From the Vault: Star Wars Alien Necropsy, Part 2

forbidden a third episode. The analysis needs to be completed today. The surgical droid is requesting that we each hold a flap of tissue. I am just here to supervise. Doesn't he have extra arms for precisely this reason? Those are for waving around all right? Then? My welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our Star Wars Alien Necropsys. Uh So

in the last episode. If you haven't heard that, yeah, you should probably just go listen to that one first where we discuss what we're doing here and then and then come back and rejoin us for this one. But hey, if if you're all caught up here, we are again. And the last time we talked about some aliens from the Star Wars galaxy. We talked about some vacuum dwellers like the Exo Gorth and the myn Ox and compared that to some real world biology, both both definite and hypothetical.

And we also talked about the Jedi toe Gruda, a powerful and honorable species of alien with some with awesome stuff on their heads. But but we're back again, and I think it's heads up first again today, isn't it?

It is? And I'm glad as you mentioned the Togruto because because basically it comes down to this situation where you have various scenes in Star Wars Cantina scenes, Jedi Council scenes, etcetera, where part of the fund is like, wow, look at the alien diversity and look at all the strange things going on with with morphology, with with these aliens heads and bodies. But of course, if we're looking at things from a biological standpoint, things are shaped certain

ways for a reason. Things have evolved into different forms for a reason. And those strange heads you see just filling up the space. If we were, if we were to look at them with scientific scrutiny, and you know, and also lean into the uh, you know two, into the imagination, into the fantasy of that. You know, all these things have a purpose, and and we can we can turn, of course, to to Cannon and to the

fiction itself to get some of those answers. But then a lot of the fun is an extrapolating and saying what else could it be used for? Or if the thing they're telling me is true, what are the ramifications, often the unexplored ramifications of that right? What can you deduce about the ancestral environment of the creature that confronts Luke in the moss ize lye cantina with the weird little lobes on his chin. I actually know the answer to that one. I think that was that one has

been described in Cannon. I think it's cannon anyway as being um like a a surgical It's like a self surgical addict. So that so all those weird features are at least partially the result of self surgery. I think that's right. Could be wrong on that. We might have to take that out if I'm wrong, but but I believe that's the case. That is not the answer I expect. Wait, are you talking about the guy who talks to Luke

or just the guy who grunt? No, I meant the guy who grunts at him, who has the weird little kind of like the butt on his mouth or chin area. Yes, um, I don't know as much about those guys, but but they are. They are described at length in some of

the books that, uh, that I've looked at. One of which I want to go ahead and mention is Star Wars Alien Archive, which is just a wonderful illustrated tone of Aliens from all I think, all the Star Wars movies up through Solo, and it had just wonderful illustrations, nice little rite ups about them. It's one of these books that, um, that I got from my my son sometime last year early last year, and we've already like

worn it out, their pages falling out of it. You know, anytime you get the book out, you have to like reinsert different parts of it that have come come apart. It's a it's seen a lot of a lot of wear and tear and love, so I highly recommend that one. Yeah. I think we've talked too many times before about our our love for the illustrated encyclopedias of fictional worlds, and and this is a great one. But the the first selection I want to make here today is Um is

not a creature from a cantina. It is that, in fact, a creature from UH that we first encounter in the Jedi Council scenes in UH Star Wars The Phantom Menace. Now, I don't know if you remember these these guys are not are really there's mainly one that we encounter, but the species they're known as the Serians. Oh, this is the guy who looks like a wizard but with a tower head. So it's almost as if the Tower of

Eisngard has been incorporated into Sorrowman's skull. Yes, these uh these were a bipedal largely humanoid species were told their native to the planet Syria, and they're most notable for their enlarged, vaguely conical craniums, though they lack the pronounced cone heads of the Remulachians of cone Head's fame. Um we're told that they have two hearts, the second of which is said to supply extra blood and oxygen to their most curious uh neurobiology. And that is a binary brain.

Oh okay, I can see why this caught your attention. Yes, So what is meant by a binary brain? Well? In uh again the excellent illustrated Star Wars Alien Archive, it is said that the Syrian binary brain is quote able to process many things the same time, sort through data quickly, and also consider two sides of the same arguments simultaneously parallel processing. Yeah, and it's also been suggested I think in perhaps this is like an extended universe, you know,

novelization thing. But it's been suggested that this sort of brain structure allows at least certain members of of of the Syrian species, especially like four sensitive individuals, to explore both the light and the dark side of the force in ways that are maybe somewhat safer compared to just normal dabbling in the dark side. Oh. I see. So the understanding is that normally, if you are to explore the dark side, it's kind of not possible to just do that as a curiosity like learning the dark side

necessarily will corrupt and contaminate your brain. And so if you have a divided mind like this, maybe you can sort of quarantine the half of your brain that does get corrupted with that so that it doesn't spread to the other half. Is that what you're saying? That is what?

That is what I've leaeve The argument is I haven't actually read anything um or viewed anything where they get into that, but certainly if anyone out there has, if you're familiar with with whatever novelization or or novel or comic this happens to be from, I'd love to hear a little bit more. Now. The most famous and recognizable Serian is, without a doubt, Jedi Master Kai Adimundi, hero general of the Clone Wars who fought alongside the likes

of Anakin, Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi. He fought at the first and second battles of Genosis and perished during the invasion of the Ghetto with the twenty one Novocore when Supreme Chancellor Palpatine initiated Order sixty six. He's skilled with a lightsaber. He was a skilled force combatant, but he was equally known and respected for his logic and tactics that big brain of his Yeah, that would make sense. I seem to recall his death scene. I think it's

in Revenge of the Sith. He's like running across a is it across a bridge or something? Yeah, I think it's a bridge battle and all the Clone Troopers start shooting him in the back. Yeah. Yeah, so so he track definitely goes down. But so you don't see a lot of him in the live action stuff, but um and in those prequel films, he was played by an actor by the name of Silas Carson under heavy um

effects makeup. But in the Clone Wars animated series, the main one, he was voiced by British Israeli actor Brian George, who does a great job with him, and they have a little more time to flesh him out. And in the two thousand three Clone Wars series from Ghindi Tartakowski, you don't have um, you don't really have a lot of character development there, but you have a lot of action.

That's a very action centric series. And in that um Master Mundi is an absolute shirt ripping beast, Like he's running around with head bandaged and his shirt torn open, with all these muscles and he's just like you know, killing the thousands of droids. It's it's pretty fun. So he's like your Hunter from the Future mode. Yeah, just slaying. But you know, okay, it's impressive that he can do stuff with the lightsaber and then he can go into beast mode. But the main thing we're gonna talk about

here is this idea of a binary brain. And as far as I know, there's no definitive word on the exact structure of the Syrian brain or brains, but I think there are essentially a couple of ways to look at what might be going on inside that skull of theirs. Okay, let's let's hear it. What's the first option? Okay, first option would be just, of course, a supersized brain that enables this binary mental process, composed of two lobes like ours,

or maybe more lobes. I don't know, you know, when you're getting into an unknown alien brain, who's to say, right, And Syrian brain evolution could certainly follow the ice cream scoop model of human brain evolution. I think we've discussed this in the show before. But as explained by Kyle Moon Kittrick in a two thousand ten Discover Magazine article, quote evolution built our brain by taking simpler brains and just piling more brains on top, like adding scoops of

ice cream to an ice cream cone. Yeah. I think that's a good way of thinking about it. I mean, obviously, we always want to be careful not to oversimplify the way we think about the structures of the brain, because brains are complex and and all that, But in rough terms, I think that is sort of true. Like at the lower levels of the brain you have um the more sort of automatic processes of the body, and the more

base level things like emotional type reactions. And then when you get further and further into the younger parts of the brain, younger in an evolutionary sense, towards the top and front of the brain, you get these you know, these core texes, which are very involved in executive function and a lot of the things we think of as higher level thinking and behavior. Yeah, Son Gentric describes like the first the first layer is actually the cone, and

that's the nervous jellyfish cone. And then you get your instinctive lizard scoop pile on top of that, then the memory mouse scoop, then the thinking, the thinking ape scoop on top of that. So each layer brings with it great pros that enable the human brain to funct and evolved, but also arguably certain cons. And that's one of the

things they get into in this article. But for our purposes, yeah, I think you could look at these arian the brain as essentially a human level brain with additional scoops cowering atop the rest of the cone, enabling this vastly increased functionality. Now you might think, well, what would the cons of having higher brain function be? And I would just say, like, I'm not aware of any reptiles that really get bogged

down in rumination. Yeah, yeah, um, and I and I really hope certainly a Jedi master wouldn't have Like a Jedi masters have to deal with the dark side too. I mean that's kind of the thing, right, Like higher cognition means you're open to the dark set. Correct me

if I'm wrong. But I seem to recall in the prequels that a lot of Jedi training is about purging emotions, or at least certain kinds of emotions, maybe not to the full Spock extent, but at least like not letting impulsive emotional reactions guide you're thinking to be clear and to be you know, to to be able to use was clear thinking in your mind when when our our natural tendency would be to get hot headed, right uh. Yeah.

And then there's a lot of Buddhist uh uh Buddhism in there as well, dealing with like the idea of avoiding attachments and all. So we see that doesn't necessarily work out all that well for those who aspire to it, right in those films. But but even like in terms of like confronting the dark side though, like that's always been a part of the uh of the of the

Star Wars world, I mean, back the Empire. When Luke goes into that swamp and he's completing his training, like one of the things he does is the encounters that that vision of of Darth Vader that is also a vision of himself, right, I mean, I think we're supposed to take that as like Luke is being confronted by the possibility of what would happen if he himself were seduced by the dark Side, which of course he does. He does play pretty dangerous in the movies, right, he

gets close. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's Basically, this is like one idea of looking at this big just one big brain in there, so it's like built up level by level, and maybe the additional brains are are something like what you would put even on top of our neo cortex.

Maybe like they've got like a neo neo cortex or something. Yeah, now another interpretation, and I think a more exotic one and also maybe maybe more fun, maybe more sci fi fantasy, but also one that I think I've seen visually represented somewhere. I tried to hunt it down to see if I get because I would have put it in our inside of our notes if I could, but I couldn't find it.

But I think I've seen this represented visibly. And that is the idea that Serian's actually have two brains inside their skull, one positioned right on top of the other, just straight up two brains inside their heads. So that means one of the brains is closer to the heart. Maybe that makes it easier to get blood flow to that one. Well, that's why they have two hearts, Joe. So the idea is that that second heart is I guess powering the second brain or enabling just enough blood

flow to get up there to to work with both brains. Um. So I want to stress I'm not talking two brains here in the sense that the human brain consists of two hemispheres connected by the corpus colalsum, but two separate brains, perhaps each consisting of two hemispheres each. And uh, I should also add that that some descriptions refer to Syrian brains in a way that does seem to indicate two brains. And again, they do have two hard so I guess

the duplicity seems to to work out here. So of these two I tend to lean more towards the actual two brains inside their their heads. Uh. So, I guess another you could do a third option that would be a variation on idea number two, and that would be that they just have a very large humanoid brain, but the hemispheres are not connected by something like the corpus colossum.

Oh no, that's very interesting. I want to say some things, but I also don't want to preempt you because I know you're going to get into talking about split brain

experiments here. Oh yeah, okay, but yeah, so the corpus colosum, at least we know in the human brain enables a large amount of community cation between the hemispheres, and in cases where the corpus colossum in humans has been severed, often a person can still live their life, like you can function with your brain hemispheres severed, and you can do things, but there are some very noticeable changes to how the brain or brains react to certain types of

stimuli and scenarios under that condition. Yeah, yeah, when the colossum has been severed. And then when you have like often it's you have to have certain experimental scenarios in place to make it become obvious because otherwise the individual doesn't notice and people who know them probably don't notice. But but we'll get out into all that in a second. Now, there are a lot of different directions you could go in here, like why, I mean, the big one is

like why would they go in this direction? First of all, would it be natural? Would it be just an evolution or would it be something that was engineered? And in either case, like why would it have to do with uh, like higher why would they need this? Like higher cognitive state would have something to do with, you know, being an interstellar species, or something to do with their their

home environment. I don't know. Well, I mean it makes me think about how there are species on Earth that have a more distributed model of intelligence and nervous system control.

And a great example would be octopuses, you know, like the octopus of course, like they've got a central brain, but then they have ganglia throughout the body that are sometimes written about, and you could argue to what extent this is a fair characterization, but they you could argue that octopuses in some ways also think with their arms in ways that are independent of the thinking that takes

place in the centralized brain. So you can imagine there are scenarios where it's useful for an animal to have thinking or information processing happening at multiple different places within the body. But the Syrian seems kind of different because you can imagine with the octopus, Okay, maybe somehow the arm needs to think independently of the central brain, but this is too central role brains, two brains in the head, So what's the what's like the second one doing differently?

How would that be distributed in a way that would be useful like the octopus's arm. Yeah, and and so in thinking about possibilities, and you know, we also come into ideas of that, like a philosophical or spiritual upgrades to the brain. I mean, why not if we're trying to determine where we go from here. I mean, it seems like that's worth thinking about. I should also just go ahead and add that obviously, big headed aliens is just a long, a longstanding trope, you know, going back

to the outer limits and so forth. So, uh, it's not like they invented the idea of big headed aliens and big headed future humanoids. It's been pretty much standard. Um. But but I don't know that I have I'm sure there's some sci fi out there predating this in which a human had to brain or humanoid had two brains, aside from Steve Martin, but yeah, but I'm not I'm not aware of it off the top of my head. But but a lot of these considerations, like when we're

talking about what, you know, what does this mean? What would two brains be like? I mean, it basically comes down to to that, what would it be like to have two brains? What would it conceive? What would conceivably be the mental state of an individual like Master Moondy here with two brains in their head? Ah? So now,

you're getting into subjective experience. And this of course touches on really big questions that are still unsettled in in in human science and philosophy, stuff about like where consciousness resides and what it consists of. Yeah, yeah, and ultimately, yeah, this is going to be unanswerable and we just have to sort of speculate and have fun with the speculation. But on one level, you have to say that, ultimately the mind of alien being might just be impossible for

us to comprehend. It just might be that different. On the other hand, you could say, well, having two brains in your head like this, it would just be like

our mental experience. Because, as we alluded to earlier, the human brain consists of two cerebral hemispheres connected by the corpus um closum, each with many different modules, all of these acting and consert with each other, interconnected, and we explored this at length in our episodes on split brain experiments UM and and of those experiments, most interestingly, one of the big takems was if is that indeed, if

you split the brain, you essentially split the person as well. Um, we're talking one person per hemisphere of the brain, a division of self not one that is obvious to the individual or too people around them, but again presents itself when revealed through various experiments, particularly the Nobel winning work of neuroscientists Roger Sperry and Michael Gazanaga in the sixties

and seventies. And so we go into much more depth than in that pair of episodes from I think it was a couple of years ago now, so you can go look those up if you want the full scoop.

But they did find some very interesting things that I will say, Um, we also talked in that episode, I think about how there has been some research in recent years that sort of challenge their original findings, but people have pushed back against that research too, so it seems like, you know, this is one of the many things in

in psychology and neuroscience that's still an ongoing question. But at least what they appeared to find is that you can, for example, in a patient who has had their hemisphere severed through this radical UH severing of the corpus closum, which is done not for the purpose of the experiment, but it's done specifically for people with really UH treatment resistant epilepsy to prevent them from having these recurring terrible seizures.

Uh that you can sever the corpus closum, a person still reports being able to live their life generally like, it is not a debilitating thing to do to the brain, but it causes these strange things where, for example, it seems that some amount of information is prevented from being shared fully between the two different parts of the brain. And so, for example, it is widely uh that in in most brains, it is the left hemisphere that seems to do the talking, like the language interactions with the

outside world. And so you can present stimuli that are only within the sensory awareness of the right hemisphere of the brain, say by presenting it in a certain part of the visual field. And so the parts of the body controlled primarily by the right hemisphere of the brain can do things that seem to reflect knowledge of the stimulus that you have showed that hemisphere of the brain, but the person can't talk about that knowledge. They don't

seem to have linguistic awareness of it, which is extremely weird. Yeah, And and at times it kind of comes off as a sort of subtle duality of self. Some of the most interesting ideas that come come out of it because Anaga wraps up in his interpreter theory, which which again we've discussed on the show, in which the the left brain hemisphere contains some function that he calls the interpreter, which creates a sense of self, even if it is a completely false sense by coming up with a post

talk explanation for behaviors. Yeah, that that there's this function that's largely seated within the left hemisphere that sort of tells the narrative story to your own brain, that explains why you're doing what you're doing. It creates that moment to moment stream of consciousness that helps you understand your own behavior, even though it seems a lot of your own behavior is caused by things that are not actually within your awareness. It doesn't, it doesn't. It's not downstream

from your consciousness, but upstream from your consciousness. Now I should also throw in that in there. They did experiment with animals as well, and um, you know there are limitations when you're looking at animal brains and you know, trying to compare it to human brains. But but they found that if they produced a split brain in some

of these animals. Uh. First of all, of course, each side seemed to function independently the other, but also that an animal with a split brain could memorize double the information. Uh So that basic idea again, we could at least when talking about Star Wars, we could extrapolate to say, well, maybe if you did have two independent brains in your head, yeah, maybe you could process and contain double the information. So

that's really interesting. But I'm also really interested in this idea of exploring both sides of the force with the brain like this that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Yeah, So with that in mind, let's consider a couple of take comes. And again we're kind of cherry picking here, but a couple of take comes from the split brain research that

Kazanga put forth. First of all, the interpreter function of the left brain makes it more makes it more likely to distort recall of events, and that the non interpreting, non explaining right brain has a more accurate recall function. So it's not telling itself a story to post talk rationalize whatever is, it's experiencing. It's logging information in a more objective sense. Yeah, like one side is telling a story, crafting a story, and retelling a story. On the other

side is is recalling events, saying what happened. Also, the left and right hemispheres have different problem solving approaches. The right hemisphere bases its judgments on simple frequency information, while the left relies on the formation of elaborate HYPOTHESI sees. So that this makes me wonder like which side would

lean dark side? Because you know that the left is again partial to distorted recall, the very sort of distortion that we see in the fall of say Anakin Skywalker, but it also relies on uh, you know, those the idea of elaborate hypotheses, which again matches up with some of some of Skywalker's inner torment or or you know, as well as the expressed worldview of of his master dark city a simper of Palpatine, right, uh and and perhaps the light you know, the right side of the force,

the side of the brain here is more about simple frequency information and accurate recall. So instead of the distorted worldview like this is the world as it is, like a more logical approach to reality. So if there is anything to interpreter theory, it seems to me pretty clear that it would be the left side that's the dark side, right, because what's the Dark Side. Do the Dark Side you tell a story in which your actions are justified because

of some reason. Right, well, I had to do it because I had to save pad May, right right where the logical side is like, no, you're just like strayed up killing people. Uh. But then again, you know, what would darth Citius say to all this? What would would Palpatine say? And I think he might well argue that it's only through mental gymnastics that we arrive at the Jedi way, that the Jedi exists because they're telling this themselves,

the story and over and over again. They're creating their own mythology to rationalize their tyranny, and that the dark Side is just the shortest logical path, like that Cidius is the same man in the universe that has been deluded by this um, this ancient religion. Darth Citius makes a good point. You know, I think it would work better. Actually, though, if Darth said if the Sith Lords were not always saying like, yes, we are the dark Side, we we are the bad guys. Like what if Darth Citius had

been like, no, it's the Jedi who are the dark Side. Well, I think he also realized that you know, dark Side is good branding, you know, yeah, yeah, it looks I mean seriously, who looks cool or Darth Vader or what Yoda or Obi wan Kenobi. I mean yeah, have you

ever seen there's an illustrator. I think this is from a comic or something where they did an alternate reality where Darth Vader fully redeemed himself and survived at some point in like say, Return of the Jedi, and then he's still in his armor, but now it's white armor, white Darth Darth Vader outfit. And I mean it's kind of a neat idea. I love the idea of exploring alternate possibilities, but on the other hand, it just doesn't look as cool as it does in black. Oh. I

think he should have kept it. I mean, I don't love anyway, like the simple like color coordinating of morality. I mean, like that's dumb. I mean, and they already transcended in some ways, like the Stormtroopers are addressed in clean white right. Yeah, so yeah, I think they should let Darth Vader keep his original armor. I mean, it looks looks awesome. Before we move on from the split

brain stuff, I just wanted to throw in. So so there's some more nuance on the subject that that research I alluded to in recent years that's put some challenges to the original split brain research. Uh. I think a lot of that was associated with the researcher named Pinto, I think named Yair Pinto, who I think is a Dutch neuropsychologist. And basically what uh, that person and colleagues have argued is that the split brain experiments actually just

proved divided perception, not divided consciousness. But then people who people have defended the original research coming back against that. I don't remember how all of the back and forth worked out right now, but just be aware that there is ongoing division about that. In fact, split brain researchers appeared to be uh somewhat divided. We may say, yeah, well I'm of two minds myself on it. Um. Speaking

of which, back to the Syrian binary brain. Um. Again, they're apparently noted for their ability to come at a topic from both sides simultaneously. Um and uh. And I got to thinking about that. I mean, one hand, I was wondering again, is something they do naturally or is it only accessible via training? But I suppose one way to really tackle the problem is again to come back to human cognition and to ask what seems like it

should be a pretty simple question. Is it possible for a human to think two things at one time, not to juggle between thoughts, or to focus on like a combination of two things. Like you know, for instance, I can think about a human and I can think about a horse. You know, I can sort of go back and forth between the two. I can focus on the idea of a centaur and kind of involve you know,

both of them at once. But can I think about a horse and a human on like on, you know, and actually do parallel lines of thought at the same time, So not this is a mixture between a horse and a human, but to think simultaneously this is one horse and this is one human at the same time, right, Can I what's the business lingo dual track, parallel path,

parallel path? I think that means something somewhat different, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying, So like, yeah, being able to I mean, I think it's a really important thing in in good mental hygiene and training your brain to work well, that you are able to hold conflicting ideas in your mind in order to figure out which one

makes more sense. I mean, I think it's our natural tendency to kind of too instead get a feel for conflicting ideas pretty quickly figure out which one were more attached to, and then just fully commit to that one

and not consider the other at all. But I think also maybe you're getting at something different, which is not um being able to consider conflicting ideas or conflicting explanations for something you're talking more about like having the focus of attention in the mind be two different things at the same time. Is that what you're Okay, Yeah, yeah,

that's a different thing. And that's also very interesting because yeah, this once again gets into like what is consciousness And one of the central features of consciousness seems to be this spotlight quality to it, right that it consciousness seems to have a basic really like one focal point of attention at a time, and other things can kind of

intrude on consciousness suddenly. But if you are thinking about a horse, you're also not simultaneously thinking with the same level of focus and intensity about a person, right, right, And so this is something that a psychologist by the name of Nick I believe it is Shader. I could have his last name pronounced wrong. If so, I apologize here at c h A t E r Um. But he is the author of the mind is flat, the

illusion of mental depth in the improvised mind. And what he would argue here is that that we depend on a cycle of thought whereby a number of systems work to push forward ideas step by step. Uh so I he would argue, I think if he worked to weigh in on this topic, that are limited human neural capacity is only sufficient to pursue one goal at a time, and maybe just maybe doubled human neural capacity is what it would actually take to truly dual track something. Does

that make sense? Yeah, I think so. So he's saying to to like consider like to you know, it's kind of how when we're making like a to do list, you have to break tasks apart into into like individual steps and do them one at a time. Uh. And I find, you know, doing that for me, it definitely helps me organize the flow of of work a lot better. But maybe if you had a more powerful mind, if you had like two brains in your head, you could actually you wouldn't have to break things into parts quite

so much. You could, you know, consider more sort of umbrella tasks with all of their subdivided parts simultaneously. Yeah, And I think ultimately it's it's very difficult to imagine what that would be like. I mean, it's kind of like trying to imagine what would our view of reality be like if we could also, uh, you know, feel the magnetosphere or something you know, or or or you know, see wavelengths of light that we we don't have access to that sort of thing. Um Now, the author of

the mind is Flat. He was also a co author on a paper um along with Elizabeth A. Mayor Mayler and Gregory V. Jones from two thousand one titled searching for Two Things at Once. And in this the author's conducted an experiment into whether retrieval from semantic memory and autobiographical memory is exclusive or whether people can search for two things at once, and they concluded that quote exclusivity was observed to occur in retrieval among multiple non overlapping

categories in both semantic and autobiographical memory. Again, they're they're talking about about memory recall here, but this also seems to get it sort of the same idea. I was reading a summary of the mind is Flat by Stephen Poole for The Guardian, and they summarize some of this by by by saying, quote, we can't even see two or more colors at once, but switch between one at a time. In general, our richness of experience seems to

be a construct. And we've touched on some of this before as well, especially with vision about like how, um you know, we we have this idea in our mind that the whole everything we can see with our eyes at one time are in like full color and maybe even full detail. But you don't have to really get too experimental. You can just to to realize that this is not the case. Yeah, And there are tons of

examples of this. We like if you close one eye, you still feel like you have total vision and you can see all around, but in fact there's a blind spot caused by your optic nerve, and you just don't see that there is a blind spot there um or.

One of the other examples we've often cited is color blindness and peripheral vision, Like you believe that you can see color in your peripheral vision until you try it, Like somebody holds up different colored objects right at the edge of where you can see, and it turns out you can't. You know, you can't see different colors there.

You can only see vague things. Something is moving. Even though it totally like a percent, it feels like I can see color in my periphery, so so very roughly, if we take that idea and we we extrapolate it to cognition itself, you know, we can we see the

limitations of of our focus. We see the limitations of how we construct a world and focus on it, you know, and it is you could basically break it down to the idea of we have the one spotlight, but if we had two brains in our head, would we essentially

have two spotlights. That's very interesting and it makes me wonder what the practical differences in like say, a culture and a technosphere and a science developed by people with brains of that type would be, Like, like, how is art different if you can focus on more than one thing at a time? How how is science and technology different if you can focus on more than one thing at a time? Yeah, or even your your use of symbols and language, etcetera. I mean it kind of coming

back to the idea of the center. The center exists to a certain extent because it combines two things into one and brags in aspects of both of those independent things. But would you would these types, would these forms be necessary for um uh, for the Syrians, or would they by just by necessity? Would all of their hybrids be more complex chimeras that involve like multiple aspects, like at least four aspects, because in terms of just contemplating two parallels,

they can do that on their own. They don't need a symbol to help with it. This is really interesting. I want more about the Syrians now, I want like Syrian focused Star Wars stories. I want to master moondy Um novelization to read somebody, why do we not have one? Mace Window got his own book. It's really really difficult to follow his inner monologue though. Oh man, it's it's actually two volumes and you have to read them at

the same time. Oh wait, No, that's a fantastic idea. Actually, you write two different novels that narrate the exact same events, but they're one is from each each brain in the head. That's really yeah, that could be good, now, that would that would actually be a fun Yeah, short story exercise if someone wanted it to keep it simple, all right, talk about his death, like the final moments leading up to his death, to his betrayal by the Clone troopers.

He was aside, he was working aside, Like what is one account of it and what is the other? Like, I guess one account is kind of like I didn't see this coming at all. The other account is is Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I should have talked to the other brain about this before we ran out of them on the bridge. All Right, well, I say we we close out on the Syrians for now. Obviously there there are a ton of other weird brains and multi headed

things we could talk about in Star Wars universe. But uh yeah, for for some reason, I think the Syrian was the one that that captured my imagination the most here. This was a very good pick. Thank thank thank all Right, what do you have, Joe, what do you have for us? Okay, Well, you had to help me with the Star Wars aspect of this one, because I admit this is one that I backed into because I got interested in the analogy

animal from reality first, to be fully transparent. This is a type of animal that I first started looking at for our episode last week. I think it was about the sargassum seaweed, but then I realized that it didn't really fit super well into that episode. This animal is not especially associated with sargassum, only in certain occasions. Uh, So I figured I would actually save it for this, and I found what I believe is a fantastic wedge

to to get into the Star Wars universe. But I felt like I had to hold up a hand and be honest about where this comes from. Oh, fair enough, but I wanted to think about bipedal, aquatic, humanoid aliens, sentient water creatures who stand up on two feet with a Homo sapiens posture. Now, the first one I thought about is is not your your excellent pick here, It's

something that doesn't quite fit my animal as well. But uh, the first one I wanted to talk about is one of my favorites from childhood, Admiral Akbar from Return of the Jedi, And I think he's been featured in many other things since. But Admiral Bar the the noble, brilliant, big eyed commander of the Rebel fleet during its attack on the Second Death Star. Famously, he discovers it is

a trap. Yeah, he's a super fun character. Wonderful, just wonderful special effects makeup to create that guy and uh, and that that species is is fleshed out a bit more in the Clone Wars animated series as well. We get to go to their their home world of of Mancola, which is this ocean world and it's also where the Corean live. Um. I don't know if you remember these guys. They were also I think first uh shown to us in Return of the Jedi. But they're like a squid

face guy. Yeah, they pop up in a job as palace I believe, yes, so, Admiral Akbar. Species is called the Montclamari and they are native to this home planet of Montcola. But also, yes, the Coreans these other creatures who look more like So, the Montclamari are an amphibious species and they look sort of I guess the closest analogy in Earth it would be they look kind of like frogs. They've got frog like eyes and kind of frog like skin, and it would make sense since they're

supposed to be amphibious. But the Corn's they look more like bipedal uh humans basically, but with squids for heads. I think they've sometimes been called like kind of Catholic aliens, now the mont Calamari. This does raise a number of questions itself, because I wonder how does the bipedalism of the mont calumari evolve Like bipedalism and limit even limited by beetle behaviors can be found in a number of

terrestrial animals on Earth. You've got birds and their extinct therapod dinosaur relatives, some reptiles such as you know the reptiles we've discussed in the past, lizards that run on the water with two back legs. Of course, in primate so number of animals will stand up on two legs. But almost all the cases I can think of with this involve animals that are standing on or walking on solid land, or walking or running across the top of

the water. And it's actually still a matter of debate in a pretty interesting way, how human ancestors developed full time by petals um. One of the bygone hypotheses you've probably heard, this was from the old days, was that human ancestors evolved by petalism so that they could see over the tall grasses of the savannah. But I think

this hypothesis is mostly discarded now. One of the main reasons is that it looks like from from the fossil record that humans became bipetle when they still lived primarily in an arboreal environment, so around the trees, not in

grasslands with tall grasses. And so there are a number of competing hypotheses today, one of which that's pretty interesting, or I guess several actually get into the idea that by petalism evolved because of the evolutionary advantages in various different ways of having free hands available for carrying things

around while you move. Yeah, as I'm hunting and gathering, like I need those free hands to hold like my my satchel of collected berries or mushrooms or the tools that I'm using, yeah, to like bring back to your family from across a long distance or something like that. But there could be another explanation this better. This is one one of those things where I think the it's wide open, you know, they're there are tons of different ideas competing, and and so it's very interesting for that reason.

But whatever the reason that that human ancestors evolved full time by petalism, it does seem kind of weird. To imagine by petalism evolving in an aquatic or mostly aquatic species, Like what are they walking around on? You know, are they walking around on the ocean floor? In order to do that, it would seem like they would have to be very dense, right, Like they sink to the bottom and they need to stand up and walk around on

the bottom. You'd imagine they'd mostly be geared for for swimming. Uh. Though maybe I don't know, because the Mont Calamari it says that they're an amphibious species. Maybe they evolved by petalism for whatever part of their life they spend walking around outside the water on the land, if they if they do that at all, I don't know all that much about the Montcolamari. But amphibious, yeah maybe yeah. In the episodes of Clone Wars where they're they're more fleshed out,

we we don't really always see here. I think some like big submersible environments, and of course a lot of like open water warfare that's taking place. So I don't know if that ultimately we get much in the way of answers from that show either, But in thinking about other bipedal upright water aliens in the Star Wars universe. Rob, You're gonna have to help me with this one, because you connected me to the species and I knew nothing

about it previously. But there is a species from the Star Wars universe called the Nephron in E P H R A N. And this is much closer to what I want to talk about here, because this is a bipedal aquatic alien that's more like a crustacean, like a bipedal shrimp or crab. They are said to come from an ocean world in the Star Wars galaxy called Nepotus. And the main example character of this species is a person from stuff I haven't seen called erm scissor Punch.

Can can you fill me in? Yeah, So this is a character, if if memory serves, pops up in the movie Solo, which of course the Han Solo prequel, which I know some folks didn't care for. I we thought it was a lot of fun when we watched as a family. Uh. It certainly has some great aliens in it, for sure, and this is one of them. Uh. You know, this kind of shrimpy, squitty looking guy and he's wearing

what looks to be like an interstellar flight suit. So this seems to support like the theory that underwater creatures in the Star Wars universe perhaps have an advantage when it comes to navigating the three dimensional world of open space, because again think of the mont Calamari. Where do we encounter them time and time again, uh, strategic commanders during

space warfare. So it makes you wonder do they have some sort of would they have some sort of advantage they're used to the oceanic environment, like the open water warfare environment and the survival environment, do they Are they better than contemplating threats in outer space? That would make a lot of sense. Now, there's still some important differences. I'd say one of the most important differences is even within the water column, you've still got an up and down.

You've got gravity and buoyancy, which you don't have in space. In space, there's no up and down. It's just a limitless three dimensional space. But even with that, you can still see the advantage where you're naturally evolutionarily adapted to combat within the space where you can move in three different dimensions in a way that we can't really on the surface of the Earth, Like you can jump and you can climb a tree, and stuff, but mostly you're

just gonna be on flat ground when you're fighting other people. Yeah, and of course you can have aircraft and stuff, but that's not really part of the ancestral environment that shaped our brains. Yeah, I imagine the reverse. Those probably true to have a like a crustacean alien had an advantage, and imagining open space warfare, they'd probably also be really disadvantaged.

Imagining like a land warfare. That would be like, like, what, what's your command, general, and they would be like move swim away, yea swim away, Yeah, get back in the water. So this guy is called therm scissor Punch, and at first the name seemed weird to me until I connected it to the fact that he has crab like claws instead of hands. So if he punches you, I guess it is much like being punched with a giant blunt

pair of scissors. Yeah, yeah, I think so Okay, But here we're gonna make the lateral leap to real biology because I've got a crustacean with an eerily human bipedal type posture to talk about. And this is the skeleton shrimp from the crustacean family Caprella Day this is one absolutely to look up pictures of. Go google skeleton shrimp. While I'm talking about this, they look very cool, very creepy, and on top of that, and on top of their

they're kind of haunting creepy appearance. They somehow to me look a little bit scene. I can't quite explain it very well, but they look like an acolyte of some horrible shadow god that was rightly banished to the cavern of tears. Yeah, they are very strange looking. And that's even if you're approaching it with the idea that, yeah, there are a lot of different shrimp in the ocean, and not all shrimp, you know, look like the shrimp

that you might buy at the seafood store. But these guys, especially, they feel like they earn their nickname the skeleton shrimp or the ghost shrimp. They look like some sort of a horrible shrimp wraith wraith shrimp, that would be a good name for them. I think they're called skeleton shrimp because they typically have a very spind ly appearance. They're almost like a stick insect, but creepier. Now. They're typically very small. They range in size from a few millimeters

to a couple of inches long. But if you get up close and you look at them with some magnification, you'll notice that they often have an upright posture where they will stretch their body out as they cling onto something with their back legs. So in that sense they look eerily human. But in addition to this, they often have a kind of bent over supplicant posture within that upstanding position, almost looking like they're in prayer. Again, I guess to that, to that rightly banished God. Yeah, yeah,

in a way, similar posture to old scissor punch. There, he looks a little bit bent over in the skills I have of him. Oh, yes, you're right, I've seen some of the skills I've seen of him. He looks like he's hanging his head, or maybe like he's about to bow down at the altar. Gravity is really hard on him. But he must gamble, he must play comics. Uh So, I was wondering if my raw sense of obscenity when looking at a skeleton shrimp comes from the

different body parts that seem to defy type. It has antentnie that look like legs, and claws that look like heads, and little claws near the face of the actual head. It's it's mains are called natopods, and it has smaller natopods near its face that look kind of like, I don't know, like hip facial hair, facial or I don't know how hip it would be the kind of facial

hair that makes a statement. Now, despite being called skeleton shrimp, these are not exactly super closely related to the shrimp that you would eat in your shrimp cocktail um skeleton shrimp in fact, consistent with what I was just saying about their their different weird claws and legs. They are of an order of crustaceans known as amphipods, which literally means different feet as opposed to related crustaceans that have

more consistent sets of feet. And I was reading about them on a page for the Monterey Bay Aquarium that mentions that these animals are sometimes called praying mantises of the sea. I can absolutely understand the comparison. In addition to the of course praying posture I mentioned, uh, the claws look very much like the raptorial four legs of a praying mantis. So skeleton shrimp emper often camouflaged within their environment, making forests of seaweed a really great habitat

for them. Uh. They're often found clinging to branzonens, hydroids or eel grass, sometimes even in patches of sarcassum, which we talked about last week. Those skeleton shrimp are found in other habitats as well. You can find them on a ship's hull or on some other animals body. Even one video I was watching of skeleton shrimp showed hundreds, I don't know, maybe thousands of tiny skeleton shrimp clinging to the scales of a scorpion fish, crowded right around

the fish's eye. I tried to take a take a screen grab so you can see it here robbed down below. But they're just crowded around the eye and all over the top of his head, and they're just swaying around in the water. And the fish does not really look put out, I know, like at first glance, these look like eyebrows and tufts of hair, almost kind of zat ish tufts of hair, you know. Oh, yes, sometimes they can look quite fuzzy, especially when the females are carrying

their brood along with them, like after mating. They they reproduce sexually and after mating, the females will sometimes carry around what looks almost like a ball of dandelion fuzz or something, but that's all they're young that that haven't left the mother's body yet. Now. The different appendages jutting off of their bodies provide a range of different ways to survive. In general, their back legs are for gripping onto a substrate, and this is where you get the

bipedal posture. Here you will very often see skeleton shrimp clinging to something a piece of seaweed or even a scorpion fish's head or something with their back legs while their body is stretched out above that, looking like they're standing up and reaching out into the water. And then meanwhile, while they're clinging with their back legs and standing up like this, they're larger front legs with the folding features

that look like mantis claws. These can be used for rooming the body or for violence in fighting each other, which it seems like they do a lot, or for snagging food, and the antennae coming off of their head apparently can sometimes be used for filter feeding. They eat everything it seems that they say are different. Different species of them will eat different things. Sometimes, but they're they're pretty omnivorous. They scavenge for floating detritus, meaning particles of

dead organic matter. They're just sort of like hanging around in the water. Sometimes they eat algae, or sometimes they act as predators. They can snag, kill and eat live prey, for example worms or crustacean larvae. And though they look very bipedal when they're attached to a substrate and reaching out into the water, I thought this was interesting. They generally move not by walking on their back legs, but by gripping the substrate, folding their body over, and then

sliding along like an inchworm. Again, very creepy. And there's another fascinating comparison to the praying manti us. Some species of skeleton shrimp practice sexual homicide, where the female will kill the male after mating, sometimes by stabbing them with

a special claw and injecting them with venom. Which this strikes me as a very interesting example of convergent evolution because of course this is there's this superficial resemblance between the body form of a praying mantis and a skeleton shrimp. They have these similar raptorial fore legs and similar posture and stuff, and like a praying mantis, sometimes the female will kill the male after mating. Uh though I didn't see much about the female eating the male after mating.

Maybe they do, because sometimes these skeleton shrimp are cannibalistic, but mainly I just saw about killing the male with this venomous claw. I was wondering why it would be that the female would kill the male after mating. I wonder if this is in part to prevent the males from cannibalizing them or their offspring in the future. So there are a couple of things they're one of which

is that mating. Uh So, of course these crustaceans, like other crustaceans, they have to grow by molting, right because having a hard outer exo skeleton, you can't get bigger with a hardened outer exo skeleton. You have to shed the exo skeleton and then come come out as a larger soft version of yourself, and then the outer layer of you hardens into a new larger exo skeleton. This

is the molting process. And apparently skeleton shrimp can only mate when the female is freshly molted, so I don't know. It's possibly that means that she could be in a in a more vulnerable position around the time of mating, or it could be to prevent males from from eating the new larva that will be coming along soon. I don't know, I wonder I like the idea that they have they may have a special claw for this though.

Oh yeah, yeah, with with the venom and apparently the males also sometimes have venomous claws which they use for fighting each other. I think in some cases, at least for access tomating real scissor punches. They're right exactly, But as I said already, skeleton shrimp are really something that you need to see with your eyes to appreciate. So I would highly recommend looking up some pictures and looking up some videos of these animals. They're they're very small,

but they're beautiful, creepy, unsettling, worth your attention, absolutely. Thank Alright, I think we have time for one more specimen here, oh boy, And for this one, Joe, I'm gonna have to ask you to come to the planet and Naboo with me. Well, I'll always go to Naboo. Well, I mean, it's an interesting world. I would say one of the most interesting in the Star Wars universe. Because even outside of its important role in galactic history, it has just

incredibly rich fauna. You have human human settlers coming to the planet at some point, and then there's signs of an elder civilization. But you have this native Gungan population um that are an advanced st amphibious species that make their home and underwater cities, and the planets expansive underwater oceans. Uh Naboo seems to have a vast uh number of of impressive land animals, many of which are used as

battle mounts by the Gungans. But then you have this this shadowy underwater realm that is home to just many, many marine organisms. And there's a fabulous uh section in The Phantom Menace where we get to explore it a bit. Uh. It's the scene where we have our main characters there uh with with the kid I think and and uh and jar Jar and they're in a submarine and they are attacked by one giant underwater creature after another, each one bigger and more horrifying than the last. Out of

the frying pan and into the fish. Yes. So the first one that attacks is this thing that's opec killer that looks kind of like a like a deep sea angler fish type of of a thing. Then they're attacked by the colo clawfish, which looks like a cross between a crocodile and an eel, and then finally by this even more titanic Sando Aqua monster, which is just an apex of apex predators, looks like some sort of a

salamandary um giant. Do I recall that in this sequence they are trying to like take a submarine through the center of the world to get to the other side of the planet or something. I don't remember if they're I don't remember if they're actually going through the center, but they are, at least at the very least. Yeah, they're going through the deep underwater sections of the of of the world to get to a specific location. Okay, Okay, maybe it might just be underwater caves. Yeah, but I

don't know, it could be. If it is. If it's the former, then it it's dante Esk and it's and it's nature, right. Yeah, But anyway, the creature of these three I want to talk about is that middle one, the colo clawfish, which which is pretty neat, little looking. I mean, all three of these are impressive creatures. This one is um is again enormous. Its head is larger than the Gungan sub. We're told in like the Alien Archive and other books that they can reach lengths of

at least forty one feet. Their long bioluminescent predators with mandible like four legs to grip their their prey. And there's long mouth of razor sharp teeth and I and I believe they're supposed to have venomous things, and there is as well to partially or completely disable some of their prey. And they can unhinge their jaw like a terrestrial snake in order to eat prey larger than their own head. But the part that interests me the most here is this one little tid debt that is that's

described in the Star Wars Alien Archive book quote. However, Coolo's must ensure their prey is dead before ingesting it. Their digestive systems are slow and they run the risk of being eaten from inside out if the prey remains alive. WHOA So obviously that got me thinking, I was like, is there anything like this here on Earth? And uh? I found an excellent article on this in BBC Earth by Sandrine Kristamont. This is from and and they made

some wonderful points on on this. So basically, as the author points out, you'd probably need two key realities to be in place for something like this to happen. So, first of all, the animal would have to survive the jaws of its attacker. It would have to be swallowed whole. No fatal crushing, no incapacitating venom uh you know, inserted into the creature. It would know. No death roll or

death shake. Yeah, no death roll, no death shake, no intentional breaking of the bones like you see with you know, like a cattle due to it to its um you know, rodent prey um, and you know it would it would just have to happen in the case of an animal that just gulps its prey down whole. Secondly, the digestive juices would have to be weak enough and or the praise outer covering would have to be resilient enough for it to survive entry into the stomach at least initial entry,

if not its entire time there. So it seems like maybe there's some risk at like swallowing hole a creature with a hard outer layer, like if you swallowed a whole crab that could be pretty bad, right, And then also it would help if the prey and question has some sort of ace up its sleeve as well. So as the author explains, yes, there are cases where all

of these things seem to line up. Um. The first one is the rough skinned newt can survive being swallowed by a frog and in and in large part this is because it packs enough toxin to kill the predator before the digestive juices overpower it. Quote. Then the news simply has to crawl back up the dead frog's throat and out of its mouth, which is pretty badass. I like that. Yes, that is power you can respect. Now.

The next example is is even weirder and maybe maybe not as as cool in the sense that like, it's not a full survival story, but it's still really amazing. And that is the case of the brahminy blind snake, a tiny natural burrower, and it has been observed to survive the digestion of a toad and emerge out the other end of the toad, essentially swallowed by the toad and then just wriggles through the rest of the way and out the rear entry um or the rear exit

as it were. Uh, so in these cases of survival, it also really helps if, if if it maybe even be essential, that there's not another big meal up ahead of it blocking the way. But then this is also a situation where protection from the digestive juices seems to be key. This is what the author Kristomont had to say.

Quote but its skin was probably the biggest lifesaver. The closely knit, overlapping scales that help blind snakes move on land would likely block gastric juices, preventing them from reaching delicate tissues and organs. The scales of other snakes come apart slightly when they move, so would not have the same protective effect. It's like a natural hazmat suit. Yeah, I have never I don't think I've ever considered this

as a strategy for defending against predators before. Uh, when I've always thought about trying to avoid getting eaten, I've thought about trying to escape or trying to fight back, not preventing eating from hurting you, Like, yeah, just get eaten and you know you'll be okay. Probably, Now it may be a case. First of all, it seems to be a case where this is not certainly not an

evolved way of surviving predators. Uh. And it also seems to be a case where survival is perhaps a um an incorrect term for it, because this in the case that it was observed by researchers here, the snake died five hours later, probably due to complications due to lack of oxygen. Because that's the thing. If even if you're armored against that that acid or the acid isn't strong enough, you're still going to be inside that animal for a certain amount of time, if you're not killing it with

toxins and chron climbing out the front. Uh. You know, if you're gonna take the complete journey through, you're gonna be without oxygen. And depending on your biology, you know, that can have very detrimental effects. That itself can be the fatal flaw. Okay, so you're saying this is not It doesn't appear that these tiny snakes have evolved a capacity to be eaten and survived specifically as a protection

against predation. It just so happens like it's a coincidence that some of their natural defenses for other things happened to allow them to survive passing through the digestive system. In at least this case, or limited cases. Yeah, and maybe it's more of a curse, you know, Yeah, they get to survive the whole process. Yeah. Now, on top of these cases, apparently there are some land snails that

can survive the journey through a bird's digestive system. And this is a case where you have you have another important helpful fact here, and that is SPEEDI or digestion time. So just less time spent in the bird's digestive system. That means less exposure to the digestive juices, coupled with the natural protection of the snail shell, which is key, but also the mucus of the snail might also help serve as a protective barrier like a chemical armor. Yeah.

And so you have some aquatic snails as well that have been that have been observed to be very um uh resilient to digestion. You have nematode worms, of course, some of which are true internal parasites. So once you get into that territory, I think we're more inclined to uh is not expect but you know, not be surprised by that kind of resiliency things that that survive in the digestive system of of of host organisms. But you

generally don't think about snakes, salamanders and other things. Uh, you know, having a chance once they're actually in the predator's gullet. You have opened my eyes so with to come back to the planet naboo. Uh I guess the idea here is that we're largely talking about other deadly predators in the depths of Nebo that, after having been eaten,

then turn on the pre or host here. Um. You know, it's just that that crazy and environment, So it seems entirely feasible that you could have something like this, like maybe there's one particular type of fish or you know, creature in that deep sea underground environment and the boo and if it eats those, it gets too excited about them. Maybe it's maybe it's a venom doesn't work on that on that particular creature, or sometimes maybe it doesn't use

its venom. Um. You know, often we see that with snakes, right, they're not going to use their venom every time if they don't have to. It is a it is an important resource. But maybe that's a fatal mistake for the COLO concerning certain prey species. You don't want to underestimate what you're eating. Yeah, all right, Well that's that's all I have, Joe, should we close the compendium? Let's let's

close it up now. Obviously there are tons of other creatures and aliens and the Star Wars universe, so you know, perhaps there are some other really good candidates that we didn't touch on. If you have suggestions for the future, let us know. Likewise, you know, we could always take this approach to other uh you know, fictional ecosystems and uh and take a look at those. I know we had some fun talking about the sand worms of Dune, uh several years back. Um, Dune is coming back? Yeah, yeah,

I need to revisit. I think I have some some ideas jotted down about things we might might consider when we get a little closer to uh to done time. Well that's exciting, and hey, they're they're probably other worlds I'm not even thinking of. I mean, I guess there's Star Trek too. I don't think we've ever done anything on Star Trek. If we we have, I'm certainly not remembering it. Did you actually watch Star Trek? You weren't really a Star Trek guy where you I wasn't an

original Star Trek guy. But there was. I watched tons of Next Generation and tons of Deep Space nine um and uh and and you know some of the movies. But yeah, that that was my my area. Like I think it was like every evening at nine pm, Next Generation was on and I always watched it, like that was my go to for a while. I like in the Uh. I haven't seen all of the Next Generation,

but I like those episodes. I think, especially in the early seasons of TNNG, where they would go down to a planet and it would just look like a nineteen nineties uh you know, family portrait photo studio with some potted plants on it. Yeah, yeah, I remember some of those settings. I think I've said this on the show before, but I don't know exactly why. I always really really

love a good cheap indoor for outdoor set. Yeah yeah, I've also really been, uh been thinking about this a lot in terms of the Outer Limits series, where they have some great sets on that show, but also each episode is like, Okay, what are they about to film in like the Toronto area that they're gonna make look

like the future or or the post apocalyptic world. Like there's some interesting choices at times where it's like you know it's it's not really an impressive building they're working with here, but they try and figure out ways to shoot it in such a way and it feels fresh and different compared to all these other episodes they're pumping out. So they're actually writing around the second hand sets and

costumes and stuff. Um, they seem to and I haven't seen all the outer limits yet, but they seem to do a pretty good job of of not repeating themselves, which I think can be hard when you have so many episodes that are about being trapped in an alien spaceship, being trapped in a in a survival bunker. You know, like a lot of the same basic setups are going

to be in place. Like I wonder how many different alien hallways, uh they create alien spaceship hallways they created for this show and still found a way to make them feel different enough, if not, you know, substantially different. It's the mark of a good bottle episode. Different yep, just different enough? All right? Should we wrap up? Let's

wrap up. If you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be We just ask the rate, review and subscribe Huge things As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas john Unson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff

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