January 27, 2011 • 37 mins
The Werewolf Principle: Will astronauts of the future be able to adapt their physiology for long-term space travel and life on other planets? In this classic STBYM episode, Robert and Julie explore the ideal physical modifications that could theoretically create the world's best astronaut. 'The Werewolf Principle' cover image by artist Ian Miller
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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 this is Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
There is a book I read a little while back
and it's referencing the title to this podcast, Um, The
Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simmic, and uh, I found
(00:27):
it really interesting. It's not perhaps not Simmac's best work.
He's and he's probably best known for a book called City,
which one Hugo Award. But it's kind of like they
came up to the Clifford, you know, really established a
sci fi dude, and they said, hey, we want you
to write, um a novel about wherewolves from space? And
(00:49):
then he set out and like wrote the most intelligent,
interesting take on that concept possible. Of course, instead of
it just being werewolves landing and running around howling it things, um,
it involved all yeah yeah, which gets into the interesting
argument that I've always wondered. It's like, what if what
would happen to be a a werewolful handed on the moon?
Would they be aware a wolf all the time? Would
(01:10):
they be affected by what the Earth was doing? Would
they be howling all the time. Yeah, yeah, interesting. But
but the Clifford, the Simcs, the whole take was that
he decided to make this a person who had been
engineered to adapt to different environments and sent off into space.
So he goes to if you were to land on Mars,
his body would rapidly change so that he could, you know,
(01:32):
live on Mars um et cetera. And anyway, he's returned
to Earth and he's he keeps changing into these previous forms,
and that's the basics. There's also something really like that,
like humans live in houses that can fly around and there,
and they're brownies like little um creatures that live in
the woods. So isn't he like two hundred years old
or something by the time he returns. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(01:55):
so he's got a he's got a lot of living. Yeah,
but it's a it's such a forming but at hard
it's such a fascinating concept because, uh were we still
talk about terraforming a lot. We talk about I mean,
one of the basic models of space flight is let's
take a little bubble of our environment and let's blast
it up into into orbit. Because we are ultimately we're
(02:17):
creatures that can that are that have evolved to live
only in a very small region of our own atmosphere,
just a small portion of the Earth's crust. Because of
the crust also, some definitions includes the atmosphere. So so
we're only really supposed to live in this one little section.
But we keep pushing the boundaries. You know. We want
(02:37):
to climb out everest. We want to to to live
in space, and then we want to have our little
environment when we're in orbit. We want to turn Mars
into Arizona. Uh, you know, and uh and and and
and and you see these fantastic science visions, um, where
we've gone out and done that to all these different
worlds where we we just find, you know, exoplanet after exoplanet,
(02:59):
change it into Florida, change it into Vacationville, right right, Um,
we're looking at you, Richard Branson. But and then you think, okay, well,
I mean fish, they're not doing this. They're not saying, wow,
I wish I could live on land, right and have
these gills. You know, how do I come up with
some sort of lung situation here? Right? They they ended
up evolving, adapting over time and uh, reaching the point
(03:23):
where they where something could not return to the water,
and so you you run into this interesting argument of
what should we be doing to evolved to our setting
and as opposed to changing our setting to to to
adhere to our demands? Right, And of course the astronaut
is like the perfect specimen to look at this whole
(03:44):
argument with, right, Yeah, yeah, it's because they're not very
ideal in terms of trying to actually explore space, right
and nothing against them, yet our humanness getting in the way. Well,
that's actually a good place to start, like what is
the ideal astronaut given what we currently know about you
know about about sending people into orbit? Um. One of
(04:05):
the more interesting things is that you want somebody with
ideal methane output? Of course. Yeah. And of course, for
I think we all know what I'm talking I'm talking
about farts of course in space. And when you see ideal,
I think you mean minimum minimum um. Yeah, because at
first of the methane is uh, it's flammable, So you
don't want you have a closed environment. You don't want
(04:27):
like a lot of gas going off in there and
potentially catching on fire while guys are carrying off you know, experiments, etcetera.
Plus this the whole psychological thing. If you're going to
be stuck in a spacecraft for six months, you don't
necessarily want to be gas and people out right right right.
There's a gavin name of Edwin Murphy, and he did
some he conducted some research on this. Uh and this
(04:50):
is this is really interesting. It was it was there's
a whole chapter dealing with with this topic. And Mary
Roach's U latest book, UM about Mars and the space
the space program. So Murphy used an experimental bean meal
and he fed it to volunteers who had been rigged
to a rectal catheter uh to uh and and to
to measure how much gas was going out. Uh and
(05:12):
he was he was interested in the individual differences, not
just the the overall volume, but in you know, the
percentage of of methane in the game in the the
the flattest. I believe it's the technical term for it,
because if you're writing a scientific you know, um, discussion
on something you don't want to just you know, keep
(05:33):
saying the farts art doesn't cut it and search cheese
joke here. Yeah, uh so, um, but what he found
it was really interesting. Uh. He found out that about
half the population doesn't produce methane in there. Um. I
thought that was incredible because it was something about like
their their bacterial flora. Yeah, it's and it's great, and
(05:53):
it's important to know. The methane itself is like a
it's not methane doesn't stink. There are other things that
work in one's digestion decides methane production. Um. So it's
not something where you can where where these people are
not creating or uh you know, emanating or express expressing flattist,
(06:14):
though he did apparently claim that one he found one
individual who was quote flattist free, which just sounds I
just I don't I didn't even think that was possible.
I mean, can you imagine, I mean you could put
that on your resume. Yeah, I mean people would or
would they hate you? I don't know, I would kind of.
I would feel like like if someone if I was
in a position to hire somebody to be like, oh,
by the way, I'm flattist free, I'd be like, well,
(06:36):
I'm not hiring you, jerk. You're gonna just make us
look bad. Yeah, yeah you're right. Yeah we could never
blame anything on you. Yeah, I just can't. It would
happen in like the dude we just said there, all
smug like and just it would be horrible. Ye, but
you could always be an astronaut. Yes, being an astronaut
would be great because because there wouldn't be any concerned
(06:57):
with methane at all. Um. So, Murphy's whole argument was, Hey, NASA,
you need to focus on getting astronauts who have the
proper um um flattest output for space you want. You
want people that are that are producing the less hostile
flattest and only those people. Everybody else you're you're out
of the pool. Yeah. And then NASA was like, no,
(07:18):
we're just gonna not serve beans, that's right, No cabbage,
no broccoli. I think we're going to get the go
the easier route. Yeah. And and actually this guy to um,
if I understand this correctly from Mary Ridges book, he
was like a flattest researcher. Like he was employed as
a flattest reacher researcher, and only a flattest researcher. This
was his life work. Yes, yeah, so you can imagine
(07:41):
why he took it so seriously and and didn't he
even uh insert the rectal cathe Yes, she actually talked
about that the rectal catheter. Yeah, I mean it's we're
we're laughing, but it's you know, it's a it's an
important area of study if you're talking about sending guys
up in gals up into space in this little, a
tiny environment. But it's but this is cost It's also
(08:03):
like one of the first like real you know moments
like which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna
gonna change our environment? We're gonna change us? And this
was a chance to not really change us, but to
you know, selectively choose. And I mean granted, there there
are you know, minimal requirements for for astronauts and and
uh members of any you know, space program, stuff like um,
(08:26):
you know, you know, eyesight, blood pressure height, um. You
know obviously that they tend to go for people who
have at least a bachelor's degree and some sort of
science or yeah. So and and you have to have
kind of a happy, go lucky disposition, right. Yeah, And
even like space tourism, most of the models we're looking at,
even the ones like you know, even like the Branson's
(08:47):
whole whole space tourm tourism deal, as as much as
they're going to try and cater that to to make
make it available to everybody. Uh, the certain people are
just not going to be eligible to go into space.
So people who have a fear fly right, I think,
are going to be cut off the list. Yeah. But
but this is a case where where NASA could could
either have have have said, yes, we're gonna go after
(09:07):
the people who who have minimal flat us you know
in our methane producers. Um, and they said no, we're
gonna change the meal plant. So it's so practically so
so other areas that the Mary roach brings up. Bone mass,
of course is a big deal. You're gonna lose bone
mass if the more you're in a in a in
a microgravity environment. Yeah. And actually that I mean it's
(09:30):
the staff that I saw in that was astronauts lose
one to two percent of their bone mass for each
month they spend in space. That's quite a bit. Yeah.
And uh and and but but the interesting thing is
that black women, for instance, are seven to percent denser
in their bones than than than white or Asian women.
And uh, of course Mary didn't have the have the
(09:51):
data for men, just for the women. And I assume
that's tied to osteoporosis research. But but conceivably um black
men would also have better bone density than wider Asian men.
So so it ends up creating an interesting argument there
should we only be using um minimal flat us black astronauts,
(10:14):
you know, why not? Why not? Yeah, if they're they're
gonna be more suited for space. And you can take
this even one step further, and then it's that maybe
they should all be deaf because because you know, if
anybody's ever had motion sickness, be it on a boat,
in the car, etcetera, you know, it's you get kind
of nauseous. Next thing, you know, you're throwing up into
the into the floorboard of the vehicles, right, And it's
(10:36):
an inner ear thing. And people used to think it
was tied to the stomach, but it's not. Yes, tied
inner ear and uh and and many people argue that
it's kind of a mistake of evolution because vomitings, as
much as we may hate it, does serve a number
of really key functions. You know, you eat something and
it's bad, it's poisonous, you barf it up, start over
um and and actually animals that don't vomit I mean
(10:59):
that becomes a problem because if they eat something they
should eat a belief horses are like this, Uh, they
eat something they shouldn't eat, they can't vomit it up.
It's it's you know, it's more of a it becomes
a real problem with huge amount of discomfort. Right, Yeah,
because like with kids, right, if a kid eats something
they're not supposed to, A child, not a goat. If
a child eat something that he or she is not
(11:19):
supposed to, you can always there's the vomiting, right, you
can give them epicacue or something. Right. Uh. And I'm
thinking about this too, like this is sort of accident
of nature, right, because whatever controls our vomiting response is
near our inner ear function or something along this. I'm sorry,
I don't have the correct terminology, but I sort of
scan that remembering. Okay, So that's why we sometimes vomit
(11:40):
because we're Yeah, but it serves no evolutionary prop prob
you know, there's no reason for it. It's like I'm
feeling kind of motion sickness, and my body's like we
have to vomit now, you know, there's no Yeah, it
serves no like evolutionary advantage. Um. So the only way
to act completely get rid of motion sickness is is
for the human have a non functioning inner ear. And
(12:03):
uh so you we can see within go for deaf people.
So all black deaf astronaut crew with minimal flattus, all right,
I mean it could happen. I guess The problem is
is that you just keep narrowing the pool to the
point where it's probably harder and harder to get astronauts
right unless you create and this is I'm throwing this
out there is like a future kind of thing, and
(12:24):
and and kind of a potentially scare eugenics kind of thing.
But like then you create a breeding program, right, just
for astronauts, just to encourage the traits. I mean, we
do it. We've done it with dogs, and of course
that has some horrible effects and many times. But conceivably,
it seems to me you could you could have a
breeding program similar to the you know, like something out
(12:45):
of Dune where you're just breeding for ideal astronauts. And
and so it's like a genetic, you know, hereditary thing.
You create an entire cast or subspecies of astronauts. I know,
and I'm just thinking now, like the Island of Misfits
and rud Off red nose reindeer in the elf that
wanted to be a dentist. Like there might be that
person that's bred to, you know, do this and gets
(13:06):
you know what, I really want to go to space? Thanks? Yeah,
but then then you have to sit down with and
be like like, but dude, listen, listen like you well,
don't listen, like read the words writing because you're deaf,
because we bread for that. Uh. You know it's like
your your death, your bone density is incredible, your you
have no methane when you when you when you break wind,
(13:28):
like this is this is for you. But they're like, no,
I really really want to be an artist, but what
do you do? Right? This presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So so there's that that
(13:48):
viewpoint like what if we so you know, step one,
we we only choose the people that are ideal for space,
and then okay, we can take that a step further.
What if we we bred people for space? Uh? But
then then the next step is what if we engineered
people for space? What if we made them um ad
or made them better, we adapted them for space into
(14:09):
the cyborg. Yes, um, and like a simple version of
it would be like if you just made people death
before we sent him into space, which is kind of horrifying.
But I'm not sure a lot of people go for that.
They might, I don't know, but there are a number
of interesting changes that could that could take place that
would be less scary, though some of them are pretty scary. Um.
So let's look get the cyboard and now that this
(14:32):
is a term that is preloaded these days, because when
when when I say cyborg, what do you think of? Well,
I think of the Terminator, but I think he's technically
he was more of a robot covered with flesh, with flesh.
Darth Vader. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was pretty cybernetic
in his state. Um, RoboCop perhaps a cyborg. I'm I'm
(14:54):
kind of foggy on the explanations in the first two movies,
but but yeah, you get this idea. It's like a
human being that has been augmented terrifically or terrifyingly with machines.
Six million dollar, six million dollar man Is is a
prime example on the cyborg. Yeah. But but again, this
is kind of a tern that's been taken by by
science fiction and and just sort of they run wild
(15:14):
with it. So now you just think of like man
with half metal face kind of thing. The term actually
originates back in nineteen sixty September of nineteen sixty in
uh an edition of Astronautics, and this was an article
by men Manfred E. Kleins and Nathan S. Klein UH
one with a C, the second with a K, and
(15:35):
it was titled Cyborgs in Space and it's a great read.
I'll have to throw up a link to it on
the the accompanying blog post when this podcast comes out. Um,
but they they may they just made he may they
make the huge argument that, like here's just a quote
from it. It It really sums it up. In the past,
evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit
(15:55):
different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible
to achieve this to some degree with out alteration of
heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications of man's
existing um bodies. So and so, what I thought was
kind of cool about this too is that it's not
necessarily that they felt like they were changing humans, but
(16:17):
that they were improving humans. So that they could explore more,
and they could have more independence to to create more
and to think more if they if they weren't um
burdened by their own physicality. Right, and you in de
leading people make the argument that the cyborg has been
around for ages. Right, the second that we skinned an
animal and started wearing its fur cyborg. Second with the
(16:39):
second we strapped a wristwatch to our to our arm
cyborg dentures exactly, yeah, yeah, how are you going to
chew you know, throw the denters in? You've augmented the
individual with technology to better enable them for their environment.
You've become something more than human. Right and and certainly
we went into a number of these possibilities on the
previous uh Accessorizing podcast about you know, if somebody can
(17:04):
wear flippers, they're gonna they're gonna swim faster. Um. You
know we we wear about computers, are you know our
our iPhones? It's like there's there's so much technology. Eyeglasses, contacts, um, lasers.
These are all examples of something where technology changes the
person to better suit them for their environment. You may
think of it it's just your everyday life, but your
everyday life is here on Earth, But what if the
(17:26):
everyday life was in space? So clients and client took
that and then they looked at all the problems facing
us and trying to exist in space or explore space.
And I thought that the solutions they came up with
were incredible. I mean, they're they're really creative, and they're
really interesting ways to to approach the problem. Yes, And
(17:47):
I have to tell you though, to like reading this,
I thought, this is this is so crazy, like this
is the Madman era. Can you imagine them like sitting
in a cocktail party saying, well, I've got an idea
about this whole problem of the lungs in space. Yeah,
or I mean it reminds me a little bit. In
Mary Roach's book, she talks about like when you would
have scientists, the scientists that designed space travel and the
(18:10):
jock astronauts that would do it, like setting in the
same room and the and she pointed out how that
the scientists would be like, you know, we could develop
a way for the for them to actually eat parts
of the ship on the return trip from Mars. And
maybe there's a way we can make it to where
they can eat eat pooh or something, you know, it's
like they're actually beginning to think along those lines. And
the astronauts were like, no, no no, no, no, we're not
(18:32):
doing that, because it's something about like the scientific mindset
when you really get into it from a just a
a pure purely logical problem solving, uh, you know, frame
of mind. So so there's a hint of that, more
than a hint of that in this in their original article,
because it's some of the possibilities are a little uh uh,
you know, they make you shake your head a little,
(18:53):
but but but they're but the logic of it is
is interesting and intive. For instance, they pointed out that
we could have osmotic pressure pump capsules UM and sensing
and controlling mechanisms in our bodies like implanted to give
us medications for blood pressure to give us basically speed
if we need to to stay awake UM, which you
(19:16):
know they have various medications on space UM any kind
of a space mission these days, but you generally have
to pop the pills yourself. But what if it was
an automatic thing? And that's one of the huge key
um aspects of of what was basically cyborg one um
as outlined in this proposal and that was that we
were taking these different things and turning them over to
(19:38):
subconscious functions, right. Yeah, So it wouldn't be like like, oh,
I'm getting a little sleepy and I've got a high
pressure job ahead of me. I better uh you know,
pop some of this uh this NASA speed Uh No,
you would just it would just kick in ums all
these sensors that are taking the data and recalibrating your
body based on that. Yeah. And and other things too
(19:58):
in this situation, like any radiation medications, uh, pituitary drugs
to help induce hibernation. That was a big key too,
because you get into the issue of how are you gonna,
you know, worry about sending people on long space voyages
where you know they're gonna be they're going to be
setting around doing nothing for you know, years. What if
you could we could learn something from bears. Uh, well,
(20:20):
bears don't technically hybernate, I remember correctly. It's a different Well,
I think that they are interested in bears. It's something
that when they hibernate, they're actually redistributing the calcium back
to their bones or something nuts like that, that which
they thought, well, if we could just replicate that in
humans that would be great. Yeah, yeah, because bears are
sitting around doing nothing for for the period of their
(20:42):
of their their winner and app time. But they're not
they're not losing a bone in their bone in density
and their their muscles. They can still walk at the
end of it. The human laid in bed for X
number of months, he or she would not necessarily be
able to move when we got it when they woke up.
And the crux of the problem too that yeah, you
can you might have muscle atrophy atrophy, but you can
(21:04):
get your muscles back afterward, right, And you'll have some
bone loss, but you may not be able to recoup
actually all of the bone density that you lost in
particularly um the area in your hips. So if you're
an astronaut and you reach retirement age, then it's not
a great scenario for you because that's like the number
one thing that happens to people are older years is
that they fall and break their hips. So it's actually
(21:26):
like a real problem with yeah, yeah, totally. Here a
few other things from the Cyboard paper. They suggested replacing
the lung with an inverse fuel cell um, altering your
intestinal plumbing so that don't love ye waste water goes
through a filter and right back into your blood, which
which this is one of those where you can just
(21:47):
imagine it coming up in the in the Madman air
where it's like, you know, we're wasting a lot of
water when we go to the bathroom. I think we
can we can probably pump that through a filter right
back into the bloodstream. Yes, yes, And to your point
too about redistributing the poop so to speak. There's a
quote from the paper that says sterilization of the gas
show intestinal tract plus intravenous or direct intra gastric feeding
(22:11):
could reduce fecal elimination to a minimum, and even this
might be reutilized. So yes, to your point, they're absolutely
thinking about this eating your own Well, well that's kind
of the you're putting the dark spin on it, but
it'll put the light spin on it, minimizing and hate.
You know, I'm a dreamer one day eliminating pooping, just
(22:31):
completely get rid of it. What a world we would
live in? Um So, I mean that would most assuredly
be the death knail for the newspaper industry, right um.
The of course, the whole idea of like a recycling
like urine. Of course, we're already doing that in space.
(22:52):
We we have water filtration systems and and and and
of course everybody has the the idea of the still
suit from in the Dune novels, you know, the idea
that you could pee in the suit and it would
turn back into water. So um, So some of the
ideas are like I would not be opposed to wearing
a still suit to you know, or or two or
someone said hey, this this water was P an hour ago.
(23:12):
I'd be like, well, you know, a lot of water
was P at some point, so it's something. But the
whole idea of like we're now gonna re reroute your
intestinal system so that the wastewater goes back into your bloodstream,
that's a little more extreme, but it's an interesting solution. Um.
Let's see a few other ones here. Enzyme tinkering to
create anaerobic organisms, in other words, astronauts that don't require
(23:37):
air or can live in different atmospheres. So that's some
extreme makeover right there. Yeah, And for those types of solutions,
I can't help but think, like, how do you recircuit
that the autonomous part of your body, like your lungs
that want to breathe like and I do. I think
that all of their solutions are really fascinating, but that
(23:59):
to me, those are the st points like that, well,
the humanness part of our body that wants to do this.
How do you shut that off? Um? They to go
back to the inner ear thing and and getting a
little motion sick and weight blessness. They proposed either draining
ear fluid or filling them up. So there you go. Um,
they said, electric slash drug cardiovascular control. They recommended drugs
(24:23):
to preventing a muscle atrophy, which sounds perfectly reasonable except
in their in their argument, would probably just happen on
its own through something implanted in you, which I guess
you would have to get like a refill pack. You'd
be kind of like a printer. I'm thinking on your
back where you have like the cyan and the magenta
and all this. You'd suddenly you get like a little
light would show up and it's like, oh, I'm running
(24:43):
low on anti radiation medicine. Yeah, And I wonder if
there'd be one that would run out the fastest, you know,
because it seems like we're always having to replace Cian
I don't know it's true. Why is that? Yeah, it's
a weird color. But they also recommended lowering body prey
shirt to facilitate better facilitate spacewalks, whereas naked spacewalks. I'm
(25:04):
thinking like, like, basically they're saying we could, we would,
We would just remove some of the necessary functions of
a space suit. So that's that's pretty wild. They also
talked about engineering humans to have a light sensitive, chemically
regulated system that would change their reflecticity. In other words,
(25:25):
you wear you know, you wear a black shirt on
a bright day, you end up being hotter, and more
of that heat you wear a white shirt reflects. So
in space you're gonna have situations where where you need
the heat or don't need the heat, because it can
make a difference between cooking and freezing. Is this the
protective plastic sponge clothing they are talking about, yes, which
(25:46):
sounded a um, sounded like I don't know something in
my attic right. They also brought up anti basically anti
space madness medications, anti psychosis medications, because you're gonna be
up there for a while in this cramp space, you
don't want your fellow astronauts going crazy. Yeah. Yeah, actually,
and I noticed that that drugs were huge part of
(26:10):
the solution here for a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
which makes sense at the time, but I guess, uh,
not knowing as much about the side effects now. Well, well,
the thing is they keep a lot of these type
medications on the spaceship. I have a blog post on this,
which will also link to when I get around and
doing the the accompanying blog post for this. But but
there are a number of different medications that they keep
(26:31):
on on the shuttle. So it's not not just the
idea of using them, but having them where they kick
in automatically, where it's like you start feeling a little
crazy and then you're you're the system that's implanted in
your side like checks you, you know, so you only
feel crazy for a second. Gosh, I need that now.
Oh it's interesting this, uh if I remember correctly. This
(26:52):
features into n M. Banks culture series. We have the
humans have been augmented over time, so everybody has like
all these systems that are either subconsciously or consciously control,
so they can they can feel less psychotic or or
you know, crank up there. They're sort of caffeine level
without actually uh, you know, having something to drink. It's
just actually made me think about this book that I
(27:14):
just read, Super Sad True Love Story. I believe this
is the title, And they talk about everybody has something
called an apparette, which is they wear around their neck
and it basically will tell you every bit of data
about yourself, will communicate it to another person, so you
could feasibly see what my cholesterol level is and you
know whether or not I need to adjust that or
(27:34):
if I even have like little nano robots going through
my blood like cleaning things up, um, as well as
my credit score. It's good stuff, but just reminded me
of that. UM. They also talked about prol using pharmaceuticals
to to have to kick in some prolonged sleep if
you get injured, like they're all deals. Like you're on
your return trip from Mars and you, I don't know,
(27:57):
you step in tote really badly, or more likely you're
jured on a spacewalk, etcetera. You might need to just
be able to put that person under for the ride home.
It might maybe a condition that can't be or an
injury that can't be treated reasonably on the ship. That
was another Hallmark, Yeah, putting people inder and um so yeah,
those are some of the key arguments that they made. Um.
(28:18):
From there, they went on to do a number of
other cyborg studies, where each one dealt with another level
like cyborg to dealt with the manipulation of human emotions
through mental exercises. Um. And and this this one involved
like a lot of hypnosis, like like the idea of
using using hypnosis too, and and I could see like
like meditation being a big thing too. Yeah. They mentioned
(28:38):
yoga too in the paper Yoga in space? Can you
do what here? You will have done more yoga than me.
Could you do yoga without gravity? Yeah? I assume you
could do some of the post is right? Um, I
mean never having done it and then gravity free environment,
I'm not quite sure, but yeah, Like I mean, I
(28:58):
don't know. It seems like the different balance imposes would
be kind of pointless and like down dog. I don't
know this down dog even count if there's no gravity. No,
it doesn't, You're right, I mean, I think you'd have
to have your compression suit on and perhaps you'd have
to do like partner yoga with one person holding you down.
This would be interesting if if anybody out there has
any thoughts and what a micro gravity yoga technique would
(29:19):
consist of of to ask my yoga teacher. Um, so
there's that level. Yeah, maybe I will no, I will
do it. Um maybe alright. So then Cyberg through is
genetic alterations to enhance the human emotional range. Uh Cyberg
four deeper genetic changes and then uh Cyberg five. Ultimately
(29:40):
they were talking about the separation of mind from body. Um,
which you know, if the ideas like, perhaps instead of
sending humans to this hostile environment, you fall back on
the human creation that is best suited for space travel,
the machine. If we could just simply put our consciousness
in it or somehow experienced what the machines exp aaran
sing uh you know, remotely, we could have some sort
(30:02):
of implant that tied into the robots. Are Yeah, like
it more or less an extension of what we're already doing, right,
We just more data. Yeah, we talked a big game,
you know about sending humans to Mars, but ultimately we
can send robots there and we can you know, move
our hands on a keyboard and move things on Mars.
We can we can look through a screen and see
(30:23):
what's happening on marsh and is that technology improves And
I mean it's it's basically like we're there and without
having to worry about how you're gonna feed this person,
how are you gonna keep them alive? How are you
going to you know, tackle the the the huge obstacles
of engineering a person that can survive this environment. That
makes sense to me. I mean, to to do this
sort of uh surveillance that you need, right, to have
(30:45):
nano robots or robots go out and accumulate all that data.
The thing that I think about is what what's missing there?
Is um like the overview effect, right that the reporting
back of the the human part of it. Yeah. So yes,
the that we've talked about this before in a podcast
about overview of fact, that sense of euphoria you get
in this deeper, better understanding of the planet that you
(31:07):
live in. Yeah, Like the Grand Canyon example is great.
Like I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I've only
seen photos of it. It looks really cool in the photos,
but everyone will tell you that's been there that the
photos just don't cut it. That you don't really like
understand the Grand Canyon until you see it, which which
I totally buy because I mean, that's that's how seeing anything,
you know, amazing works. It's like the photo, the video.
(31:28):
You can really capture a moment or a string of moments,
but it's not the same as being there. Yeah. Yeah,
but then you know, I don't know, I think about that. Yes,
robots makes so much more sense. But you know, I've
seems like I've been bringing this up a lot. But
like the exo skeletons we talked about the military is using,
you know, is there a way to combine that technology
(31:50):
as well as the carbon nanotube muscles that they're trying
to create, to to glomb that onto the human too,
to again make them more of this um the cyborg
in reality as opposed to the future that we keep
pointing to. Yeah. So one of the big questions that
comes to mind when we talk about all these different
variations in the cyborg is is that if we change
(32:12):
humans to live in space or live in another world,
at what point are they no longer human? You know?
Like what you know, you get to where you're adding
a lot of hardware, you're genetically altering somebody, and then
you're sending them out and is that a human being anymore?
Is it something else? Is it a subspecies? I don't know.
Paul Davies of Study has actually said that biological intelligence
(32:35):
is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the
evolution of the universe. And so his feeling is that
the supplies to humans and and if there are indeed
in uh, extraterrest extraterrestrial life out there, that it's uh,
it's got to be some sort of machine hybrid mm hmm. So,
and this is an idea that's come up before. Is
(32:57):
aliens Is these more evolved um replications or iterations of
ourselves that are the sort of machine cyborg being. Yeah,
and uh, and it falls back in line with what
we were talking about earlier, Like it comes to like
the like the like say Cyborg five was talking about, uh,
like basically machines with human intellects. You know, it becomes
(33:18):
more of a I mean just again, just look at
what we've sent out. We sent machines. Machines have been
the first to land on on on on Mars, on
on the moon, the first I'm going to be the
first to leave the Solar System. So, so's the definition.
Then if the brain is intact, then we're still human.
But well, I think we would kind of like that
(33:38):
to be the case. But again, we're not just our brains.
It's like we're you know, we're we're a much more
complicated system than that. That's right to bring up the gut.
So anyway, it's an interesting question at what point, at
what point do do have At what point would we
not be human anymore? At what point are we already
not human? Um? There's a stat that and this is
(34:00):
ninety seven which which argued that that ten of the
human population was already a cyborg, just counting like everything
from you know, pacemakers to prosthetics. Two denture's that there
was just a huge, huge population segment of the population
that was already not fully human. And certainly, I mean
(34:21):
if you start counting clothing, like none of us are
except for those those few nutives out there. They're keeping
it real for the for the original humans. We salute you. Yeah,
so that you have it, um, But we're not quite
done with the brain and the gut yet, because we
have a little listener mail speaking of how important it
is that our gut tell us what to do, and
(34:42):
you know what to do. Uh. This is uh from
reader Ryan who writes in about our recent episode about
the gut in the mind, and they said, quote your
episode on stomach on the stomach's influence on the mind
struck my interest in regard to eating disorders. Also, as
a late teen, I had a peculiar and sudden onset
with a few life altering issues like IBS, irritable bal syndrome,
(35:03):
manic depression more and more mannic than depressive, frankly, which
can be very destructive, he adds UM and eventually a
very long about with anorexia, which initiated as a coping
mechanism with the ib S. The IBS almost completely subsided
by my early twenties, but the anorexia persisted, and it
really felt like I didn't have control over my own body.
I often compare it to how a heavy substance substance
(35:26):
addiction must feel. I dedicate a lot of insight into
eating disorders because they are so misunderstood, stood as being
a fueled by vanity, which just isn't the case, not
always anyway. With these new insights on how much the
stomach affects the mind, I'm excited to see what this
will mean for the underlying uh and treatment of eating
disorders on the whole. I mean, I'm sorry for the
(35:47):
understanding and treatment. UH. And again that was from our
reader Ryan, which I think is really interesting because that
is what neuro gastontologists are pointing to. Are there. They
are saying, like, is the gut of the problem here?
Is that the the one that is mentally unstable in
sending all these signals up to the brain and confusing matters, right, Um,
so you gotta you gotta look out for that one.
(36:08):
It's going to be big news here. And UH. On
a lighter note, UH. In response to the same episode,
Kevin writes and it says, just reassuring your podcast by
saying that I probably listen to my gut more than
I listened to my brain, because every time I listen
to my brain it leads me in the wrong direction.
But when I listened to my stomach, I generally have
a better time here here. Yeah, you know, And I
(36:31):
think it's interesting. As we started out this podcast talking
about Flattiste, We've just close the circle with the guts.
There's no avoiding it. As much as we you know,
we we would like to, we haven't reached that point
where we have engineered the humans that no longer um
um unit flattis or poop. So that's right now, sttological
(36:53):
free humans. Yeah. So hey, if you have anything to
add to that, and certainly if you're the one one,
or or or very few of one of the very
few individuals out there who is flattest free um, do
let us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter,
where we are blow the Mind on both of those.
We won't shown you. We promised, no, we won't. We
(37:14):
won't shown you. You can also send us an email
at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey this is Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
There is a book I read a little while back
and it's referencing the title to this podcast, Um, The
Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simmic, and uh, I found
(00:27):
it really interesting. It's not perhaps not Simmac's best work.
He's and he's probably best known for a book called City,
which one Hugo Award. But it's kind of like they
came up to the Clifford, you know, really established a
sci fi dude, and they said, hey, we want you
to write, um a novel about wherewolves from space? And
(00:49):
then he set out and like wrote the most intelligent,
interesting take on that concept possible. Of course, instead of
it just being werewolves landing and running around howling it things, um,
it involved all yeah yeah, which gets into the interesting
argument that I've always wondered. It's like, what if what
would happen to be a a werewolful handed on the moon?
Would they be aware a wolf all the time? Would
(01:10):
they be affected by what the Earth was doing? Would
they be howling all the time. Yeah, yeah, interesting. But
but the Clifford, the Simcs, the whole take was that
he decided to make this a person who had been
engineered to adapt to different environments and sent off into space.
So he goes to if you were to land on Mars,
his body would rapidly change so that he could, you know,
(01:32):
live on Mars um et cetera. And anyway, he's returned
to Earth and he's he keeps changing into these previous forms,
and that's the basics. There's also something really like that,
like humans live in houses that can fly around and there,
and they're brownies like little um creatures that live in
the woods. So isn't he like two hundred years old
or something by the time he returns. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(01:55):
so he's got a he's got a lot of living. Yeah,
but it's a it's such a forming but at hard
it's such a fascinating concept because, uh were we still
talk about terraforming a lot. We talk about I mean,
one of the basic models of space flight is let's
take a little bubble of our environment and let's blast
it up into into orbit. Because we are ultimately we're
(02:17):
creatures that can that are that have evolved to live
only in a very small region of our own atmosphere,
just a small portion of the Earth's crust. Because of
the crust also, some definitions includes the atmosphere. So so
we're only really supposed to live in this one little section.
But we keep pushing the boundaries. You know. We want
(02:37):
to climb out everest. We want to to to live
in space, and then we want to have our little
environment when we're in orbit. We want to turn Mars
into Arizona. Uh, you know, and uh and and and
and and you see these fantastic science visions, um, where
we've gone out and done that to all these different
worlds where we we just find, you know, exoplanet after exoplanet,
(02:59):
change it into Florida, change it into Vacationville, right right, Um,
we're looking at you, Richard Branson. But and then you think, okay, well,
I mean fish, they're not doing this. They're not saying, wow,
I wish I could live on land, right and have
these gills. You know, how do I come up with
some sort of lung situation here? Right? They they ended
up evolving, adapting over time and uh, reaching the point
(03:23):
where they where something could not return to the water,
and so you you run into this interesting argument of
what should we be doing to evolved to our setting
and as opposed to changing our setting to to to
adhere to our demands? Right, And of course the astronaut
is like the perfect specimen to look at this whole
(03:44):
argument with, right, Yeah, yeah, it's because they're not very
ideal in terms of trying to actually explore space, right
and nothing against them, yet our humanness getting in the way. Well,
that's actually a good place to start, like what is
the ideal astronaut given what we currently know about you
know about about sending people into orbit? Um. One of
(04:05):
the more interesting things is that you want somebody with
ideal methane output? Of course. Yeah. And of course, for
I think we all know what I'm talking I'm talking
about farts of course in space. And when you see ideal,
I think you mean minimum minimum um. Yeah, because at
first of the methane is uh, it's flammable, So you
don't want you have a closed environment. You don't want
(04:27):
like a lot of gas going off in there and
potentially catching on fire while guys are carrying off you know, experiments, etcetera.
Plus this the whole psychological thing. If you're going to
be stuck in a spacecraft for six months, you don't
necessarily want to be gas and people out right right right.
There's a gavin name of Edwin Murphy, and he did
some he conducted some research on this. Uh and this
(04:50):
is this is really interesting. It was it was there's
a whole chapter dealing with with this topic. And Mary
Roach's U latest book, UM about Mars and the space
the space program. So Murphy used an experimental bean meal
and he fed it to volunteers who had been rigged
to a rectal catheter uh to uh and and to
to measure how much gas was going out. Uh and
(05:12):
he was he was interested in the individual differences, not
just the the overall volume, but in you know, the
percentage of of methane in the game in the the
the flattest. I believe it's the technical term for it,
because if you're writing a scientific you know, um, discussion
on something you don't want to just you know, keep
(05:33):
saying the farts art doesn't cut it and search cheese
joke here. Yeah, uh so, um, but what he found
it was really interesting. Uh. He found out that about
half the population doesn't produce methane in there. Um. I
thought that was incredible because it was something about like
their their bacterial flora. Yeah, it's and it's great, and
(05:53):
it's important to know. The methane itself is like a
it's not methane doesn't stink. There are other things that
work in one's digestion decides methane production. Um. So it's
not something where you can where where these people are
not creating or uh you know, emanating or express expressing flattist,
(06:14):
though he did apparently claim that one he found one
individual who was quote flattist free, which just sounds I
just I don't I didn't even think that was possible.
I mean, can you imagine, I mean you could put
that on your resume. Yeah, I mean people would or
would they hate you? I don't know, I would kind of.
I would feel like like if someone if I was
in a position to hire somebody to be like, oh,
by the way, I'm flattist free, I'd be like, well,
(06:36):
I'm not hiring you, jerk. You're gonna just make us
look bad. Yeah, yeah you're right. Yeah we could never
blame anything on you. Yeah, I just can't. It would
happen in like the dude we just said there, all
smug like and just it would be horrible. Ye, but
you could always be an astronaut. Yes, being an astronaut
would be great because because there wouldn't be any concerned
(06:57):
with methane at all. Um. So, Murphy's whole argument was, Hey, NASA,
you need to focus on getting astronauts who have the
proper um um flattest output for space you want. You
want people that are that are producing the less hostile
flattest and only those people. Everybody else you're you're out
of the pool. Yeah. And then NASA was like, no,
(07:18):
we're just gonna not serve beans, that's right, No cabbage,
no broccoli. I think we're going to get the go
the easier route. Yeah. And and actually this guy to um,
if I understand this correctly from Mary Ridges book, he
was like a flattest researcher. Like he was employed as
a flattest reacher researcher, and only a flattest researcher. This
was his life work. Yes, yeah, so you can imagine
(07:41):
why he took it so seriously and and didn't he
even uh insert the rectal cathe Yes, she actually talked
about that the rectal catheter. Yeah, I mean it's we're
we're laughing, but it's you know, it's a it's an
important area of study if you're talking about sending guys
up in gals up into space in this little, a
tiny environment. But it's but this is cost It's also
(08:03):
like one of the first like real you know moments
like which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna
gonna change our environment? We're gonna change us? And this
was a chance to not really change us, but to
you know, selectively choose. And I mean granted, there there
are you know, minimal requirements for for astronauts and and
uh members of any you know, space program, stuff like um,
(08:26):
you know, you know, eyesight, blood pressure height, um. You
know obviously that they tend to go for people who
have at least a bachelor's degree and some sort of
science or yeah. So and and you have to have
kind of a happy, go lucky disposition, right. Yeah, And
even like space tourism, most of the models we're looking at,
even the ones like you know, even like the Branson's
(08:47):
whole whole space tourm tourism deal, as as much as
they're going to try and cater that to to make
make it available to everybody. Uh, the certain people are
just not going to be eligible to go into space.
So people who have a fear fly right, I think,
are going to be cut off the list. Yeah. But
but this is a case where where NASA could could
either have have have said, yes, we're gonna go after
(09:07):
the people who who have minimal flat us you know
in our methane producers. Um, and they said no, we're
gonna change the meal plant. So it's so practically so
so other areas that the Mary roach brings up. Bone mass,
of course is a big deal. You're gonna lose bone
mass if the more you're in a in a in
a microgravity environment. Yeah. And actually that I mean it's
(09:30):
the staff that I saw in that was astronauts lose
one to two percent of their bone mass for each
month they spend in space. That's quite a bit. Yeah.
And uh and and but but the interesting thing is
that black women, for instance, are seven to percent denser
in their bones than than than white or Asian women.
And uh, of course Mary didn't have the have the
(09:51):
data for men, just for the women. And I assume
that's tied to osteoporosis research. But but conceivably um black
men would also have better bone density than wider Asian men.
So so it ends up creating an interesting argument there
should we only be using um minimal flat us black astronauts,
(10:14):
you know, why not? Why not? Yeah, if they're they're
gonna be more suited for space. And you can take
this even one step further, and then it's that maybe
they should all be deaf because because you know, if
anybody's ever had motion sickness, be it on a boat,
in the car, etcetera, you know, it's you get kind
of nauseous. Next thing, you know, you're throwing up into
the into the floorboard of the vehicles, right, And it's
(10:36):
an inner ear thing. And people used to think it
was tied to the stomach, but it's not. Yes, tied
inner ear and uh and and many people argue that
it's kind of a mistake of evolution because vomitings, as
much as we may hate it, does serve a number
of really key functions. You know, you eat something and
it's bad, it's poisonous, you barf it up, start over
um and and actually animals that don't vomit I mean
(10:59):
that becomes a problem because if they eat something they
should eat a belief horses are like this, Uh, they
eat something they shouldn't eat, they can't vomit it up.
It's it's you know, it's more of a it becomes
a real problem with huge amount of discomfort. Right, Yeah,
because like with kids, right, if a kid eats something
they're not supposed to, A child, not a goat. If
a child eat something that he or she is not
(11:19):
supposed to, you can always there's the vomiting, right, you
can give them epicacue or something. Right. Uh. And I'm
thinking about this too, like this is sort of accident
of nature, right, because whatever controls our vomiting response is
near our inner ear function or something along this. I'm sorry,
I don't have the correct terminology, but I sort of
scan that remembering. Okay, So that's why we sometimes vomit
(11:40):
because we're Yeah, but it serves no evolutionary prop prob
you know, there's no reason for it. It's like I'm
feeling kind of motion sickness, and my body's like we
have to vomit now, you know, there's no Yeah, it
serves no like evolutionary advantage. Um. So the only way
to act completely get rid of motion sickness is is
for the human have a non functioning inner ear. And
(12:03):
uh so you we can see within go for deaf people.
So all black deaf astronaut crew with minimal flattus, all right,
I mean it could happen. I guess The problem is
is that you just keep narrowing the pool to the
point where it's probably harder and harder to get astronauts
right unless you create and this is I'm throwing this
out there is like a future kind of thing, and
(12:24):
and and kind of a potentially scare eugenics kind of thing.
But like then you create a breeding program, right, just
for astronauts, just to encourage the traits. I mean, we
do it. We've done it with dogs, and of course
that has some horrible effects and many times. But conceivably,
it seems to me you could you could have a
breeding program similar to the you know, like something out
(12:45):
of Dune where you're just breeding for ideal astronauts. And
and so it's like a genetic, you know, hereditary thing.
You create an entire cast or subspecies of astronauts. I know,
and I'm just thinking now, like the Island of Misfits
and rud Off red nose reindeer in the elf that
wanted to be a dentist. Like there might be that
person that's bred to, you know, do this and gets
(13:06):
you know what, I really want to go to space? Thanks? Yeah,
but then then you have to sit down with and
be like like, but dude, listen, listen like you well,
don't listen, like read the words writing because you're deaf,
because we bread for that. Uh. You know it's like
your your death, your bone density is incredible, your you
have no methane when you when you when you break wind,
(13:28):
like this is this is for you. But they're like, no,
I really really want to be an artist, but what
do you do? Right? This presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So so there's that that
(13:48):
viewpoint like what if we so you know, step one,
we we only choose the people that are ideal for space,
and then okay, we can take that a step further.
What if we we bred people for space? Uh? But
then then the next step is what if we engineered
people for space? What if we made them um ad
or made them better, we adapted them for space into
(14:09):
the cyborg. Yes, um, and like a simple version of
it would be like if you just made people death
before we sent him into space, which is kind of horrifying.
But I'm not sure a lot of people go for that.
They might, I don't know, but there are a number
of interesting changes that could that could take place that
would be less scary, though some of them are pretty scary. Um.
So let's look get the cyboard and now that this
(14:32):
is a term that is preloaded these days, because when
when when I say cyborg, what do you think of? Well,
I think of the Terminator, but I think he's technically
he was more of a robot covered with flesh, with flesh.
Darth Vader. Yeah, I think Darth Vader was pretty cybernetic
in his state. Um, RoboCop perhaps a cyborg. I'm I'm
(14:54):
kind of foggy on the explanations in the first two movies,
but but yeah, you get this idea. It's like a
human being that has been augmented terrifically or terrifyingly with machines.
Six million dollar, six million dollar man Is is a
prime example on the cyborg. Yeah. But but again, this
is kind of a tern that's been taken by by
science fiction and and just sort of they run wild
(15:14):
with it. So now you just think of like man
with half metal face kind of thing. The term actually
originates back in nineteen sixty September of nineteen sixty in
uh an edition of Astronautics, and this was an article
by men Manfred E. Kleins and Nathan S. Klein UH
one with a C, the second with a K, and
(15:35):
it was titled Cyborgs in Space and it's a great read.
I'll have to throw up a link to it on
the the accompanying blog post when this podcast comes out. Um,
but they they may they just made he may they
make the huge argument that, like here's just a quote
from it. It It really sums it up. In the past,
evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit
(15:55):
different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible
to achieve this to some degree with out alteration of
heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications of man's
existing um bodies. So and so, what I thought was
kind of cool about this too is that it's not
necessarily that they felt like they were changing humans, but
(16:17):
that they were improving humans. So that they could explore more,
and they could have more independence to to create more
and to think more if they if they weren't um
burdened by their own physicality. Right, and you in de
leading people make the argument that the cyborg has been
around for ages. Right, the second that we skinned an
animal and started wearing its fur cyborg. Second with the
(16:39):
second we strapped a wristwatch to our to our arm
cyborg dentures exactly, yeah, yeah, how are you going to
chew you know, throw the denters in? You've augmented the
individual with technology to better enable them for their environment.
You've become something more than human. Right and and certainly
we went into a number of these possibilities on the
previous uh Accessorizing podcast about you know, if somebody can
(17:04):
wear flippers, they're gonna they're gonna swim faster. Um. You
know we we wear about computers, are you know our
our iPhones? It's like there's there's so much technology. Eyeglasses, contacts, um, lasers.
These are all examples of something where technology changes the
person to better suit them for their environment. You may
think of it it's just your everyday life, but your
everyday life is here on Earth, But what if the
(17:26):
everyday life was in space? So clients and client took
that and then they looked at all the problems facing
us and trying to exist in space or explore space.
And I thought that the solutions they came up with
were incredible. I mean, they're they're really creative, and they're
really interesting ways to to approach the problem. Yes, And
(17:47):
I have to tell you though, to like reading this,
I thought, this is this is so crazy, like this
is the Madman era. Can you imagine them like sitting
in a cocktail party saying, well, I've got an idea
about this whole problem of the lungs in space. Yeah,
or I mean it reminds me a little bit. In
Mary Roach's book, she talks about like when you would
have scientists, the scientists that designed space travel and the
(18:10):
jock astronauts that would do it, like setting in the
same room and the and she pointed out how that
the scientists would be like, you know, we could develop
a way for the for them to actually eat parts
of the ship on the return trip from Mars. And
maybe there's a way we can make it to where
they can eat eat pooh or something, you know, it's
like they're actually beginning to think along those lines. And
the astronauts were like, no, no no, no, no, we're not
(18:32):
doing that, because it's something about like the scientific mindset
when you really get into it from a just a
a pure purely logical problem solving, uh, you know, frame
of mind. So so there's a hint of that, more
than a hint of that in this in their original article,
because it's some of the possibilities are a little uh uh,
you know, they make you shake your head a little,
(18:53):
but but but they're but the logic of it is
is interesting and intive. For instance, they pointed out that
we could have osmotic pressure pump capsules UM and sensing
and controlling mechanisms in our bodies like implanted to give
us medications for blood pressure to give us basically speed
if we need to to stay awake UM, which you
(19:16):
know they have various medications on space UM any kind
of a space mission these days, but you generally have
to pop the pills yourself. But what if it was
an automatic thing? And that's one of the huge key
um aspects of of what was basically cyborg one um
as outlined in this proposal and that was that we
were taking these different things and turning them over to
(19:38):
subconscious functions, right. Yeah, So it wouldn't be like like, oh,
I'm getting a little sleepy and I've got a high
pressure job ahead of me. I better uh you know,
pop some of this uh this NASA speed Uh No,
you would just it would just kick in ums all
these sensors that are taking the data and recalibrating your
body based on that. Yeah. And and other things too
(19:58):
in this situation, like any radiation medications, uh, pituitary drugs
to help induce hibernation. That was a big key too,
because you get into the issue of how are you gonna,
you know, worry about sending people on long space voyages
where you know they're gonna be they're going to be
setting around doing nothing for you know, years. What if
you could we could learn something from bears. Uh, well,
(20:20):
bears don't technically hybernate, I remember correctly. It's a different Well,
I think that they are interested in bears. It's something
that when they hibernate, they're actually redistributing the calcium back
to their bones or something nuts like that, that which
they thought, well, if we could just replicate that in
humans that would be great. Yeah, yeah, because bears are
sitting around doing nothing for for the period of their
(20:42):
of their their winner and app time. But they're not
they're not losing a bone in their bone in density
and their their muscles. They can still walk at the
end of it. The human laid in bed for X
number of months, he or she would not necessarily be
able to move when we got it when they woke up.
And the crux of the problem too that yeah, you
can you might have muscle atrophy atrophy, but you can
(21:04):
get your muscles back afterward, right, And you'll have some
bone loss, but you may not be able to recoup
actually all of the bone density that you lost in
particularly um the area in your hips. So if you're
an astronaut and you reach retirement age, then it's not
a great scenario for you because that's like the number
one thing that happens to people are older years is
that they fall and break their hips. So it's actually
(21:26):
like a real problem with yeah, yeah, totally. Here a
few other things from the Cyboard paper. They suggested replacing
the lung with an inverse fuel cell um, altering your
intestinal plumbing so that don't love ye waste water goes
through a filter and right back into your blood, which
which this is one of those where you can just
(21:47):
imagine it coming up in the in the Madman air
where it's like, you know, we're wasting a lot of
water when we go to the bathroom. I think we
can we can probably pump that through a filter right
back into the bloodstream. Yes, yes, And to your point
too about redistributing the poop so to speak. There's a
quote from the paper that says sterilization of the gas
show intestinal tract plus intravenous or direct intra gastric feeding
(22:11):
could reduce fecal elimination to a minimum, and even this
might be reutilized. So yes, to your point, they're absolutely
thinking about this eating your own Well, well that's kind
of the you're putting the dark spin on it, but
it'll put the light spin on it, minimizing and hate.
You know, I'm a dreamer one day eliminating pooping, just
(22:31):
completely get rid of it. What a world we would
live in? Um So, I mean that would most assuredly
be the death knail for the newspaper industry, right um.
The of course, the whole idea of like a recycling
like urine. Of course, we're already doing that in space.
(22:52):
We we have water filtration systems and and and and
of course everybody has the the idea of the still
suit from in the Dune novels, you know, the idea
that you could pee in the suit and it would
turn back into water. So um, So some of the
ideas are like I would not be opposed to wearing
a still suit to you know, or or two or
someone said hey, this this water was P an hour ago.
(23:12):
I'd be like, well, you know, a lot of water
was P at some point, so it's something. But the
whole idea of like we're now gonna re reroute your
intestinal system so that the wastewater goes back into your bloodstream,
that's a little more extreme, but it's an interesting solution. Um.
Let's see a few other ones here. Enzyme tinkering to
create anaerobic organisms, in other words, astronauts that don't require
(23:37):
air or can live in different atmospheres. So that's some
extreme makeover right there. Yeah, And for those types of solutions,
I can't help but think, like, how do you recircuit
that the autonomous part of your body, like your lungs
that want to breathe like and I do. I think
that all of their solutions are really fascinating, but that
(23:59):
to me, those are the st points like that, well,
the humanness part of our body that wants to do this.
How do you shut that off? Um? They to go
back to the inner ear thing and and getting a
little motion sick and weight blessness. They proposed either draining
ear fluid or filling them up. So there you go. Um,
they said, electric slash drug cardiovascular control. They recommended drugs
(24:23):
to preventing a muscle atrophy, which sounds perfectly reasonable except
in their in their argument, would probably just happen on
its own through something implanted in you, which I guess
you would have to get like a refill pack. You'd
be kind of like a printer. I'm thinking on your
back where you have like the cyan and the magenta
and all this. You'd suddenly you get like a little
light would show up and it's like, oh, I'm running
(24:43):
low on anti radiation medicine. Yeah, And I wonder if
there'd be one that would run out the fastest, you know,
because it seems like we're always having to replace Cian
I don't know it's true. Why is that? Yeah, it's
a weird color. But they also recommended lowering body prey
shirt to facilitate better facilitate spacewalks, whereas naked spacewalks. I'm
(25:04):
thinking like, like, basically they're saying we could, we would,
We would just remove some of the necessary functions of
a space suit. So that's that's pretty wild. They also
talked about engineering humans to have a light sensitive, chemically
regulated system that would change their reflecticity. In other words,
(25:25):
you wear you know, you wear a black shirt on
a bright day, you end up being hotter, and more
of that heat you wear a white shirt reflects. So
in space you're gonna have situations where where you need
the heat or don't need the heat, because it can
make a difference between cooking and freezing. Is this the
protective plastic sponge clothing they are talking about, yes, which
(25:46):
sounded a um, sounded like I don't know something in
my attic right. They also brought up anti basically anti
space madness medications, anti psychosis medications, because you're gonna be
up there for a while in this cramp space, you
don't want your fellow astronauts going crazy. Yeah. Yeah, actually,
and I noticed that that drugs were huge part of
(26:10):
the solution here for a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
which makes sense at the time, but I guess, uh,
not knowing as much about the side effects now. Well, well,
the thing is they keep a lot of these type
medications on the spaceship. I have a blog post on this,
which will also link to when I get around and
doing the the accompanying blog post for this. But but
there are a number of different medications that they keep
(26:31):
on on the shuttle. So it's not not just the
idea of using them, but having them where they kick
in automatically, where it's like you start feeling a little
crazy and then you're you're the system that's implanted in
your side like checks you, you know, so you only
feel crazy for a second. Gosh, I need that now.
Oh it's interesting this, uh if I remember correctly. This
(26:52):
features into n M. Banks culture series. We have the
humans have been augmented over time, so everybody has like
all these systems that are either subconsciously or consciously control,
so they can they can feel less psychotic or or
you know, crank up there. They're sort of caffeine level
without actually uh, you know, having something to drink. It's
just actually made me think about this book that I
(27:14):
just read, Super Sad True Love Story. I believe this
is the title, And they talk about everybody has something
called an apparette, which is they wear around their neck
and it basically will tell you every bit of data
about yourself, will communicate it to another person, so you
could feasibly see what my cholesterol level is and you
know whether or not I need to adjust that or
(27:34):
if I even have like little nano robots going through
my blood like cleaning things up, um, as well as
my credit score. It's good stuff, but just reminded me
of that. UM. They also talked about prol using pharmaceuticals
to to have to kick in some prolonged sleep if
you get injured, like they're all deals. Like you're on
your return trip from Mars and you, I don't know,
(27:57):
you step in tote really badly, or more likely you're
jured on a spacewalk, etcetera. You might need to just
be able to put that person under for the ride home.
It might maybe a condition that can't be or an
injury that can't be treated reasonably on the ship. That
was another Hallmark, Yeah, putting people inder and um so yeah,
those are some of the key arguments that they made. Um.
(28:18):
From there, they went on to do a number of
other cyborg studies, where each one dealt with another level
like cyborg to dealt with the manipulation of human emotions
through mental exercises. Um. And and this this one involved
like a lot of hypnosis, like like the idea of
using using hypnosis too, and and I could see like
like meditation being a big thing too. Yeah. They mentioned
(28:38):
yoga too in the paper Yoga in space? Can you
do what here? You will have done more yoga than me.
Could you do yoga without gravity? Yeah? I assume you
could do some of the post is right? Um, I
mean never having done it and then gravity free environment,
I'm not quite sure, but yeah, Like I mean, I
(28:58):
don't know. It seems like the different balance imposes would
be kind of pointless and like down dog. I don't
know this down dog even count if there's no gravity. No,
it doesn't, You're right, I mean, I think you'd have
to have your compression suit on and perhaps you'd have
to do like partner yoga with one person holding you down.
This would be interesting if if anybody out there has
any thoughts and what a micro gravity yoga technique would
(29:19):
consist of of to ask my yoga teacher. Um, so
there's that level. Yeah, maybe I will no, I will
do it. Um maybe alright. So then Cyberg through is
genetic alterations to enhance the human emotional range. Uh Cyberg
four deeper genetic changes and then uh Cyberg five. Ultimately
(29:40):
they were talking about the separation of mind from body. Um,
which you know, if the ideas like, perhaps instead of
sending humans to this hostile environment, you fall back on
the human creation that is best suited for space travel,
the machine. If we could just simply put our consciousness
in it or somehow experienced what the machines exp aaran
sing uh you know, remotely, we could have some sort
(30:02):
of implant that tied into the robots. Are Yeah, like
it more or less an extension of what we're already doing, right,
We just more data. Yeah, we talked a big game,
you know about sending humans to Mars, but ultimately we
can send robots there and we can you know, move
our hands on a keyboard and move things on Mars.
We can we can look through a screen and see
(30:23):
what's happening on marsh and is that technology improves And
I mean it's it's basically like we're there and without
having to worry about how you're gonna feed this person,
how are you gonna keep them alive? How are you
going to you know, tackle the the the huge obstacles
of engineering a person that can survive this environment. That
makes sense to me. I mean, to to do this
sort of uh surveillance that you need, right, to have
(30:45):
nano robots or robots go out and accumulate all that data.
The thing that I think about is what what's missing there?
Is um like the overview effect, right that the reporting
back of the the human part of it. Yeah. So yes,
the that we've talked about this before in a podcast
about overview of fact, that sense of euphoria you get
in this deeper, better understanding of the planet that you
(31:07):
live in. Yeah, Like the Grand Canyon example is great.
Like I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I've only
seen photos of it. It looks really cool in the photos,
but everyone will tell you that's been there that the
photos just don't cut it. That you don't really like
understand the Grand Canyon until you see it, which which
I totally buy because I mean, that's that's how seeing anything,
you know, amazing works. It's like the photo, the video.
(31:28):
You can really capture a moment or a string of moments,
but it's not the same as being there. Yeah. Yeah,
but then you know, I don't know, I think about that. Yes,
robots makes so much more sense. But you know, I've
seems like I've been bringing this up a lot. But
like the exo skeletons we talked about the military is using,
you know, is there a way to combine that technology
(31:50):
as well as the carbon nanotube muscles that they're trying
to create, to to glomb that onto the human too,
to again make them more of this um the cyborg
in reality as opposed to the future that we keep
pointing to. Yeah. So one of the big questions that
comes to mind when we talk about all these different
variations in the cyborg is is that if we change
(32:12):
humans to live in space or live in another world,
at what point are they no longer human? You know?
Like what you know, you get to where you're adding
a lot of hardware, you're genetically altering somebody, and then
you're sending them out and is that a human being anymore?
Is it something else? Is it a subspecies? I don't know.
Paul Davies of Study has actually said that biological intelligence
(32:35):
is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the
evolution of the universe. And so his feeling is that
the supplies to humans and and if there are indeed
in uh, extraterrest extraterrestrial life out there, that it's uh,
it's got to be some sort of machine hybrid mm hmm. So,
and this is an idea that's come up before. Is
(32:57):
aliens Is these more evolved um replications or iterations of
ourselves that are the sort of machine cyborg being. Yeah,
and uh, and it falls back in line with what
we were talking about earlier, Like it comes to like
the like the like say Cyborg five was talking about, uh,
like basically machines with human intellects. You know, it becomes
(33:18):
more of a I mean just again, just look at
what we've sent out. We sent machines. Machines have been
the first to land on on on on Mars, on
on the moon, the first I'm going to be the
first to leave the Solar System. So, so's the definition.
Then if the brain is intact, then we're still human.
But well, I think we would kind of like that
(33:38):
to be the case. But again, we're not just our brains.
It's like we're you know, we're we're a much more
complicated system than that. That's right to bring up the gut.
So anyway, it's an interesting question at what point, at
what point do do have At what point would we
not be human anymore? At what point are we already
not human? Um? There's a stat that and this is
(34:00):
ninety seven which which argued that that ten of the
human population was already a cyborg, just counting like everything
from you know, pacemakers to prosthetics. Two denture's that there
was just a huge, huge population segment of the population
that was already not fully human. And certainly, I mean
(34:21):
if you start counting clothing, like none of us are
except for those those few nutives out there. They're keeping
it real for the for the original humans. We salute you. Yeah,
so that you have it, um, But we're not quite
done with the brain and the gut yet, because we
have a little listener mail speaking of how important it
is that our gut tell us what to do, and
(34:42):
you know what to do. Uh. This is uh from
reader Ryan who writes in about our recent episode about
the gut in the mind, and they said, quote your
episode on stomach on the stomach's influence on the mind
struck my interest in regard to eating disorders. Also, as
a late teen, I had a peculiar and sudden onset
with a few life altering issues like IBS, irritable bal syndrome,
(35:03):
manic depression more and more mannic than depressive, frankly, which
can be very destructive, he adds UM and eventually a
very long about with anorexia, which initiated as a coping
mechanism with the ib S. The IBS almost completely subsided
by my early twenties, but the anorexia persisted, and it
really felt like I didn't have control over my own body.
I often compare it to how a heavy substance substance
(35:26):
addiction must feel. I dedicate a lot of insight into
eating disorders because they are so misunderstood, stood as being
a fueled by vanity, which just isn't the case, not
always anyway. With these new insights on how much the
stomach affects the mind, I'm excited to see what this
will mean for the underlying uh and treatment of eating
disorders on the whole. I mean, I'm sorry for the
(35:47):
understanding and treatment. UH. And again that was from our
reader Ryan, which I think is really interesting because that
is what neuro gastontologists are pointing to. Are there. They
are saying, like, is the gut of the problem here?
Is that the the one that is mentally unstable in
sending all these signals up to the brain and confusing matters, right, Um,
so you gotta you gotta look out for that one.
(36:08):
It's going to be big news here. And UH. On
a lighter note, UH. In response to the same episode,
Kevin writes and it says, just reassuring your podcast by
saying that I probably listen to my gut more than
I listened to my brain, because every time I listen
to my brain it leads me in the wrong direction.
But when I listened to my stomach, I generally have
a better time here here. Yeah, you know, And I
(36:31):
think it's interesting. As we started out this podcast talking
about Flattiste, We've just close the circle with the guts.
There's no avoiding it. As much as we you know,
we we would like to, we haven't reached that point
where we have engineered the humans that no longer um
um unit flattis or poop. So that's right now, sttological
(36:53):
free humans. Yeah. So hey, if you have anything to
add to that, and certainly if you're the one one,
or or or very few of one of the very
few individuals out there who is flattest free um, do
let us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter,
where we are blow the Mind on both of those.
We won't shown you. We promised, no, we won't. We
(37:14):
won't shown you. You can also send us an email
at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
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