Beyond Human: Accessorize!

all sorts of zippers on it. It's like very eighties, you know, it's kind of a throwback to a motorcycle jacket. And then I've got this fabulous fin at the bottom and um, in fact, it's this fin that can propel me through the water like twice as fast as Michael Phelps. Wow, how did you drive to work in that? Um? You know, just carefully. I've got a stitch shift, so it was just kind of a kind of stop and go and lots of looking, but you know, it's completely worth it. Wow.

Well it looks pretty sharp, almost as sharp as what I'm wearing, which is a wingsuit. I did not fly to work because you you actually have to have a really significant skydiving experience to jump out of a plane in one of these. But it looks pretty sharp. But we have this awesome webbing underneath each of my arms. Um. The webbing between my that goes down between my legs is a little less awesome because it makes me kind of have to walk like a penguin, which can be

a little awkward on Martha. Um. But you know, so I think a few people may miss the train this morning because of me. If you're listening, I apologize. But if I was to fall off a cliff and this thing I would, I would stand a really good chance of not dying quite as fast. Yeah, and you would kind of look like, you know, Bobby Brown. Yeah, with a sort of Bobby Brown wingsuit is what I'm looking at right now. The Bobby I like the idea of the Bobby Brown wingsuit. He's not doing anything right now.

He can he can get behind this product. Oh yeah, absolutely, this is prerogative. So we are talking about accessorizing the not just the human wardrobe, but the human form. That's right, not content just to be human, right, And we've been doing this for a while. I mean clothing itself is basically an accessory to the human form. Like hair is not cutting it. Throw some clothing on there. If you get some hair from another animal to augment what we've

got going on, and suddenly you can sustain. You can go a little farther north or a little farther south to forge for food. Right, that's right exactly. I mean it's crazy the amount of accessorising we do. Well. Our kitchen is kind of an accessory. I've heard this argument that it's basically an external stomach that we've created to to cook food, and or even just a camp fire is kind of an external stomach in a certain sense. Well,

until like how's our food? Yeah? Yeah, and it makes it more digestible and does does the work that our stomach cannot or you know, will not. Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's it's pretty fascinating the ways that we've tried to manipulate our form. And I even think about the Right brothers, which you know, of course we're land lovers.

We we can't fly, but that didn't stop them, yeah, or the just count as people just for centuries beforehand that that tried and generally died or were horribly injured when they fell off of something with wings strapped to them. Yeah I could fly. Yeah yeah. We actually we have a couple of really good articles on that. We have a like a top ten early attempts at flight article

on the house stuff works dot com. We're checking out that details some of these more disastrous attempts, and I wrote a short one like what was the first attempt to fly? That also goes into some of these just comic but also horrible accidents um of early attempts at human flight. That's right, But I like the way that you you put what we're talking about today. It was basically like humans trying to Mr potato head themselves. Yeah. Yeah,

it's like the potato in itself. It's not you know, doing much, but you know, so some eyes and there's so some teeth on there. You know, the human form. It's not gonna excel in the water, um, like a dolphin. It's not gonna sail like a bird. So we end up it's not going to sting like a bee. Yeah yeah, it's not gonna sting like a bee. So we kind of I I couldn't help but think of like like a classroom containing all the varied forms that natural selection

is generated over over millions of years. And uh and imagine like the human setting there and kind of like looking over to cheat off of somebody else's sheet, because we're we're cheating off of the work that in many of these, in some of these more bio mimetic, you know, mimicking mimick, mimicking biology forms, We're we're basically kind of

cheating off of their work. You know, their natural selection has has been pushing this, uh, this design and fine tuning this design for ages, and we're just kind of like, you know, looking over seeing what they're doing and copying it to our own, our own purposes. Yeah, and I'm thinking about the dolphin fins. Um, well, let's get into the dolphin fins. Yeah, where is this coming from? Like where symbolically or who came up with this great idea? Yeah, yeah,

let's go with that one. Okay. Ted C. Millo, whom is an inventor, basically studied the dolphin form and said, Okay, that is really cool that dolphins use something like of their energy and convert it into thrust, whereas us humans are pretty lousy in the water and we can only

convert four percent of our energy into forward motions. So basically when we get into the water, it's just it's it's kind of an awkward experience if you think about it, Like, even if we put on swim fins, right, we're you know, flippers, we're only just getting like what ten to fift more efficient, right exactly, and we're still kind of just trudging through

the water. Even if even if we look really elegant like Michael Phelps, which I know that when I swim my, like really elegant like him, it's still not the best, uh way to make our way through that sort of uh discuss material, I guess you could say. So this

guy Semlo, great, totally interesting guy. He decides that he's going to create a two and a half pound fin um and this is made by his company called Luna Set, and uh it's basically like a piece of foam and it's got a really big span so it allows you to now go twice as fast as Michael Phelps in

the water. It's kind of like a mermaid uh flipper, right, yes, yeah, And so the really cool thing about this too is that he envisions that eventually and they've been messing around with us that that you can breach completely out of the water like a dolphin, you need to actually jump up into the air, yes, like like SeaWorld style, which then I start to think, of course, well, are they going to replace the dolphins with the human humans breaching

the water? Oh? Man? And then you'll like, you'll be able to go, You'll be out in California, be able to take tour boats out to watch like the crazy um dolphin people. Yes, coming up to the side of the boat and like, you know, following following the boat like they do and jumping out of the water exactly. Although I still think the humans might be fired. I feel like they won't be able to do the tricks

as well. Yeah yeah, I don't know. But what they can was they can have those guys like the dolphin people hanging out in the back of the boat and if they're they start freaking out. It's like, oh my goodness, we're not singing any whales, we're not singing any dolphins. They're like, call those guys in, We're not sending these people back disappointed. I like that. I want to ride

the humans me um. Well. CML also is envisioning this hydro touring aspect of it too, which is basically that you get a group of people who have these fins on and they can go really long distances throughout the day. They've got waterproof gear, backpacks, and they can basically just go and hang out in the oceans as long as they want and tour around. And of course that makes me think of like these marauding gangs. Oh we'll see,

I was. I had a much more optimistic view that I was thinking like sort of wandering hippies of the sea, you know, especially since this guy that comes from Athens, Georgia, which I mean, granted has the whole like football side of it, but then there's also kind of like a hit thee, you know, music incompatible with the world outside

of Athens quality too. I Mean, I love Athens, but I can't help but think of the patent Oswalt quote that it's one of those places where people like leave Athens and then they're they're like, what you can't you can't pay for a meal with a song in this in this town, you know. So it's true, it does have its own little special bubble of reality to it, and so it makes sense that it produced this guy.

Yeah totally so. But but yeah, indeed, Weather we're talking you know, your vision of of you know, marauding, um, you know Hell's Angels with flippers. Yeah yeah. Can't you just see them going up to the snorre flowers, like the tourists who are all snorkeling, and just start jabbing them and you know, running away really quickly or swimming away. Yeah, what with like the bottle knows that they wear over their mouth exactly. Yeah yeah, yeah, that along with like

a Nixon mask. Yeah. Well, okay, all right, I can I feel like the hippie idea a little better. But but but I mean, either way, they would be heading out to like a local little island with their sack full of like with their cell phone and their GPS system and some peanut butter sandwich. Yeah, unless they're really into it. Maybe they only they start only eating like you know, like raw fish. Oh, like they just really embrace it. Yeah yeah, and they start spearing their fish. Yeah. You

could create an entire community out of this. This doesn't have to be like a day trip. It could be a way of life. Yeah. But this guy Semial He also created a human powered submarine and I don't know if he's actually used it to cross the Atlantic, but I know that he's planning to. And it too has a bio mimicry and it it's it's got a a foil like a dolphin's tail. Okay, now, how many humans does he have to enslave to power it? For him? You know what? This is the good news? Just one,

just just himself. Oh okay, that's actually that's a lot more optimistic. Yeah yeah, And I mean I can't quite get my head around it because it's fifty pounds, But it's been explained like a StairMaster crossed with a cross country ski machine in the arm and leg drive system is linked to the flapping tail through a system of pulleys. And that seems really exhausting to me. I really hope that, um, the the inventor is not out there right now on the bottom of the ocean in this thing. Now. I

know that would be awful. But I knew that he was planning it for like his forty birthday or to celebrate his his forty year. And here's a quote on his website. He said, I want to spend time out on the open ocean, and something I built with my own hands, pondering my own existence. So obviously the only way to really achieve that is to build a personal submarine. Yeah, don't run a boat, yeah, starting evil gazing. You just

have to create your own power petaled submarine. Well, we're making fun of it a little, but it is kind of now it's really I'm making fun of it because it's so cool. I want one of my own, and I wish I had the own that sort of initiative to be like, you know, I want to ponder in the best way I can ponder in the middle of the ocean, and I'm going to make that happen for me. Cool. It also make it reminds me that we do have an article on the site about whether a um giant

squid could take down a submarine or not. Well, I mean that we haven't even discussed rogue waves. Yeah, rogue waves. Yeah, I mean that could take animal or um you know, side stitches. I think that can really thank you in this particular advice. Oh yeah, I didn't even thought about that. Yikes. Yeah. Yeah, See, you can't eat your peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then

you definitely would have to take breaks. So that's one way that we're trying to look over at our classmate the dolphin and say, what's what's going on with you and your design, which I think is pretty cool that we're trying to co op cool as long as we don't do any you know, crazy damage in our marauding gangs. Yeah. Well, while while our marauding um um Luna set that wears are busy in the ocean um in the air, we have people wearing wingsuits like and uh and and these

are these are pretty awesome. Recently, there's been a couple of I mean they by they kind of pop up in the news. I guess like wingsuits one of those things that the economy doesn't really hurt because they're always going to be crazy people who want to jump out of an airplane and sort of fly for a little bit. I mean, they fly, But if you've got that kind of discretionary income, you're probably not too badly hurt by

the the economy. Because recently in the news and both of these relate to the Red Bull Skydiving team, which is basically a wingsuit with a bunch of Red Bull logos on it. And uh, they're not like wearing a red bull can mascot outfit or anything. They don't have what it touched their head with a straw coming down. But there's a guy named Valerie rose Off and he's a Russian and he recently glided uh forty seconds when he jumped off of Vatana Mountain in uh Antarctica. And

that's a nine thousand, six d sixteen foot peak. Yeah, so there's video that online. It's worth checking out. It's extremely terrifying because even though you kind of well on YouTube, I guess all all you know, bets are off, but I figured he probably wasn't going to crash into the side of the mountain and die horribly. But you kind don't know when you watch this, uh this film, because he's pretty close to the side well, And I think it's fascinating that it's not enough just to fly through there.

It's to try to get as close to the mountain and the cliff as possible. I mean, isn't that that's sort of part of the whole wingsuit thing. If if you're an enthusiast, well with the base jumpers, I think it just kind of comes with the territory because you know you're jumping off of a mountain. You know it's gonna be you're not gonna necessarily get that much distance, but plenty of these guys do it also just you know, out of planes and it's all about that seems to

be just all about soaring as far as possible. Uh, you know over when watching the mountains and stuff just pass underneath you. So I think there are different schools of thought on it. But the other news item related to the Red Bull sky Diving Team. Um, but I think it's like the last month or so in the Santa Monica area, they had UFO sidings and it turned out to be I was strange lights in the sky. Oh, it's just the Red Bull Skydiving Team. So so if you see a UFO, you know, don't freak out. It

could just be these guys. Um. And if something comes into your house and you have like an abduction, abduction experience like we've experienced, like we discussed that previously, Uh, try to look at their legs and see if there's webbing, right. And it's not Bobby Brown by the way, But I do think that's kind of funny when you think about it, Like, you know, an octogenarian when such good eyesight looking up in the in the air and seeing what looks to

be like these flying squirrels coming at them. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, if you think of a flying squirrel, you're imagining the suit pretty spot on, because it's all about creating an air foil, uh, you know. And uh and so it's like webbing under the arm and between the legs, and so you like, you spread your arms, you tuck your head. I better not tuck my head away from the mic. You tuck your head right now, yeah, and uh, and you spread your legs and and you create this air

foil so you can generate some lift. Now, you can't get enough. It's not enough to you're still fall you're still gonna, you're still kind of falling. I mean, you're just sending anyway. You can't really ascend in this in this kind of suit, but you can. You can steer, you can glide around just by moving your your legs. The the airfoil itself. It's pretty brilliant because if you look back in uh, in parachuting history, like the first parachute jump from an airplane was nineteen twelve, which was

just uh nine years after the right brothers. So you know, we we were on this pretty quick. It's like, woh, this is great, we can fly, but can we jump out of so? Um. You had a lot of people back then they were trying to incorporate wings into their design because you know, they're trying to come up with ways to steer and and you know, the dream of human flight without the aid of this airplane is just I mean, it's it's older than the idea of the airplane.

Really you look back to you know, the myths of Vicarius and Dadalus and all that, or even looking at da Vinci's drawings right exactly. Yeah, so it really predates the idea of creating a flying machine. Um. But of the seventy five original pioneering birdmen, uh seventy two testing their new designs and techniques between just between nineteen thirty

and nine sixty one. Because you throw these uh these these different wings on and suddenly you have just just like extra limbs that can become entangled in the shoot um or like you know, I like to think, you know, you jump out and then you go to check your pocket watch and uh and then bam, you go into a spin because you have a wing out here on the side of your arm. So the the wingsuits, though, they solve a lot of this really in a really neat way, because you don't have like the wings are you.

They're not wings tacked onto you, and and they the membranes inflate when you jump out because the air rushing up towards you like goes into these chambers and it kind of inflates you to a certain degree. I mean, you can still moving on, but it gives it kind of gives it more of a structure. And so it's not just like you know, some loose webbing underneath the army. That's pretty nuts. So I have to say, I think

that's that's a speed freak thing. Yeah, And if you're interested in doing it, um, just keep in mind that you're going to I mean, you can wear one to

work like I'm doing. It's no problems. You know. Just to be careful when the train comes when you're on the platform exactly because that that that train breeze will catch you, believe me, but you you recommended, it's recommended you have a five hundred jump traditional skydiving jumps under your belt before you even strap on a beginner wingsuit, and those will cost your own six D dollars less less estimate I looked at and if you get an advance model you're looking at at well, you know, well

over twice that. Yeah. So um, some experience probably and as well as an understanding of basic physics probably helps a lot in terms of, yeah, surviving your fun experience exactly. Um. Yeah, it is an advanced skydiving technique, so that that really has to be stressed. It's it's it's an it's it's an advanced technique. So don't just don't try and build one on your own. No, no, kids, don't do that

in your backyard there. Yeah. Well, there's another really cool way that we're using accessories I suppose you could call them, which is neural prosthetic devices. Okay, So the cool thing about this is that these devices use neural implants consisting of an array of electrodes that are implanted in the brain to monitor a small set of neurons. Okay, and now this is related to our nervous system exactly. And so if you think about the brain is an electrical device,

an electricity. Electricity is a common language. So that's what allows us to interface the brain to these electronic devices, so it detects an individual's intentions to maneuver an object, such as a prophetic limb. And I'm thinking about the bionic arm, which allows you to basically say, you know, a quick command like move fingers here or go there, and then it basically takes that signal and allows your hand to move, which is incredible if you think about,

especially if you've lost a limb. Um, you know, it can be used in so many different ways. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really incredible. Um, it'sens So it seems seems like the ones I've seen, you know, schematics of it's kind of like a little legs so it's like a little metal plate in the interior of the device, like this kind of a sensor. Yeah. And in fact they tested it a monkey, of course. Oh yes, yeah, so of course they present a monkey with a bionic arm.

I'm just gonna assume that the monkey lost that arm naturally. I'm not even to tarnish my brain with with any other possibility. You know, I can't remember right off hand, but maybe this is my brain creating a cover memory because I was trymatised by that myself. But I want to say that they actually just strapped it on top of the arm. Oh well that's good, which does it means doesn't make it any freakier looking, right, Um, but again that might be a cover memory that just created.

Still the end result, monkey with a mechanical arm. There you go, That's that's progress right there. Um. But it actually is progress because ultimately it can help out a lot of people. Yeah, even if they did, even if they did have to saw off a monkey's arm. It's like, you know, the fact that you can help all these people with that have that have lost a limb is pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah, And then I was reading too that. I mean, it's it's so fascinating that you can take

the neural code and break it down like that. And now that we have figured out that genome, you know, what can we do how can we apply that to the way that we're operating with prosthetics? You know? Is there is there a deeper way I guess to embed the information so that it's it's coming. Um. Two is

a much more complex fashion. So are you are you getting into the area who we're talking about not just simply having a machine replacement to to feed off of existing Uh, neural points, but too potentially create new neural points exactly or yeah, exactly, and and enhance not just replaced,

but enhance what we can already do. So I guess it's sort of like moving toward the bionic man, yeah, or like creating so like something I'm like, if you see people that run with their like their iPod or the MP three player like strapped their shoulder, like, so what if they had a neural uh connection on their old docking station? Yeah? So if they don't yea, if they don't like the song that's playing, they can just skip to the next track by like you know, just

thinking about apples or something. Man, I have to say that that is something that I would probably get under the ninth four. That's pretty cool. I know. That's seriously though, have you ever sat and I thought, oh God, I don't want to get up and change the iPod or I'm so lazy that I can't even pick up this remote. Now you haven't, well yeah, sometimes just admit it. Um,

that's pretty cool. And then uh, there's along that same sport of idea of improving upon what we already have, or is something called the carbon nanotube muscles UM, this is really cool. It's basically a next generation muscle made out of carbon nanotubes and UM. So you know, carbon nanotubes are about a hundred thousand times thinner than human hair. It's they're super light and they're stronger than steel and

carbon nanotubes when they contract at three per second. That you think about the human muscle, which contracts at around per second. So all of a sudden, you have this ability for super crazy strength. If you can apply this to artificial loombs. Yeah, and there's a guy named Ray Bowman who UM has produced a formulation that's stronger than steel actually, and it's light as air, and it's more

flexible than rubber. And in addition to being used in artificial limbs, that can be used to make smart skins, which are the shape changing structures which shape shifting. It's like my favorite thing. That's pretty cool and ultra strong robots. But in the media in the immediate future, it's just gonna be good for highly efficient solar cells. Yeah. But I mean nanotubes are one of those things where it's like, if you you look at any kind of contemplation of

advanced structural UM technology, nanotubes tend to show up. Yeah, almost everything is predicated on that. Yeah, everything from you know, uh, space elevators to know to solder say les. They're frequently sided right, and they're being used. I mean that That's the amazing thing is that, Okay, there, maybe this one guy is playing around with him right now, but that translates to them being used pretty in a word spread

way in like twenty years. And the whole thing about the limbs you're you're talking about is I'm of course you instantly think of like superpower grip where you're just like crushing everything inside. But the key here, uh seems to me is also speed. I mean you see some of the you know, in many cases outdated examples of mechanized prosthetic limbs, and you see kind of like a slow robotic kind of thing going on, right because there it has to depend on hydraulics, um or or even

kind of just sort of puppetry type devices. You know. But but if you have these nanotives, but we would have this the speed of of reaction and uh and and you know, you'd be able to downplay it wouldn't be a situation of like like please don't touch anything, because you will crush everything that you love. Would be more like, you know, there would be a controlled system

where it's like, yes's ahead and touch the apple. It's going to be more of more of a lifelike maneuver and uh and uh and you know grasp ability right, But I mean, would it also, um, Santa reason that you could also accelerate yourself? Yeah, there was a reason to um, but it's not like you know, I was thinking like, okay, you can make legs east, you can do like super jumping abilities. But then that seems extraordinarily dangerous,

So I don't know how useful that is. It could be. Yeah, you're right that there's there's a lot of contemplation that needs to go on here before it starts to be released to mass audience. I believe this presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. I don't know if you knew this. Um. The carbon nanotube infused steel was thought to be used to me to make Damascus blades, which is history's sharpest sword. Really yeah, yeah, and the

the technique has been lost. But when they actually looked at the swords, they found that carbon nano tubes and nano wires were used in the sample of a seventeenth century sword forged from damask of steel. Wow, I did not know that. That's pretty incredible, but I mean so that I think that was sort of an accident of science, you know, back in the day. But it's really interesting to find out that that was used in this material. Yeah, and especially interests when you look at the Damascan space

elevators of the of the day. Those were pretty those were yeah, I mean they are an elegant interpretation of that absolutely. So what the accessory item do we have next year on the list? Exoskeletons, which again you can carbon ano tubes eventually could be used with us. Yeah. And of course, the great thing about i mean exo skeletons if you're at all, if you're like a guy and you're into sci fi at all, then you're just probably in love with the idea of exo skeletons because

they're everywhere. I mean, it's back to like uh, you know, Starship Troopers, you know, the novel to you know, stuff like the whole Warhammer forty thousand world with all these you know power uh, you know, mechanized power armor that these guys are wearing to you know, do all sorts of amazing things, or even like aliens where you have really fighting. It just was thinking about her stepping into

her excess skeleton. Yeah yeah, so it's like it's it's it's another one of these things that it's just, you know, we just can't get enough of the idea that you could strap on this this armor that would just make you a superhuman, right, and it's here in existence. Luckheed Martin has actually developed it, and it's been dubbed the Hulk, which is human Universal Load Carrier. I love how they claim that any that the Hulk thing is just accidental.

They're like, oh you mean, oh wait, are you trying to tell me that there's a comic book character that has that's green and has super We had no idea, what a weird coin? No, no, you know that they put like together, thank Tank for that, and do buy somewhere in. Twenty hours later they came out with Hulk. Yeah. Um oh. The suit weighs eighty two pounds. Purportedly, when a soldier is strapped in, they don't feel that weight.

They feel virtually nothing when it comes to that, and then it allows the wear to effortlessly lift two pounds. But this is pretty cool too because it can also be accessorized with missile launchers or even steel shield capable of yeah, capable stuffing munitions dead in their tracks. See this is this is just straight up space marine stuff, I know. And it's here again. I'm I'm pretty excited about it. Most of the models use a hydraulic system

which is controlled by an onboard computer. And just in case you're wonderingly, well, you know what, what's the power source. It's an eighteen pound battery and it's a lithium uh you know battery I believe, excuse me, a lithium one and it lasts for three to four days and it can be recharged using a hum vy just in case you're worried about that. Yeah, and uh, right now, they're testing them. Uh actually, they'll be testing them in the spring on real soldiers in the military, and then they'll

be using them in Afghanistan. So they should complete their tests by about and then introduced them to the market and their mass market commercial market. And just in case you're interested, that's it's around. You probably want to get a backup one, okay and make sure you have homebies parked everywhere you can, consumably exactly because when one of these suits powers down, that's the thing. It's like you're

kind of in this big tomb. I guess, I don't know. Yeah, And I'm just thinking too, is that one of those things that you buy and then it powers down and you get it never really get around to putting it back up. Having an iPhone, Yeah, I also thinking you'd just sit in your closet. There goes that Exo suit again. You shouldn't really power it up. Another really interesting one out there because a number of different people are working on different variations of the Exo skeleton. Um, there's a

there's a one that comes out from that. The Honda has been working on the Hondo Exo Skeleton lay and these are pretty awesome because it looks basically like a bicycle seat with a belt, uh and like robotic robotic leg braces that go down to shoes and so you kind of end up looking like you have to look at a picture this because you kind of end up looking like you have mecha legs and like Meca groin in this because the bicycle seat thing kind of like

you know, comes up in both sides. It kind of like, what's the did you say it cuts you on both sides. Yeah, so you know, it kind of looks like a weird cod piece in the front. So you see these, you know, wonderful demonstrations by you know, these very very nice, polite looking Japanese scientists and uh, massive cod piece and robotic legs.

It's pretty pretty awesome. But they they this would come in like different sizes and would weigh about fourteen point three pounds and again lithium ion battery and in this particular exo skeleton, you'd be able to walk like two point eight miles for that per hour for about two hours when I'm having to worry about charging it. That's not that if you want to take a stroll. Yeah.

And then there's the m t Exo Scout Alton and uh again this is this is another one's very similar to some of the other things we're looking at, um the prototypes um I was I was researching. They have It's one of these things where we have legs that are braced and then kind of a back area and so the idea is not as much to like you're not providing like, oh I can walk forever because my legs are robots or you know, I have super you know strength for kicking the enemy. It's about supporting a

massive payload on your back without feeling it. It's like transferring the weight through these robotic exoskeleton legs to the ground. Okay, so every time I move into a new house, this is the thing that I want to buy. Yeah, but it's it's really cool. And then it's because it's the when we were talking earlier about like shield attachments and missile attachments. It's like that's just like just straight up like kind of a sci fi vision and it's easy to get caught up in that. But this is more

like sort of practical area. It's like, if you need a guy to carry a whole lot of stuff, um, you know, this is a way to do it. That was this the one that you were saying that they might end up renting or it's not necessarily something that you have to buy, But um I think um, I think that the Japanese models are the ones that they're talking about making available to the public for rental. Okay, so I could go to home depo and rent this,

um well, whatever home depot is Okay, yeah, whatever that is. Um. Then there's another one also in Japan, though, who are on the subject from Japan's Cyberdyne, which this whole okay, Cyberdyne for those of you who are film buffs. Um, this was the name of the company that built the sky net system in the Terminator films. So you know, the Japanese have such a more optimistic view of a

robotic future than it seems like everybody else. So they just happily named their company Cyberdyne, and they named their their exo skeleton system the how ex exoskeleton, as in the robot that goes berserk in two thousand one. So it's yet robots suit hybrid assistive limb or how exoskeleton. Yeah, that doesn't inspire confidence to me. Yeah, though they have a lot of that. They do have a lot of like cooler ideas in mind for hovice would be used.

They think it would be used up for to train doctors, uh, to help in physical therapy as people you know, re you regain use of their their limbs, uh, you know, asist disabled people. Uh. And that this is an idea you also see in uh New Zealand's Rex exoskeleton, which again, Rex it's I I just refuse to believe that they're

not coming up with the these first. But but the idea is, like, you know, instead of somebody being confined to a wheelchair, uh, an exo skeleton system would give them the liberty to walk around like uh, you know, as if they still have the use of their legs, which is which is pretty cool, but they have been Also Cyberdyne is looking at ways it would allow laborers to carry heavier loads and to aid in emergency rescues. So pretty cool. Yeah, I have to tell you, um,

I have something to do at once. I need to actually run over to the Yeah how many? How many laps do you have to do to get a decent workout when you're superpowered? Though? Oh? Just like thousand? Yeah. So I'm just gonna dominate the lane for a couple of hours. If anybody gets in there, just Bottle knows them, they'll they'll get out. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna let the staff know there. So, hey, we have a couple of

listener male items here. Shall I look at them? Please? Do? Okay, let me see if I can reach them in this You just get hooked on all right, I got it. Okay, this one comes to us from a listener by the name of Gin and Uh she addresses you. Actually, she says, I recently found it found U interesting U to the episodes that Duly mentions a vomitorium and says that Romans

would eat until they've vomited and then eat more. I'm not sure if that was ever a cultural Roman thing or not, but the vomitarium was actually something completely different. Vomitarium was an archway of Roman theater, such as the colosseum, where the people would enter or leave. It's called a vomitarium because of the way it looked when crowds of people would swarm out of the door, like the building of vomiting people. I guess she's right, and I was

actually referring to sharks. I think we're talking That was the inside Out podcast, and we were talking about sharks emptying their stomachs, and I think I likened it to a vomitorium. And later on we were doing some reading for Pyrocross Plastic Flow and actually came on the um. So thank you Jen for pointing that out. It's absolutely right. Do I wish that there was a vomitorium. I'm not

gonna lie, you know. Yes, I've always thought it was really cool, um that you could stuff yourself so horribly and then go vomit, and then there would be a loot player there to cover up the sound of the vomiting um or me vomitings. I should say, um, but no, you're you're right, And I guess this is another thing we're hanging on the Romans, right, yeah, yeah, I don't see. I don't understand whly you have to be put down

on the Roman Empire. A lot of great things, I know, but like to think of them as hedonist, you know, yeah, free wheeling. Well we have we have one more bit of a listener mail here from Hope speaking of Romans. This one is apparently from a listening by the name of buddhica Um, who was, of course the the the warrior Queen was, or belief for people were crushed by

the Romans at one point. We'd have to ask the history gals about this because it was also an on your track as I recall, so there back back from my on your listening days. But anyway, Buddha my little on yeah, budicas rights, I believe you mistitled the podcast. You titled the podcast quote if a tree falls in a forest doesn't make a sound. However, the way I've always heard it is if a tree falls and no one is able to hear it doesn't make it sound.

And she's correct. This is the full version of it, because otherwise it loses its philosophical punch if you admit those words. But I believe we had to some of the words to fit it into the podcast title. Yeah, because we were going to call one of our episodes you're so vain, you probably think this universe is about you. But then Ben Bowlen told us we had to short that's right and such. Yeah, but it's good that we got the email because that we knew that our tree

had fallen in the forest via your emails. So keep them coming, please, Yes, um, be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter. You'll find us on both of those as blow the mind. Uh, you know, we'll we post all sorts of interesting stuff there and feel free to interact with us. Let us know what's blowing your mind. You find a cool piece of of news or research on the net, you know, shoot it to us, because there's a there's a you know, we may not

have seen it otherwise. That's right. And let us know if there are any really cool superhuman things that you've found out about lately, and email us at blew the mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it 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 House stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes, m