The Life Aquatic

The oceans cover the majority of Earth's surface -- that's quite a bit of potential real estate. But what would it be like to live as an underwater denizen? Can people even do it safely? Tune in as Julie and Robert fill you in on life beneath the waves.

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Episode Transcript

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.
This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, have
you ever raised sea monkeys? I have? Yeah, Well are
you disappointed? Um? Yeah, a little bit, But I think

(00:24):
I was more intrigued by the atmosphere that they were
living in, Like that seems really magical. Well on the package,
it looks magical because it shows these little creatures living
and they have like a little undersea kingdom, and then
you expect that to take place to up and it
doesn't really happen. Now it doesn't, but I was taken
with that. I thought, oh yes, finally, Well, like like

(00:45):
growing sprouts is I find that to be far more satisfying.
And at the end I have, like something delicious put
on a sandwich. Sea monkeys not that delicious, No, not
at all. Yeah. There are a species of brine shrimp, right, yeah,
I mean not to take away them as stake here,
but yeah, yeah they're not. They're not actually you know,
hominid's in any way, shape or form. Yeah, tiny seaman.

(01:07):
But according to their packaging, they are a true miracle.
Of nature. Yes, well, I mean everything is really but
but you know there's uh these undersea kingdoms that they had,
like it, like it really captured my imagination. I think
a lot of people's imagination is because because there's something
like in the Psyche that just wants to see underwater cities. Um.

(01:29):
I guess it's just the like the just impossible nature
of it, the sort of topsy turvy world aspect of it.
Well yeah, I mean if you think about it geographically,
it is like the Earth turned upside down or not
the Earth, but that what we see there as land lovers. Um,
So why wouldn't you want to hang out in that

(01:49):
submerged mountain range? Yeah? And it's you know, it's the
mystery of it too, like the what's underneath the water?
You know, and see some fish something that looks kind
of like a mermaid. Yeah, and then there's a whole
tranquil thing. Yeah. Yeah, and you know it's like your
wait list and it's yeah, it's uh so it's it's
a it's an idea that's been exploring in a number
of times, like just to run through like a few

(02:10):
of the famous ones, like in in myth you have
the Lost Cities of s and Atlantis. Yes, um, yes,
yes you do. Oh. I thought you're correcting because I
wasn't exactly sure how to pronounce because it looks kind
of like yees and it and it's I thought it
was pronounced like S, but it could be yes, the
city of Yes. Yes, no, I was just agreeing they
are mythic. You have the City of Rapture in the

(02:31):
Bioshot games. You have Lions in the War and War
Gods of the Deep. You have the Lost City of
Atlanta and Futurama. Did you ever see that one? It's
like the city of Atlanta, which where we're podcasting from,
is completely submerged and people live in it. Oh my goodness,
I'm gonna have to seek that one out. And uh,
it's not I mean, it's it's like an outsider's critique. Okay,

(02:55):
I was gonna say, does it have Marta, Does it
have like like for underground Atlanta. Yeah, because an insider's
view of the Lost City of Atlantis, I think would
would be a lot more interesting, at least to Atlanta,
because what happens to Marto when it's when it's submerged,
it's still late. Yeah, you have of course, uh uh
sub Diego of Aquaman. You have the city of and

(03:17):
I'm never sure pronounced this, even though I've read Lovecraft
numerous times. We have the city of really really a yeah,
I know I've always wondered yea, yeah. I always just
think of it as like Caulu town, you know, yeah,
right yeah? And then uh, and then you have you
have like various like mechanical underwater cities that have popped up,

(03:38):
like um, I like or not or not always cities,
but sometimes just habitats. I have anyone who's seen any
of them. Like the late nineties, I feel like it
was when we had just tons of underwater base underwater city,
uh situation showing up in the films you have like
the Abyss, you had Deep Star six, you had the
Leviath than the Lords of the deep Water World water World?

(04:00):
Did they ever go into what I've never seen water World?
I haven't either actually think that they not having seen
it though, um, I think that they just created like
a bunch of floating areas, floating cities. So nonetheless they
were on the water. Well, they were on the water.
They might have had stuff, yeah, slightly. I bet they
took a swim every once in a while. Yeah, in

(04:22):
the unfilmed sequel maybe, But but but anyway, outside of
the realm of myth and fantasy and science fiction, we
we've actually looked into this, uh through through a number
of experiments, and it's an idea that continues to capture
the imagination and it and often ends up spilling over
into a scientific inquiry. Yeah. And it seems to me

(04:45):
like like the nineteen fifties saw a really big fascination
with us and that this has some parallels with space colonization. Yeah,
the same sort of idea where we could enter this
mysterious um quiescent space and live our lives in a
completely different way. Yeah, and he goes back like anytime
you look at like the like the Walt Disney you know,

(05:06):
I've got Center Visions of Tomorrow or you know, the
World of Tomorrow, and it was, you know, it was
always like we're totally we're gonna do it, guys. We're
gonna have cities on the moon, We're gonna we're gonna
live underwater and cities. I mean, it was just this
since that same sense of optimism that that you know,
that told us that with science at our side. You know,
the stars are ours and it's you know, so of

(05:28):
course the ocean is also within our grass. Of course.
Of the funny thing now is it's driven by pessimism,
I think, because it's like, well, hm, we're really eating
up all the natural resources here and taking up a
lot of land. Maybe we should explore the oceans a
little bit more. Maybe that's possible to live underneath them. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
where it's like, oh, well, the the environment is not

(05:48):
going too hot. Everything's gonna be underwater anyway, right, so
can we make it everything float or make it just
all waterproof? So New York City. Maybe it's just a
chain of little lisle ins and underground pods. Who knows.
So one of the first that really comes to mind,
like like when when this is when people were actually like,

(06:09):
let's let's do it. Let's let's try it out. Because
on the on the surface, on the on the surface
of things, like the idea sounds pretty simple, you know,
if you if you're not familiar with any of the
the science involved, just like, well, let's just build something underwater.
You know, you saw it's air tight, pump some air
down to it, and people will live in it, right,

(06:30):
will be like the chunnel. Yeah, but it's it gets
a lot more complicated than that. And when one of
the the main guys who is really looking into this
UM in the late fifties or like sixties was of
course Custo. So wait, oh, I thought you were okay,
I thought you're gonna do more of a French tech
on Custo because I feel like I'm not getting the

(06:52):
proper Okay, it's just one syllable is that I don't
know anyway, not my forte jacqu Custos. Let's try your
more Italian see okay? Um. But Jacquesto had the con
Shelf project and this was a series of three underwater

(07:15):
habitats that they explored and and it it gets right
into the idea of the aquanot, which is like the
astronaut except underwater. Basically it's just going down for an
extended period of time and adapting to the pressure. UH
scuba divers living and operating both inside and outsider and underwater. Right,
and to be in a specific about and we're not
talking about David Blaine like doing some sort of like

(07:36):
seventeen minutes done under the water. Um, but it's more
about someone living in an underwater habitat or using storm
sort of device for twenty four hours or more in
order to explore the area around him or herself. Yeah,
the first one of these that Jacques Cousteau and company
pulled off was con shelf one. And this is two.

(07:56):
And this is just off the cop the coast of
France near Marcellus. And uh, they just went down about
they went down thirty three ft ten and this is
this thing just looks like a big steel, yellow barrel
about sixteen ft five meters long, you know, uh, eight
ft two point five meters in diameter. And it was

(08:17):
a you know, it's like a home laboratory. Two guys
in there one week, thirty people observing from the surface,
monitoring these guys health, um and uh. And they'd leave
the two for five hour shifts to study see life
work on an underwater farm, which sounds fabulous and uh
and and and again they're just like they weren't actually like,

(08:39):
all right, you know, we got to you know, get
a crop going this week. It is you know, it's
more like, let's let's observe what would happen if we
actually did have people down on the you know, the
bottom of of of the of the ocean working on something.
Let's let's look at their vitals. Let's see how they're doing. Right,
And it's a really practical solution to right, because they
don't have to decompress, they don't have to worry about
coming up. Um, so if they're able to hang out

(09:01):
there for a while, then they can you know, a
mass a lot of data, look at it, continue to
go out, so on and so forth. Yeah, because just
just without getting to a whole lot of depth about
the about the bins, but you go down to certain
you go down to certain depths, you have more pressure
and that causes the gas and the breathable air to
dissolve into your flesh, right, the nitrogen. Yeah, and if

(09:23):
you surface too fast, you get nitrogen bubbles, which can
be exceedingly painful or fatal. So which means, you know,
the longer you stay down, the longer you need to
come back up. Yeah. Right, And it was originally called
the Grecian bend, by the way, the Grecian Yeah, I
don't know what maybe they attributed like bending to the Grecians.
I don't know, they observe people bending over. Oh, Wow.

(09:46):
So it's actually like you would come up and just
be bent over, Yeah, doubled over. And I know that.
So Concheff one was a success there. You know, it's
just sort of like, let's test it out. Let's see
because this hadn't really been done before. You know, you
have guys going down the submarine. Sure, you know, you
had people have been diving under water to catch fish,
and and you know in Jacques Cousto, certainly it's spent

(10:09):
a lot of time developing you know, you know, scuba
aqualung technology. But but this was a real first Yeah.
I mean it's pretty groundbreaking and um even though it
was basically like a low tech uh sort of, it
was like a shipping container. Basically, it's low tech in
in terms of what we think of today. But and
you you look at images from the inside and it
looks like two dudes living in a big barrel. Like
it looks kind of it looks rugged. It's not yes,

(10:31):
socks everywhere, it's not pretty. Yeah, it's not very Steve
z sue. It's just like like guys living in a barrel. Um.
So so that this was a success, so they're like,
let's try something a little more ambitious. Let's um, let's
actually maybe leave you know, our French backyard here and
and you know, improved that we can do this in
a in a in a more exotic location. So they

(10:52):
went to the Red Sea and uh and and and
went down this time again ten meters in uh thirty
three ft and con shelf two had like three different facilities,
basically two main facilities. There was a starfish house, which
doesn't look at so much like a starfish, but it

(11:13):
had like a central hub and like these little areas
come sticking off from the side. Um, when we do
a blog post for the round up for these podcasts
for this week's podcast, I'll be sure to you know,
throw a link to a couple of good sites that
have lots of cool images of these. But but yeah,
they the main starfish house contained crew quarters, bathroom facilities,

(11:33):
a dining area, a laboratory. So suddenly everything's at everything
is a lot more life aquatic, a lot more you know,
like we think of as an undersea base and less
like a barrel right there, thinking more esthetically now, yeah,
and next the next door to this, they have a
structure that they call the aquarium, which was basically a
garage for the fly for the diving saucer vehicle that

(11:55):
they had, which you know, cool little submersible unit UM
for zooming around underwater uh an equipment hangar. And then
they also had a complex called Deep Station, which was
located UM eight eighty two feet deep, so it was
you know, it's like you know, it was even deeper
than than the main station. And this is a hat
and a habitat filled with oxygen helium mixture, with the

(12:18):
inhabitants divers leaving the habitat to do daily work below
one sixty feet. Okay, is this the one that they
spent a month in? Yes? Yeah, five Yeah, five m
aqua nuts or ocean knots would live Frenchy. No, I
really think that. Yeah, they call uh five. Five of

(12:38):
these guys with one or of gals. I think they
were all guys in this though, would live for a
month in the Starfish base. Two of them would spend
a week in the Deep Station. And once more project
was successful and Custo began talking about a third project. Yeah,
and again I see the parallels here between this and space. Right,
Like there's you completely isolated, You're with very few people.

(13:03):
I mean that even though they they've gotten a little
bit more pimped out here, you're it's still esthetically like
not like it is at home. The comfort level it
is isn't as great. And you have to wonder about
the psychological ramifications of this too. Yeah, just basic. I mean,
it's like you get down to the basics of humans
need sunlight, and the deeper you go, the less sunlight
there is, you know, a weird habitat plus being like

(13:25):
soggy all the time. That's gotta it's gotta chief. Yeah,
to say nothing of the athletes foot or maybe it's
called con shelf foot um with those in the new Yeah.
But but actually, you know, we talked about the space expiation.
A lot of the data that came out of this
and other experiments in the in the early sixties. I mean,

(13:45):
it was stuff that they could they were able to
apply to contemplating, you know, the habitats in the orbit.
This presensation is brought to you by Intel sponsors. Tomorrow.

(14:06):
Now we're up to and this is con Shelf three,
the third and final um underwater habitat. And this was
like the Oldman. This was like a large yellow and
black six person sphere which was lowered to a depth
of oft. So the crew lived on con shelf three
for three weeks, venturing out each day to work in
a mock up oil well and uh, you know, just

(14:27):
to you know, test their ability to you know, to
leave this thing and work and then come back. And
again it was a success. They were they were able
to show that, yes, we can put people down there
on you know, at a at a considerable depth, and
they can they can actually operate and work within this
you know, this time limits. So right, and actually U
three hundred feet is is the norm, right for what
we usually go down to in terms of depth that

(14:50):
we have access to. Yeah, yeah, because otherwise than you
get down into the really cool extreme a file territory,
so to speak. Yeah. So this was really pushing personal
the envelope um. At the same time, the U. S.
Navy was interested in this too, and so they had
the Sea Lab programs, which this is one of the
reasons I did not mention s Lab one earlier because

(15:11):
I didn't want to confuse the issue. But this is
the actual sea lab, not to be confused with any
cartoon uh some sixty four Sea Lab one. And this
was this was very like the Sea Lab like con
Shell rolled out in three phases, very similar. Sea Lab
one was a you know, windowless red ciland cylinder had

(15:32):
four guys in it eleven days performing physical biological experiments.
Uh um. You know they were doing stuff with like
ultrasonic beacons and anti shark cages again just to see
how they performed. And this is off the off Panama City, Florida.
And then they they moved it about twenty six miles

(15:53):
southwestern Bermuda and tried it out two hundred feet and
it was a success. So they did Sea Lab two
in sixty five and this was this was out in
San Francisco, and they had ten men depth of two
hundred feet thirty days. Uh. There was another cylinder type situation.
So it wasn't as cool. I mean, it's just me,

(16:13):
but it's not as cool looking as they cond shelf too.
But that too, was was bigger, looked kind of like
a little submarine. And and they they conducted you know,
physiological psychological studies. Yeah, that's what I think is interesting
about this party. They took a lot of what they
learned from conch off right because cont originally I think
was was pitched to them, and they said no, and

(16:35):
coast and they do their own thing. Yeah, Jacosta said,
I'll take it on. So it's what I think is
interesting about Sea Lab is that they really are looking
at this like the psychological strains and the physiological strains
on the person as well. Yeah, and the number of
experiments that they did on Sea Lab two was actually
pretty cool, like that they just really threw a lot

(16:55):
of task at these guys, Like, uh, they were evaluating
the struck full engineering at the habitat they worked up on.
They work on the mock up for a submarine hole.
They tested undersea tools, they used uh um, like like
foam to raise an old Navy jet fighter to the surface.
They experimented with plants um and they also experimented with

(17:18):
a trained porpoise named Toughie to do quote courier work
between the habitat and the surface. Um so tough uh
and Tofy was trained, uh yeah, trained to respond to
a buzzer and uh, Toffy would apparently did a pretty
good job of bringing them male tools and bottles of soda,

(17:40):
which I don't know, it sounds kind of demeaning, but no,
but I mean there's part of that part of that
sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, who
hasn't trained their dog to probably get them a beer?
Will not me because I don't have a dog, But
it's always seemed like a good thing to do. Has
the cat been able to succeed in that yet? Okay,
we'll keep working now. I mean he's he's working on

(18:02):
bigger projects. Yeah, that he can't discuss with me. Well. Sadly,
Sea Lab three UM, which was similar to see Lab two,
just kind of like more robust. Uh. It ended up
being kind of a disaster unfortunately, And this was February nine.
They lowered it down to the ocean floor off off
the coast of California. They sent four divers down to

(18:23):
repair hey, helium leak on Sea Lab three, and enduring
the attempt, one of the divers died, apparently of carbon
dioxide asphyxiation. Yeah. Yeah, so they were concerned about their
safety and they just shut it down. I mean this
is the rub right, the CEO two problem. Yeah, I mean,
this is this is obviously why we can't um colonize
oceans like you for the oceans, I suppose, UM, but

(18:47):
that doesn't mean that we don't continue to try and
build really like macked out stuff like the trilobus. Oh yeah,
this one's really um, really awesome looking. Uh. This particular
submersible habitat was the cover story for Popular Mechanics back
in two thousand two, so you may have seen it there.
I'll throw a link up to the to the website.

(19:09):
It has the images so cool. It's really really I
dare say, boss, Yes, you know it looks like like
James Bond villain should be living in it and feeding
people to sharks. Um, it's true. And it's it's like
a sphere, right yeah, it's got different levels. Yeah. Um,
it's very like retro to me. At the same time,

(19:30):
it kind of looks like a like a space clam
that lives. It's it's it's really cool, but the clam
part being like the the where the windows are and yeah,
and it has like lots of areas you know, for
uns set by the set by the window and observe
you know, fish and dolphins swimming by. Yeah. Yeah, I
mean it's it's definitely for the godfly of the seas,

(19:51):
right um. And it's got a spiral staircase connecting all
four levels. Yeah. So it's neat. We'll see if it
ever actually gets built, but the designs out there. Yeah.
What I like about it too is that they say
that the shape allows for modular aggregation, creating colonies if
you'd like. So, I mean to me, I think of
it as like this super futuristic suslito. You know, these

(20:12):
sort of they're not houseboats but necessarily, but these communities
they kind of like hook up and yeah. Right, you
can have like a whole community of trilobus if you'd
like trilobi um and and there then there, of course
is We've we discussed this a little bit in Life
on the five Floor. But you have you have Hydropolis,

(20:35):
which is the planned underwater skyscraper in Dubahi, right yeah,
and it's this time right now. It's I think it's
still in the works a k a. Being crushed by
the economy, so I don't know where they are in
the process, but it does sound like this completely crazy

(20:56):
super fly. Of course, this is in Dubai, right, so
it's it's not going to be a junkie star sure, um,
but it includes a shopping mall, restaurants, movie theater, and
my favorite, the missile defense system. All sixty ft underwater.
But you know, the economy has been rough on everybody,
so in Goodbye, they just send to be like, all right,
we're gonna tighten the belt. We're just gonna build the
largest skyscrapers that have ever been erected on the planet. Uh,

(21:20):
and we'll just we'll just hold off on building underwater
skyscrapers that are protected by a town of weapons, right exactly.
But what I like about this is that, you know,
a poor man's Hydropolis is the Jewels Undersea Lodge Um,
which is named after the author of Two Leagues under
the Sea, and that is actually the world's first underwater hotel.

(21:43):
And it was originally built in the seventies as a
research lab off the coast of Puerto Rico, and it
was relocated to Key Largo in eighties six and opened
its hatch to the public then. But it's twenty one
ft under the sea and you have to scooba dive
to get to it. So unlike Hydropolis, which they plan
to have like this crazy clear glass um tube that

(22:06):
shoots you underneath. It's like in Futurama where they have
these these tubes these shoot people like pneumatic tubes that yes, yeah, yeah,
and supposedly it is supposed to be in the shape
of a jellyfish or resemble a jellyfish. I don't know
really how that works, but that seems like more like
a subway system to me. Yeah, maybe they can work

(22:26):
and making the overall design even more ambitious, right right,
or they could you know, save some money in stream land. Um.
So you know, they're there are different ways that you
can get at living undersea if you'd like, you know,
if you are the gadfly about town. One of the
interesting things we're looking at the other day too, is
that you have the National Science Foundations Ocean Observations Initiative.

(22:52):
It kind of forces you It's it's a really really
kind of it's a complex, multi scale observatory plan where
you have uh it's like, you know, everything from like
this very regional observations uh of of the undersea environment
to kind of interconnect into a global um it's kind
of like putting spy cameras. Like the very rough explanation

(23:14):
is like let's put spy cameras and sensors automated on
the ocean floor. Let's have you know, automated submersible sort
of going on patrol and checking out conditions. Right, Let's
collect data on every single thing we could collect data on,
and you know, let's run fiber optic um lines all
over the place, like you said, cameras, Let's have platforms

(23:36):
that we can observe, submersibles, anything and everything. Because the
idea is that the entire world can benefit from better
knowing its oceans and that we can help to predict
climate change. Um, we can look at the population of
uh species and really better understand what's going on because
right now, I mean the ocean is largely unknown to us. Again,

(23:59):
parallel to space, um, I mean, you know, it's covering
more of the world. So it does kind of make
you say, okay, that that seems like it might be
a good idea. Yeah, And it's an interesting parallel of
the space too, because like both visions of us, you know,
moving under the ocean and moving into into the cosmos,
Like it was very much tied with the scientific exsporation.

(24:19):
We're gonna go down there and figure out how things work.
We're gonna go up there and and and figure out
what space is all about. And eventually that the technology
reaches the point where We're like, well, we can actually
do that easier without you know, trying to tackle all
these problems involving how to take a fragile human being
that's that's designed to live in a certain layer of

(24:40):
the Earth's atmosphere. How are you going to you know,
create the technology to safely send that into orbit or
into you know, pressurized depths when we can just send
robots instead, and and you know, and the idea is
understanding what's going on down there, so you know we
can This is a classic example. I mean, it's a
lot like robotic probes, you know, it's it's we can

(25:00):
do this without necessarily sending people down there, right right.
And the the oceanographer John Delaney, who's heading up the
team working on this, he was actually saying, I mean,
he wasn't saying this was the holy Grail, but I
was thinking about as the holy grail in the sense
um that it's a quest to better understand our world.
But not only that, that beneath the on the ocean floor,

(25:23):
there's all this biomass tied up living in microbes. Um
they're living in the sea cracks are but no beneath
the floor, and the total amount of biomass living at
the surface of Um. The ocean floor actually exceeds that
of the planet's surface. So his idea is, could it,
you know, could it be the next rainforce in terms

(25:44):
of potential pharmaceuticals And that's that's the holy grail element
that I think that is really enticing, but also you know,
could be a red herring. Yeah, I mean, you know,
it would be really interesting to defind out what sort
of bacteria is there and could it be useful to us. Now,
the flip side of that is, OK, when you start
to interrupt ecosystems, because presumably there would be some level

(26:06):
of interruption when you're laying on the cable, which we've
done a lot anyway, UM and you have all these submersibles,
you know, what is it doing to the oceans? Yeah,
because I mean, on one level, it's like we're already
laying We've been putting a lot of crap down there
for riches, and you know, we're erecting you know, oil
rigs and and and everything else. But you know, this

(26:28):
would be for a much more positive purpose. But still
you're laying laying a lot of cable. You're you know,
you're you're putting a lot of machines out there. Stuff
is gonna you know, there's gonna be a certain amount
of litter that's gonna Yeah, and if you're if you're
going to try to map the entire ocean with sonar,
what is that going to do to the population of
you know, dolphins? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we already have examples

(26:50):
of of a certain like navy and certain Navy sonar
techniques that are interfering with with with certain types of
whales and dolphins right in the breedy and and yeah, yeah,
they're getting it's I guess it's sort of confusing them
in terms of what they're perceiving from the sonar. So
there's that question. I mean, it really is intriguing to
to be able to find out more. And what if

(27:11):
there is a sort of rainforest at the bottom of
the sea for us, a mermaid kingdom and we or
you know, or you know, or we've discovered the los
city of Atlantis and we took them off with our
robots and they attack us. It could happen. Well, if
you're like Richard Branson, you just get into your submersible
and use zoom away. And I'm not kidding. Oh, you know,

(27:33):
I keep forgetting that he has a submersible. I end
up end up reading far more about his interest in
space and right again, here we go. He can't help
himself either space and um in the ocean. It's called
the neck or nymph. I know it's a I mean
the name, I'm sorry, but the Necker part is Necker Island,
which he owns, his private island. And the nymph part,

(27:56):
I suppose its supposed to be a scene nymph um,
but it can dive to depths of up two hundred
and thirty feet and he hopes to one day explore
depths of thirty five thousand feet plus. Um. But it
can carry a pilot in two visitors, it can go
on a two hour trip and uh after you have
to of course be um fluid in the in the

(28:16):
language of scuba diving in order to do this. I
guess there's a legal protocol or something. But the nymph
is available for higher dollars a week. It just sounds
like a like some sort of a pleasure barge, just
the nymph. I know, Richard Branson, come on, I mean yeah,
I mean, that's what do you expect, um, But just

(28:37):
in case, you're wondering it does have fighter jet technology,
because you know, it's just in case you do come
across Atlantis. So, I mean, I don't know. All this
sort of bears out the question of of, uh, what
do we do into the oceans? Who even owns the oceans?
Jeoff Clark has an awesome article on that, and do
a search on the House Opports homepage and find that yeah. Um,

(29:01):
and and will we ever permanently have human occupation of
the sea floor? I don't think so, but it can happen.
We'll see, We'll see, well, I mean we won't see.
We'll be dead, but somebody will see. Why I'm laughing
about that. You know. Well, Hey, we have some listener
mail here, and the first one actually uh corresponds with

(29:24):
the theme of this podcast. We recently did an episode
on accessorizing to make a to make us more than
human and one of the technologies that we covered was
the dolphins suit, which you wore for that podcast. Ye
kind of uncomfortable, Yeah, but it hit at the y. Yeah.
I bet uh So Richard uh a listener by the

(29:46):
name of Richard since this end, He says, Hi, I
recently bought these and he throws a link to something
called the Dark Thing. No, I'm sorry, dark Thin Gloves.
I think it's dark fingloves, but it's Dark thin glove
dot com. Not sure if I will ever use them,
but I thought they were they were really cool and
priced well enough that I should own them, just to

(30:07):
say I own them. Maybe I'll freak my daughter out
at bathtime or something. So if you, if you go
to the website and did you have a chance to
look at these, no, I haven't. All right, Well there
they're they're black webbed gloves and they kind of look
like a creature from the Black Lagoon hands and uh
and and I think would make an interesting companion to
those toe shoes that people were, all right, yeah, yeah,

(30:30):
I don't know how I feel about that. Actually, uh,
I've I've heard mixed things. Well, I mean, I think
toes are a separate issue into themselves. I'm not quite
sure that you should define them with toast sock shoes. Yeah,
but yeah, that's for another podcast, I suppose. But but
now these are these look pretty cool. I mean they
look kind of creepy and would I think would be
ideal for creeping somebody out at bathtime? Um? But but

(30:52):
also I mean it's like he's just adding webbing to
improve you know, you know, your speed. And I wonder
too if, like I don't. I try swim semi regularly,
and I find it like holding my hand together to
make a like a like a scoop, a scoop just
to swim with like end up, my fingers feel kind
of sore the next day. And it makes sense because
you're you're flexing your muscles and your your hands and

(31:14):
your fingers. Yeah, but it freaks you don't normally go
around like that all day long, right, Well, yeah, I
just in case I need to karate ch out somebody,
right right, So I'm just constantly and then I have
to type. So but yeah, it's dangerous in these halls.
You never know, you never know. But it makes me
makes me wonderus, like, should I just look into having
something that like holds my fingers together, so I'm that
straining to create that scoop, I don't know, I think,

(31:35):
so yeah, I should probably do a searching. I mean,
keep in mind, you have to type, you don't want to,
you know, Yeah, these are the moneymakers, exactly. I can't
I can't depend just on podcasting. That's right, those babies
are insured. Yeah. So anyway, Richard, thanks for sending that in.
They are pretty cool. And that's again. That's Dark Thin
Gloves dot com. They have cool pictures. You can check

(31:57):
them out. We also received an email from the listener
by the name of Derek and Uh. He responded to
our In a recent podcast we mentioned or I mentioned
how Atlanta shows up in The Walking Dead and has
all these like a post apocalyptic looking locations, despite the
fact that the the the film doesn't take that far

(32:19):
in the future. So it's you know, it's like Atlanta
is pretty post apocalyptic looking already if you look in
most of the right places. Uh. And uh anyway, he
just wrote in to say, um, I took to point
out that says, quote, well, hopefully Atlanta doesn't look quite
as supposed to apocalyptic as it does in The Walking Dead. Uh.
It does. Um, that's not the reason it was chosen
for the filming. The actual reason for it is that

(32:40):
the series is based in a long running comics series
by Robert Kirkman, and in the comics, Uh, that was
one of the major cities that was thrown out there
to the living as a strong home stronghold before it
fell to the zombie, So he just was clearing that up.
And he also said, apart from that, this was really interesting.
He's talking about the Life on the five Floor episode. Uh,
the concepts of virtual farming are mind blowing. So I

(33:03):
think I'll be sad if I live to see the
day when people live their entire lives in the same building.
The loss of cross culture and social creation would be
a very interesting thing to study. Though isolated pockets of
individuals whose influence is based off of what would essentially
be isolationism and a futuristic internet social network, the psychological
and sociological discussion would be endless. Yeah, seriously, And I

(33:26):
mean that that begs a question about whether or not
we'd have tribes within these these buildings, these living platforms.
We all have different tribe and different buildings. It would
be or entire to like different cultures in each building,
like warring with each other. Well in gene pools too, Yeah,
you have you have you basically have different Maybe you'd
reach to the point where like you have building a
building beat and like they can't even like breed. Wow. Well,

(33:50):
instead of identifying yourself as American or Australian. You say
I'm building a Yeah, Now tell me like Roomy and
Juliet didn't. That wasn't part of the thing that everybody
lived in like sort of ancient skyscrapers to a certain extent,
like they if I remember that correctly, they lived in
felt like that that region had sort of tall buildings
and everybody, every each family would have like a building.

(34:12):
I don't recall. I mean there's definitely a balcony in
that so maybe so Yeah, all I'm saying is futuristic
Romeo and Juliet one species living in Building A, one
species and living in Building B. Who's going to write it? Um?
I don't know. I'm throwing it out. Maybe me, maybe
you the listener. Send it in when you get it

(34:32):
done next three weeks would be kid. Yeah, And if
you want to send us anything else, you can certainly
come to visit our Facebook or Twitter pages. We are
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(34:54):
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(35:14):
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