December 1, 2011 • 32 mins
Waves of protest continue across the globe, but modern protesters benefit from social media technology. In this episode, Julie and Robert discuss history's largest protests, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and the future of protest.
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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 to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Do
we have a hashtag for this podcast? We do? What
is it? It's called hashtag um blow the mind protest?
(00:26):
Whoa protesting in a digital age? That's that's really I
think that's gonna I don't know if we're going to
have enough room for the rest of the tweet, but
but it's it's it's pretty good. We'll try that out. Yeah,
we'll work on that. No, but this we we're talking
about today, I'm pretty sure we get to own that hashtag.
We don't know. I don't think anybody. It's not gonna
be like when I tried to retake blow blew my mind. Yeah,
(00:50):
from from from the rest of the twitter verse. But
but yeah, we're talking in this podcast specifically about Occupy
Wall Street and some of these other um social media
enhanced protest movements that have taken hold in late two
thousand ten and then throughout two thousand and eleven, ranging
(01:10):
from um, you know, from the Arab Spring to uh
to London to back in the US with the occupied stuff,
and of course the occupied stuff is has led over
into other countries as well. But we're talking about what
is a modern protest? What is it really is the
modern protests shaping up? I mean, uh, protests have always
utilized advanced technology to whatever degree it's available. I mean,
(01:33):
it's just the way we work, um. And so it's
no surprise that people are going to use modern technology,
modern social media to to to fuel the movement. Um.
But let's back up before we we get into two,
into the technology things. Just talking about numbers because yeah,
because when we're talking about hashtabs being heard around the
world to a certain extent, we're talking about the number
(01:55):
of people involved in that protest, because I mean, the
the people of serving a protest are arguably as important
as the individuals that are partaking in it, because it
has to be seen to really take that effect. That's
the whole point is to convey the importance of a
topic and to put a little context behind that. Two.
And we're talking about the hashtag occupy Wall Street, which
(02:18):
showed up on July. Right, It is just this sort
of idea linking to a blog about hey, we should
occupy Wall Street there. Obviously there was uh no formal
movement at that time or even intention. So the earth
we live on is currently home to what seven billion people? Now,
we just had the seven billion birth yea, like the
last couple. Can you imagine being like, hey, I'm baby
(02:39):
seven billion? Well my parents? Um, these billions and billions
of people, uh, roughly spread across two hundred and forty countries,
close to seven thousand languages around like documented documented languages, Yes,
somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty and twelve uh, and
(03:00):
more branches of religion, personal belief, ideology than you can
shake a stick at. Yeah, twenty major. But you're right,
there's there's uh quite a bit more than that. Yeah,
And we continue to grow, we continue to in some
cases of splinter uh and and reorganize amid those groups. Um,
So how are you going to get these people together?
Because I was I was talking with my life the
(03:23):
other day about a recent episode of This American Life
where they're talking about junior high and how junior high
is horrible, and how one of the things going on
in junior high is that when you're young, you get
along with everybody, but then as you get older. Uh,
just within school you begin you become more judgmental, you
become more perceptive to Uh, you know, who you want
to be associated with and who you want to to
(03:46):
identify with. You created this blueprint of reality. And you're right,
and so by junior high it's already pretty complicated. So
how do we ever agree on anything? How do we ever,
how do we get out of high school mentality? Right?
And Uh, Historically, wars are generally a pretty good way
to do it. Um. I mean, wars have long brought
together millions of individuals and pitched battles. It's thankfully, hopefully
(04:08):
it seems to be going out of style in recent
years and doing part well again because technology. Technology changed
the way that we wage war. Uh. And then maybe
there's something going on in the in our collective psyches
as well. But the better angels of ourselves, we can hope.
I've seen some interesting arguments of that that we you know,
we live in a time where there's there's less war
now than than ever before. So let's hope that keeps
(04:31):
up until the big machine human war. But singularity, Yeah,
but that's gonna bring us all together even more so,
Like it's hard to put stats on some of these
ancient battles, but for a DBC, the Persian army marched
into the Battle of Thermipoly with between two hundred thousand
and five hundred thousand men. More than two thousand years
(04:52):
later and three the Soviet Union's Red Army suffered more
than a million casualties of the Battle of Stalingrad. UH.
And then we have other examples where we can see
people converging UH for a cause that is not bloodthirsty
and drenched in hardship. UH. January two thousand seven, an
estimated sixty million Hindu pilgrims gathered at the convergence of
(05:16):
the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in northern India for the
um Are Kombla Mella Festival, huge festival. You've probably seen
clips to this individual's bathing UH in the rivers and
sort of an active purity, right, Yeah, in active purity.
Sixty million people coming together for that, which is amazing, amazing.
So protests also bring people together. And this is the
(05:40):
and we just recorded a podcast about this, so it
should already be in your iTunes folder or hanging out
on the web for you to listen to. If you
want a lettle more information about why we get into
into the protest mentality. But once we are there, we
can gather in in rather large numbers sometimes. And the
reason why Occupy on All Street has I think some
legs or has had legs at least over the past
(06:03):
four months. We don't again know what its fate is now. Um.
It has a classic earmarks of a protest. So we're
talking about disenfranchised people, right check. Crappy economy check uh huh,
and stagnating politics double check. Right. So pretty much this
is pretty much a global situation right now. Right. So
it's not just in the United States. Uh, you know
(06:26):
a group of people in New York starting this. Uh,
that's why it has, you know, such resonation all over
the world. Um. And of course we've seen this before.
We've seen it with Vietnam, right, Uh, a little bit
different circumstances. But we have people who are saying that
there are wrongs that need to be righted. We've seen
it with the Arab Spring. Um. But the Arab Spring
being just the the string of of protests and in
(06:51):
many in some cases actual rebellion revolution situations that has
just spread throughout various countries in the Middle East, ranging
from we've seen for the protest and I ran Tunisia
Egypt Um. I mean really, it points of the fact
that people will put up with a lot of crap
until it gets to the point where you know, it's
(07:11):
it's a it's making them powerless in their day to
day decisions on whether or not to buy groceries or
you know, buy new shoes, or you know, it's hamstringing them.
So yeah, we can put it with a lot of corruption,
a lot of political who until that happens. All right,
we're gonna take a quick break to hear a word
from our sponsors, and then we're gonna really break down
(07:34):
the question what is the largest protest of all time
and what factor has made it that way? Yeah. This
podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of
Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity
is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity
dot com and explore the answers to life's questions. All right,
(07:59):
we're back largest protests. Uh. This is something that is
sometimes very difficult to gauge because not every protest consists
of individuals gathering in a in a square, and then
it's hard to count sizes and and and you're gonna
get into the wars of information and politics of information
to where the protesters are may in some cases want
(08:21):
to inflate the number because it sounds better, and then
the people cracking down on the protests are likely to
lower that number for obvious reasons. You know what I
just occurred to me, Why don't they use the same
technology that NASA does to count the constellations that they
then applied to tracking dolphins. Well, true, that's that's true.
You can do some sort of sophisticated data. But then
if you're the people who has that in that technology,
(08:44):
it's gonna tend to be the governmental forces, So they're
not gonna necessarily want an accurate count anyway, not for
public consumption. And then the other thing think back to
in the other podcast we mentioned Mohamma Gandhi and the
whole u uh. Some of the civil disobedience was going
on there, with individuals protesting by showing up for work
or by resigning from their positions. You get into protests
(09:04):
of that nature and it becomes even more difficult to
to gauge what the turnout is because they're protesting in
ways and ruch, they're not visible when you're getting down
into actual numbers though, and you can say like, well,
this is the number of individuals that we know of
the participated in this, and therefore this is a very
large or the biggest protests. One of the big ones,
according to Guinness Folk of World Records was it was
the Iraq protest in Rome UH February two thousand three.
(09:28):
The event drew a crowd of estimated three million people,
and on the same day, protesters gathered in nearly six
hundred cities in a coordinated global effort to express moral
outrage against the US invasion of Iraq. So you had
like one point three million protesters in Barcelona, Spain, between
seven fifty thousand and two million in London, um. All told,
(09:50):
according to BBC, between six and ten million people participating
in a global protest, which is amazing because think about
you know, when we talked about the civil rights movement,
and we talked about Rosa Parks and how her refusal
to give up a seat to a white person than
uh spurred a one day boycott of the bus system,
(10:11):
right um, And this was something that was in the
works forever. I mean that this there were a lot
of people working on this specific plan in other ones
um for months and months and months, and then you
have something like this, between six and ten million people protesting.
And I'm going to wager a bit that it didn't
take that long given the data that we know about
(10:32):
when the Iraq War broke out and when the protests happened,
um that people were mobilized. And so you can obviously
point to when really one key factor in mobilizing all
those people, which is the technology we have available today,
which really does change the landscape of protesting. It's it's
worth noting real quick before we get even more into
(10:53):
the technological stuff that that's sometimes the protest is just
as simple as a naked lady with a fur and
some fake blood splider on her, you know, or a
naked man or a naked man probably both, I guess.
So you get all your demographics covered. But that's the
shock tactic, that's like, hey, we want to we want
to the media to cover this. Yeah, and then that's
(11:14):
the thing like like Peter, no matter what you think
about Peter, and and certainly there's some very some very
contrary positions on on what Peter stands for and or
how they carry out their protests, but their protests tend
to uh to get attention, they do. And I will say,
you know, I've I've certainly walked through a Peter protest.
I was walking through one in Boston with my mom
(11:36):
h when when we all lived there, um a number
of years ago, and my mom had a fake fur
colored line jacket on, and of course she was the target.
The thing that stood out is that they said, I
hope that you get cancer and die. Yeah, so I
mean obviously fake blood. Uh no, they didn't, but that
(11:58):
was in itself really very jarring. Obviously my mom um,
she was actually kind of oblivious, just kind of like,
what did I just say? And I was like nothing, um.
But you know, there are effective ways to to really
get at um at the psyche, right, and that's that's
what protests are trying to do. So you can do
it in numbers, or you can do it in an
awful things that you say to pastors by yeah. And
(12:19):
then of course there's there's art. There's music protests, songs protests.
In our art episode that we did recently about your
brain and are we mentioned, um, like the words of
public Picasso talking about the Spanish Civil War and expressing
that through art, prep expressing his outrage and varied emotions
about this political situation through the expression of art, you know.
(12:40):
And I'm thinking to um about the protests of the
Iraq War. And obviously this is before Twitter and Facebook,
and this isn't a question that we can answer today
or anytime soon. But uh, you know, I do wonder
how it would impact or would have impacted that protest.
Do you think more people would have participated? Do you
think that it would have attenuated it in some way
(13:03):
because it might have taken focus away? Um, And we
certainly know that the protests of late have been really
effective because of these technologies. Yeah, it's it's real effective
for a number of reasons. But I mean, I mean
because a it's instant networking and social networking. It's it's
the ability to throw something out with that hashtag occupy
Wall Street and then everybody following that hashtag can instantly
(13:24):
see what's up, real time information in all of it's
effective and in some cases perplexing manner, you know. I mean,
it's the real time aspect of it. I think is
really key because you can you could be like somebody
suddenly somebody's tweeting, Hey, the police are cracking down. Uh,
they're moving into this area and everybody knows. And it's
also allowed certain groups to even It allows you this
(13:46):
huge voice without necessarily having any huge investment in the megaphone,
in the metaphorical megaphone or the real megaphone. You know. Um,
like not quite a protest, but just consider with all
the crack downs that have occurred on Wiki leaks, a
lot of their continued momentum has taken place on Twitter,
(14:07):
where they have continued to be able to speak out
to all of these followers despite bank accounts and websites
going down around the world. Yeah, I just I can't
help but think about the protests in Iraq or the
protests of the Iraq War and ten million people mobilized
by via email. Right, that's a huge coordinated global effort.
Just what it might have looked like with these different
(14:29):
technologies that we used today. UM, where's people people were
have been studying the the impact of social media on protests,
UM and movements prior to all of this. I actually
spoke to uh, this guy by the name of Dr
Michael Best, who had Technologies and inter National Development the
(14:49):
lab at the Georgie Institute of Technology. I thought. I
spoke to him early two thousand eleven UM for an
article on Discovery News called our Smartphones Worth It, and
it ended up being a lot more interesting of an
article then it sounds, because I got to discuss like
how does it affect our daily lives? And and then
by talking to Best, learned a little bit about how
it was specifically being used by UM Nigerians leading into
(15:14):
the two thousand eleven Nigerian election, and they were doing
a lot of political organism organizing. They were planning activist
meetings and flash mobs all leading up to the election
that I was at least at that time slated to
take place in April, and and at the time I
thought it was really interesting. But then of course this
turns out to be a major theme of two thousand
and eleven UM as individuals are are tweeting about the
(15:36):
various protests that they're involved in uh and and coordinating
their movements. And in all of this, I also can't
help but think another advantage of social media, and specifically Twitter,
has to do with the people observing because I feel
like with Twitter, one of the things people like about
celebrities being on Twitter is that you're kind of as
(15:59):
close to that celebrity as you are to the friend,
the real life friend that you know on Twitter, Like
there's there's this um, there's this closeness. Well, there's this
idea that you're getting insights to how they're living in
and you're all a part of the same information stream.
So when you're observing like a real time protest taking
(16:19):
place on Twitter and you're seeing updates about Occupy Wall
Street or or the protests in Iran, well whatever it
may be, I feel like the people observing it on
Twitter end up feeling closer and a little more personally invested.
It probably gives people a little bit more empathy, right movement,
So if someone is sprayed with tear gas, right, and
let's say that this was a uh the use was
(16:42):
was just an indiscriminate response by police and that or
that was how it was tweeted, right, then people are
going to say, oh my, you know, the depth of
injustice here is unbearable. Yeah, because you're getting real time
data about this, right. I think it's like if you
it's as if you were standing on the edges of
a protesting crowd in real life, and even if you're
not actively participating in it, you're gonna feel a little
(17:04):
more like a protests, You're gonna feel more sympathetic to
that cause just by virtue of being in close proximity
to it, and the social media world of Twitter puts
you on the edges of that crowd in a virtual sense.
So I think that the same thing ends up happening. Well,
it's real. It's such a game changer too for the
government because now that you do have these so much
(17:28):
information to share, it's very easy to document the missteps
that the government might take or that a police force
might take against protesters. So you know, obviously that sort
of stuff came out before, but now it's it's pretty verifiable,
particularly if you've got, you know, a cell phone video
of it. Now. Of course, it's it's worth noting that
that throughout these these various protests and on Twitter hasn't
(17:49):
necessarily been the motivating force. It's not like Twitter was
the like the real power of the movement necessarily. It
certainly helped, and it was certainly a game changer, but
take the Egyptian Revolution UM January through February two eleven. UM.
So you know, Twitter and the various social media outlets
are made a lot of headlines, but the television newspapers
(18:12):
and telephone UM specifically like Al Jazeera UH continued to
to be a major informer for the people even as
the Egyptians the Egyptian government blocked internet connections in January.
So UH, you know, it's worth noting that there are
other media outlets and employ here uh. And then in
some cases, UM, this was pretty interesting. This is from
(18:34):
February two th eleven, following the uprisings in the Middle East,
some individuals in China were arguing for a quote Jasmine revolution,
and they were talking about on this overseas Chinese community
news site boxing bo x u n. The Chinese government
ended up blocking searches for Jasmine for the term jasmine,
and they also the the website was hacked by a
(18:56):
denial of service attack. So right, so that you see
a little bit of this sort of digital virtual social
media warfare. It ends up taking place like the basically
the protest testing UH situation of the crowd of protesters
and the riot control taking place in a vertu. Yeah,
seeing it play out there. But and actually that's it's
(19:18):
worth noting to the Jasmine Revolution really didn't have legs,
right for that very reason that it was shut down. So,
you know, looking to the future a bit, it would
be very interesting to see how China and protesting uh
take place in the future, giving technologies and also given
the fact that you know, if you can shut down
(19:40):
a protest that way, you can obviously have people go
in and hack the other way. Uh. So, I don't know,
just just interesting thought. With that many people in in
one country, surely something will come out of it. Yeah,
But I guess one of the things too, is that
even even as as we've been increasingly digital, it seems
(20:01):
like the idea of individuals gathering together to support a
cause is just is going to remain a vital part
of protests. Like I can't see I can't see protests
going completely digital, you know, because it's kind of like
on Facebook, for instance, for while, there there were a
string of these things where it's like, uh, speak out
against I don't know, something like child abuse by changing
(20:21):
your your profile picture to a cartoon or something like.
There was there was a there were stringy and and
then finally people started saying, you know, this is this
is kind of dumb because we're not doing anything. You're
not actually doing anything for these causes. You're just it's
not like you quit paying your taxes, right, right, right,
It's not like you went out in the street and
made yourself known. And we're I mean, there's something about
(20:42):
people gathering in a space generally a space they're not
really supposed to be in, um and speaking out as
as as a group and saying, look at these individuals
all piled here together, look at them, uh, look at us. Yeah,
but it's not to sound too or well in again,
looking for the future and thinking about facial recognition software,
it could be really problematic for people in the near
(21:03):
future to congregate and um, I was just thinking about
the app that came out for the Chicago bar scene
using facial recognition software, which you can you know, go
buy a bar and it basically is going to tell you, um,
the age range of the people in there and the
relative income, which, by the way, if you've ever just
by looking at faces, yeah, from the facial recognition software,
(21:25):
like you take a picture of people at the bar
and then it yeah, because it's because it's indexing some
sort of database that's basically saying, okay, well, I mean,
I don't know if someone's wearing pearls, maybe it's looking
at that. I don't you know. But anyway, the point
is that this is a software that could be used
for crowds and you could start, you know, I ding
certain people UM. You could tag them as a known protester.
(21:49):
You could begin tracking them, and this is fascinating. I
could see then a situation where say a protest movement
begins to um gel together in a public space. They
send a guy out with one of these devices. All
he has to do is take a picture of analyze it,
just a quick scan of the crowd, and then it
will it will compare faces with the database. It will
(22:10):
sort of judge, you know, the various socio economic status,
any possible criminal histories, and then give them a readout
with advice. On the next step. They could be like, oh,
this has nothing to worry about. This is going to
break down in a couple of hours, versus go ahead
and shut this down now because this is going to
get bad. Right so, right now, we think about protesters
(22:30):
facing UM officers who might be armored with kevlar vests
and plastic shields, and um, you know, instead of bullets,
they might be hit by rubber bullets, which we've seen before. Um,
you know you've got snatched squads that will come and
snatch people. Um and sound cannon. We've talked about this
to you in our Future of Pain podcast about how
you can basically just scatter a bunch of people with
(22:53):
an incredibly loud noises. Okay, so you have all of that,
but maybe in the future, you know, you don't have
of uh as much of a police presence, but you
do have people in the crowd who are trying to
shut it down by getting the data on the people
and preventing them for future, you know, and from participating
(23:14):
in future protests. It's very likely. Uh, this is yeah,
this is kind of a tangent, but I can't help
ever be reminded. I think it's a So it's like
a DJ shadow track UM from an older album where
he ended up sampling this this bit from a sermon
who was taking place in the Woodstock era, and uh,
(23:35):
the preacher giving this sermon was talking like he was
describing outlandish lee like a situation where you had like
hippies in uh in kind of a protest environment, and
the police could not enter, they could not even like
enter in to like control them, because the marijuana smoke
was too thick that that it was just there was
just this crowd of just out of control, sinful hippies
(23:57):
and they were just just layed in drug smoke so
that the police couldn't go in. And so the way
to combat facial recognition software is just to have a
big thick uh ganja cloud. Well, and according to this guy,
according to that guy, yeah, I'm not suggesting that you're
you're you're saying people should do that, but it is
well but but no, I'm not suggesting people do that.
(24:19):
But but you know, it just brought it to mind.
But here's the thing about the facial recognition software. Um,
everybody could just end up wearing masks, right, I mean
that's the whole, the whole vif for Vendetta guy fox Man,
that's true. That become increasingly a symbol really more of
a symbol of these various movements in various groups like
anonymous h etcetera, rather than just this movie based on
(24:40):
this Alan More graphic novel. Yeah, yeah, you could you
could dial down the protester profiling profiling by doing that.
For so, in some cases it's illegal to wear a
mask in public officially, so I can understand why. I
was on Marto one day and someone had a mask
on um, but I can't remember. It was maybe like
Tigger or something. It was so disconcerting I thought, for sure,
(25:01):
you know, no good will come with this. You know this? Yeah, Well,
when uh, for the Olympics it took place in China,
Mexico sent a couple of Lucadors. They masked wrestlers, not
to actually compete, but to just sort of I think
they were doing the show. There's goodwill kind of thing.
But they had to get special permission for them to
wear their masks because they can't take their masks off.
(25:24):
I mean, that's their identity, right, I mean right, And
I mean there's no point in them going over there
if they can't wear their mass they are their masks.
So they had to get special permission from the Chinese
government to to wear these things. Well. Oh, by the way,
when I speak of MARTA, I'm talking about the train
system we have here in Atlanta. Yes, okay, Anybody's like,
what do you mean you are in Marta. Who's Marta? Yeah,
(25:45):
that's the train system. Alright. So just just a little
bit of food for thought. Um, the number one indicator
civil unrest lack of money, right, yes, and then of
course resources and political corruption. Now keep in mind that
by thinking about two and a half billion more people, Well,
I don't know, what do you think is gonna happen? Well,
(26:06):
I think, as with any age in the past, there
will continue to be protests, There will continue to be
situations that are worth protesting about. Uh, and hopefully, like
I said at the start of the podcast, will continue
to engage in these type of group activities rather than
open warfare. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, but it's it's a
(26:27):
much better prospect for sure. So there you go. What
do we have in our magic mailbox? I don't know
where's the robot that's always taken breaks? Here you go,
bring us some of that sweet listener mail. All right,
here we go. We have one from a listener by
the name of Jen. Jen writes in UH and says, Hello,
(26:48):
Robert and Julie. I hope this finds you Well. I've
been listening to your podcast for about half a year,
and I've loved every single one. That's that's great. I
even I haven't loved every single one. UM, I know
I love every single one. I have loved all of them,
from one I want to talk about. Okay, UM. I
now look forward to my long commutes because I get
to listen to your entertaining and insightful conversations. I think
(27:10):
that's why your podcast really stands out for me. You're
not just delivering information UH to your listeners, but you
are actively engaging with it and picking apart of some
quite complimented topics for us. Thank you for hours of entertainment.
It takes my mind up of how much I'm standing
on GAS as a graduate student researching medieval gender in
women's history, which is pretty exciting. I particularly appreciated your
(27:31):
October eleventh podcast on evolution of and the Orgasm war UM.
I apologize for this being late. My pod broke and
I only just replaced it, so I was listening to
two months worth of podcast last week. Ideas about the
nature of the female orgasm, especially in regard to its
UH necessity or lack thereof, for conception, was a topic
of interest for doctors, church officials, and court officials. Alike
(27:55):
in the Middle Ages. In fact, it had rather tragic
consequences for a number of women throughout the period. Um
galenic medicine, The dominant theory throughout the Middle Ages held
the female orgasm wasn't necessary requisite for conception. It was
widely believed that women also produced sperm during intercourse, and
it could only be released if the woman had enjoyed herself. Consequently,
(28:17):
a woman in the Middle Ages who was the victim
of a rape resulting in pregnancy had no legal recourses
in many areas of Europe. Her pregnancy belied her enjoyment
of the encounter, which inherently singled her consent to the act. Well,
that was a bummer anyway, thank you once again for
your wonderful podcast, and I'm sorry that my gratitude prompt
need to tell you some really sad history. You guys
(28:38):
rule best gen Well, that's awesome. That yeah, very interesting
and certainly kind of sad, rather insight but I mean
that's that's exploring anything about the Middle Ages. What's true true,
But it is uplifting in the sense that if you
think that the female orgasm is still a mystery, just
look back down and say, ah, the understanding is is
a little bit better there. Yeah, you gotta love the
(29:00):
middle Age. So I'm excited that we have a listener
who is steeped in medieval lore. Yeah, well, especially in
gender issues. All right, Robot, hand me another one. Here
we go, Um Jim right then and says, hi, guys,
your mind. Slash Art show reminded me of an exhibit
I saw a few years ago. I took my then
eight year old son to the Moment in New York
City on a school holiday. They had a really cool
(29:22):
temporary exhibit. It contained something like sixty four small works
of art in sequential order. The concept of this exhibit
was that each work related to the to the next one,
uh the one next to it. For example, a Rubik's
cube was next to a drawing of a Rubik's cube,
which was next to a drawing of a cube shaped building,
which was next to a round building, et cetera. At
(29:42):
one place, we came across a photo of rocks. Then
there were rocks displayed as a sculpture. Then the rocks
were on paper, Then there was paper, then shredded paper,
then some scissors, ah, rock paper scissors. The exhibit came
with a brochure which identified the works and artists, but
there were no details about how the pieces related. This
was up to the viewer. The last several items were
(30:04):
a dangling bear light bulb that talked a set of
phrases out of out of any meaningful context, a film
projector a vintage photo from the balcony of a nine
era movie theater, a sign that said the end. And
finally you had to check the brochure for this one,
but the rooms built in exit sign was the final piece.
(30:24):
It was a really cool and fun to walk through
the exhibit with my son and figure out the connections. Well,
that's that's interesting. I've gotten to to look at some
art with Nissan nephews and uh and it is interesting
too to sort of prod young minds on and see
them inspired by kind of figure out what art is about.
And then, as we discussed in the podcast, it's one
(30:46):
of the amazing things about art how it engages in
their brain on both conscious and subconscious levels. Yeah, it
was that quote from Picasso, something like he you know,
he could draw like Rembrandt, but it took him, but
you know, his whole lifetime to draw like a child
or think like a child. I guess that's what he
was saying. Um, so, yeah, that's really cool And I
(31:07):
love the idea that it's this cumulative work that you
content like, your your perception is forced to reevaluate each
piece that you're seeing as a whole. Pretty trippy. Yeah. Well, hey,
if you have anything trip you would like to share
with us, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
We are blow the Mind on both of those and uh,
we we find update both of those fees with all
(31:29):
sorts of cool links, uh, both the stuff that we're
working on and stuff we've done and you know, podcast stop,
but also just cool things we find around the net.
And certainly you guys are invited to share that kind
of stuff as well. On more than one occasion, something
you guys have shared with us has turned around and
ended up being a podcast episode all and you can
always send us your thoughts via email at blow the
(31:51):
Mind at how supports dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
House to work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Do
we have a hashtag for this podcast? We do? What
is it? It's called hashtag um blow the mind protest?
(00:26):
Whoa protesting in a digital age? That's that's really I
think that's gonna I don't know if we're going to
have enough room for the rest of the tweet, but
but it's it's it's pretty good. We'll try that out. Yeah,
we'll work on that. No, but this we we're talking
about today, I'm pretty sure we get to own that hashtag.
We don't know. I don't think anybody. It's not gonna
be like when I tried to retake blow blew my mind. Yeah,
(00:50):
from from from the rest of the twitter verse. But
but yeah, we're talking in this podcast specifically about Occupy
Wall Street and some of these other um social media
enhanced protest movements that have taken hold in late two
thousand ten and then throughout two thousand and eleven, ranging
(01:10):
from um, you know, from the Arab Spring to uh
to London to back in the US with the occupied stuff,
and of course the occupied stuff is has led over
into other countries as well. But we're talking about what
is a modern protest? What is it really is the
modern protests shaping up? I mean, uh, protests have always
utilized advanced technology to whatever degree it's available. I mean,
(01:33):
it's just the way we work, um. And so it's
no surprise that people are going to use modern technology,
modern social media to to to fuel the movement. Um.
But let's back up before we we get into two,
into the technology things. Just talking about numbers because yeah,
because when we're talking about hashtabs being heard around the
world to a certain extent, we're talking about the number
(01:55):
of people involved in that protest, because I mean, the
the people of serving a protest are arguably as important
as the individuals that are partaking in it, because it
has to be seen to really take that effect. That's
the whole point is to convey the importance of a
topic and to put a little context behind that. Two.
And we're talking about the hashtag occupy Wall Street, which
(02:18):
showed up on July. Right, It is just this sort
of idea linking to a blog about hey, we should
occupy Wall Street there. Obviously there was uh no formal
movement at that time or even intention. So the earth
we live on is currently home to what seven billion people? Now,
we just had the seven billion birth yea, like the
last couple. Can you imagine being like, hey, I'm baby
(02:39):
seven billion? Well my parents? Um, these billions and billions
of people, uh, roughly spread across two hundred and forty countries,
close to seven thousand languages around like documented documented languages, Yes,
somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty and twelve uh, and
(03:00):
more branches of religion, personal belief, ideology than you can
shake a stick at. Yeah, twenty major. But you're right,
there's there's uh quite a bit more than that. Yeah,
And we continue to grow, we continue to in some
cases of splinter uh and and reorganize amid those groups. Um,
So how are you going to get these people together?
Because I was I was talking with my life the
(03:23):
other day about a recent episode of This American Life
where they're talking about junior high and how junior high
is horrible, and how one of the things going on
in junior high is that when you're young, you get
along with everybody, but then as you get older. Uh,
just within school you begin you become more judgmental, you
become more perceptive to Uh, you know, who you want
to be associated with and who you want to to
(03:46):
identify with. You created this blueprint of reality. And you're right,
and so by junior high it's already pretty complicated. So
how do we ever agree on anything? How do we ever,
how do we get out of high school mentality? Right?
And Uh, Historically, wars are generally a pretty good way
to do it. Um. I mean, wars have long brought
together millions of individuals and pitched battles. It's thankfully, hopefully
(04:08):
it seems to be going out of style in recent
years and doing part well again because technology. Technology changed
the way that we wage war. Uh. And then maybe
there's something going on in the in our collective psyches
as well. But the better angels of ourselves, we can hope.
I've seen some interesting arguments of that that we you know,
we live in a time where there's there's less war
now than than ever before. So let's hope that keeps
(04:31):
up until the big machine human war. But singularity, Yeah,
but that's gonna bring us all together even more so,
Like it's hard to put stats on some of these
ancient battles, but for a DBC, the Persian army marched
into the Battle of Thermipoly with between two hundred thousand
and five hundred thousand men. More than two thousand years
(04:52):
later and three the Soviet Union's Red Army suffered more
than a million casualties of the Battle of Stalingrad. UH.
And then we have other examples where we can see
people converging UH for a cause that is not bloodthirsty
and drenched in hardship. UH. January two thousand seven, an
estimated sixty million Hindu pilgrims gathered at the convergence of
(05:16):
the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in northern India for the
um Are Kombla Mella Festival, huge festival. You've probably seen
clips to this individual's bathing UH in the rivers and
sort of an active purity, right, Yeah, in active purity.
Sixty million people coming together for that, which is amazing, amazing.
So protests also bring people together. And this is the
(05:40):
and we just recorded a podcast about this, so it
should already be in your iTunes folder or hanging out
on the web for you to listen to. If you
want a lettle more information about why we get into
into the protest mentality. But once we are there, we
can gather in in rather large numbers sometimes. And the
reason why Occupy on All Street has I think some
legs or has had legs at least over the past
(06:03):
four months. We don't again know what its fate is now. Um.
It has a classic earmarks of a protest. So we're
talking about disenfranchised people, right check. Crappy economy check uh huh,
and stagnating politics double check. Right. So pretty much this
is pretty much a global situation right now. Right. So
it's not just in the United States. Uh, you know
(06:26):
a group of people in New York starting this. Uh,
that's why it has, you know, such resonation all over
the world. Um. And of course we've seen this before.
We've seen it with Vietnam, right, Uh, a little bit
different circumstances. But we have people who are saying that
there are wrongs that need to be righted. We've seen
it with the Arab Spring. Um. But the Arab Spring
being just the the string of of protests and in
(06:51):
many in some cases actual rebellion revolution situations that has
just spread throughout various countries in the Middle East, ranging
from we've seen for the protest and I ran Tunisia
Egypt Um. I mean really, it points of the fact
that people will put up with a lot of crap
until it gets to the point where you know, it's
(07:11):
it's a it's making them powerless in their day to
day decisions on whether or not to buy groceries or
you know, buy new shoes, or you know, it's hamstringing them.
So yeah, we can put it with a lot of corruption,
a lot of political who until that happens. All right,
we're gonna take a quick break to hear a word
from our sponsors, and then we're gonna really break down
(07:34):
the question what is the largest protest of all time
and what factor has made it that way? Yeah. This
podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of
Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity
is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity
dot com and explore the answers to life's questions. All right,
(07:59):
we're back largest protests. Uh. This is something that is
sometimes very difficult to gauge because not every protest consists
of individuals gathering in a in a square, and then
it's hard to count sizes and and and you're gonna
get into the wars of information and politics of information
to where the protesters are may in some cases want
(08:21):
to inflate the number because it sounds better, and then
the people cracking down on the protests are likely to
lower that number for obvious reasons. You know what I
just occurred to me, Why don't they use the same
technology that NASA does to count the constellations that they
then applied to tracking dolphins. Well, true, that's that's true.
You can do some sort of sophisticated data. But then
if you're the people who has that in that technology,
(08:44):
it's gonna tend to be the governmental forces, So they're
not gonna necessarily want an accurate count anyway, not for
public consumption. And then the other thing think back to
in the other podcast we mentioned Mohamma Gandhi and the
whole u uh. Some of the civil disobedience was going
on there, with individuals protesting by showing up for work
or by resigning from their positions. You get into protests
(09:04):
of that nature and it becomes even more difficult to
to gauge what the turnout is because they're protesting in
ways and ruch, they're not visible when you're getting down
into actual numbers though, and you can say like, well,
this is the number of individuals that we know of
the participated in this, and therefore this is a very
large or the biggest protests. One of the big ones,
according to Guinness Folk of World Records was it was
the Iraq protest in Rome UH February two thousand three.
(09:28):
The event drew a crowd of estimated three million people,
and on the same day, protesters gathered in nearly six
hundred cities in a coordinated global effort to express moral
outrage against the US invasion of Iraq. So you had
like one point three million protesters in Barcelona, Spain, between
seven fifty thousand and two million in London, um. All told,
(09:50):
according to BBC, between six and ten million people participating
in a global protest, which is amazing because think about
you know, when we talked about the civil rights movement,
and we talked about Rosa Parks and how her refusal
to give up a seat to a white person than
uh spurred a one day boycott of the bus system,
(10:11):
right um, And this was something that was in the
works forever. I mean that this there were a lot
of people working on this specific plan in other ones
um for months and months and months, and then you
have something like this, between six and ten million people protesting.
And I'm going to wager a bit that it didn't
take that long given the data that we know about
(10:32):
when the Iraq War broke out and when the protests happened,
um that people were mobilized. And so you can obviously
point to when really one key factor in mobilizing all
those people, which is the technology we have available today,
which really does change the landscape of protesting. It's it's
worth noting real quick before we get even more into
(10:53):
the technological stuff that that's sometimes the protest is just
as simple as a naked lady with a fur and
some fake blood splider on her, you know, or a
naked man or a naked man probably both, I guess.
So you get all your demographics covered. But that's the
shock tactic, that's like, hey, we want to we want
to the media to cover this. Yeah, and then that's
(11:14):
the thing like like Peter, no matter what you think
about Peter, and and certainly there's some very some very
contrary positions on on what Peter stands for and or
how they carry out their protests, but their protests tend
to uh to get attention, they do. And I will say,
you know, I've I've certainly walked through a Peter protest.
I was walking through one in Boston with my mom
(11:36):
h when when we all lived there, um a number
of years ago, and my mom had a fake fur
colored line jacket on, and of course she was the target.
The thing that stood out is that they said, I
hope that you get cancer and die. Yeah, so I
mean obviously fake blood. Uh no, they didn't, but that
(11:58):
was in itself really very jarring. Obviously my mom um,
she was actually kind of oblivious, just kind of like,
what did I just say? And I was like nothing, um.
But you know, there are effective ways to to really
get at um at the psyche, right, and that's that's
what protests are trying to do. So you can do
it in numbers, or you can do it in an
awful things that you say to pastors by yeah. And
(12:19):
then of course there's there's art. There's music protests, songs protests.
In our art episode that we did recently about your
brain and are we mentioned, um, like the words of
public Picasso talking about the Spanish Civil War and expressing
that through art, prep expressing his outrage and varied emotions
about this political situation through the expression of art, you know.
(12:40):
And I'm thinking to um about the protests of the
Iraq War. And obviously this is before Twitter and Facebook,
and this isn't a question that we can answer today
or anytime soon. But uh, you know, I do wonder
how it would impact or would have impacted that protest.
Do you think more people would have participated? Do you
think that it would have attenuated it in some way
(13:03):
because it might have taken focus away? Um, And we
certainly know that the protests of late have been really
effective because of these technologies. Yeah, it's it's real effective
for a number of reasons. But I mean, I mean
because a it's instant networking and social networking. It's it's
the ability to throw something out with that hashtag occupy
Wall Street and then everybody following that hashtag can instantly
(13:24):
see what's up, real time information in all of it's
effective and in some cases perplexing manner, you know. I mean,
it's the real time aspect of it. I think is
really key because you can you could be like somebody
suddenly somebody's tweeting, Hey, the police are cracking down. Uh,
they're moving into this area and everybody knows. And it's
also allowed certain groups to even It allows you this
(13:46):
huge voice without necessarily having any huge investment in the megaphone,
in the metaphorical megaphone or the real megaphone. You know. Um,
like not quite a protest, but just consider with all
the crack downs that have occurred on Wiki leaks, a
lot of their continued momentum has taken place on Twitter,
(14:07):
where they have continued to be able to speak out
to all of these followers despite bank accounts and websites
going down around the world. Yeah, I just I can't
help but think about the protests in Iraq or the
protests of the Iraq War and ten million people mobilized
by via email. Right, that's a huge coordinated global effort.
Just what it might have looked like with these different
(14:29):
technologies that we used today. UM, where's people people were
have been studying the the impact of social media on protests,
UM and movements prior to all of this. I actually
spoke to uh, this guy by the name of Dr
Michael Best, who had Technologies and inter National Development the
(14:49):
lab at the Georgie Institute of Technology. I thought. I
spoke to him early two thousand eleven UM for an
article on Discovery News called our Smartphones Worth It, and
it ended up being a lot more interesting of an
article then it sounds, because I got to discuss like
how does it affect our daily lives? And and then
by talking to Best, learned a little bit about how
it was specifically being used by UM Nigerians leading into
(15:14):
the two thousand eleven Nigerian election, and they were doing
a lot of political organism organizing. They were planning activist
meetings and flash mobs all leading up to the election
that I was at least at that time slated to
take place in April, and and at the time I
thought it was really interesting. But then of course this
turns out to be a major theme of two thousand
and eleven UM as individuals are are tweeting about the
(15:36):
various protests that they're involved in uh and and coordinating
their movements. And in all of this, I also can't
help but think another advantage of social media, and specifically Twitter,
has to do with the people observing because I feel
like with Twitter, one of the things people like about
celebrities being on Twitter is that you're kind of as
(15:59):
close to that celebrity as you are to the friend,
the real life friend that you know on Twitter, Like
there's there's this um, there's this closeness. Well, there's this
idea that you're getting insights to how they're living in
and you're all a part of the same information stream.
So when you're observing like a real time protest taking
(16:19):
place on Twitter and you're seeing updates about Occupy Wall
Street or or the protests in Iran, well whatever it
may be, I feel like the people observing it on
Twitter end up feeling closer and a little more personally invested.
It probably gives people a little bit more empathy, right movement,
So if someone is sprayed with tear gas, right, and
let's say that this was a uh the use was
(16:42):
was just an indiscriminate response by police and that or
that was how it was tweeted, right, then people are
going to say, oh my, you know, the depth of
injustice here is unbearable. Yeah, because you're getting real time
data about this, right. I think it's like if you
it's as if you were standing on the edges of
a protesting crowd in real life, and even if you're
not actively participating in it, you're gonna feel a little
(17:04):
more like a protests, You're gonna feel more sympathetic to
that cause just by virtue of being in close proximity
to it, and the social media world of Twitter puts
you on the edges of that crowd in a virtual sense.
So I think that the same thing ends up happening. Well,
it's real. It's such a game changer too for the
government because now that you do have these so much
(17:28):
information to share, it's very easy to document the missteps
that the government might take or that a police force
might take against protesters. So you know, obviously that sort
of stuff came out before, but now it's it's pretty verifiable,
particularly if you've got, you know, a cell phone video
of it. Now. Of course, it's it's worth noting that
that throughout these these various protests and on Twitter hasn't
(17:49):
necessarily been the motivating force. It's not like Twitter was
the like the real power of the movement necessarily. It
certainly helped, and it was certainly a game changer, but
take the Egyptian Revolution UM January through February two eleven. UM.
So you know, Twitter and the various social media outlets
are made a lot of headlines, but the television newspapers
(18:12):
and telephone UM specifically like Al Jazeera UH continued to
to be a major informer for the people even as
the Egyptians the Egyptian government blocked internet connections in January.
So UH, you know, it's worth noting that there are
other media outlets and employ here uh. And then in
some cases, UM, this was pretty interesting. This is from
(18:34):
February two th eleven, following the uprisings in the Middle East,
some individuals in China were arguing for a quote Jasmine revolution,
and they were talking about on this overseas Chinese community
news site boxing bo x u n. The Chinese government
ended up blocking searches for Jasmine for the term jasmine,
and they also the the website was hacked by a
(18:56):
denial of service attack. So right, so that you see
a little bit of this sort of digital virtual social
media warfare. It ends up taking place like the basically
the protest testing UH situation of the crowd of protesters
and the riot control taking place in a vertu. Yeah,
seeing it play out there. But and actually that's it's
(19:18):
worth noting to the Jasmine Revolution really didn't have legs,
right for that very reason that it was shut down. So,
you know, looking to the future a bit, it would
be very interesting to see how China and protesting uh
take place in the future, giving technologies and also given
the fact that you know, if you can shut down
(19:40):
a protest that way, you can obviously have people go
in and hack the other way. Uh. So, I don't know,
just just interesting thought. With that many people in in
one country, surely something will come out of it. Yeah,
But I guess one of the things too, is that
even even as as we've been increasingly digital, it seems
(20:01):
like the idea of individuals gathering together to support a
cause is just is going to remain a vital part
of protests. Like I can't see I can't see protests
going completely digital, you know, because it's kind of like
on Facebook, for instance, for while, there there were a
string of these things where it's like, uh, speak out
against I don't know, something like child abuse by changing
(20:21):
your your profile picture to a cartoon or something like.
There was there was a there were stringy and and
then finally people started saying, you know, this is this
is kind of dumb because we're not doing anything. You're
not actually doing anything for these causes. You're just it's
not like you quit paying your taxes, right, right, right,
It's not like you went out in the street and
made yourself known. And we're I mean, there's something about
(20:42):
people gathering in a space generally a space they're not
really supposed to be in, um and speaking out as
as as a group and saying, look at these individuals
all piled here together, look at them, uh, look at us. Yeah,
but it's not to sound too or well in again,
looking for the future and thinking about facial recognition software,
it could be really problematic for people in the near
(21:03):
future to congregate and um, I was just thinking about
the app that came out for the Chicago bar scene
using facial recognition software, which you can you know, go
buy a bar and it basically is going to tell you, um,
the age range of the people in there and the
relative income, which, by the way, if you've ever just
by looking at faces, yeah, from the facial recognition software,
(21:25):
like you take a picture of people at the bar
and then it yeah, because it's because it's indexing some
sort of database that's basically saying, okay, well, I mean,
I don't know if someone's wearing pearls, maybe it's looking
at that. I don't you know. But anyway, the point
is that this is a software that could be used
for crowds and you could start, you know, I ding
certain people UM. You could tag them as a known protester.
(21:49):
You could begin tracking them, and this is fascinating. I
could see then a situation where say a protest movement
begins to um gel together in a public space. They
send a guy out with one of these devices. All
he has to do is take a picture of analyze it,
just a quick scan of the crowd, and then it
will it will compare faces with the database. It will
(22:10):
sort of judge, you know, the various socio economic status,
any possible criminal histories, and then give them a readout
with advice. On the next step. They could be like, oh,
this has nothing to worry about. This is going to
break down in a couple of hours, versus go ahead
and shut this down now because this is going to
get bad. Right so, right now, we think about protesters
(22:30):
facing UM officers who might be armored with kevlar vests
and plastic shields, and um, you know, instead of bullets,
they might be hit by rubber bullets, which we've seen before. Um,
you know you've got snatched squads that will come and
snatch people. Um and sound cannon. We've talked about this
to you in our Future of Pain podcast about how
you can basically just scatter a bunch of people with
(22:53):
an incredibly loud noises. Okay, so you have all of that,
but maybe in the future, you know, you don't have
of uh as much of a police presence, but you
do have people in the crowd who are trying to
shut it down by getting the data on the people
and preventing them for future, you know, and from participating
(23:14):
in future protests. It's very likely. Uh, this is yeah,
this is kind of a tangent, but I can't help
ever be reminded. I think it's a So it's like
a DJ shadow track UM from an older album where
he ended up sampling this this bit from a sermon
who was taking place in the Woodstock era, and uh,
(23:35):
the preacher giving this sermon was talking like he was
describing outlandish lee like a situation where you had like
hippies in uh in kind of a protest environment, and
the police could not enter, they could not even like
enter in to like control them, because the marijuana smoke
was too thick that that it was just there was
just this crowd of just out of control, sinful hippies
(23:57):
and they were just just layed in drug smoke so
that the police couldn't go in. And so the way
to combat facial recognition software is just to have a
big thick uh ganja cloud. Well, and according to this guy,
according to that guy, yeah, I'm not suggesting that you're
you're you're saying people should do that, but it is
well but but no, I'm not suggesting people do that.
(24:19):
But but you know, it just brought it to mind.
But here's the thing about the facial recognition software. Um,
everybody could just end up wearing masks, right, I mean
that's the whole, the whole vif for Vendetta guy fox Man,
that's true. That become increasingly a symbol really more of
a symbol of these various movements in various groups like
anonymous h etcetera, rather than just this movie based on
(24:40):
this Alan More graphic novel. Yeah, yeah, you could you
could dial down the protester profiling profiling by doing that.
For so, in some cases it's illegal to wear a
mask in public officially, so I can understand why. I
was on Marto one day and someone had a mask
on um, but I can't remember. It was maybe like
Tigger or something. It was so disconcerting I thought, for sure,
(25:01):
you know, no good will come with this. You know this? Yeah, Well,
when uh, for the Olympics it took place in China,
Mexico sent a couple of Lucadors. They masked wrestlers, not
to actually compete, but to just sort of I think
they were doing the show. There's goodwill kind of thing.
But they had to get special permission for them to
wear their masks because they can't take their masks off.
(25:24):
I mean, that's their identity, right, I mean right, And
I mean there's no point in them going over there
if they can't wear their mass they are their masks.
So they had to get special permission from the Chinese
government to to wear these things. Well. Oh, by the way,
when I speak of MARTA, I'm talking about the train
system we have here in Atlanta. Yes, okay, Anybody's like,
what do you mean you are in Marta. Who's Marta? Yeah,
(25:45):
that's the train system. Alright. So just just a little
bit of food for thought. Um, the number one indicator
civil unrest lack of money, right, yes, and then of
course resources and political corruption. Now keep in mind that
by thinking about two and a half billion more people, Well,
I don't know, what do you think is gonna happen? Well,
(26:06):
I think, as with any age in the past, there
will continue to be protests, There will continue to be
situations that are worth protesting about. Uh, and hopefully, like
I said at the start of the podcast, will continue
to engage in these type of group activities rather than
open warfare. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, but it's it's a
(26:27):
much better prospect for sure. So there you go. What
do we have in our magic mailbox? I don't know
where's the robot that's always taken breaks? Here you go,
bring us some of that sweet listener mail. All right,
here we go. We have one from a listener by
the name of Jen. Jen writes in UH and says, Hello,
(26:48):
Robert and Julie. I hope this finds you Well. I've
been listening to your podcast for about half a year,
and I've loved every single one. That's that's great. I
even I haven't loved every single one. UM, I know
I love every single one. I have loved all of them,
from one I want to talk about. Okay, UM. I
now look forward to my long commutes because I get
to listen to your entertaining and insightful conversations. I think
(27:10):
that's why your podcast really stands out for me. You're
not just delivering information UH to your listeners, but you
are actively engaging with it and picking apart of some
quite complimented topics for us. Thank you for hours of entertainment.
It takes my mind up of how much I'm standing
on GAS as a graduate student researching medieval gender in
women's history, which is pretty exciting. I particularly appreciated your
(27:31):
October eleventh podcast on evolution of and the Orgasm war UM.
I apologize for this being late. My pod broke and
I only just replaced it, so I was listening to
two months worth of podcast last week. Ideas about the
nature of the female orgasm, especially in regard to its
UH necessity or lack thereof, for conception, was a topic
of interest for doctors, church officials, and court officials. Alike
(27:55):
in the Middle Ages. In fact, it had rather tragic
consequences for a number of women throughout the period. Um
galenic medicine, The dominant theory throughout the Middle Ages held
the female orgasm wasn't necessary requisite for conception. It was
widely believed that women also produced sperm during intercourse, and
it could only be released if the woman had enjoyed herself. Consequently,
(28:17):
a woman in the Middle Ages who was the victim
of a rape resulting in pregnancy had no legal recourses
in many areas of Europe. Her pregnancy belied her enjoyment
of the encounter, which inherently singled her consent to the act. Well,
that was a bummer anyway, thank you once again for
your wonderful podcast, and I'm sorry that my gratitude prompt
need to tell you some really sad history. You guys
(28:38):
rule best gen Well, that's awesome. That yeah, very interesting
and certainly kind of sad, rather insight but I mean
that's that's exploring anything about the Middle Ages. What's true true,
But it is uplifting in the sense that if you
think that the female orgasm is still a mystery, just
look back down and say, ah, the understanding is is
a little bit better there. Yeah, you gotta love the
(29:00):
middle Age. So I'm excited that we have a listener
who is steeped in medieval lore. Yeah, well, especially in
gender issues. All right, Robot, hand me another one. Here
we go, Um Jim right then and says, hi, guys,
your mind. Slash Art show reminded me of an exhibit
I saw a few years ago. I took my then
eight year old son to the Moment in New York
City on a school holiday. They had a really cool
(29:22):
temporary exhibit. It contained something like sixty four small works
of art in sequential order. The concept of this exhibit
was that each work related to the to the next one,
uh the one next to it. For example, a Rubik's
cube was next to a drawing of a Rubik's cube,
which was next to a drawing of a cube shaped building,
which was next to a round building, et cetera. At
(29:42):
one place, we came across a photo of rocks. Then
there were rocks displayed as a sculpture. Then the rocks
were on paper, Then there was paper, then shredded paper,
then some scissors, ah, rock paper scissors. The exhibit came
with a brochure which identified the works and artists, but
there were no details about how the pieces related. This
was up to the viewer. The last several items were
(30:04):
a dangling bear light bulb that talked a set of
phrases out of out of any meaningful context, a film
projector a vintage photo from the balcony of a nine
era movie theater, a sign that said the end. And
finally you had to check the brochure for this one,
but the rooms built in exit sign was the final piece.
(30:24):
It was a really cool and fun to walk through
the exhibit with my son and figure out the connections. Well,
that's that's interesting. I've gotten to to look at some
art with Nissan nephews and uh and it is interesting
too to sort of prod young minds on and see
them inspired by kind of figure out what art is about.
And then, as we discussed in the podcast, it's one
(30:46):
of the amazing things about art how it engages in
their brain on both conscious and subconscious levels. Yeah, it
was that quote from Picasso, something like he you know,
he could draw like Rembrandt, but it took him, but
you know, his whole lifetime to draw like a child
or think like a child. I guess that's what he
was saying. Um, so, yeah, that's really cool And I
(31:07):
love the idea that it's this cumulative work that you
content like, your your perception is forced to reevaluate each
piece that you're seeing as a whole. Pretty trippy. Yeah. Well, hey,
if you have anything trip you would like to share
with us, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
We are blow the Mind on both of those and uh,
we we find update both of those fees with all
(31:29):
sorts of cool links, uh, both the stuff that we're
working on and stuff we've done and you know, podcast stop,
but also just cool things we find around the net.
And certainly you guys are invited to share that kind
of stuff as well. On more than one occasion, something
you guys have shared with us has turned around and
ended up being a podcast episode all and you can
always send us your thoughts via email at blow the
(31:51):
Mind at how supports dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
House to work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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