illness. Well, yeah,
you you can imagine a kind of like a talk
therapy regime for an AI, just to make sure that
it's emotionally stable, that it's you know, that it's experiencing
mental health, to recognize signs and symptoms of I don't
know what you would call it in AI, but the

(01:11:49):
AI equivalent of delusion or hallucinations or anything else that
could be worrying. Quick fun fact here, it's it's mentioned
in the film that how became operational in Okay, which
which I love that because that that makes everything even
feel feel even more um like. That's the date that
makes me sad as opposed to two thousand one. Cinematically,

(01:12:10):
nine two, I would say is the first year of
the nineteen nineties, because in a in a cinematic time scale,
nineteen nine we're still the eighties. Yeah, and ninety two
I was looking this up. Sort of a terrible year
in actual science fiction, as it gave us such let's say,
challenging to love films as Alien three, and Alien three
is the best film I'm gonna list here because it

(01:12:32):
also this is also the year that gave us Universal Soldier,
Free Jack, the lawnmower Man, Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
Haven't seen it, John Carpenter joint. It's not a good one. Yeah.
I enjoyed it at the time, but I was like
a child. Uh. And then a solar crisis. I don't
know it. Oh, very problematic production history. Also split second,

(01:12:53):
don't know this one second it's a ba Rugger Howard
running round in sewers with monsters. It's actually it's kind
I'm on board, yeah, but put me in that sewer.
There were no certainly no contenders for the crown of
two thousand one of Space Odyssey in but speaking of
Alien three, I mean, I would say Alien is another
franchise where you do absolutely see echoes of two thousand

(01:13:16):
Space Odyssey, you see, I mean, it's a very different
kind of story, but you absolutely see the legacy of
the way it changed our vision of space travel and
space exploration and UH and kind of the deep, the
mystery of of the world beyond to one more question
about how How claims to be conscious? Do you believe him? Robert?

(01:13:36):
Is he conscious? I? In watching the film, I was
definitely thinking about this. Uh when I when How brought
it up? Uh? You know, in a large part due
to our recent topics about consciousness. I keep coming back
to the eye, the eye of How. You know, we
spent a lot of times zooming in on it. Uh.
There's an implied focus of attention there is How is

(01:13:57):
watching things, observing things, watching the Uh. The two crew
members uh speak, reading their lips as they're essentially plotting
against him. How has enormous computing power obviously, but does
seem capable of focus, focusing his attention on given problems,
people in situations. So if you lean towards an explanation

(01:14:18):
of of human consciousness that is more about focused attention
attention schema theory, and you know the use of limited
cognitive um mechanisms to to to tackle any given problem
or scenario, then then I buy the idea that How
is conscious. Well, I don't know, I mean, I don't
know if it's he's conscious by necessity or by design,

(01:14:41):
if you're looking at it in this lide though, I
very much am persuaded by the idea that consciousness has
something deep to do with attention, uh, from a from
a brain structure standpoint. But at the same time, I
don't know if focus and attention is enough for consciousness,
because you can imagine just making an automated security camera

(01:15:02):
that tracks things, so you wouldn't assume that that thing
was conscious. So it seems very true to me that
consciousness in humans definitely has something strong to do with attention,
But I don't know if just the ability to focus
and give attention to things creates consciousness. It's true now,
but then you know another thing that comes up in
all of this. It's just the question. I believe this

(01:15:24):
is the question that I I asked Max tech mark
in in my interview with him from previous episode. Uh,
is it possible? Would you would you be able to
have a super intelligent machine? Would you be able to
have a how nine thousand that wasn't conscious or his
consciousness essential to the too to its function? That's a
great question. Obviously that's not something we know the answer to,

(01:15:46):
but it's it's interesting to wonder if, yeah, if there
could be such a thing as great intelligence without consciousness.
Is How quote unquote conscious because How has to be
conscious to do what he does? Or is it all
about making the humans comfortable, giving the humans something that
they can relate to and have a conversation with. Yeah,

(01:16:09):
So it would be a great irony if the designers
of How made him act like he is conscious to
make the crew members more comfortable around him, make him
seem more like a person that they can get along with.
But in fact, the irony is that when David Bowman
has to go kill How, How begs for his life
because he simulates consciousness. He says, I'm afraid that's such

(01:16:30):
a heartbreaking moment because he says that towards the very end. Yeah,
and he says it over and over again. Yeah, And
it kind of makes me hate David Bowman a little bit, Like,
I know, I know How dis killed about people, but
I'm still kind of like, Ah, Bowman, you have no
chill where you're You're falling for those sli machine appeals
that they're getting under your skin. They were they were
I mean, in many ways, How is like a child,

(01:16:51):
and you know, he's he's a very he's a different
type of child. He has a capable there's a calmness
and a reason to him that you generally did not
find in Ail that is far more emotional. But but yeah,
there's the there is this childlike element. So it's like
Bowman is killing a child, especially towards the end when
he is he's singing Daisy. Yeah, he's singing a song.
It's uh, it's it's incredibly unerving. Uh. And that scene

(01:17:15):
is mostly remembered when people make jokes about it, now,
like that's the primary context in which that scene comes up.
But if you watch it in the context of the movie,
it is a deeply disturbing, weird, uh surreal scene. It
kind of makes it takes you out of your body
in a way. Yeah, alright, so we're beginning to run
out of time here. We should probably talk if you

(01:17:37):
should probably talk about those aliens that Oh yeah, there's
any kind of the entire movement of the plot. So
of course there's the huge question of of what is
happening at the end of the movie after David Bowman
goes through the stargate. Uh, and he's in that room
with the weird, you know, neo classical furniture and the
paintings and he and he turns into the Star Child.
What is happening there? Uh? On one hand, I can

(01:18:02):
definitely see that the creators try to resist explaining literally
what's happening there. It might be that they don't have
a literal answer. There is one audio clip that is
supposedly of Kubrick, but I think it's unconfirmed whether it's
Kubrick or not. But it's been alleged, well it was.
I think it was a recording supposedly made by a

(01:18:23):
filmmaker who was doing a documentary and interviewed and and
claimed to have interviewed Kubrick, and was released many years later.
But if this clip of Cooper talking is actually genuine,
he explains, you know, he says, like I've been resistant
to explaining the ending, but if you must know, basically
what's happening is that Bowman has been put into a
kind of cosmic zoo. Uh. It is a place where

(01:18:46):
he can be observed by these creatures from you know,
galactic civilization, and the zoo is it has this sort
of like inaccurate historical furniture. They've tried to create an
environment that he would think was pretty like mulating his
natural environment. So they have this like French you know,
kind of furniture and stuff like that, and uh, and

(01:19:07):
it's kind of in the same way that like a
human zoo might put a tiger in a cage with
something kind of roughly approximating its natural environment, but not
in a very not in a very accurate way. I like,
I like this explanation. I mean, of course, it inevitably
reminds me of Billy Pilgrim and slaughter House five. Very
different type of zoo, very different, very different story entirely,

(01:19:31):
but but ultimately the same scenario. Let's just put him
in here and uh watch him go. And then of course,
the the alleged Kubrick in this recording says that after
they're sort of finished with him, after after they've finished
observing him, they transform him into some kind of god,
into some kind of super being and send him back
to Earth. Uh, and that that he you know that

(01:19:53):
Kuber says, this is something that happens in a lot
of myths, which is very true. You know, like the
human gets the apotheosis kind of near of the human
gets transformed into a star. Heavenly being or God or
demi God, and look at what they can do now. Yeah,
And I know that this idea is more born out
in the literature and in Clark's writings, But at the
same time, I I can't watch the final portions of

(01:20:16):
the film without thinking of it and contemplating it more
as a almost kind of a Riddle of the Sphinx
kind of moment, like having this encounter with this deadly
potentially deadly at least powerful uh in human force, and
in doing so you are contemplating You're just forced to
contemplate the nature of man because there is this sense

(01:20:38):
of it is kind of like the real l of
the Sphinx, where you're seeing Bowman progressively age and go
through at least the remaining phases of human existence and
then well and then if you count the baby and
kind of coming back around to the first model. Well,
I like. So the model of change that I like
in that scene is sort of similar to what we

(01:20:59):
were talking about with Bert's interpretation of what happens with
the monolith and the ape like creatures. So the ape
like creatures see the monolith and it's not even necessarily
that it does something to their brains physically to change
them into smarter organisms or something. Is just seeing. It's
just the inspiration, the experience of what that shape is

(01:21:21):
like that inspires them to pick up the bone. I
like that interpretation. And so what if at the end
it's it's you know that to the millionth power, it's
that David Bowman has seen such things. He's been He's
experienced such a different reality than he thought was possible
in the presence of these aliens with all their technological power,

(01:21:41):
that he is in a sense transformed the same way
that the ape like creatures are transformed, but just by
what they've seen. Yeah, I mean he probably saw colors
that don't exist in the real world world for like
a thousand years there in that segment. So yeah, I
like that in interpretation as well. But there is a
sense of information. I mean, obviously he does become something else,

(01:22:03):
sort the thing that was Bowman becomes this new entity. Uh.
In a sense when he comes back and looks over
the earth, what is that? Is he there in a
benevolent way, in a malevolent way? What's he going to do?
I think that was this kind of a great riddle
to uh. To close out the episode on like what
what is he going to do? What? What is the
what is this next phase and human evolution going to produce?

(01:22:27):
You know, what will the the higher human form be?
Like what will it be? Uh? Would be as dangerous
and self destructive? Is what we have now? Or you know,
in which case the Bowman starchild is is a destroyer
returning to his birth world? Or is human Is humanity
going to become something nobler, in which case he is

(01:22:49):
returning as a savior. Or is it going to transcend
our physical forms altogether? Is our future a future of
information alone? Do we become intelligence in some way rather
than becoming a biological species? These are all great questions
And one of the great things about two thousand one
what makes it a great movie is that it forces
us to ask these kinds of questions. Yeah. Absolutely, So

(01:23:11):
it's one for the ages man. All right. As we
close up, I will say, Uh, there was a little
bit I wanted to discuss about the idea of an
alien civilization storing a monolith on the other side of
the moon, but I think we talked about it a
little bit in our Ancient Aliens episode. Uh, there there
was some some some earlier writings from K Carl Sagan
where he actually referenced um Um Clark and said, oh, well,

(01:23:34):
this is actually a pretty good idea of how an
alien civilization might have left a sentinel for us to
encounter should we reach a certain level of technological advancement. Unfortunately,
we have come across no such artifacts. No, we have not,
but we do have two thousand and one, which is
a really good movie. This is the kind of thing

(01:23:55):
we might want to leave on the dark side of
of of of a lunar body for another civiphlization to discover.
All right, So, if you want to listen to more
episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over
to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where
we'll find all of the episodes, including that Ancient Aliens
episode that we mentioned there, uh and all these episodes

(01:24:16):
that have dealt with consciousness, AI, space travel, micro gravity,
you name it. Uh. And you also find links out
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and review us wherever you have the ability to do so.
Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producers, Alex

(01:24:38):
Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you want to get in
touch with us directly with feedback about this episode or
any other, with the suggestions for a future topic, or
just to say hi, let us know where you listen from,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

(01:25:04):
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