From the Vault: Dune Biology

on October one. Yeah, there's a lot of sand where I'm talking this episode, as we sort of pieced together the science that that Frank Herbert used to create the idea of the sand worm, as well as scientific interpretations by a couple of different commentators in the decades to follow. Now, wait a minute, Robert, we're going to be getting another

Dune film, right, Yes, it's true. Bye bye Dnevillneuve. Yes, the director of, of course, the most recent blay Runner film, Blade Run, which I really enjoyed and it certainly is just full of visual flare like watching that and especially enjoy I especially enjoyed the slow pace of the film, like like Blade Runner is what three four hours long, it's about seven hours long, but it feels like it's just an hour and a half. It feels far shorter than any superhero movie I have ever seen. How long

was Batman v. Superman Dawn of Justice? Is that about six and a half hours? I don't know. I only saw that over other people's shoulders on an airplane. I watched it on a flight and could not finish it on the flight. Like it. I started it at takeoff and we landed and the movie wasn't over. Yeah, superhero movies are not necessarily my thing these days, unless unless it has Wesley Snipes in it, and he's he's running vampires. So yeah, I am all in on another cinematic vision

of Dune. I mean every element, all the old ones we talked about here, the sand warm terms. If we get to face dancers, I really want to see a nice cinematic vision of the face dancers as well. I think I might have said this in the original episode, so apologies if I repeat later in our rerun what I'm about to say now, But I think there should be an HBO series adaptation of the Done universe. Oh you think what HBO did with Game of Thrones. They

should do with Done. Yeah, there's plenty of material. They're even just the first book. You could do a full blown, drawn out, you know, cinematic treatment of the thing. Like I'm currently watching the Netflix adaptation of Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, which is a not that lengthy of a novel. It has a lot of ins and outs, and they've done a really great job of of giving it the

multi episode treatment. Whereas I like watching their treatment of it, I can't imagine crushing it all down into even a lengthy film, so Done is perfect for that that sort of treatment. But I guess we're getting another movie. Hopefully it'll be four to five hours long. That's that's that's what I'm looking for. Hud percent agree, And I hope it has a little intermission break in it. It just runs for thirty seconds or so, but not a werewolf

break because there are no there are no werewolves. That's a callback, folks, all right, with without further ado, let's enter the vault. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Disembarkation disembarkation notice to all passengers arriving on Station Aracus, the June Planetary Tourism Consortium funded by the great generosity of the most noble House Hardconed would like to welcome you to planet Aracus. Aracus is a dry place. Please remember to conserve water

whenever possible. It is recommended that you do not venture outside without a properly fitted steel suit to recycle your sweat, urine and fecal moisture. When traveling beyond the shield ball, remember always to watchful worms. Signed by keeping in mind

the three ages, hissing, heaving, and high energy discharge. A hissing sound in the sand, heaving up of displaced sediment, and high energy study discharge from the dunes may all indicate that the sand worm is near and the event of worm sign do not activate shields and proceed immediately to the nearest cave building or evacuation or in a thought or local vendors and kiosks gone throughout station. Iraqets are the best place to purchase steel suits, frim hits,

and individually packaged worm thumbers and duty free prices. Please remember also the spice must blow. Anyone suspected of sabotaging, inhibiting, or interfering with spice production may be subject to penalties up to and including gladiatorial remuneration on gating prime or personal evaporation. Please enjoy your stay among the dunes. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And this is episode two in our exploration of the science of doone, the science of Frank Herbert's sci fi classic Dune, which is celebrating its fifty the anniversary this year. Yeah, so if you missed the first part, you should go back and listen to that first part one where we talk about the technology of doing and we we talked about some important sort of introductory materials to the universe of doone.

If you're not familiar with it, we highly recommend that you check out that part first before you listen to this one. But if you just want to get thrown right into the middle, here we are. Yeah. Last time we talked about but Larry and Johad, we talked about still suits, We talked about orna thoptors, and a little

bit about the Holtzman effect whatever that is. But yeah, this time we're going to talk more about the the living science of done, about the biology an ecology of the planet Iracus, and one of the coolest things about the Dune universe has got to be the sandworms. Yes, I imagine that is one of, if not the key aspects of the franchise that come to people's minds when they think of do Yeah. I So, I just finished reading this book a few weeks ago, and I loved it.

I absolutely adored this book. As I said in the last podcast, it frequently struck me as just amazingly fresh for a fifty year old book. It's full of ideas that you don't encounter elsewhere. It just felt very original and unique and different. But the moment where the book really kicked into gear for me was the first sandworm attack. And this is when they're going out to observe spice harvests. Correct. Yeah, So I want to kind of put you the listener

into the moment of the sandworm attack. So imagine you're one of a group of twenty six spice sminers working on a patch of spice in the deep desert. So you're out there among the dunes. The heat is high, the sun's bearing down on you. You've got your protective still suit on, You're working the harvester machine trying desperately to get this spice going, and you've you've been at it for several minutes, and overhead there's this enormous cargo aircraft.

I suppose it would be some type of ornithopter with flapping wings, which, as we discussed in the last last episode, doesn't make a lot of aerodynamic sense, but okay, uh, And it's called a carryall. It hovers nearby, waiting to lift you off at a moment's notice, and preferably at the last possible minute, to maximize the profits, because you've got to get as much spice as you can. The spice is important. The spice must flow, the universe needs it. But a worm will come. The worm always comes it.

Here's the harvester. It knows where you are and the moment you start working, it's on its way now. With for precautions, you'll lift off at just the right moment, you'll get the maximum spice and you'll avoid the worm. But if you're not able to lift off in time, you may notice a hissing sound in the sand sliding. You know, it's sand sliding against sand. In the background, you might see a static discharge in the air and Eventually you're gonna notice an upheaval of sand as the

worm rises to the shallows of the desert. And then finally you see, and it's probably the last thing you see, a great gaping circular mouth, maybe up to eighty meters wide, emerging from the dunes, spreading open, closing over you, and swallowing you and your friends and your mining vehicle all in one bite. It's quite a site. And as far as sound goes, we do want to give a quick thanks to Chris Knife double O seven. Uh. He's on band camp as Cheesy Nervosa. Will include a link to

his account on the landing bait for this episode. But he does a lot of cool and it tracks where he gets the the ambience from from various sci fi properties. And so this was the track that we used to was Dune Sandworm Ride. Yeah, so I love the sandworms. I love the sandworms scenes in the book. When we first encounter sandworms in the book, it's there merely as a threat. You know, this this huge, terrifying beast that

lives in the desert. It's you know, it's a gigantic snake eel worm type creature that it's sort of like the monsters and tremors. You know, it lays under Yeah, it lives under the ground. It can hear where you are. You know, it might be hundreds of meters long. They're so huge you can't fight them off. There's no way to avoid them except to run. Yeah, and I've I've seen it describe that that the Frank Herbert sandworms are are kind of like dragons, and but but not merely

in just the threat aspect. Not just a monstrous dragon, but a celestial dragon, because there ultimately the gateway to wisdom. Yeah, that's true, because I do want to spoil too much. But then later on in the book, we learned that the desert dwellers of the planet Iraq is the Fremen, have a more complex relationship with the sand worms. It's not just you know, here's this huge, threatening creature that we have to avoid. They have a sort of a

bit of a back and forth. I don't want to say too much more, but it's really interesting, and so I thought we should talk about the sand worm. What is this organism as it's imagined in the Dune universe, and how has this changed the way we think about aliens and science fiction? And what what analogies can we make to real world life forms? Yeah, and for starters, let's just go ahead and roll through what we know

from from Frank Herbert's books. And again it's one of those cases where Herbert, there's a lot of information at you about how sand worms work, but then when you add it all up right, you realize you don't know key things. Um, here's what we know. The sand worm or shy hallud I believe that is the fremin term a creature. Again, you utterly unique to iraq Us, totally tied to a complex life cycle on the desert planet.

Links exceed four hundred meters width of a hundred meters at the thickest point, perhaps as long as the thousand meters. In the deep isolated parts of the desert mouth, diameter is probably about eighty meters, so when it's open and lined with a thousand or more cargo silica crystal teeth um. A typical worm consists of one to four hundred segments, and each segment possessed its own nervous system. Something to keep in mind for later. Now, what Herbert didn't tell us.

He didn't tell us whether sand Mouran's lay eggs. They He didn't tell us if they're male and female, how reproduction occurs at all. He didn't tell us if it's a definitively if it's a vertebrate or an invertebrate. He didn't explain the physics of how it moves, and he didn't tell us what it eats. I would be surprised if it's vertebrate, simply because I think of vertebrate as a category belonging to Earth life. I mean, I think it might have some kind of internal, you know, rigid structure.

But it's weird to think about those, you know, those peculiarities of evolution that seems so ubiquitous on Earth. We just assume their natural categories. But I mean, who knows if a alien life form is likely to have a backbone, right, And I think that ultimately, the like the segmented nature and the independence of the segments tends to imply something that is inherently invertebrate. But but again, he doesn't draw

a distinct line in the sand. Well, then to learn more about the sand worm, I think we're gonna have to turn back to our old friends that we mentioned in the last episode. A couple of books that we used as resources. So one of these is going to be The Science of Dune, edited by Kevin R. Grazier, and then the other one is the Dune Encyclopedia right right. That one's compiled by Dr Willis E. McNelly, and that came out in eighty five. It's out of print, but

you can still find used copies in various places. Uh I got mine online for like, you know, fifteen or twenty bucks, so it's it's still out there and it's not like an out of your reach collector's item. In particular that the explanations for sandworms from these two books. From Doune Encyclopedia, we have an explanation by marine a shifflet, and in the Science of Doune we have a sybil hetchel pH D's explanation from her piece the Biology of the sand Worm. Now I'm actually gonna start with the

Doune Encyclopedia explanation from Marine shifflet. Um shifflet goes ahead and defines both male and female sandworms, the ladder somewhat smaller than the males, with the secondary segment um of each worm containing its reproductive system, and she posits that at age one thousand, because these are long living creatures, the female develops an egg sact in her reproductive system, constructs a deep, massive nest, and then a tracts a

male with rhythmic thumping. Now this is key because in the in doone we see people attracting or distracting a worm by using a mechanical thumper. Right, yeah, that's one of the technologies we could have talked about in the last episode, but I guess we just didn't have time.

The thumper is a sort of you might think of it as a defensive decoy mechanism out in the desert where if you want to draw off a sandworm, or perhaps even attract a sandworm, you put this thing down in the ground and it starts beating on the sand to say come on over, Yeah, with a rhythmic pattern, because if you you know, there's like this thing, if you you got to walk without rhythm, yeah, you know,

unless you want to attract the worm. So yeah, one of the things that's frequently mentioned in the book is that if you want to walk across the sand and not attract the worm, you have to walk without rhythm. You have to walk without any kind of uh cadence to your walk. And I love how they bring up the fact that this is so much harder to do than it sounds like, like the characters are just exhausted from trying to walk without maintaining a rhythm of their gait. Right.

And so she ties this into the into the life cycle the worm by saying that it's that kind of rhythmic um thumping that not only indicates something unnatural on the desert surface, but perhaps the mating cry, the mating call of the female worm. So she says that then the male would arrive, consumes the smaller female, just straight up eats the female and then goes into a dormant state. And it's during the state that the heavy duty spice fiber egg sac remains intact and it's fertilized by the

male's reproductive system. And then when he wakes up, he's gonna spit that fertilized egg sac out. What yeah, I mean, I've heard of reproductive cannibalism, but what yeah, this is it's an interesting uh uh. And again this is you know, her taking Herbert's world and extrapolating on it and trying to come with a scientific explanation for how it might work.

It's not. This is not cannon by any means, but it is interesting because we don't see sexual cannibalism occur in nature that I can think of where the male eats the female, because generally the female is the species and she may or may not eat the male after he's served his purpose. But here we have the male consuming the female. Yeah, okay, I mean that just makes me wonder if this almost would start to play with the definitions of what counts as male and what counts

as female in a species. Yeah, I would. I feel like I would feel more comfortable with this example if the genders were reversed and the primary primarily the sandworms are are female. But but you know, either way, the the best example that comes to mind of something close to this in the natural world would be um anglerfish, where you have, oh those great things, so you've probably seen pictures of this from the deep ocean. They look

like movie monsters. Uh, they've got the crazy faces and that they've got a little a little lit up fishing pole, right, And those are the females. The females are the ones we see pictures of the males. Um are essentially a tiny, heat seeking sexual missile equipped with gigantic nostrils. Uh. All they do is they swim out in search of a female and if he's lucky, and most are not, they find one and they bite onto her abdomen and hang on. Again.

These are the angler fish, real world organisms, nothing from sci fi. And then there I'm looking. I just sorry, I looked. I just googled pictures of the male angler fish attaching to the female angler fish. And it's pathetic. It's could go with that interpretation because what happens is not only does he bite on and hold on, but their flesh grows together, their blood vessels connect, and the male becomes a mere part of the female's body, sustained

by her systems. His eyes, fins, and some internal organs all atrophy h and just leave him as just this fat flap of skin, this just mindless thing on the female. And this way, the male and his reproductive systems are always there when she needs them, which is a necessary adaptation in the a dark, lonely world of the deep ocean. That's fascinating. I've never read about this before. I was really I ran across in the past year or two

and was pretty amazed by it. But that's certainly it's the case where the male and female fuse into one. And I guess you could interpret this consumption of the of the female sand worm is more of emerging than a consumption, since there's not, according to her model anyway, there's not really any nourishment to be gained from the worm eating the other worm. So this is where we

start getting into a more complex life cycle. So bear with me, everyone, Um, when the male sum so, the male sandword comes to vomits up that egg case, and he takes off the egg case. Eventually hatch catches into a legion of sand trout sand trout sand trout. Yes, and now these these this is where we're getting back into um, into the actual canon of of of Frank Herbert's sandworm biology, because these are very much a part

of the series. Yeah, there are sequences in Dune where character, well, at least one character I can think of, the planetary scientist kinds Uh. There may be other characters, but not that I recall. At least Kinds thinks about down under the the dunes of sand there are these massive patches of life. Then there's moisture down there too, which is sort of hidden from the surface, which is I guess

being trapped or used by these unicellular life forms. And in this case we're talking twenty by six centimeter unicellular organisms. But that's a big cell. You know, Alien world, different laws, right, um. But but yeah, their water scavengers. So the idea here is that they're traveling out, they're collecting water, they're bringing them back, according to um to this model, anyway, to the nest site and there sequestering the water. And here

the water mixes with excretions from the pre spice mass. Uh. And here the c t U c O two builds up as a byproduct, and this eventually results in a

spice blow explosion. And this is very much a part of the books, where eventually the pressure builds up and it blasts that precious spice melange that's produced uh somehow by this sand trout nesting water sequestering action blows it up to the surface where people can say, hey, there's some spice there, let's go get it, all right, all right, So but it's not only people that want to come and get the spice that also attracts the sand worms,

which we'll get into. Um. And at this point, according to Schifflet, the sand worms enter a pre metamorphic stage during which surviving sand trout joined bodies, and as metamorphosis sets in properly, each sand trout also known as a little maker among the fremen, becomes a segment of a conjoined body that becomes a small sandworm. So again we see conjoined bodies coming into play. Uh. And this is this is certainly part of of Herbert's original model for

the sand worm. So this is fascinating because the sand worm and that sense it's is sort of a composite organism. Yes, very much so. Um and this this play I don't want to give any spoilers, but this also plays out and rather unique and mind blowing ways in the sequels. Okay, so how long does it take for little sand trout joining together to become the gigantic shihlud like we see

in the book? You know, before they're they're a big sandworm out in the desert over over a thousand years, because it's going to take that long, corner and Chifflet here to segment for the segments to take on. Uh, you know, the different properties such as the tooth head, the reproductive system. If you're going by her model and h during this time of environmental conditions are not met,

then the underdifferentiated segments can revert to sand trout. So it's kind of like those jellyfish that can that can reverse age, right, they can revert to the earlier life form stage if things aren't going well. Yeah, I like that detail. If she throws in and finally the a sexual juvenile warm develops and it's twenty to thirty long, and this is the form that fremen eventually capture and drown to produce spice essence. More about spice in this

episode later that's coming up. Uh, most juveniles, according to Shifflet, would become females, but it's possible that it's possible that the environmental absence of a male is what results in male development. In the book itself, we're told that each male has a three four hundred kilometer territory that it defends against other worms, and she has a really interesting bit about how that combat would work. Yeah, how do the worms fight each other if they're just they're huge

worms with big circular mouths. Well, she draws on a on a on a detail that will discuss in a minute. Um or I guess, let's go ahead and hit it. How does someone ride a sandworm? Ah, yes, well this is something we learned about later in the book and it's very interesting. So the sandworm, like the sandworms like we mentioned, have these segments on their bodies. They have sort of scales that protects their soft, fleshy inner tissues from the you know, the harsh exterior realities of Aracus

and all the sand. So a coman who is who is hopped up on spice and ready to ride, will go out into the desert with some hooks and attract a sandworm using a thumper, and if the sand worm comes by at the right time, the fremen rider can get the hooks under one of the sandworms outer plates or these scales segments, whatever you wants, yeah, and then pull it back. And what that does is exposed the

sandworms inner tissues to the external elements. Obviously, the sandworm does not like this and says, oh no, and it rolls over to protect the exposed part of its body from the sand, and in doing so can lift the rider up onto its back. And then once you're going like that, the sandworm refuses, It doesn't re submerge into the ground while it's got a part of its body exposed like that, because it doesn't want sand to get

in there and hurt it. So you can essentially ride this sandworm around as long as you want until it's just exhausted and collapses, as long as you've got the hooks pulling back the plate. Right, did I describe that about right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's that's perfect. And and so in shifflet, trying to understand like what its teeth are for, she draws on this detail and says, well, uh, what happens when two males are are getting into combat

over territory. They're using those teeth to pull back each other's segments, essentially wrestling that way. And uh, because again sand gets in there, it's gonna irritate the flesh. And she posits that in extreme cases this could result in a viral infection that could kill a worm, but generally the bluser breaks away. So uh, yeah, just grappling with each other, exposing each other as inner flesh by pulling back with the teeth and eventually forcing one of them

to give up and break. Yeah, And a lot. It's like in nature on Earth, a lot of territorial disputes between you know, angry males of species. They don't always end in death. They just one of them is like, okay, I give up. Yeah, if you can have it, you can eat all the female in this region that you want. Um. Finally, a word on diet from Shifflet. Her theory here is that the sandworm is a true autotroph as an organism that's able to to form a nutritional organic substances from

simple inorganic substances such as carbon dioxide. In this case, the sandworm is producing all of its nutritional needs from inorganic compounds on the planet's surface. The energy for this, she says that it it drives the synthetic reactions to completion just by by traveling across the sand, which causes an electrostatic charge differential, which we do see in the books with a whole You know, you see that you already mentioned the static charts that tells you that a

worm is approaching and uh. Incidentally, she also uses this as an as an explanation for why water would be fatal to a sandworm, and that it would cause the electrons to discharge abnormally. Yeah. Now, obviously it can't be that any massive water is fatal to a sandworm because there there is some tiny amount of water on a racus.

But it sounds like a large amount of water will kill the sandworm, right, and it gets into that whole segmented thing because it's it's mentioned in the book that to really kill a sandworm, like to straight up kill it, it's so big. And since each shot, since it doesn't have a central nervous system, since each segment has its own nervous system, you would have to just nuke the whole thing with one of your your handy house atomics

that you're not allowed to use anyway. Wow. Yeah, so uh yeah, it's a it's kind of a complex life cycle. Uh and uh it's it's summed up in this brief bit from the appendix to dune. Now they had a

circular relationship little maker. Again, that's our our sound trout to pries spy spice mass little Maker to Shah Haloud Shah Haloo to scatter the spice upon which fed microscopic creatures called sand plankton, which we'll get into the sand plankton food for Shah haloud, growing, growing, becoming little makers. Now that of course is a little complicated, and we'll get into that, because here it seems like how can

one be. It sounds like one part of its own life cycle is also part of it is also it's part of its diet. That's bizarre, alright. And this brings us to biologist Sibyl Hetchel, PhD s um. Science of Dune Explanation, which, uh is also really interesting and I think gives us our best comparison to real world biology. Okay, so first of all, she she she zooms in on the whole idea that sand trout produce oxygen deep underground,

as mentioned by Kinds in the novel. But they need an energy source to produce oxygen, and since photo since theist is out of the question because their underground, right, the best candidate is of course deep hydrothermal vents. That's

how we see it working on Earth, right. Okay, so one could interpret the sand trout is the producer of milange, and that's certainly Herbert doesn't really say exactly like it's just sandworms are key to the production of spice malhunch, but I don't know exactly how it goes happening, but of course we don't want them to go extinct. Right. So Hetchel deposits that just as sand trout scavenge and herd water, they may also tend a milange producing fungus.

So in this case then it's not actually any part of the of the sandworms life cycle that produces the spice, but they are harvesters of spice, right. She's theorizing that they would sequester stashes of water around these hydrothermal areas, and this would cause the spice fungus to grow. Uh. And in our world, plants, bacteria, and fungi produced the majority of exotic compounds, such as psychedelic compounds, so this would make extra sense, right, the secondary compact pounds that

synthesized for protection by a particular fungus. And of course they're are examples of animals on earth that actually do practice farming, I mean animals other than humans. Right. The example here would be, of course, the leaf cutter ants, and that's the comparison that that civil Hetchel makes in this uh. In this piece, the leaf cutter ants are of course a number of species that are found in

the America's and they cut tree leaves. They drag them to an underground growth chamber and they keep it moist to gold, cultivate fungi on the leaves um and then they so they so basically it breaks down like this. They bring leaf cuttings back to the colony along well worn forest roads and paths. We've probably all seen video or images of this, you know, very very visual. Um. They filter out the bad cuttings, they hand the good ones off to their farmer ants. Then they munch the

leaf cuttings down into a fine mulch. Then they grow the delicious fung guy on that mulch, lay some eggs in it, and enjoy. They drag the depleted leaf cuttings to the dump chamber, along with all the dead ants and dead fungus. So the crazy part about this, and ultimately kind of sigh five uh sounding thing about the leaf cutter ants is that they gave up hunting and gathering fifty million years ago and they became farmers. And they they discovered the technology of agriculture before we did.

They did, and well not only before we did, before we existed, right, They not only did they find this substance, but they essentially domesticated it, and it's grown extinct in the wild, like it's no longer something that they can go out and get. So the analogy here would be imagine if leaf cutter ants, uh could grow to become giant leaf cutter ants that can eat a city. But also if the fungus that the little leaf cutter ants grew in their colonies created a drug that lets you

see the future. Yeah, yeah, imagine all those leaf cutter ants voltron ing up into a larger organism over the course of a thousand years. Um, And I do also want to know that it's it's also kind of like a caveman movie in that when a winged male prepares to leave a leaf on her cut her aunt colony to found a new colony, they have to take a sample of that precious fungi with them because again, it doesn't exist in the wild anymore. It was continually fascinated

by that. Um, we're completely at the mercy of the ants if we want this fungus exactly, and of course we don't want it, but they require it completely. It's key to their their their life. But back to the sandworms. Okay, so we don't know exactly what sand plankton and sand trout are supposed to eat. But maybe they eat spice, uh and it and it, but you know it, but

it wouldn't make sense. Hetchel argues for the creature to both create and consume spice, so the fungus again makes more sense from from that analogy as well from that comparison as well. So she well, I mean I wonder you could look at depending on what you mean by create, you could look at an example like honey in a bee colony. You know, the bees don't create the honey,

but they sort of they process the honey. Yes, And I think that would be an apt analogy here for the milange as well, that the mash is kind of is a created element. UM. So she argues that sand trout communities um are essentially like a combination of leaf cutting, ant nest and hydrothermal vent community and in this case, sandplankton and sand trout would subsist on living spice, fungi,

and bacterial mats that grow around the events. She also presents the notion that sand trout or essentially a sexual and they might subsist as clone communities for quite some time at least until the build up of carbon dioxide from their farming efforts triggers sexual reproduction and also triggers that spice blow the results from the build up, and then that that would scatter the newly produced sand plankton.

So then the sand worm comes in. It wants to eat up that spice, and in doing so it disperses the offspring across vast distances, because of course sandworms have those large spread out territories. That makes sense with some earth earth life too. Or you can think about seeds that spread by growing in fruits that predators want to come and eat, or maybe not predators, you'd call them. I guess they're predators of the plant. They come and want to eat the fruit, and then they take the

seeds with them wherever they go afterwards. So now she also goes on in this piece if she has some some thoughts on size constraints of enormous organisms. If you want to read about that, do check out the book to check out her peace. But we're not gonna go

into him in this podcast. So one of the things I've already mentioned that I really loved about doing is that it's the most ecologically conscious novel i've ever read It's It's a novel that really has interesting thoughts about ecosystems and about resources in ecosystems, like how resources get used and conserve, specifically water and spice, and then also about how organisms feed into one another and create ecosystems.

There's actually a section in the book where the planetary scientist and ecologist Kinds has visions of his father, who was also an ecologist and lived among the fremen on the dune plan in it, and the vision of his father says a couple of interesting things. He says, the more life there is within a system, the more niches there are for life. Life improves the capacity of the environment to sustain life. Life makes needed nutrients more readily available.

It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay from organism to organism. And I think that makes a lot of sense, because whenever you imagine a a rich, thriving ecosystem on Earth, it's one that already has a lot of life forms succeeding in It is kind of counterintuitive from a resource competition or evolutionary perspective, places that have a lot of competitions seem like they they should be harder to survive in. But life creates

ways for other life to thrive. And this is sort of part of the problem with aracous as it's imagined, unless you you imagine it terraformed and seated with other life forms, as some aracters in the novel do kind of imagine. I think primarily they talked about, let's plants, some grasses and you know, and settle the dunes. It doesn't seem to have enough biodiversity to be very hospitable

to life forms. And uh, in addition to the sandworms, like what life forms are described as inhabiting Aracus, Herbert mentions some scavenging birds and a few other carrion eaters and some kind of scrubby plants. But I got the sense, I don't know what you thought about this. I get the sense that a lot of these animals that are described as inhabiting Aracus are imports from human settlement. I don't know what you thought. That's that's the sense I

got as well. They, like the scavenging birds, have certainly evolved over over time to to thrive on Aracus. Like they're there's you know, they're far more conscious. They can basically hear water, you know, miles away, but that they're essentially a terrestrial product. Yeah, while the sandworm is it is entirely alien. So I don't know, maybe somewhere in the if it's in the sequels, or if I missed it.

In the book, Herbert does talk about other life forms native to Aracus, but I can't think of any examples where I remember him talking about that. And and I wanted to ask the question, if we imagine that the sandworm, at the various stages of his life cycle, were the one and only organism native to a planet, is something like that possible in reality? Can you have a one organism ecosystem? Yeah, even if it's a really complex organism like this one. I was trying to find examples of this.

I found one. Actually I think you found it first. But in two thousand and eight there were reports that the first known single organism ecosystem had been discovered, and this was miles under the earth in the moment, I apologize if I'm pronouncing this wrong, Momponing gold mine in South Africa, and it was a bacteria called de Sulfuru dis audax viator. It was a rod shaped bacterium, and

it makes its living in a very remarkable way. It doesn't need sunlight and it doesn't need any prey organisms, so it lives down there by itself, and instead it puts together the organic molecules it needs by access only to water, carbon, and nitrogen in the ground using energy from According to this Lawrence Berkeley Lab source I read on this, hydrogen and sulfate produced by the radioactive decay

of uranium. So this is a it's surviving on chemicals created by radiation in the ground, almost two miles under the ground. This is essentially about as close to an alien microbe as I've ever heard of on Earth. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty far removed from our traditional ecosystem model. Yeah,

and so I just thought that was fascinating. But another way of thinking about it is, if you imagine way way back in time two I don't know, situations of a biogenesis on Earth, you probably at least have to imagine that there are some periods in the history of life where there was only one organism, um and then and then of course we got a branching ecosystem. So that again makes me wonder if you could naturally have a planet where there's really only one type of organism there.

It seems like the natural course of biological evolution is to diversify. But another way of thinking about this that that occurred to me is that what if it is the case that the sand worm and its various stages of life is the only major organism alive on Iracus And it wasn't always that way, And so it could have been a planet rich with life that has essentially been conquered by a single invasive species, Like there's one

organism that destroys all eco diversity on the planet. I could say, Okay, I could see that being the case too, Yeah, where you end up with just a sandworm only ecosystem because it's that dominant of species in this environment. Yeah, I mean, one wonders how sustainable a system like that would be. Uh. And then of course, if you want to think about other parallels to the sandworm in reality, you've of course got the Mongolian death worm. Ah. Now

the Mongolian death worm is not real though, right? Maybe not to you. Well, I didn't know. I maybe I've missed a new study where the occasionally you see an expedition to to to find it. No, as far as I'm aware, no one has ever discovered the Mongolian deathcorm. But if you're not familiar, you should. I bet you've written a blog post about that. I don't know if I've ever really covered mongolian death worm. Um. I have run across you have something called a sandworm that lives

in beach sand. But of course that's an entirely different scenario. Yeah, that's unfortunate, okay, Robert, Yeah, imagine yourself at a party with some hip young people who start passing around the hottest new designer drug. It is the spice Melange. And Herbert never is exactly clear what the spice in the book looks like, but I'm going to try to imagine it here based on a scene from the movie and a description quote I read from a from a sequel. It's it's a little glass box. And then inside the

box there is some orange mass. It almost looks like a like an evacuated insect shell, you know how, like when the cicadas leave their shells behind after they mold some stuff like that. It's kind of brownish orange. And then you press down a little piston to crush some

of this stuff. In the glass and an orange liquid strains out and it smells like cinnamon and you can drink it right up, or you can add it to food or beverages or have it transformed into a gas if you're old navigator in the tank, but it's going to be doing some weird stuff to you. Yeah. And if you're in araqan U Dennizen, if you if Iraqus is your home and you're not privy to a lot of outsider food coming in from other worlds, uh, it's just gonna find its way into your diet. It's just

an ambient part of of water and food on the world. Yeah. And if you're not careful and you keep taking too much spice, you may begin to see the future and become fatally addicted. Yeah, and your eyes will turn blue despite the fatal addiction. There's something kind of appealing about the way they describe some of the spice consumption in the novel. Yeah. They mentioned having, you know, having a cup of spice coffee some I think there's some spice

cakes that are mentioned here and there. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, you're like, yeah, I would kind of like that a nice you know, a nice consciousness expanding cup of coffee as opposed to this, you know these red Bull and Samuda cocktails that I keep going. So characteristics of the spy us in the book, which very according to the person taking it and the intake level, would be some of the following. First, I should say that it's core the spice is described, I think is an awareness drug

and that it changes perception and consciousness. Uh. Now, the first major feature described is that it's the geriatric spice. It's when taken in small quantities over long periods of time, it extends your lifespan. And that's something we probably should have mentioned more earlier on. Like, that's another reason that Iraq is the center of the universe, because not only does the spice enable interstellar travel, uh, it also allows

the wealthy people to extend their lives. Right, once you're a feudal lord and you've conquered all your enemies and you've secured a place in the in the power structures of the universe, what's the next thing you need? You've got to live forever, right, So it does that. And then another effect of it is that it stains your eyes. Taking spice will will cause blue ten ting of the eyes, not just the irises, but the whole eye. It's a mind expander. It grants heightened awareness. In some cases it

allows prescience or limited omniscience. I don't know if limited omniscience is a phrase that makes any sense. It allows you to have some knowledge beyond your physical time and place, and the ability to see some aspects of the future or aspects of the present removed by distance, or to share communal awareness, sort of collaborating across aspects of mind with others. And they often make geographic comparisons in the book. So it's like looking into the future is kind of

like looking across the landscape. And depending on your circumstances, you might be kind of standing in all like a shallow basin and you can't actually see that far. Other times it's flat. Other times maybe you're on a hill, and it depends on your prescient availabilities. How far can you see? Yeah, And then of course the negative that the downside I alluded to earlier is the addiction. When you take it in large quantities, you will get addicted

to it, and if you stop taking it, you will die. Well, that'll happen, unfortunately. So the idea of a drug that expands consciousness is certainly something you find in many cultures writing, including our own. You know, lots of people believe things like hallucinogens like LSD, marijuana, psilocybin, mushrooms, uh, and the ayahuasca brew which I think the chemical uh, the active

chemical and that is D m T right. Yeah, and so under various circumstances, people have suggested all these drugs not only provide euphoria and sometimes sensory hallucinations, but they actually provide access to information or knowledge about reality that

is not otherwise available to people. One of the most common claims you hear is the sort of transcendence journey you might call it, where the hallu synogen gives the user a mental vantage point from which he or she claims to see a deeper reality or to now understand that our day to day experiences are not all there is.

I'm sure you've encountered this before. Oh yeah, And of course it's and that's key to most religions too, that you have at the heart there's a deeper understanding of reality, um, that you have to uncover. Yeah, And I think that's interesting. I think the hallucinogen comparison to spices. Perhaps quite on point, because in a two thousand five book called my clum Running by the American mycologist paulse statements, that's a person

who studies fungus. Uh. The author claims that Frank Herbert. Well, I should just read this quote. It says Uh. He says that Frank Herbert was apparently an enthusiastic mushroom collector himself who came up with this great system for for growing chantrell mushrooms in a way that people hadn't realized how to do before, by creating this spore slurry in

a bucket. But anyway, he says of Frank Herbert. Frank went on to tell me that much of the premise of Dune, the magic spice spores that allowed the bending of space tripping, the giant worms, maggots digesting mushrooms, the eyes of the fremen, the cerulean blue of psilocybin mushrooms, the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors, the Binny Jess, It's influenced by tales of Maria Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico, came from his perception of the

fungal life cycle and his imagination was stimulated through his experiences with the use of magic mushrooms. All right, well, then that that certainly matches up with with what we see in the book. And again bearing in mind that this is you know, rising out of NINETI and mid sixties and and uh and a lot of the counterculture movements that were taking place there, and the and the roll of drugs and lucinogens in that subculture. Yeah, yeah,

certainly though one thing about that that was weird. I googled the psilocybin mushrooms and they didn't look blue to me. I don't know. Yeah, maybe there's sometimes I have not Yeah, they look like mushrooms to me. I've never noticed anyway. To go back to the science of Dune, the writer Carol Hart, PhD has a great essay about the spice, melange and the science of Dune, and she makes some really interesting points comparing the spice to hallucinogens like the

ones I mentioned above, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca. And there are the following changes that you can notice that are similar. One would be changes to the eyes. The spice, it seems, causes a more permanent kind of change with the blue tent, but hallucinogens like LSD and ayahuasca typically cause an extreme

dilation to the pupils. She also notices suspension of time right, ecstatic us, an ecstatic and sometimes frightening sense of communion with others, out of body sensations, loss of self and merger into a oneness, euphoria, death, rebirth, experience, vision slash,

hallucinations and opprescience and life changing realizations. And I think this is one of the most interesting things because, like like I said earlier, a lot of times people take hallucinogens not just with the idea that I'm going to see something interesting, but they take it with the idea that they're learning something about the true nature of reality.

They're getting access to facts and useful information. She says, for example, for the Amazonian Shamans, ayahuasca allowed the soul to leave the body, to search out the explanation for illness in the individual or problems threatening the community, and to decide the course of action. Yeah, I I remember reading, uh, some words from Buddhist Alan Watts, who is also part

of you know the certainly a name. During the decent seventies and he was commenting on on the views of psychedelic drugs in the counterculture, and he compared them to the use of a telescope or microscope that it's something that you, you know, you put your eye to the telescope of the microscope to learn something about reality, but then you also have to re engage with reality. You have to put the telescope or the microscope down in

order to to take those lessons and apply them to life. Yeah, another really interesting parallel with Dune, I think is that the effect of the drug, whether you're talking about real hallucinogens or the spice in Dune, is not just a product of the drug. It's not just here are the molecules in the drug and what they'll do to you, but there are there are product sort of combinatorial product of the drug acting on body and the preparation that

the user has experienced. So it's about preparation, it's about departure. States. Some people will take acid, take LST and just mess around and have some weird experiences and don't learn a whole lot from it. Some people might have bad trips, some people might have what they would consider to be transcendent experiences. And I think there are a lot of people who throughout the years have been advocates of controlled hallucinogen use, who lament the fact that it's taken for kicks. Yeah.

I mean, we look at some of the current research and we're finally seeing a lot more research into psychedelics uh these days. For a while, it was such a taboo area, you know, really kind of poisoned by uh the more you know, extreme aspects of the counterculture in the way that it it gained coverage in the media, we're finally seeing it being an area that can get

funded and and and be studied. Uh. And there have been some some really fascinating looks into how the right levels of hallucinogens combined with appropriate priming, uh, you know, preparation for the experience, uh and as well as sort of after uh exploration of what they felt it can be you to to help eternally ill patients as they prepared to die. It can be used in in various therapies, even addiction therapies. UH. So so yeah, that the priming,

the purpose, really the ritual of it is essential. I mean, I imagine a number of our listeners can think of you know, some individual they've come across before that at least on the surface, looks like they are gaining nothing of value from their experimentation with psychedelics. And and then on the other hand, you know, there are cases where, you know, this particular thinker claims to have had some sort of profound insight um intellectually or creatively while trying

one of these substances. Yeah, So, as Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, once wrote, he said, special internal and external advanced preparations are required. With them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience. So I think he was one of those people you're talking, you know who, who recommended the preparations that go into making yourself ready for the mental journey of expanded consciousness. If you don't put

the preparation time in, it doesn't work. And we see this in the novel Dune because people consuming lots of spice react to it in very different ways. You get the sense that when paul A Tradees starts taking lots of spice and then has his moment of expanded consciousness, begins to see the future, begins to have you know, heightened awareness and pressions and limited omniscience. It's all because of the things that have gone into making Paul who he is. It's not just like he got a really

strong hit of it, you know. So it's the fact that he's been trained in the Benny Jesser at ways that we talked about in the last episode in The mint at Ways. All this that went into making him who he is also made the expanded consciousness what it was. You can see that in contrast to another character in the novel The Twisted Mint at do you call him Pider or Peter? Um always read At as Peter, but Piper might be more accurate. They call him Pider. In

the David Lynch movie, I'll call him Peter. Peter Davrees the The Bad Men Tad who works for the evil harconans uh he They say he takes huge amounts of spice too. He's just gobbles it like candy. He can't get enough of it. But he does not seem to have this same type of expanded awareness that Paul has from extended spice use. And it seems to be that it's it's because of different types of preparation going into

the experience. Yeah, I mean The other example, of course, of the Guild navigators who have been engineered in bread to to pilot these spaceships uh while using the spice. So they consume the spice in order to safely navigate folded space and as a celestial mechanic. John C. Smith points out in the Science of doone UH, there's a

quantum physics tie in here. So eight years before the publication of doone, physicist Hugh Ever the Third proposed a radical interpretation of quantum mechanics that everything that can happen does happen, and each possible action spawns a new universe. This is what's known as the many worlds theory. Every time there's an indeterminate quantum event, the world the universe

branches off into separate realities. It's the very thing that the Borges referenced with the Library of Battle, that this library would contain not only all books, but all possible books. So taking the spies here would have allowed the navigator to at least see the immediate path of the ship in many different multiverses uh, and then safely, you know,

choose the safest path um. And interestingly enough, there is kind of a real world tie in here because according to a nineteen seventy three studied compiled by the RAND Corporation for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, UM, there was a Soviet plan to launch psychics into orbit. Quote how how much should we how much face should we put in this report? I mean maybe a grain

of salt, I'll read the quote here. Regarding precognition, we found only one unverified report by a Soviet investigator that a program was being planned to train astronauts to quote foresee and to avoid accidents in space. It was clear from the context that he was referring to pre cognitive process. So I don't know, uh, if they did look into it, obviously didn't work out. But this was a time of when, you know, the stakes were high in the Cold War.

So if there was a possibility that there was something to some sort of paranormal uh situation, you checked it out, yea? Why not train a bunker full of psychics? Yeah? The same. The same Rand Corporation report also mentioned UM that there was a test into psychic communication by sacrificing a litter of baby rabbits on board of on board of Soviet submarine and the idea here was that the mother rabbit, located on the surface receive psychic signals from the dying young.

So again, uh, this is all unverified, but but it seems possible based on some of the other reports we've heard about both the US and Soviet investigations into the

potential use of paranormal effects. You know, one of the things that's interesting to me about the role of spice in the Dune universe is that it posits a world in which the entire universe is completely dependent on a resource that essentially produces effects similar to things that are taboo in our culture that not only do we, you know, not depend on as a society, but we try to stamp out and say that's not okay. Yeah, Like, essentially everyone in the book seems to be taking some sort

of um performance enhancing substance. If it's not milange, then it's the uh you know, then they're taking samudo, or they're taking the I can't remember the name of it, but that line that the mentent drink, which I believe is supposed to be derived from the same source as samuda, the purple stand lips. Yeah, so everybody's just cranked to the gills on something because you can't depend on the thinking machine, You've got to depend on the human mind.

So maybe you could say that if we had to get rid of our computers, there would be I don't know less opposition to recreational drug use. Maybe. So all right, you know, we're running out of time here, and I don't know, we might even have to cut this part, but I do want to mention the beneath a lack Sue face dancers before we close out. These are characters that you did not encounter in the book because they don't show up until book two and then play an

increasingly important role moving on. But as we mentioned, uh, I think in the first episode that many if the lack su this is a group, this is like a faction in the Doune universe that are really involved in

trans human post human um machinations. They're changing the human form uh engineering new people uh to to survive in this post singularity, you know, Postbutalian jihad world, and so they're doing things like like essentially engaging in cloning the producer of these ghoula's that play an important role in the later books, where dead individuals brought back as a clone h. I like the sound of that. Yeah, they're the they're the faction that creates the twisted uh mentats

we've already discussed. And then they also have these face dancers who are known and feared as spies and assassins UM and their essentially their shape shifters. They can change their their face, their appearance, um, their their voice everything to resemble another person UM and and so they you know, give some unparalleled acting ability. They serve as entertainers throughout the galaxy and UM and they're also key at the Laxu diplomats and conspirators as and as well as just

core members of their society. So uh. There, there's actually a couple of cool articles about how this might work, essentially, how a shape shifting humanoid might work as an organism. Uh. The first uh and the primary one I want to mention comes to us from the Dune Encyclopedia, and this is from contributor Walter E. Myers, and he very much in envisions face dancer biology a shape shifting biology as a complex creation of training, breeding, embryotic manipulation, genetic team

current tinkering, and surgical augmentation. So basically throwing all of these various everything. We got everything we got at creating this shape shifting creature. So I'm not gonna go through the entire entry because it's a he has a lot of details that he throws out, But here are the high points. This is what you need. Key alterations include selected breeding for appropriate physicality and muscle control, because you're gonna need muscle control to shift the face around out

and shift everything about. Embryotic stimulation of overdeveloped back muscles and hyper elastic spine for height control. The embryonic manipulation of the bodies of psylamic sacks, altering their position and allowing them to serve in the voluntary inflation of artificial tubes that are implanted after puberty, thus allowing conscious body size alteration, so essentially bladders in the body that allow

you to just fill up as needed. Childhood augmentation of facial structure replacing certain facial bones with elastic cartilage, coupled with extensive training to allow total manipulation of facial features.

Cellular embryonic manipulation to allow conscious control of scalp temperature and temperature, because this would be used to allow the color manipulation of artificial liquid crystal hair follicles that are later planted like individually, genetic manipulation to enable the conscious formonal control of eye pigment, fetal manipulation, and surgical augmentation to produce male genitals that are attractable within a vaginal

cavity for visual gender swapping. So they wouldn't actually be able to change sex, but they could sort of retract the genitals into a cavity as if they were the landing gear of an airplane. Training and surgery to enhance deferential muscle and autonomic nerve control. Uh So, in other words, a face dancer by this definition would be an extremely complex product uh and no mere human subspecies. But this

is just one take. We also have a take from Sandy Field in her essay Evolution by Any Means on Dune, and this is from the Science of Dune, and she goes into a lot of a lot of these sort of highly evolved human models that we discuss here, but she posits that the face dancers mimic their targets through

conscious migration of body cells. So in order to swiftly change form, a face dancer would need to reck reorganize its skin cells, uh, muscle, liature, and skeletal elements, a feat they might accomplish through the the dissolution and recombination of the cell to sell bonds that hold the tissue together. Now, how might the the lax who have accomplished this. Here's

what she had to say. Quote the concerted action of newly created hormones selected genetically by the the laxu over many generations could act to allow different cell types to move when prompted by neurological signals. Face dancing then could be a genetically derived ability to generate specific hormones at will which allow for the concerted movement of skin, muscle, bone, and other cells to new locations to create the appearance

of another person. So there you go. I mean, I appreciate that as a as a great attempt to explanation. I somehow don't feel like a creature like that could exist in reality. I mean, certainly you can imagine some types of uh, you know, chameleon type elements like changing pigmentation and when we see octopuses and stuff that have a remarkable ability to change their external appearance at wed will. But the moving of bones and things like that, that

sounds impossible to me. Yeah, I I do love the the the rigor in both of these examples, because one takes a very um, you know, genetic, cellular hormonal approach, and the other is a very more of a varied approach but also all into just post human cybernetic tinkering.

And I guess in reality you could create a model that is a combination of the two, maybe draw in some bio mimicry by looking to the world of of the of the octopus or the cuttlefish and saying, well, how could you create those same sort of flesh effects in a humanoid creature. Well, here's something I would say. I don't know to what extent they have shape shifting precision in the books, but I would I would buy this creature more if it could make basic changes to

its body. But but sort of target a particular individual like I, you know, can look now exactly like Robert Lamb as opposed to just I can look different than I normally look. Yeah, yeah, it would. And I think in the books it's laid out that it depends on how long they study a target. So if they study, you know, they just sort of glance at you would be like a very rough version, but they would ideally want to uh study you in earnest for a few

days before replacing you. Yeah, all right, so there you go. We're out of time. Uh that's the biology of done. But before we go, Robert, I gotta ask you about David Lynch movie. I've been burning to talk about this. No, I mean, I read the book and then I watched the movie, and there's so much to like about the movie, actually, because it's got great sets and costumes. Some parts of it are truly weird, uh in ways that are really fun and exciting, and other aspects of it are just incomprehensible.

I watched it with my wife Rachel, and I constantly had to explain things because the movie does not make sense on its own. Yeah, it's It's been a long time since I've seen the movie, though I did last night. I rewatched the intro material that was on the TV airing of it, where they have the the still illustrations and some narration to set up the world. Uh. Yeah, I agree. There's there's so much that doesn't work in the films and ultimately led to it being a kind

of a train wreck. But then there's so many elements that are they're well done. Like some of the casting is just weird. Some of the casting it's just spot on. The costumes are amazing, some of the visual takes on the world are just perfect. But it just doesn't all come together. Yeah, you know, I think Doone could be a really great animated movie. Yeah, Like imagine if Miyazaki had had taken it on, you know, because you have the ecological elements that he's you know, it's so president

in his work. Oh man, that's a thing that I think was really lacking, and at least the version of doing that I saw. Now I heard that there there's shorter there's a shorter version and a longer version. I'm not sure which one I saw. Uh. If there's a shorter version, I cannot imagine it because the version I saw left out so much explanation it's crazy. But but yeah, the one thing that really seemed left out of the

movie is the ecological themes of the book. All the concerns about water, about about how to survive in the environment. I mean, this is a this is a key part of the book, and it's you know, maybe one out of every three pages is primarily about water, and this is just not the case in the movie. Yeah, indeed, and that's you know, ultimately a you know, a large

thing to be missing from the finished product. On the other hand, the movie does have I don't know if you remember this from the movie, but the the strategically inserted pug. Oh yes, how how c Trades has a pug. Yeah, and if you mentioned this, I saw he The pug shows up in the still illustrations for the TV version intro. So it's got Jurgen proc now standing there with his his beard in his uniform holding a pug. There's also a scene of Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck fighting a

battle and he's got the pug in his arms. Yeah. I do not remember. I've in my reread of the book, I've not come across the pug. Pretty sure. They added that their pug at Tradees is not in the book. They added the pug, they adding the added the weirding module, um and a few other things. They added him then left out some some key things as well. So yeah,

there you go. Well, hey, I know that a lot of you out there have comments you would like to add on the Dune Universe, on the Dune movies, on some of this uh uh, some of the possible science behind the biology behind the technology that discussed in the other episodes, and we would of course loved to hear from you. As always, check out our homepage Stuff to

Blow your Mind dot com. Uh, and you also want to check out the landing page for this episode that will include links out to these books that we've mentioned too related our coals, as well as where you can find some of the music that we featured and uh and indeed, as we close out here, we're gonna be listening to the track Aracus by musician Raleigh Porter off his two thousand eleven album Aftertime, released by Subtext Recordings. Uh. There'll be a link to that on the landing page

for this episode. But you can also learn more about human his work at Raleigh Porter dot com. And if you want to get in touch with us about your favorite aspect of the Dune novels or the Dune movies, or your least favorite aspect, or just tell us what you think about Dune or give us feedback on the episode, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com