Transcript: Fantastic 4 series: Episode 40: Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards): Stretching:

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EP 40: Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards): Stretching
What would it actually take for a human body to stretch like Mr. Fantastic? Maria Dowell, MD joins us to explore the fascinating, terrifying, and biologically implausible science of stretching.

Transcript:

joe: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the Rabbit Hole of Research down here in the basement studio hanging out. We’re bringing you the last of the Fantastic four Super series. This is, we’ll be covering all things stretchy,

nick: very stretchy

joe: Mr.

Fantastic. Himself. Himself. We are almost crewed up. You have me, Joe.

nick: You got Nick.

joe: got

nick: We’ve got Nick.

We got the foot of Georgia here.

joe: We’ve got,

I don’t know what that means, but

nick: she stretched away.

joe: she stretched away. I get it. Oh, I get it.

maria: and she left her foot.

nick: Yeah. She just, wanted to act like she was Still here.

joe: And we have our special guest.

nick: Wait. Hello there.

maria: Hello.

Hi, I’m Maria Dowell. I’m a pulmonologist at Northwestern and Laurie Children’s.

joe: Awesome. There we go. So people have been asking for someone to keep us sharp and on point with anatomy, and here we are. We deliver [00:01:00] on Reed Richard. Mr. Fantastic.

Just a little background if you’ve been following the series or if you’re new, the Fantastic four are fictional superhero team created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

First appearing in Fantastic Four, number one in 1961 from Marvel Comics. They were considered Marvel’s first superhero team of the modern era and help establish the more human, flawed and family driven style that defined Marvel storytelling. And a little more at sci-fi as we learned from some of our guests.

As I said, this is the fourth in the series, so episode 37 we had Nick Linsky. Talking about Sue Storm and invisibility, episode 38. We had Jonathan Mayberry talking about Ben Grime, the thing and strong skin. Episode 39. We had Dr. David Pincus, Johnny Storm, human Torch, spontaneous Combustion, and now we’ll be talking about Mr.

Fantastic Reed. Richard himself, [00:02:00]

the man of The fan, the group leader. He’s a scientific genius who can stretch his body into incredible shapes and lengths. He’s also a reckless scientist. He took his team and flew them into the cosmic

nick: I think reckless is a little bit of a

maria: experimental,

nick: them

maria: adventurous.

joe: But okay, we’ll touch this again ’cause I’m always a little like consent there because he just said, get in the ship, we’re gonna go check out some cosmic rays. And I don’t think he explained what could happen, but we usually open with a

definition, a little grounding open. And so I’ll do that, and then we get into it.

I do have a list, but this one here. So what does it mean to stretch in science? Stretching is a form of mechanical deformation. When a material is pulled beyond its original length, storing or dissipating energy in the process, and biology, stretching is dy. Stretching is the dynamic response of living tissues like muscle skin and connective fibers to tension [00:03:00] driven by proteins like elastin and collagen that determine whether a body snaps back or gives way.

But stretching is more than physical. It’s metaphorical and fiction. Stretchable characters like Mr. Fantastic Elastic girl, plastic man turn flexibility into superpower, embodying, adaptability, resilience, and transformation. They just don’t change shape. They change meaning. And today on this episode, we’re going to try and understand the biology and the science behind one of comic’s.

Most hand W Powers.

nick: hand wa

maria: I know.

nick: Whoa.

joe: Whoa. One of the most hand wa on powers.

nick: I don’t You say that every

joe: episode? No, I And this one,

every

nick: every

episode you’re like,

this

has an unreasonable

level of

handwaving.

joe: This one is up there.

nick: I don’t know about that, Joe.

maria: Human torch is not hand wm.

joe: Oh, I didn’t say it wasn’t that I,

maria: Oh, I, see.

Okay. I’m saying this is probably even, this might be more than the human torch

Okay. It’s on the spectrum.

joe: on the spectrum. It’s on the spectrum, yeah. And we actually I thought about it and I didn’t think about [00:04:00] the list, but I think we went in order of probably hand wa

real, realization, the hand waving on from percentage wise, I think invisibility, we probably can make someone invisible, mechanically or whatever.

There’s a path and we do that with materials. Strong skin. I think we talked about a few things. the human torch, was just a episode

nick: We were able to prove that to be able,

joe: we did, we got to some workable

nick: I think we’re gonna come to the same

joe: I don’t know.

nick: dunno. And

joe: We’ll

nick: gonna be like, wow, this is the most

probable

one out of all of ’em.

joe: I just think from a biological standpoint the reason is that with the human torch, what we did there was limit it to just the outer surface of a skin and separate that from internal organs.

So we didn’t have to figure out all the biology of making him completely heat resistant, just so that was nice. Here in this case, the same thing with the thing. He’s really just got the rocky exterior. So once again, that’s an external, there’s challenges, but [00:05:00] you go, okay, that’s external. But this one here, I think you have not only skin changing, you have internal organ structure.

Muscle bone. We have a lot of rigid structures. And Maria, here it’s just a lot of systems to

overcome.

E especially as fantastical as he appears in the comics where he’s not stretching just a few feet. He’s stretching, tens of

maria: He’s stretching.

He’s

splaying

out. he’s doing all sorts of

motions.

I was, thinking

about this and I

stretched,

my mind to

to

say,

When they

got raid,

whatever we’re calling that. I was thinking of the stretching as

The opposite

of

the strong skin. Right. Like whatever

happened To

the

collagen

and elastin and things that make up,

That or allow us to be stretchy or make up that structure.

It changed the

dynamic. Right.

And then I thought wait, his bone stretch,

his

organ stretch. All those things you said is cartilage stretches.

So

[00:06:00] what’s the common theme? One of the common things is collagen, right? We know That, and so maybe something cool

And mutated

happened to his collagen

in the opposite

direction.

Of the thick.

tough, thick

skin. right? So that’s one thing. But then I thought, how does he control it, it’s a balance. And You have collagen, you have elastin. and So thick skin guy has,

More collagen, less elastin and

maybe

Mr. Fantastic has

more elastin,

and less collagen or something.

I don’t know. What was The weird

mutation that happened,

joe: or mutations. Because you, I think you hit on a point and for all of, I think a lot of superheroes, they’re neurological control. You would have to almost reorganize to have that ability to at demand, stretch out and then recall and then have.

The nerve

maria: and why doesn’t it hurt? Because you guys, brought that up

with

why doesn’t it hurt?

When you know,

you’re,

your, you’re bumping against the tough skin,

thing Or your [00:07:00] back. Right.

joe: the human fla, we talked about the human tor with Johnny and

The pain receptors and things like that, like what happened there.

nick: Your body mutated to Be against that. Like, all right, We’re cool with this pain. like This, our nerve endings have changed.

joe: Yeah, yeah, I mean it’s but structures like bone are anti flex. Their design is

not

to be flexible. Is that, because of their content,

maria: right?

Again, it’s a balance,

right? They’re designed to be, to maintain structure,

But They do have some flexibility,

joe: but how much is flexibility? What’s our movement like? I’ve seen bones.

maria: Mine is not much

but Mr. Fantastic. It’s a lot.

joe: A lot. Yeah. But then would you be able to stand and walk if you had like rubbery bones, because then what, so I guess rubber, let’s say that you stretch, that means that you have an addition of some sort of mass, right? Because now you’re elongating and so you’re thin. You can do it two ways. One, you can get thinner and redistribute [00:08:00] cellular material or you add quickly and I guess so if he’s stretching is the bone.

Stretching with

it. Like it’s this, it’s a growth kind of thing.

maria: So you’re asking is he maintaining? mass?

joe: He

maintains strength, so you have to maintain ma mass. We have to, I think, assume that because he is still physically strong because if you stretch your arm out, it, you would lose, ’cause of the way the muscles overlap

and Yeah.

maria: If you stretch ’em too far. they can’t

contract properly. But he’s not normal.

joe: Yeah. But

maria: He’s got super normal.

joe: We gotta explain it how’s, what’s super normal. That’s hand w

maria: That’s hand

waving. Wow.

nick: I feel like,

she’s bringing good points here. And you’re trying to

maria: neuron stretch. If his neuron stretches then his

skeletal muscle can

joe: you could have, so or so.

nick: I feel like it would be weird if just skin stretched like,

maria: oh no, it’s everything. Yeah, it’s

joe: gotta be everything.

nick: You,

can’t just have. Loose skin fingers flapping [00:09:00] around

joe: Or maybe the timing, in the comics and animated and even the movies. It’s a very rapid response.

Maybe after he stretches out, it takes, he is gotta wheel it in to reform,

maria: but he’s in control he

can not, be stretchy and

look. perfectly fine And then he can flip a

switch. Do you think

that has anything to do with his level of intelligence? ’cause he’s super

smart.

joe: maybe you’re saying maybe you already had

nick: I feel like most superheroes do have a certain level of intelligence, to Control their powers Because so much of it. is, Johnny, with his being able to turn his flame

on mis invisible with her invisibility in force fields, it’s all very brain power based.

maria: And there’s precedent for that. Right.

The mind,

gut

access.

the,

nick: Oh, I feel like there are things now that some

people can do, but other people can’t because it’s just, all right, I’m able to control this part of my body. I’ve seen people be able to move their ears. That’s weird. But

joe: yeah,

maria: And There’s some people with really stretchy

skin.

For genetic conditions,

nick: Wait, you can move your ears. [00:10:00] What?

joe: I can, yeah. But we need video for

that.

maria: See it with headphones.

so just, I guess I was starting with the most rigid biological structure in humans, which we’re assuming Mr. Fantastic is a human and he has this and so one, he could, they got into, we, we touched on this before, genotype and phenotype, that he already had some genotype that predisposed him to, have, take advantage of the mutagen when it hit.

joe: And now he’s expressing that. Okay. But I think we gotta go one step further. You have. He can flatten out. So you do have a number of bones in your chest. Is that

maria: Oh yes. They’re called ribs.

They’re called ribs.

joe: Just

nick: is that what

maria: they’re,

called?

joe: I’m just

nick: like to eat those at barbecue

joe: been a while since I’ve taken anatomy, but yes.

And so they have to go somewhere. So now you’re,

they,

to flatten out. And then it, oh, go

maria: You’re

assuming that

they remain

ribs. There’s [00:11:00] collagen

in those structures too. so maybe if he can flip a

switch and be all stretchy in the skin, he can do it with his other organs.

And they can get more fluid.

joe: So fluid is good. ’cause I had an idea. What if he. What if its internal structures, juices up and it, you almost then become a fluid. And you could actually, there’s organisms like octopuses, things like that, that do have stretch. They can stretch their limbs and change shape and form and really elastic, but they’re usually hydrostatic.

And so could his bone structures and things be more hydrostatic and fill almost like a tube and then that would fill out

and the juice of his organs would then become would powered in his

maria: No. I think. you’re onto something. elephant trunks tongues.

Things like that. They don’t have bones in them. And they can do things and they can Change shape. So

joe: Camil chameleon tongues. They can also, they have, they can stretch out and curl and do all sorts of weird things, but and I will say curling,

if

you can roll your tongue.[00:12:00]

if

you can roll your tongue, that’s genetic.

maria: He’s right. He’s right. you, can’t, can he? Oh,

He can’t. He really Looks funny.

Yeah. Ooh,

joe: I can’t do that. What the,

maria: Yours is fluted,

Like aa.

joe: don’t know what’s

nick: Oh man

If only we had videos.

joe: Here it is.

maria: I don’t

joe: But yeah, no,

nick: hummingbirds tongues, don’t they roll up into their heads too?

No.

joe: know.

maria: Oh, they are, they,

do have,

to come out the, no, that’s probus,

joe: Yeah.

I don’t know what that is.

maria: Pocus Probus.

nick: Oh, I don’t know what that word

maria: that word is. like it comes out really long So it can go down. and, get the pollen and then it retracts up.

So maybe you’re Right? It does roll up.

nick: yeah.

I thought

joe: And I was gonna say that there are, with the, with kind of the thinking about the neurological axons and things like that, you could have a situation where you coil up, right?

So you have some length. And our, like our intestines. Our your intestines, average [00:13:00] adult’s about six feet long or so. Stretched out a little

maria: I think it’s longer than

that. Longer than that,

yeah,

much longer.

Like Probably in the

twenties.

joe: Oh, okay. So there you go.

20

feet, but it’s all coiled up inside of you. So

maria: I’m making it up,

I know

it’s longer than six.

nick: Yeah.

joe: We’ll put that in the show notes.

nick: All

I know is

joe: we got you here, Maria, to keep us

maria: Dang, this

is like a,

nick: feel like Maria’s closer than you are right now,

Joe. six feet.

right. I know. That’s

joe: That’s that’s, after you have a procedure,

nick: know anything.

joe: six feet left. Maybe that’s just a small, large intestine,

maria: that’s very

long.

nick: but yeah that’s

joe: I was gonna say that co that’s a nature. Does

maria: oh my God. 30 feet, nine meters The average.

joe: Wow.

There you go. People,

that’s a lot

nick: no, six foot,

lot of

joe: of intestine, but it’s

maria: probably more like twenties.

But

anyway, It’s

joe: coiled up

in there.

maria: yeah.

joe: a feature of nature, that it’s coiled. And actually, if you go to the ultra structure of the intestine, the villa, you have their coiled, and then you have the micro villa, which they’re on the [00:14:00] surface.

They actually are have this kind of , not coiled, but it’s it’s more folded structure. And so if you fold up something, you can pack it in, so a tighter space. So you could have this situation where so many structures are folded up, and then as you stretch

maria: yeah,

you

might have 25 to 30

feet,

Of a tube. But you’ve got a ton of surface

area inside, So agreed.

So you could, Lungs are similar. Yeah.

joe: Yeah, the lung’s, right? So they can flatten out. So he, you might have to juice up all the organs, maybe as a, maybe it’s not completely flat. There’s some lumpiness to it. And so maybe some things are being juiced and then

the

gi to generate the

fluid,

nick: really hate the way you’re saying

this,

joe: we have to.

But I think either way, I think at, if we had Mr. Fantastic here and we did some cell biology on him, I think he would have to have rapid cellular regeneration and growth. I think no matter how you slice it, how you stretch it that he would have to, [00:15:00] I think he would have to make new cellular material one way or the other.

Either stretching out or retracting back and probably both. Because the stretching out.

maria: So

elasticity,

and maybe some

plasticity,

nick: so

as he gets older, would his stretching ability

weaken

Or would it not retract as

maria: much

I say it would

get stiffer.

nick: I was just

thinking like an old rubber band.

That gonna right. That’s right. Yep.

joe: I thought it was interesting too. I was thinking about it and remembered

in the Incredibles, Alaska girl.

maria: She’s awesome. Yeah.

joe: But there was, when she was talking to oh, the woman that was making the super Edna,

maria: Mos talk to

joe: Edna Moons, and they were going over to suits, and Edna goes, it will stretch as far as you without injuring yourself. So that means that for elastic girl, there was some limit or perceive limit that you would stretch, and then you would actually cause physical harm, either get stuck there or not.

nick: No I took it as. If the suit didn’t [00:16:00] move with her, that would be the thing that hurt her.

joe: She said as

is, as far as

you, you would without injuring yourself.

So that’s more

nick: isn’t

joe: sounds more like it will stretch

maria: as far as there’s a limit you

joe: before until you hurt yourself. I, and it presumes that there’s a limit.

You, why say that, just say the suit was stretched as far as you can,

but it said as far as you can without injury. There was a, there was actually a qualifier there of injury,

maria: total

tangent.

But All the garments,

worn by the fantastic war, Why don’t they burn up or overstretch or are they

also imbued with The same

qualities.

nick: What It was

joe: Unstable,

yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Reed. Reed made up all of the

maria: Okay.

joe: outfits

maria: never change. Okay. never change your clothes.

nick: They

maria: assume they meant to,

nick: Adjust

to their abilities

joe: Yep. And even if they swapped, there was a,

what’s

that? A comic or the animated series where they switched power Johnny and

Sue

Switch Powers, but their suits still

nick: all of them. did. Mr.

joe: because they touched That’s right, yeah. Yeah. It was like by tut, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

nick: [00:17:00] Mr. Fantastics and in the comics Reed Richards can stretch up to 1,500 feet.

Just

so you know that’s his limit.

joe: That’s a pretty,

That

maria: was me being

speechless. Oh, wow.

I didn’t know that

joe: I looked at, I found it had about a hundred to 150% stretch limit before, before you tear. So that’s it. That, and that’s not a thousand, you said whatever, a thousand feet,

nick: feet.

joe: That’s not 1,500 feet. And,

is a,

so that means you would have to create new cellular material to keep stretching. That, that would mean that you would have to have some very fast growth of cellular material and then break down of the material.

maria: Wow.

That’s,

yeah.

Also,

nick: he can actually move his body parts

and

create the exact same part within himself.

maria: Wait,

what? example, please? Yes.

nick: I was reading comic recently with my daughter for a nighttime story where Reed goes [00:18:00] ahead and. They Reed and sue find a decayed body inside of a Doom bot, and he proceeds to put his eyeballs in his fingers

and

have it go throughout the body to examine it without

disrupting

the whole

body

itself.

It was absolutely

joe: So we can,

maria: is he a giant organism of

pluripotent cells,

and

he can just like, wow,

joe: just one big stem cell

maria: is one

joe: that’s going one, so yeah, that would fit that.

nick: Here you go.

maria: And there your regenerative aspect.

Ew.

Yeah.

joe: So that means Yeah, he could actually. Juice up his insides, take advantage of the kind of the hydrostatic skeleton.

nick: Also his making

maria: multiple, Appendages. and.

joe: And he maintains strength in all those appendages. Yeah. And

maria: So he’s a shapeshifter,

nick: Yeah.

But he

does wear himself [00:19:00] out while doing that,

joe: Yeah. So you

nick: I can send these to Joe And hopefully we don’t get them taken down.

joe: we’ll put ’em, in the show

maria: notes. Okay.

joe: Yeah, no, he would, you’re right, he is almost like a shapeshifter where he can manipulate,

nick: which Miss Marvel was able to do that as well.

Where

When she first got her power, she ended up changing into Carol Danvers.

And she

thought she was Carol Danvers then for a bit.

joe: But She Can mystique stretch if she. Or no,

nick: miss

that’s her powers

joe: will. Sorry, I meant would rogue stretch. So when she absorbs powers, so would she absorb Mr. Fantastics power?

nick: I’d

assume so. She

takes over anyone’s

Like No matter what it is, her abil, Her power is to take other people’s powers.

joe: a little

nick: And depending how much of her power, Their powers that she gets. It can either drain

them,

joe: Completely kill

nick: Yep.

joe: And then she, and she permanently gets their

nick: depending

on how long [00:20:00] she Holds on. Yes.

maria: I was thinking of the

stress and the strain for

Mr. Fantastic.

What

would

he do in a vacuum? What were, what if he were in space?

joe: Oh yeah. would he

maria: would he just Yeah.

Be a puff up?

blobby, protosome thing? or,

what would

joe: I,

presume he can control it. So you can you become more rigid?

maria: But he use gravity though.

joe: So you think it’s gravity based, especially if it’s

maria: some,

there

has to be some force,

right?

In in order to deform something.

That’s the Strain part.

force is do in space? It just loops, Right.

I’ve never heard water.

say, so maybe you’re

right, That sounded a little goldfish like that. does

joe: not have surface tension in water and space? Is that where you have it and I’m not,

maria: I don’t know.

my mind thinks it breaks down to

the smallest little thing.

that would,

joe: Yeah. People

they,

shoot water at each other and drink

nick: Yeah. They have water. gun fights up there. Like

joe: And the water actually at this, it does. Blob up and itself, it has its own surface tension, it still has its integrity, but it’s not fluid as we [00:21:00] think about it on earth.

That’s interesting. I don’t know I to look ’cause you can soak it up a sponge. Yeah,

maria: do that in

joe: I think it has its properties there, but a vacuum. I’m trying to think what happens to marshmallows. If you put it into a expand, they expand like in one of those flavor saver, vacuums, you suck all the air out, they get puffed up.

nick: yeah, they

joe: I would think that would happen to him. He would just puff up.

nick: So

he would just end up filling the space that’s in there.

joe: I, it, I presume if he can control how big it’s right, he can control. But if he can control his cellular growth and expansion, then he actually won’t experience anything necessarily be like a normal human.

You would just control that.

nick: What do the human do when there’s no. When they’re in a vacuum.

joe: Yeah. I think he, but I think he, I’m saying I think he can maintain a shape,

nick: but you’re losing consciousness too then. If you put Reed Richards in a vacuumed sealed room, I.

suck out all the air.

He’s not gonna be conscious enough to keep himself together.

maria: [00:22:00] But he might be because

he has the ultra structure to combat whatever is expanding him.

That’s why I think he can Use gravity to help

deform himself. That’s the stress on his system, and the strain is all the little movements that, that stress creates.

So that’s the deformation.

So

if he doesn’t have that,

then

he fights the opposite direction to keep himself together. I think he’d be fine.

joe: Yeah. I think you’re right. He would run outta oxygen and if he needs oxygen to live, and yes, he would. But he could be, I don’t know. Could he self.

Oxygenate through cellular breakdown at some level. I don’t know what his respiratory would be like. Is he using his lungs the same way as normal? Because if he’s flattening himself out and he is doing stretching and he is doing activities, then how is he actually inflating his lungs to push oxygenated blood through his system?

So I It’s almost a whole lot of

maria: Yeah. he, He’s maybe he’s turning his skin into, a respiratory system or something.

I don’t

nick: Being able to move [00:23:00] his organs and stuff around. He Could theoretically pump the oxygen that way? No.

joe: or if he, you, I don’t know until you’ve, gimme a better terminology.

When he juices his insides, then he would become more, you would have you would have dissolved oxygen in that fluid that can then be used and distributed in a very different way than a typical

maria: listen system, if Somebody can deform

themselves

that degree, they

could probably change

their hemoglobin to hang on

to whatever,

oxygen and use it over and over again.

Yeah.

I dunno.

I

nick: I feel like this whole series, you’ve

said

maria: the worst word every episode.

Wait, it was juicing

this time. Juicing your Organs. Juice

joe: up. His organs.

It’s

all squishy. Someone poke, Reed,

nick: so

for

his skin then we’re back going.

on the skin episode.

That’s

joe: right.

nick: But

how, like I wonder [00:24:00] if he does get cut, does it cut him or is he, just,

joe: See,

I think if he has increased

cellular regeneration,

I think he’s almost like a Wolverine or

nick: that’s what I was, thinking, like how

joe: That he would actually be able to heal cuts. And that’s a comic thing. I don’t, I’m trying to think if I’ve seen him injured like that.

nick: I don’t think I’ve

really

seen him,

someone

else

actually

do something

to

him other than what he does to himself.

And that’s where it’s huh.

joe: And it’s good in a comic that he runs out of energy because if you are doing this increased cellular regeneration and manipulation of your physical, both your external structures, but also your internal, that you would have this.

Yeah.

He could just

nick: I feel like he definitely does run out of his own

joe: He could be an octopus in the shape of a human,

maria: but I don’t think you can injure him. I

do think he can run out

of oxygen. and thus energy.

He’s a little beat after.

he reforms his shape.

nick: I feel like [00:25:00] that’s one of the main ways that he gets injured. And then if someone’s attacking his mind,

that’s

another way to

get to

joe: And that fits to what Maria was saying, that about the physical, mental control of the systems. And so if you are being mentally challenged and then also have to do physical challenges I think if he was playing chess and trying to, stretch out, would he be limited? Would he be

maria: able could we beat

him at chess Is what you’re saying? Beat

him at chess

We can beat him chess.

nick: no, ’cause

he

joe: outta reach,

right?

nick: do

his

lab stuff. I don’t know what you guys call that stuff, But he’s stretching himself out into multiple

joe: Yeah. But if you’re grabbing a pipette or something like that, you’re not doing a lot of

nick: a what

joe: it’s

nick: a pipe,

Are you

smoking a pipe. at The lab,

joe: called a pipette.

nick: What year are we

joe: pipette?

nick: Joe, I can

really picture you just with a

maria: but he can get snacks.

while he is in the

lab without moving.

joe: So we had we had some [00:26:00] fans stop by and that was one of the things they said they wanted stretching ability to reach the snacks. And so that’s it. But I think you would expend more energy getting the snack than you would actually could take in by the snack.

nick: Why, how many Big Macs are you gonna say, Joe?

joe: Yeah, I Big Macs. So I, once again, if he’s regenerating cells at that level. Then that puts him at the Wolverine Deadpool calorie load.

maria: That’s high metabolism. High

metabolism.

joe: We’re talking maybe baseline 10, 20,000 calories, just resting state. I think if he’s doing this other stuff where he is juicing inside and reforming, you may be in hundreds of thousands of calories.

nick: honestly,

he can take that all down With one bite.

joe: one bite. Was he, is he eating a whale? What are we talking about there?

nick: Open his mouth

and then shove everything in.

He doesn’t really need to sit [00:27:00] there and

joe: I guess you’re right. How’s he, what’s his in like stomach what’s his

maria: maybe he does take Something. in and then

he changes

all of his organs into a

big stomach, into big intestines There go. Extract

it on. And then

put your organs,

back. That’s,

I think he can, I

think he can

manipulate.

everything.

joe: Gotta get Jeff Goble, man.

nick: Oh yeah.

joe: Jurassic Park when he goes, that’s one big pile of

nick: what did he say? I’m

joe: That’s one big pile of poop.

I

think he used a different word there, but

maria: dinosaur.

joe: So maybe that’s so he can, but still that’s a lot of calories. That’s not so that means, as we talk about with other superheroes, does he have some metabolism change or more efficient? That’s been re pointed out. If he can do all this, then why can’t he change? Is his proteins that do work also difference and use and store energy.

Does he, is he using some sort of variable biological high energy [00:28:00] storage? Vehicle

maria: I like it. I think it’s a great theory.

joe: Yeah, that’s it. A lot of handwaving in there.

maria: Handwaving

nick: nailed to

joe: lot of handwaving.

But on the stretching thing and elastins great and that’s what humans have. But I was gonna say, the other thing I had found was Resilin

It’s a

nick: those of us who don’t know,

joe: Yeah. It’s a structural protein that’s found in certain insects. It was discovered in 1960 in Locust, and it functions as like a rubber biological rubber band. It can stretch recoil, it can store mechanical energy with minimal energy loss. And it’s found in areas such as wing hinges, jumping legs for frogs fleas, locusts or feeding or vibration systems like Circadas and things like that.

So it’s a very flexible elastic, protein, more elastic it can stretch up to 300% without damage. And and then there’s synthetic forms [00:29:00] that are engineered and they can stretch a little bit more about 300, 350, 300, 400, 400%. And so you could have used this modified structural protein.

maria: Mm-hmm.

joe: So when a cosmic ray hit

maria: mm-hmm.

joe: he had some sort of, I don’t know, I actually, I didn’t look up what the

maria: Elastin goes to lin

joe: Yeah exactly. Yeah. Yep. Or Reed was monkeying around with CRISPR and head, and I given everyone a little bit of a, he was trying to create superheroes in the lab and. The cosmic ray was the activating function.

I, I just think, I think Reed was up to something funny and I think Doom called him out a couple times about that and said, Hey, that, he experimented on you guys to the rest of the team. Because I think that’s what I think there was, I think he intentionally did

it.

maria: Brilliant.

but disingenuous.

joe: Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. That’s

maria: Experimenting on your

friends

Watch out

joe: using CRISPR in there. Hey, take a look at this

maria: [00:30:00] yeah, let’s see

what happens.

nick: you did that to me last

maria: let’s see what happens.

nick: What are you trying to say?

joe: you get a suit and a meal. But yeah, that, that was one that I found where you could actually start to go in and you could get something that’s a little more stretchy. And if you can combine it with some of these other things we talked about. With that,

would

that get you there to, yeah.

Closer to maybe stretching a little bit. I don’t know, about a thousand feet.

I just think 10, 10 feet

even. That’s a lot.

nick: I do feel like he was stretched further than that in a

comic before where, I want to say it was a

issue

of Spider-Man that was like a alternate universe where something was happening to earth and Peter snapped and stretched out Mr.

Fantastic. To keep everything together.

joe: Yeah.

nick: And that was a

weird Issue. It was dark. And

joe: now did he come back together or did he No. Stay, no.

nick: Reed was pretty much in [00:31:00] a agonizing state.

joe: So he, there was a,

maria: but he didn’t do it

he was stretched.

So back to the mind, body, part. yeah.

Ah,

nick: Where he was keeping

stuff together and it was just like. He

was not,

joe: doesn’t matter if you knock him out, if you,

maria: if

You could injure him, But if he is yeah. If He’s conscious

and

Reshaping himself,

whatever, what are

we calling it Deforming himself. I don’t know himself. Stretching, himself. There we go. Stretching himself.

joe: He Stretching We’re not using that,

maria: to

stretching himself, then he’s in control. But if you take that control

away. we could inre him. We could hurt

him.

joe: That’s it.

maria: are

we working for Dr.

nick: Doom

today?

Like

joe: got it. We can get him.

nick: I do feel like him and Doom are a very good, villain, hero matchup, because

they both do have their darker side as well as a good side.

’cause

what Mr. Fantastic ends up becoming the maker

who

is a [00:32:00] alternate version of him that is absolutely off the walls bonkers where. He wants to control absolutely everything. And Doom is a person that is trying to keep his

country

in order and wants to better them, So it’s like they

have

the good and bad

in them,

and it’s always so cool to see when, yes, they still fight.

But

what I wanna say Doom is the Godfather to Reed and Sue’s children.

joe: Yeah. Yeah.

nick: And

in

what one of the last issues we read, Reed ended up doing a thing where he took out a whole block

of

New York to take out some alien invasion, and he sent it a future

year

in the future.

Doom, got found out, freaked out, tried to fix it, and as soon as that year was up, doom [00:33:00] couldn’t do anything.

And

Reed ended up sending him a picture saying, Hey, I know you tried, but what I did worked and here’s a picture. knowing, letting you know that they’re all good. It’s like

they

still, they’re frenemies.

Yeah. that’s, I think That’s what I’m trying to go at. Yeah.

joe: And it reminded me of something with talking about that and the interdimensional mass storage, and we had this with Cyclops and his eye powers. Now he’s pulling from another dimension to use the optic blast that he has. So he is opening a portal through his eyes.

But we had this, I’m trying to think who else. We’ve talked about this where. This mass conversion. So the one way is that he’s has some rapid cellular, gener generation and then retracted. But what if the mass comes from another dimension? And that would tether into kind of Reed’s overall story of his [00:34:00] intelligence, science, stretching, and then this dimensionality that he has

maria: A human portal,

joe: A human portal, right? So he actually is, instead of channeling energy through his eyes, he actually is channeling through himself. And then you could get to a thousand feet.

maria: Okay.

nick: Where

is he pulling it

from?

joe: from? That’s

maria: it’s still him.

nick: no matter what part of it? You

go to,

maria: His brilliance. there

joe: could be many hims though, right across the

maria: There are Many,

hims, right?

joe: And so he’s just pulling from and himself.

So

maybe in, in some other dimension, he becomes very tiny and shriveled. And while he is stretching out or from multiples, he’s just pulling a little bit of material from many reeds.

nick: Are you high right now?

joe: No,

nick: That

one came outta left

field for me. I was

like,

joe: know.

maria: I like,

it

joe: I know, but

maria: because it’s so weird.

joe: a lot. [00:35:00] It gets you we gotta, we’re trying to make the jump from 10, 20 feet to a thousand. And so I’m just throwing something out there. Then

nick: take that,

take

the stretching ability to, any other stretcher, miss Marvel, Elastic girl,

plastic

Are they all doing that?

joe: So I, like I said, I think Elastic Girl has some limit and that was revealed. We don’t know what the limit is, but even in the show, she only stretched so far, she didn’t stretch a thousand feet. Okay. Maybe she has rapid regeneration. Maybe it’s a genetic, she was born that way.

maria: But

she always

has an appendage or she

always has a body,

appearance, right? Yeah, that’s right. She does. Indeed

but Reed

doesn’t, oh, So I think if you

joe: No. I’m gonna stop. She turned into a parachute and a boat.

maria: She did, but she still had,

A head,

joe: had a head. But I think Reed also has a head, usually his head doesn’t flatten or

maria: because it’s all coming from there,

joe: I’m just saying He also doesn’t but Right. Go ahead.

maria: Yeah, but he can’t maintain mass then, when [00:36:00] I’m thinking about that A thousand feet. I’m sorry. he’s gonna have to, do some regeneration because if

you,

took his mass and you

stretched it. out,

joe: that’s right. Strength and

maria: tiny little thread trying to beat up on you.

we go.

joe: He gets there.

Tink. But if you’re pulling mass Other dimensions and building up as you go, then you can maintain. And then when you get there, you have a powerful punch. ’cause now you’ve been

maria: and when you’re going back to

yourself, you just shove it back down the hole

nick: attacking anyone at that length.

joe: He’s grabbing things. He’s don’t, why stretch a thousand feet if you’re just for a

heck of it?

You’re

maria: just

joe: look what I can do kids. And

nick: I would,

joe: think he’s, I

maria: and then a Breeze comes.

and blows his

like, he’s

joe: grabbing something. Even if something, you could, it could be something that’s trivial as grabbing a knife off the ground at a thousand feet stretch.

You don’t have enough

nick: you grabbing a knife from a thousand feet away?

joe: He’s gotta get, he’s not close

maria: to stab somebody. Of course.

Secretly,

nick: Oh man. I left something at home.

Hold on.

Where What are you doing? I’m grabbing something, don’t worry. [00:37:00]

joe: But if he had, if he was pulling mass and keeping his strength, and then, ’cause when you stretch out, also we’re just talking about stretching in a vacuum.

It was like a physics test. There’s no friction, but

maria: I know

joe: i’s equating,

maria: worth thinking about

joe: if your arm is stretching out and then your gravity’s pulling on it, right? So now as you’re getting thin, not only will it get thin, but now it’s just slump. It’s gonna have a big,

it’s gonna sag in the middle like a, like a weighted clothes line.

And so you’re gonna have a big saggy thing and at the end, your hand’s gonna be out there and super skinny and thin. No, I, yeah.

It’s gonna

be weird. Yeah. Yeah. A thousand feets. That’s a

maria: lot.

That’s a,

joe: I think inter dimensionality, now I’m gonna go with it.

maria: A thousand feet. That’s like

football

field, right?

joe: A thousand feet. A

maria: That’s a hundred?

yards.

Yards. Oh, that’s 300 feet. Sorry. That’s three, three and a Three. plus, sorry.

We’re

nick: How big is a football field.

maria: I know that’s A hundred yards. but I,

Yeah.

Okay.

[00:38:00] That’s,

a

joe: And there’s three feet in the

yard.

maria: I

like the,

portal part.

I think that’s pretty good. That would explain a lot, right? ’cause he can pull on the energy and the Oxygen from whatever. He doesn’t have to maintain. Lung volumes

or,

Or blood volume or, yeah, he just yanks it.

joe: you put ’em in that vacuum. He is just

maria: pulling from

joe: some other dimensional Reed that’s now suffocating for no reason. I can’t breathe. What’s wrong with me?

maria: He would not have to eat a whole pasture of cattle to,

joe: that

is true too.

maria: to maintain

his energy level.

joe: It’s but you would need to eat though, because to maybe opening his portals, that takes some energy. So he would need, he, you might not even have to sustain it during the stretching.

nick: I feel like you just put this weight anymore into hand.

Avium.

joe: It was already

maria: I think if you’re a portal, it just is.

mean, if we’re gonna, we’re, and we’re gonna have to embrace the hand WM here. I’m trying to actually, the portal might work like, ’cause Cyclops does it, I’m not saying that’s not hand wave him also, but

do the cosmic rays make him smarter?

nick: I

[00:39:00] don’t think

joe: I think he was already like genius level,

maria: right?

nick: I think he was

joe: yeah.

nick: Top universe.

joe: That was his thing.

maria: So it Didn’t

hit him in the head.

It hit him everywhere else.

nick: I don’t think.

it affected

joe: Maybe. What was his personality like before? It felt like he was the same, but we started close to him wanting to take his friends up to the cosmic race, his wife, his brother-in-law, and his best buddy to get bombarded by Cosmic Ray to see what would happen to him.

And then they crashed, landed back on earth I believe, and then they woke up with powers.

maria: Boy, And how did they ever

trust him again? That so

rude.

nick: I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for power’s.

joe: Yeah, you

maria: Okay. But

it’s

joe: there’s a an advertisement

going

to explore cosmic ray. Are you in next one? Yes. I

maria: it’s a wild card, what you’re gonna get. You could turn into a giant nose,

you know,

nick: I am

maria: just

one

joe: cancerous tumor or you’ll get superpowers.

maria: [00:40:00] flip a coin. It’s a

gamble

I’m

willing

nick: to take.

Either It’s gonna be something, wild And

joe: That gets into that and there’s a lot of non-consensual superpower gaining in comics.

nick: Oh, a hundred.

joe: And I think. I think this was one of those cases.

nick: I feel like most of them are like,

oh, no no one’s really I’m going

for

joe: Some are accident, truly accidental. Like Spider-Man, he got bit by a spider while he was, and

once again, poor lab animal control that, there was, there’s issues, but some powers are like, you’re actually experimenting. You’re actually trying to do whatever thing happens to you and that’s you consent it yourself.

Now was it, should there be, OSHA rule? Should you be looked at and there, human, scientific experimentation, ethics. Yes. But I think you have that category, but then you have the other category where it’s just like. We’re gonna like we joke about the reign of Superman comics where it was like, we’ll give you a sandwich in a, a suit if you lick this rock and we’ll see.

It’s, and we, and [00:41:00] the scientists know something. Something’s crazy’s gonna happen.

nick: don’t know what’s gonna happen but Something’s gonna happen.

maria: Who was that little kid that was chasing back to the Incredibles for a minute that was chasing

Mr. Incredible

around wanting to be

him. And then Syndrome.

Yes. Syndrome. I Forgot how he got his power. What does

He

do? he

joe: he doesn’t have power. That was his whole point. He created technology.

maria: Oh, it was technology.

That’s right, that’s right. Fake power.

nick: Did you hear the theory that he was actually a

Mr.

Incredible son?

joe: What are you watching?

nick: So many random things. on YouTube.

Yeah. There. Legitimate

joe: son or yeah,

wow.

nick: That was pre elastic girl.

joe: Interesting.

maria: Yeah. That

it was

one of those things I was watching and I’m like, that would be weirdly

joe: It would be.

nick: And that’s why he was

going

around with a

joe: Right.

He had all of the shrine to him and he was older than Violet. It’s Right.

maria: but smaller than

Violet.

joe: [00:42:00] Shorter,

He

was like stocky. He had, it was a super

nick: he looks like dash

joe: a non-super, right?

maria: He was Dash,

with a

big head. Yeah.

nick: And his power was having a big brain.

maria: Yeah. I wonder what the, I always the genetics of superheroes, so we have Sue and Reed and they have kids

Mm-hmm.

joe: and they both are powered. And so it’s whatever the mutation was, it’s not, it’s actually

it

could be passed. It’s hereditary, so

maria: it wasn’t somatic

Wanda had kids too,

nick: mary Jane.

Mayday she has powers.

joe: Some,

maria: did Wanda’s,

they

joe: already genetic, right? So with

nick: have

maria: powers. Wanda’s kids had power. Wanda.

and Vision.

joe: Yeah, but vision wasn’t

Android,

maria: He,

joe: I don’t know how that worked, Yeah. right. That’s a different okay. maybe,

maria: was gonna

say wrong topic.

I say with,

joe: with I was gonna say with Re Reed and Sue who got bombarded by the cosmic race, usually, sometimes that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s [00:43:00] gonna pass that you’ve affected your. Germ line. Your germ

maria: cells,

the non somatic ones. I would think it would affect them all.

Yeah. Yeah.

joe: What do you think it would, Yeah, mutate with similar, so really the mutations would be

maria: I think it’d be random.

joe: Okay. So that’s why the kids not necessarily have invisible and

maria: I have no

evidence. What else

I would predict it.

would be

like rolling the D It’s rolling the dice going up in the cosmic race. Yeah. So It’s every kid would be different. That’s the weird part.

joe: but also, but that, you can say that with Sue because she has all of her a, your women are born with all of their

maria: you got all your eggs.

But

joe: sperm are regenerated. And so that means his germ line, the actual progenitor

maria: And maybe that’s a wild card. Why,

why they have different powers

joe: and maybe, and you said maybe it’s just one big stem cell. So maybe when he reproduces, he just regenerates some genetic out of the juice soup.

maria: Gotta throw juice In there.

don’t you?

joe: [00:44:00] I did it. I was gonna

nick: juice soup

there, Joe?

joe: I was trying, I’m birthing a new term.

Soup Primordial

maria: Mm-hmm. That

joe: Could you

imagine? He’s like lashing around after he gets out of a battle.

nick: One of my

maria: favorite. I think that’s what happens. And then

nick: And you’re saying juice so much and

maria: and then the cells decide, oh wait, I’m the heart cell and oh,

I’m the liver cell and oh I’m your

bones’

joe: have little, or you could just

maria: go where they need to nuggets, little

joe: in there that are for me.

maria: I believe that.

joe: And then. And then you would just, and that’s why you can move the organs around, like you said, they move, they’ll reform his livers here.

And that goes to what Jonathan was talking about, like the medical treatment. Could you imagine like cutting into him and it’s just just

nick: don’t think you’d even need

to cut into him,

He could just pull it out? to the

joe: he’s he’s incapacitated. You gotta help him out. Like he’s now, his heart’s stopping or his, his lungs are not inflating.

maria: I don’t think you could cut into him if he were conscious,

joe: he’s un, let’s say he’s unconscious, you knock [00:45:00] him out and now you’re gonna have to do some work, right? Because we’re saying that when he is conscious, his cellular regeneration or his interdimensional mass, Ree equilibration is so active that if he is

conscious,

he will stop you.

But that means if he’s conscious and he wants medical treatment, he can allow you to open him up.

That would be,

nick: he just open himself up then.

joe: Can you just open yourself up?

Can you make a pore?

maria: Yes.

nick: he’s able to move

every

other thing around his body. Why wouldn’t he be able to just

plop

it out front?

joe: Like he would just move it out like in here’s

maria: I’m gonna move it right here. Here’s my liver. Here, go here.

This is

nick: I need it to be

joe: Maybe he doesn’t need fixing. Maybe he can just generate, but I guess if you have a genetic issue like cancers, like what? What’s his Yeah.

nick: because Mm-hmm. I don’t

maria: think he needs anything fixed, to be honest.

nick: If you go into the cancer category, then you get Deadpool.

Who his body’s constantly killing himself, but he’s also regenerating [00:46:00]

joe: Yeah.

nick: It’s that war with himself.

joe: Now what if Reeds other dimensional reeds aren’t all superpowered?

Would,

Could he pass superpower.

Material back and forth through to dimensionality as he’s stretching and reforming and he’s pulling from his other counterparts,

maria: don’t pull from

the wrong

one. Is that what you’re saying?

joe: Don’t pull from

nick: then you can’t even choose. You

can’t pick and choose who you’re pulling from.

joe: Maybe can,

maria: I think he

has more control than you think. because he

doesn’t Maria, get cancer. That would be cells outta control. He’s in control of the cells.

And

joe: he’s regenerating ’em at that level, would he would,

nick: but

doing the interventional portals, that’s where you’re like,

maria: he says buddies on the other

side. he that.

Yes.

is the only pulling

joe: from dimensions that have super they’re already, they have the cosmic ray, so

maria: That’s his brilliance.

You guys that missed the

joe: pool of,

nick: I feel like

that, [00:47:00] I.

don’t know. Like it,

joe: Yeah, I think cancer is interesting because his, if he has this rapid regeneration also that means his cells have figured out ways to bypass the normal checks that cells have.

So with normal cells, they have like contact limitations. So once they your cells touch each other, they stop growing. But cancer cells, when they have certain mutations, they’ll grow over top of each other. They almost become immortal ’cause they’ll just keep growing into a big mass, uncontrolled mass.

That’s the idea there. So if he’s, now he’s taking advantage of that system to actually create rapidly new cells to stretch and manipulate his internal organs. Now, his external structure,

maria: but to control it enough so he doesn’t turn into a giant sarcoma.

joe: Yes.

nick: A What

maria: basically his

stretchiness over

I

want

I say

over produces itself.

and just

takes over.

Oh

yeah.[00:48:00]

oh it’s

a

A soft tissue tumor. Oh.

yeah. So if you don’t

have control of this process,

of

Not

overgrowing yourself,

You turn into an OMA

and in that situation. be sarcoma. so,

joe: yeah.

nick: Did not know

maria: either. Yeah. I

nick: I feel

like there was a lot of words that dropped. today

maria: know.

nick: wait, what is

that?

Yeah.

What

else you got for us there, Joe?

I see,

joe: I always got

nick: tapping away.

maria: Do you have questions?

joe: Questions? As a quiz?

maria: Yeah.

No, I mean.

Generated questions.

No, I, think we

went through a portal. we went through.

joe: Yeah. I just have I

maria: control of the Slushy. A slushy, is better than juicing

juice.

joe: You, and you don’t, do you slushy?

maria: slushy

joe: slush

up?

maria: Yeah. Because you have a catchphrase like slush up

better than

smoothie.

I dunno. than smoothie.

nick: It’s better than juice.

maria: [00:49:00] Better than juice.

joe: He’s juiced in there. I let’s go. I do have a little list of characters and we talked about Mr. Fantastic already. And everything that he does, plastic man

DC

Yep. He was there and he like can twist himself and he he’s more cartoonish than Reed I think in the comics.

Like more, more humorous and what he does, we talked about last girl Helen Par and hers was more genetics had. Plastic man was a chemical accident, so he fell in and he became, his skin became elastic and his, almost like he got dipped in vinegar or something and

maria: Elastic

or

plastic, because I think of plastic, The opposite of elastic. Yeah.

Okay.

nick: Which he also goes from good to bad a lot.

joe: He does. Yeah. He’s you

nick: know where he’s at.

joe: Yeah. He’s kinda like a joker or where he has

nick: falls in the dead pool

joe: Yeah, maybe Deadpool. Yeah. I

maria: Can he do a flat Stanley?

Yes.

Oh, okay.

he’s everything

nick: like this This guy I feel like he’s [00:50:00] more all over the place than Reed is.

joe: Somebody didn’t, not

realize elongated man

and

he was a DC character also. He consumed gin gold extract. And that. Made ’em stretchy and as gin gold was based on ginkgo extract which ginkgo extracts a real thing. It won’t make you stretchy.

maria: It’s often used to support

cognitive function, memory, How do you know that show?

joe: to the brain.

maria: It just won’t make you stretchy.

it’ll, you’ll know

joe: you need to drink

maria: rabbit

joe: hole of research is, we’re know, take

nick: he’s trying to

save us from

people being Like,

I

drank this ’cause you,

mentioned it on the

show. I just

joe: a quart of ginkgo

maria: and nothing happened.

joe: thing that stretched was my inside got

juiced.

Someone I wasn’t, and maybe, are you familiar with one piece? Yes. And Luffy, is it Louy?

Luffy Monkey.

nick: I

read

them. I [00:51:00] don’t,

I will pronounce it However,

I

do in my head. but I’m not gonna say it.

out loud.

joe: Luffy.

maria: Luffy. Luffy.

Like Puffy.

joe: They have like rubber arms and can bounce and things like that.

Someone I

came up to T 1000 from Terminator two. Liquid metal.

nick: No, I

wouldn’t say. Is he

joe: they can stretch out and they can manipulate their liquid metal form. It’s not biological, but it is a stretchy material that he has functional control over.

maria: think you’re getting into the materials science

world. And we need

joe: maybe Reed maybe he’s liquid metal

maria: science.

joe: And he gets stretch a thousand still difficult. Then there was, when I was a kid, I remember. Stretch Armstrong.

And a stretchy latex

maria: I remember Gumby

joe: was here. Gumby

So

maria: not a superhero, but Gumby.

joe: But Gumby,

maria: that’s

joe: right.

nick: Don’t know. Gumby was

joe: He was a super, oh my god.

nick: I’m here to say?

[00:52:00] It?

maria: You liked pokey

nick: Yeah. He was mean to

maria: pokey

nick: all the time.

joe: there it is.

maria: Read. Richard’s not the NICE’s guy.

in the world either,

So

joe: Gumby

maria: that love, hate that internal war.

joe: Gumby never took pokey to space to examine cosmic race.

nick: Pokey

is a

creature

that has,

joe: He can’t

nick: speak for himself.

maria: Okay.

nick: Stand up for the little guy there, Joe.

saying,

joe: man, it was. We have it there, but yeah. Gumby, I haven’t thought about Gumby in a while. Do you know the Gumby theme song, Maria?

maria: I do not.

nick: I Am Gumby. I am Gumby. that’s it

joe: went. I don’t. And then the go historical 16th century and this has come up journey to the west.

It’s one of China’s four great classical novels. There’s a character s song, W Kong, the Monkey King, and he could

nick: Oh, I, for God,

joe: stretch, transform his body and [00:53:00] shrink and grow in size. So more size morphing powers than any elasticity, I think we’ve been using those a little

interchangeable.

nick: Miss

Marvel goes in big,

and then

she Makes herself giant.

joe: yeah,

nick: So, yeah, it’s

a possibility

to use it.

joe: Yeah.

And I thought I just, now, I don’t know why, just when you said that made me think of it. The pin particles and that

maria: was

joe: we and the inner

maria: dimensionality

joe: aspect of it with mass conversion.

And so it could be a similar thing. Maybe read, discovered pin

maria: Yeah, I think mass is off the table. We talked about

preserving mass before mass

is never

off table.

No. I meant in terms

of conserving mass.

joe: That’s your hand. Wavy re’s, just like mass is gone

maria: It

went into the portal, into the

internal portal.

nick: Joe opened that can, and you’re like, yes, portal. I

don’t have to explain.

anything.

joe: right.

nick: Put it in the I like it. [00:54:00] Like you explain it by explaining it

joe: and it’s just explained.

But yeah, no, I think we’ve covered, like we talked skin. The only other system I had was muscle, but I think if we can get skin and everything else, then you would just, you would do the same trick. Just grow a bunch of new muscle or pull it from, another

nick: So Would he be able to make himself as big as the Hulk?

joe: Yeah. Why not?

he,

does, he does that kind of, that’s if he’s, if you’re going to do it, then yeah, I think he could beef

nick: don’t see why he would need,

joe: I think there’s a different episode and maybe one on just mass conversion. ’cause I don’t know where the Hulk gets his mask for him, like when he bulks up.

So either he has cellular, the same sort of process that he can

maria: pin particles.

in reverse.

No,

nick: It’s actually a portal that just comes out of nowhere in his,

joe: it’s the ga Yeah.

maria: antman. Got really big ones. Really

big, ones.

joe: He had to have orange slices afterwards too. But yeah, no, so you have that, the muscle, but you’re right, you could see [00:55:00] Reed, I think, if you maintain strength a thousand feet away, then why can’t you just bring that back in this beef up?

Become, bigger than Hulk,

mass wise.

maria: I,

always think of ’em as stretchy.

though, and not Really bulky.

joe: Yeah. I think he doesn’t take advantage of it. He presents

nick: I mean he doesn’t

maria: he doesn’t Oh, he is holding, back.

He’s

joe: holding, he presents as like a skinny, lanky dude.

nick: I feel like he doesn’t need to be strength like he has been for that, for the most part.

And then,

joe: That’s just,

nick: he just works.

in self around things.

joe: right? Is that they got the strong guy

nick: Yeah. I mean if you don’t need to,

joe: he doesn’t need the flex.

nick: Yes, he doesn’t need a flex on Ben. He’s

joe: He’s just juicy.

nick: alright.

I need you

maria: yeah,

I,

think what

we decided, this one

joe: very hand waving.

nick: I, think we proved it and we’re, we’ll talk about it in

maria: I don’t know. I mean, there’s a little hand W [00:56:00] portion to it. I think the human body can do strange things

And

bones

can get

Flexible and muscle. you,

still,

joe: you’ve avoided the how flexible are we talking before breakage?

maria: Inches There are or feet?

Oh,

Not

joe: Okay. So we’re already,

maria: but if you can do it a little

and you

get a cosmic

ray hit, then you can do it a

nick: See, this is why I like having her on.

maria: That’s the potential. because there’s precedent there. It’s just on a different

scale. race have you seen this happen?

joe: You have a

maria: what have you seen it on?

joe: i’s why

I want,

maria: anything hand

joe: I’m on team hand Wao, you’re on team. It could happen if we find some cosmic rays. Let’s do

maria: it.

Cosmic gray and a portal. we got both.

Get a

phone call from you Joe,

joe: guess what? Those cosmic rays?

maria: we got a trip. you wanna take it?

nick: Hey Joe, you wanna go

on a road trip

maria: at your base?

nick: To where?

Space. don’t worry.

joe: Yeah, I don’t know. You too. You’re really [00:57:00] leaning into these cosmic

maria: your brains.

joe: I,

don’t Woo. Yes. They’re insides will be juiced. We’ll see you.

maria: that in

Slushy. slushy Smoothie.

joe: Slushy Smoothie.

maria: Reed

joe: Mr. Fantastic. Mr. Pedro Pascal himself. That’s who’s playing. Mr. Fantastic. Are you excited about the movie, Maria?

maria: Now I’m gonna have to see it Yeah,

for sure.

There it’s, yeah. Yeah. I’m

growing excitement. Can’t you tell

Your excitement. I’m stretching.

my excitement container. Oh, I Can’t wait to hear the fanfic from this movie.

nick: Oh,

joe: all

maria: gonna Have to have a watch party.

or something. Yeah. have watch

joe: Alright.

I think that’s yeah, I think we can wrap this up. We wanna thank Maria,

nick: thank you so much for being here. My pleasure.

maria: My pleasure. I learned a lot.

some

nick: words that, I’ll never

maria: lot.

joe: words.

Yeah. You have me, Joe.

nick: You got Nick.

joe: got Nick. We’ve got Nick and [00:58:00] yeah, thanks for Go listen.

Fantastic Four, see the watch a movie. couple days, it’s coming out. So yeah, super excited and we’ll report on it in our mini, I think we already made a date to go. Awesome.

maria: you

gonna interview people again?

Okay.

joe: but

maria: No. That like strangers, what’d you think of the movie? What’d you

joe: Not at the movie. No, that’s, yeah.

Okay. yeah.

And

nick: we went down some stretchy holes.

joe: Y’all stay safe out there.

nick: Bye. Bye.

joe: Love you.

Transcript: Fantastic 4 series: Episode 39: Johnny Storm: Spontaneous Combustion

Click link to listen or search Rabbit Hole of Research where you find your other podcasts:


EP39: Johnny Storm and Spontaneous Combustion

We torch the handwavium behind Marvel’s hottest character—Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. Dr. David Pincus of the University of Chicago explores how biology might survive a “Flame On!”

Transcript:

joe: [00:00:00] Hey.

Welcome back to the Rabbit Hole of Research down here in the basement

nick: studio.

We are setting it a blaze

today. Joe

joe: a blaze today.

david: y’all.

nick: Did you

joe: know it’s coming. We are talking about the human torch. Johnny Storm.

nick: and

joe: our Fantastic four series.

nick: We’ve already talked about

geo: Woohoo ability.

joe: we’ve talked about the thing, and now we’re here talking about human spontaneous combustion

geo: fire.

joe: And here today, joining me, you got me, Joe. We’ve got

nick: Nick.

You got Nick,

joe: we’ve got Georgia.

geo: Hello. Hello.

joe: And we have a guest, a returning guest. I,

nick: I think this is our first, is this his first

Wait, has he been on before?

joe: first returning

geo: shut up.

nick: Yes. Yes. People might remember Dr. David

joe: We’ll let ’em introduce was up on, you might remember our episode on climate disaster

nick: and the permit turpentine

joe: farms.

That was

david: It was it was pretty good.

geo: [00:01:00] it was fun. It was a fun one. I think

joe: was

nick: was as fun as

joe: disaster can

nick: be.

joe: but

david: Always a barrel of

monkeys.

joe: Pincus, will

you wanna give

david: Yeah. I’m David Pincus, uh, assistant professor in molecular genetics at University of

Chicago. And Hopefully

any day now, any day now, I’ll be cashing them checks. Yeah, and I happen to be an expert on the heat shock response, which, , hopefully will come up at some point today.

nick: Wait, if I recall correctly on the last episode, you go, why am I on this episode again,

joe: yeah, yeah.

david: Well, this one was much clearer to me. Spontaneous combustion and I happen to study how cells cope with, , thermal stress. So it actually it’s not that even a simpleton like me could

make that, uh, too.

joe: surprised on this one. I was, I was

nick: like, I

joe: well, I will I

nick: drop the, the Anil. I get on you.

joe: Like, why am I here? Oh, that’s

nick: why.

Yeah.

david: Oh.

nick: we’ll put

a link to that episode

in

joe: the show notes. It

nick: Wasn’t fun

Nick Nick and I are always here and we don’t have, uh, our science degrees.

[00:02:00] never. I actually was gonna start. Piggybacking off Joe’s, you know, be like, yeah, I’m a scientist by association.

geo: we could get an Well, if they ever promote me, I’ll give you all honorary degrees as soon as they let

nick: I am all for it. I need an honorary degree or something.

joe: Honorary degree. All right.

david: or an honorarium,

nick: oh,

joe: that’s even better.

nick: take honorarium. Yep, definitely

better. Yeah.

Let’s jump into this. You guys know how I do it? I have a definition

Do you have a list today?

geo: I thought you had a description.

joe: I mean all the above, but we’re gonna go, a D words. Yeah. A

nick: , we, , covered

joe: Fantastic four Marvel’s first family 1961,

nick: Stanley Jack

joe: Kirby. And so this is Johnny Storm. He is Sue’s younger brother, , just so that he can generate flames, fly and surround himself with them.

And so I wanted to start with what is combustion,

nick: and that’s

joe: as the [00:03:00] moment when matter breaks. Its bonds when oxygen, heat, and fuel collide, rapid oxidation, molecular breakdown, and a violent release of stored energy. This energy erupts in a form of flames, it and light, but in storytelling, fires mourning chemistry.

It is a symbol of change, rebellion of passion and destruction. And no one in a superhero cannon embodies this better than Johnny Storm the human torch. He doesn’t wear a mask. He doesn’t hide. He explodes with a single shout flame on. He becomes pure fire, radiant, reckless, and often just barely in control.

But fire is never just fire. It is the heat of adolescence, the illusion of ego, and the threat of catastrophe. It’s Johnny’s gift and his curse, a transformation that makes him powerful, but also volatile

geo: very nice.

joe: Thank you.

david: In short,

he’s hot.

nick: I’m shocked. Yes.

geo: Wait, okay.

nick: I wanna say in all senses of the

word, say,

joe: will say, oh, go ahead.

geo: Which character does Pedro Mascal

nick: Pascal, Mr. Fantastic.

joe: We’ve

nick: Which [00:04:00] we haven’t gotten to yet.

Because I was gonna say,

this would be spoiler alert,

joe: Next

geo: because he, because

nick: he’s hot,

geo: so maybe

david: That is a great character. Uh, I’m not gonna lie.

Yeah. I will, say out of probably all the shows that we’ve done and all the, you know, hypotheticals that I, I think this character is probably, I.

joe: The most hand. WII Yeah. This is a tough one. I mean, come on.

geo: come on. So spontaneous combustion.

nick: people do this all the time. All the

time. Yeah. Yeah.

There

has been

mysteries. inquire?

I I have not

no. Did you hear about that story where the guy burned alive in his chair with nothing else around him on fire? Come on. It’s usually

geo: everything like the torso and everything, but the hands and the feet don’t move.

joe: he walk away?

nick: No, he died. Okay. Well that’s, that’s part of the spontaneous

complexion, let’s say

geo: a.

pile of ashes.

nick: Okay,

Let’s say he was a charred skeleton,

joe: combustion work. [00:05:00] He,

nick: Johnny keeps living, right? I mean, so

We

got

a explain,

so we got a bunch of hand wavy of stuff

going on here. So a we have, and it’s a rundown his powers that did a little bit, but he can spontaneously combust, set himself ablaze, alright?

joe: That’s, and then he lives he turns it off just as fast

geo: he is not burnt or anything. He’s not

joe: or

david: no, no scar

tissue. scarring. He can fly.

nick: the fire, by the fire, by fire

to fire, which, we, we’ll

get back.

It might

geo: like

nick: propels him. Propels

david: feel like once you can,

you

nick: Once you go, and then

he can project the fire

joe: out.

You Yeah, yeah.

geo: thrower.

joe: thrower. like a flame thrower.

Exactly.

nick: this all seems addict. Insane. yeah, so that’s,

um, and you know, so

joe: so

geo: the plausibility is pretty much 0%?

nick: I’m,

joe: I’m gonna go. Yes, we’re

nick: gonna try.

joe: That’s, that’s the

nick: goal.

joe: We will,

david: Let’s just condition it like what’s the probability even of at will Spontaneous combustion,

joe: No

david: right? Like, let’s set the bar

low. heard of of spontaneous [00:06:00] combustion, but I never thought it was at will.

I suppose

nick: I, I think

david: that’s true. So maybe he’s adding energy. Maybe that’s the thing. The will adds the energy so it’s not spontaneous.

nick: Oh,

geo: So

I mean, you have to think about it, then

nick: he

joe: would be creating a whole new, set of organs probably to be able, in neurological

david: Or

joe: to project heat out, you know, we think about , a firefly or , with luciferase,

david: Sure. so some specialized chemical reaction.

nick: you can think

joe: of a lot of different oxidizers

david: stuff you put in your pockets in the cold, where you mix it

together and then your hands are warm.

nick: Mm yes.

About hot hands.

So, and you have to Hot hands. because,

david: the hot hands in the dice game.

nick: and you have to.

Yeah. and you have to generate

joe: because of oxygen, right.

There. There’s not enough oxygen in our atmosphere. It’s about 21% that you would be able to have spontaneous flame in this way. So you probably [00:07:00] would have to have some oxidant. We could think of a couple, maybe hydrogen peroxide, maybe a, a nitrous kind of compound, you know,

david: Or a heavy metal, maybe like arsenic

might work.

nick: I was thinking of

something that would kill us.

geo: are you

nick: Are you

joe: and that we

david: Yeah,

nick: because we, are you that he’d have to put that on his skin and then like, or

joe: it in some way?

nick: That’s, that,

the plausibility

of that he would have, he would have to develop some new kind of

gland .

, so it’s like a sweat glands,

Like a, like sweat

joe: Yes.

david: Except

with flames.

nick: Except that they would converse.

joe: Right, right. And they will converse

geo: They’d have

david: Would you imagine like there’s jets, like pores where the flames are coming out. , or

Like a grill,

nick: you

joe: kind of like

david: Like a propane

grill.

joe: Like a propane grill with

geo: a, but okay.

nick: A loose hose

geo: So

nick: David’s house,

in the comic, you’re testing the grill turns

into an

experiment.

david: Meat is the bal

geo: let’s not test that. Literally. Okay.

nick: Okay.

geo: [00:08:00] Now

in the comic book

He doesn’t have like pores or anything. Well, with your skin,

nick: I he doesn’t have like vis visible,

joe: cover that.

nick: I mean they just cover him in fire at all.

geo: at all?

joe: Not that I know of, no.

nick: You know, we have to,

You have ‘

david: cause what is, what is combusting, right? Like you need fuel, here.

joe: you need, you need heat and you need, you need an oxid

david: Yeah. And So the skin is presumably not the fuel

nick: But he can,, collect the heat energies

geo: from others.

nick: Yeah. So, uh, in an issue I’ve read, yeah, he, ended up heating up

david: Ah,

nick: lake.

To destroy a certain bacteria and then was able to go back in and absorb it

david: wow. Now that

nick: So he didn’t

david: that is the.

nick: all the, they took the fish out first.

joe: How’d they take the fish? Nevermind.

geo: Oh, okay. That, that

joe: yeah. Now we’re,

geo: that

nick: that all, so Reid was gathering them with his hands and then he was gathering invisible women, woman was, we

haven’t talked about Mr. [00:09:00] Fantastic yet. ‘

joe: cause that’s pretty

nick: fantastic. But

joe: let’s

nick: honestly, what he was making neck with his fingers, you know, just,

I can picture it.

geo: I can picture it.

nick: Just a couple things,

joe: just to set the baseline I think, David, you were headed this way a little bit,

nick: is that,

At,

joe: something around 41 c, 105 degrees Fahrenheit, you begin to get protein,

denaturation cellular lipid bilayer degradation. So the, the cellular bilayer, that’s what holds the stuff inside your cells. Inside of cells.

david: I mean even long before that, so that’s a, that’s even, you know, we’re at 37

degrees,

  1. Yeah.

joe: Right,

david: even when we have a fever, right? If we get a bad fever of above like 103, 104, the reason you’re going to the hospital there is ’cause you’re actually not able, your proteins are starting to denature

and as the proteins go, so goes the function of, of the cell and cognition and all that stuff we like

so.

nick: what happens

joe: to proteins at high heat, just imagine an egg, right?

I mean, that’s mostly protein that you’re frying up [00:10:00] and it coagulates into it like that.

nick: Is this like one of those drug TSAs, like Right.

david: This is your brain.

nick: you’re

geo: You’re,

david: is your brain on

heat.

geo: all I, all I

nick: a superhero?

geo: All I know is that , when I lived in Phoenix, sometimes you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.

joe: You

david: On the cement. Yeah. , on the asphalt, right?

Yeah.

geo: yeah. It’s hot.

joe: So there and

david: you know, tardigrade though, these, uh, there, there are certain extremophiles, how many times do tardigrade come up? Pretty much every episode.

joe: Not as many as you think, but it’s come up.

nick: Yeah.

david: things, , they actually evolved proteins that don’t even have a shape so that, , they can survive.

It’s really primarily for desiccation, but you can take these things up to 120 degrees. Hotter than anything else on the planet. And , they’re still kicking.

So, and

yeah.

so

it is evolutionarily possible

To recode [00:11:00] the proteome of certain cells to make them extremely thermo tolerant, heat resistant.

But a flame is really frigging hot, like Fahrenheit 4 51. Right. If it burns a book, it’s gonna burn

your skin.

joe: I, I think then, you know, with the glands that it may have a couple of functions. One may be to provide the oxidant for the

david: Ah,

the prop, the propellant.

Yeah.

joe: layer

of protective jelly or something

nick: Well, it’s also in his mouth too,

joe: you. It’s in his mouth.

nick: Yes,

geo: Have you

nick: So, uh, I

geo: anything?

nick: in one of the,

david: Of course,

geo: Come on, Nick.

nick: Well, in one of the cartoons, , he ended

up,

joe: you watching?

nick: That was watching all the Fantastic four ended up switching powers where he ended up getting invisibility and he, right.

Yeah, that was Yes,

joe: yes. That was the animated one. Right? Okay. Yep.

nick: So he, what? Heated up a slice of pizza and he took it outta the [00:12:00] microwave and he goes, oh, the pizza bit me. And I’m like, wait, what? You would have

to, and he’s like, oh, that’s ’cause it’s hot.

Yeah, This, this,

uh oh. ’cause

geo: oh,

joe: because

nick: protective,

whatever.

It’s protecting him from all heat it, it might be

that

his pain

joe: receptors are different,

geo: but you know, that

joe: be the

nick: other, ‘

joe: cause

david: ah.

nick: so you might have a

joe: whole neurological kind of change when you do this.

So, so you have to. Affect that also, that you might perceive pain very differently than you would a normal person.

geo: But do you remember the time that we were at the museum and then the stump people were there?

nick: The what?

geo: then they, the stunt people that

nick: oh,

stunned. I heard Stu.

joe: like

nick: like,

geo: stubby

david: stu

people,

joe: stu people were here,

nick: Georgia, please. You’re gonna get us canceled again.

geo: No, the stunt

nick: people,

geo: and they set themselves on fire. Like they put the stuff on , and then they set themselves on,

nick: they have

a lot of protective gear,

joe: like they’re not bare skin. So that’s why I

nick: think that,

geo: that guy in that show we [00:13:00] watch was bare

david: So you would have to regenerate this though, right? Because,

joe: right. Yes. I,

nick: I agree.

david: so there would,

joe: Yep. Some

david: there would be some refractory period, or at least some limit, right? On the.

geo: the,

nick: on

david: On the amount you could withstand if it were some type of protective layer,

nick: Yes.

Or you would,

joe: you would have some.

nick: Rapid

david: unless it’s other hand waving like atium or something like that.

joe: We we’re trying not to do

nick: we already in hand wa we’re trying

joe: take it

nick: away.

geo: Well, there was the, that guy that, oh, what’s his name? David. David Blaine.

joe: David Blaine,

geo: And we watched that show recently. And he sent himself on fire and dived into the remember, right?

joe: Yes.

geo: And there

nick: he he coated himself with like,

geo: some, but it

nick: was material jelly. That would

geo: skin, wasn’t it?

nick: it? Isn’t that like what you do with the spray? What’s that? Like axe body spray and people used to set it on fire.

Oh

yeah. Like

david: trying to get some in New Jersey?

joe: flame thrower.

It’s just

nick: is like

some

homemade flame throwers. Yeah.

geo: Yeah.

joe: movie when

nick: they’re [00:14:00] like, they got, they’re reaching on the counter. and They got the lighter

joe: a, you know, a can of aerosol.

geo: Yeah, but see that’s the opposite of protecting you. That’s makes it

nick: supposed to protect it? That’s

geo: like glider fluid. That’s right.

joe: Don’t put lighter fluid on yourself.

nick: are you sure

that’s not,

let’s not try. But gets to

geo: not

nick: that do not play with fire, period.

Unless you really want to No,

joe: no, please

geo: no.

nick: out here in in the

david: no kids. No. No kids.

geo: But

joe: a a couple things touched on, I mean you touched on , the tardigrades, but there are also the Archie that live in thermo vents and so they also have specialized, uh, kind of

geo: think of them.

nick: of them.

david: Extremophiles.

nick: clue what that is.

And

I think that David’s point,

geo: And what are those? Can you tell us what those are

nick: with a definition, please?

david: Thermi Aquatics is the most famous one, right? So. The reason we’re able to sequence the human genome or do any of the things that we do in modern molecular biology, amplifying [00:15:00] genes,, all this diagnosis for genetic disorders. It all comes from the, this extremophile called thermos aquatics, which is an organism that lives in one of these heat vents.

And people realize that it had to be able to replicate its DNA at an extremely high temperature so it can grow it, almost boiling water and still divide. And so it has these proteins in it that have evolved to be rock solid, so they won’t even denature under, boiling conditions practically.

So The cloning of this genome, what I mean by cloning is once people figured out what the sequence of the, of what’s called the DNA polymerase, it’s the enzyme in the cells that copies. Double helix and makes , the copy for the daughter they cloned that gene, found the sequence of that, and then you can put it in a batch of another organism like e coli and then produce a bunch of it, a bucket load of this enzyme and [00:16:00] then, , you can descend it to all your friends all over the world.

And now they can take their DNA and put it in a really high temperature and put it through a series of temperatures to allow this copying mechanism to occur. And so really the genomic revolution depends on an extremophile that was able to evolve to withstand a high temperature. Now

joe: It’s

david: still we’re solving a problem that’s not, uh, exactly getting us

there, But,

uh, it is quite

awesome.

Right?

joe: it’s a, it’s what’s called a pro

nick: is

geo: that like a single cell?

joe: it’s a single cell,

david: single cell Yeah.

nick: They are

joe: where you carry out, its, that means an a procars. We have a nucleus that contains our DNA. We have organelles like the mitochondria that provides power for our cell. A TP energy. A pro cario doesn’t have those specialized structures. , they are probably the simplest life forms.

geo: I

nick: argue, we throw viruses

in there, but

but

geo: I think, I think that name, that, that’s like a superhero [00:17:00] name. Can you,

could be, can you say that again?

david: tack. Yeah.

geo: No. What was it, ex the, what are they

david: Extremo file

geo: doesn’t that sound like that should be something that’s, so

nick: something, There, there are many,

david: Extreme.

geo: there are

joe: there

nick: are superhero, no,

joe: and there are many extremophiles there. There’s organs.

geo: organisms, so

nick: of

us kicking out on ex extreme ex files.

geo: Not, not all of them can get really hot. Just some

david: yeah. So This

one’s a specific, a

thermo file. Yeah.

joe: at thermal

vents in the ocean.

geo: You know what, when you’re

nick: you, when you’re talking about thermo

geo: I’m picturing like some vent in like a house there inside. I dunno.

nick: And, and then like

david: Turn the air conditioner off.

geo: and then some scientist is just looking in their vent. Oh,

nick: thermo file in there.

joe: Yes, yes.

nick: Get it out these thermophiles that,

joe: Gotta go down there GitHub. So,

geo: sorry.

joe: No,

nick: no, that’s

joe: [00:18:00] I

david: it’s the thermophiles versus the germaphobe.

geo: pho,

nick: I mean he are,

joe: and that’s, uh, the thermo files. They’re just, um, these kind of geothermally heated kind of vents that are on the ocean, sea floor and where kind of tectonic plates would be.

So you’re releasing a lot of heat and gas there. So it’s pretty, pretty hot. It’s pretty

nick: extreme. Just extreme. That’s

geo: and

david: like only Mountain Dew down there.

nick: The fact

geo: there’s scientists, that that’s what they study. I mean, do they have to be in the ocean? Like I, I don’t know.

I’m just, it seems so

david: so the scientists that discovered this, right, never, you know, they got funding for this back in, I think the seventies or something, and this guy just went to go and dig cores and then catalog what was in there and, , put it away for later. And then somebody, and then these guys, , 30 years later when they started making these little pieces of DNA were like, , it would be cool the allegedly took LSD [00:19:00] and had this vision of

nick: This is my kind of science driving down,

joe: , in California. Like some

david: Highway one, right? Or, or, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

geo: to

nick: he pulled over tripping. And

he saw it in the,

david: He saw,

geo: Oh my God. Saw

nick: the

david: Yeah.

This is, at least this is the apocryphal story, I think. I don’t know if it’s real, but

geo: I, I

david: so, so it, so it said.

joe: learned the same story and it’s been passed

david: Yeah, exactly.

nick: So it’s like, that’s like lore,

geo: it’s science scientist lore.

david: this guy won a Nobel Prize.

His name’s Kerry Moles.

Yeah,

geo: crazy. That’s interesting.

nick: So

you’re saying we should be doing more LSD, is that

david: Basically that’s the moral of the story.

nick: I

geo: No. You

joe: you remember, do you remember the magazine

geo: Bio Kids don’t do

david: Yeah, of course. I know Bio techniques.

nick: somewhere I have

joe: one

nick: the

joe: the early. Issues him talking about PCR polymerase chain

david: Oh yeah. This thing’s called the

polymerase PCR. Yeah.

joe: That, and that you can take just a few fragments of

DNA and

or [00:20:00] RNA the instructions for life

nick: and

joe: then you can replicate it and then you can make many more copies, in a tube in a matter of, , hours.

And so

david: You may remember , in COVID, the gold standard test was the PCR

test, You could have a antigen test or a PCR test anyway. All the same

stuff.

joe: there? Yep. And that’s where it comes from. Someone doing LSD on the drive home.

nick: and this is,

geo: And

nick: it

hit too

david: there’s a main line from LSD to

COVID is now what we’re

saying.

nick: now

we’re making it a line. If you do LSD,

joe: can flame on probably. So We’ll,

nick: what’s wrong?

joe: the

nick: So on it come

david: As long as that LSD is fire.

joe: right. Flavor. on. Don’t try at all.

david: Another thing we should not do.

geo: So thir, you said they, they discovered

joe: these

geo: extreme files.

joe: extremophiles,

david: Extreme.

geo: can’t even say it. Yeah,

they found that and then it was 30 years later when he is like,

david: Yeah,

yeah,

geo: moment.[00:21:00]

david: totally. , it was one scientist doing the sort of. Scavenging for the future, not knowing necessarily what they were gonna find, but cataloging it. Well, doing the naturalism and just, , getting a small grant and going out on a expedition thinking that there would be some type of interesting biology down in these very, extreme conditions.

And lo and behold,

geo: In these holes

nick: holes

david: down

joe: hot

geo: holes.

david: it’s hot.

joe: that, that just

geo: that just goes to show, so does that original scientist that was doing more basic research. Did he get involved in an, in any kind

david: You know, he never got the Nobel Prize as far as I

know. Um,

nick: because

david: but I do believe, yeah, he didn’t even get to do LSD

joe: Nothing.

david: you know, I don’t

know. I don’t know this

man’s life.

geo: he might

david: I don’t know that

this man’s life.

geo: document it. Okay. So

david: And I also don’t remember his name and I do remember Carrie

Mo’s name. [00:22:00] So,

anyway. Yep.

geo: this

nick: a question,

LSD

joe: story, that’s

geo: this is kind of going,

nick: Yeah. Young scientist

joe: that.

Like, you just go off and, you know, I don’t know, you’ll just

nick: up all

geo: have an epiphany.

nick: You

joe: some napkins with some great equation written on

it. How’d that,

this here? Do we need to do this? Is this a rabbit hole of research science experiment? No.

david: uh, I some field work.

nick: yeah, that’s

joe: right.

But

geo: I, I have a question, so, yeah, go for it. Does, do people like scientists doing really, really basic research ever win Nobel prizes? Or is it usually something more advanced? Do you know what I mean?

joe: think

david: Well,

joe: Nobel Prize winners were doing basic research. I, I don’t I, I don’t think any, I can’t think of, I

nick: may, there may be somebody,

david: but

there’s always other basic researchers that should also get the Nobel Prize that are not included. ’cause they can only ever give it to three people. And any given thing, , involves, thousands.

right. [00:23:00]

Who knows,

nick: Okay. And who has their hands on it the most? Their labs.

Like they’re

joe: the labs they were in, they generated grad students, postdocs,

Technicians had worked with

geo: Right.

nick: Right. And so usually there’s a, there’s a web of kind of researchers who work and then those are the three that might win the prize.

joe: But then you had many collaborators, colleagues who, you know, they also participated in it. I think

nick: it’s like the Oscars,

it’s

joe: to Oscar with the, with the Nobel

geo: It’s like so many things, right? I think the big thing

joe: with the Nobel Prize is that it really shines a spotlight on particular areas of science and then amplifies that message.

And you gotta, to do that, you gotta highlight a couple people and go, oh, these are the people that really helped push this, , technology. So cryo

nick: EM

joe: 2017 at Nobel Prize was awarded and then everyone jumped in and had to build out their EM facility, you know, so it was this

whole kind of push and it really was because of the Nobel Prize.

And then people said, aha, this is really important. So. I think you

geo: get, it gives that validation, but. [00:24:00] I think that that’s why sometimes it’s much harder to, to convince people about basic research. Yes. You know what I mean? Like why are you

david: but there was

geo: time doing that?

david: There was a Nobel Prize for the temperature sensing receptors that, you know, speaking of heat and cold.

David Julius won the Nobel Prize a couple years ago for how, , how we detect vibrations that, , in our skin that actually, , tell us what temperature it is

geo: and

david: and how the capsaicin, the hot, , the ingredient in in chili peppers, it activates exactly the same receptors that actually detect heat, so you feel hot because it’s the , same signaling.

So I always thought that was quite cool.

Yeah.

joe: if Johnny can eat really hot peppers. Like what is the, because we talked about pain,

nick: I feel like he, could he just go

joe: and he just,

david: can you go ghost pepper?

nick: Well, I mean considering like

joe: Tennessee Reaper?

And, and just go

david: Chomp. Yeah. Ah,

joe: yeah. So I, I [00:25:00]

david: oh yeah. Good question.

nick: it. Like he’s like, no, this is fine. This is fine.

geo: He’s not gonna admit

nick: Yeah. You can’t say that.

Like he’s

joe: have to suck it up,

nick: he like, he’s a

joe: pizza. I’m just wondering, ’cause the pain receptors are what’s, what is the true nature of the pain?

Is it directly related to heat and it’s many versions of heat because one is, . Do you know, is the capsaicin heat receptors similar to other pain receptors or are there different pathway?

david: the, the trip family of, uh, so yeah, it’s a part of a giant family of, , what’s called ligand gated ion channels. So, they’re different things that respond to various things in the environment and allow neurons to turn on and off direct leave by sensing the environment. So, pain receptors have, some of them are in this class.

Yeah, I do believe that’s true. Yeah.

geo: Yeah.

joe: All right.

nick: So, yeah,

joe: so maybe we can get flames on, so , we

nick: flame on,

we can

joe: generate [00:26:00] some sort of oxidant, maybe hydrogen peroxide or something like that.

Our bodies already make that, so not a huge leap.

nick: Maybe to get there,

joe: you have some sort of glands so you can ooze

nick: it

out.

geo: And also the fat, the fat in your body would work as like a candle.

joe: The, the fat in your body

david: You think, that’s what’s actually being burned?

joe: But his internal organs stay intact.

geo: Doesn’t, I was

nick: say, he doesn’t melt from the inside. usually that’s

geo: that’s not a good thing.

joe: you don’t wanna, yeah. Yeah. But

no,

nick: uh, you’re right. Lipids,

joe: you know, and fats do burn. I mean, that’s, we, um, if

nick: calories would he have to have?

joe: well, we’re gonna get some calories potentially.

nick: But I was gonna touch

david: Yeah, that’s a

good

question.

joe: if you do any staining or any, , cleaning linseed oil, things like that, and you, if you read the can you’re supposed to take your rag , and lay ’em out to dry.

Because if you take it and you boil ball it up, , the lipids in there, in the oils will start to oxidize. And you have, then you have a fuel.

geo: a [00:27:00] spontaneous combust,

joe: fuel and it will spontaneous combust if you do that.

david: Oh no.

geo: I

nick: and in grad school we had a

joe: a professor of mine, he wanted to demonstrate this.

We were talking about these processes. So he took, a rag, dipped it in, linseed oil

nick: or

joe: tung

oil, one of the, one of the oils.

nick: And, uh, ball balled it up

joe: threw it in a beaker and left it on a table. Did the lectures, like hour long lecture, nothing happens. Really? Oh man, I was anti-climax.

We

nick: all leave Next day he

joe: in and the beaker, it’s like just ash.

I guess

sat it

in

nick: the hood,

joe: safely. That was the best place. Probably. He sat up on a bench or somewhere, put it in the

geo: hood, but still

nick: Still balled up and stuffed in there. he was disappointed. It didn’t flame

on.

And so at

joe: time during the night, his postdoc called him and was like, there’s a beaker in the hood on

nick: fire.

joe: Should I put it out?

is like, yes, put

it out. What you doing?

No, let it burn.

So

yeah, then he brings a beaker the

next day and he

tells a story and it was like, oh.

nick: And so, yeah, that, that’s a [00:28:00] safety warning out there for anyone

joe: using any, do not just ball a rags up and throw ’em in the, in the corner of your garage.

nick: But I love doing that.

They will fy here

joe: or

nick: throw it into the, dumpster and,

joe: and see what happens.

But

nick: yeah,

geo: that’s dumpster fine. Essentially

joe: you can,

there are

mechanisms love us biologicals

to spontaneously combust. I think the issue here is that it’s on command. And it’s fast. It’s

geo: not, and it doesn’t hurt him.

nick: time? Like right. And it doesn’t. That’s the third thing. But that’s, that’s probably the

geo: most important thing.

joe: That’s,

nick: I

think it’s fairly important if you’re gonna set yourself ablaze in, in some way. So that,

or I mean, for it to not hurt.

other

thing is maybe you have very fast skin regeneration. I mean, he is already himself on fire. So that’s some ability. He got these abilities ’cause he was bombarded with cosmic ray.

joe: Um, so it activated all sorts of genes and things like that. And, , we talked about

nick: this genetics,

joe: you know, your genome. And your phenotype. And I was just wanna say

nick: that

often

you don’t, you know, so he could have already [00:29:00] had

joe: advanced

skin

regeneration, let’s say.

david: S And so here’s the, here’s the thing. I was thinking about what kind of mutations that could help, right? So I know for a fact that you could increase the heat shock response and increase the ability of the proteins in the cell to stay folded with just a few mutations. But then, yeah, the regeneration too.

You would have to ga basically have a localized cancer stem cell population that just regenerates, but , never escapes the niche. You know what I mean? It’s kind of it. Those were the two, mutational ideas that I had. Yeah.

Anyway.

joe: that’s and I was saying that if you have,

know,

at, at some level, if you are never tested. Then you’re unaware that you have some new phenotypic ability,

geo: but then you happen to, so, so maybe, but then you happen to get,

nick: right.

He got this power

joe: then that was the thing that, right, it was kind of

like

the[00:30:00]

fusing to

Wolverine skeleton. It was because he had healing factor that allowed him to have Adam Addium fuse to a skeleton successfully. And so you had that, so if

nick: you didn’t know you had that power, you could

joe: just accidentally get tested on and then wake up with this power and you, you lived and no one else.

Because that, that was a question. And a couple episodes ago it was like, how come no one’s done tests to find a genetic, , pathway to recreate.

A human torch or a

geo: is that the question that we had asked?

david: mean, these

days we would use PCR.

And Oh, I thought you were gonna say LSD. No,

geo: that’s only if you’re Same, same, only if you’re a scientist.

joe: if

nick: If a you know, the, road trip, that’s right. If you’re on it, you’re not No,

you’re not.

joe: No. A PhD scientist. We’re gonna set some

nick: bad.

joe: here.

david: yeah, that Venn diagram is a circle.

nick: David. You got me right. We’re good, right? I I I can do this, right. No, I, for science,[00:31:00]

Georgia was asking,

because

joe: we had, , Jonathan Mayberry on and at towards the end of the episode, he had asked about how

nick: does

joe: Johnny stop from dehydrating?

geo: Oh, that, that was a, yeah. Thought that

joe: was a good question because you are. When you’re on fire you are, removing,

geo: the

david: this is where the tar grade proteins might come in. Right. You know, they’re also desiccation tolerant, so it’s gotta be some combination of, Antifreeze type proteins that you develop. I don’t know, it

seems,

joe: know, I had, I had another idea, I don’t know, if you might think this one, but I was thinking about face separation and biomolecular connaissance. I don’t conc

david: Ooh, yeah.

nick: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, me too.

Yeah.

joe: experience on that, but, uh,

david: Yeah. That’s, that, that, that’s a that’s another thing I do.

nick: Yeah. So, and just

to and

can you give

geo: us a little bit of a, so I was

nick: so I was just gonna say that

joe: that these condensates form when proteins and or RNA [00:32:00] undergo liquid, liquid phase separation, and so they reorganized themselves from this kind of liquid phase into a more dense membrane free droplet inside the cell.

Presumably giving it some heat protection or protection against other stresses, heat shock, oxidative nutrient, de deprivation, DNA

david: Absolutely. Yeah. All the,

nick: of.

joe: Yeah.

david: yeah, the,

if, if you can sort of

add,

that’s great. Yeah.

That’s fantastic. And

I, I,

nick: on

joe: so that’s why I,

geo: I just heard

joe: give a, a lecture

nick: on

this,

joe: so

nick: that’s why.

david: That was incredible. But yeah, it’s basically because the cells made of stuff and this stuff is all gooey.

joe: gooey

david: when you change, when you change the. Anything, the temperature, the goo mixes in different ways, right?

And will reorganize, it’s like a lava lamp in there, basically. And , as the lava lamp stays on longer, it gets hotter and you see the more mixing, right? So it’s the same type of idea that, , the [00:33:00] interior of the cell, it’s been a billion years that this thing’s been evolving. As the temperature goes up and down and up and down and over the seasons and over the latitudes, you just have a huge range.

And then the extre of files, right? We all have

In our genes the memory of all of this fluctuation. And so that has made us super tough. And so you can imagine somewhere out there, there’s some suite of genetic mutations that could confer an incredible amount. Tolerance. Now, it’s hard to imagine that being in a

joe: a

david: big ass person, like a human, like an animal, like I can see it in a cell, or, or a small

animal, I don’t know.

joe: effect, right?

So we

nick: could

geo: not a Johnny.

joe: so you could have these, uh, connaissance that lock. Like kind of vulnerable enzymes and proteins into some sort of protective

geo: you know, what bubble,

joe: that, um, it kind of

david: and [00:34:00] casing. Yeah.

joe: And then he’s just kind of,

nick: so almost a, that’s why I

joe: you would have to start at the layers of the skin and to protect everything in.

So you might not have to have this across every cell type in your body.

david: I see what you’re saying.

joe: limited to, uh, maybe even some specialized new It’s almost like a plasma TV screen. You know that’s a liquid crystal display.

david: actually. that’s, that’s

the right. metaphor.

nick: go. So what we’re saying is we’re moving out of the realm of handwaving. Right. Like, we’re gonna make

it

david: Yeah. You know,

this is, I’m, I’m, I’m coming a little bit round to the idea that this is a little

more,

nick: making

geo: this like

nick: And so you could have percent plausible

Yeah. I mean this goes

to like the

joe: episode. We

nick: ended there

joe: leading into this, because that was where I started and started thinking about that, is that you would, now, if you say well take all the other organs out and body, how do you protect everything inside just on the outside?

And that would be, so now you can have specialized glands with your oxidase or [00:35:00] peroxidase in there and some specialized organ generating the, the, that

there. And

you have

david: Little

reaction trap, the heat, so it

right. Yeah. I think

joe: you

nick: can even form that

joe: as condensates until it’s needed.

Right? So that’s that rapid on and off. So you could actually go turn on, ’cause peroxidase will form these nice crystalline structures inside of cells. And so you could turn on and then you ooze out and you then you

david: You know

what? You could, you could, if you had a little,

little mitochondria, ooze out, flame on.

geo: right?

david: If you recruit mitochondria over there Right. You could uncouple the mitochondria and generate localized heat.

joe: That’s right. Right.

geo: This

is what

david: Yeah. to

get the spark with the, the mitochondria uncouple or could be

nick: the spark.

Yes. That’s where

joe: I was. Yeah, you could do that.

geo: This is what happens when you get a couple scientists

nick: together.

david: the spark, man. This is,

this could, This could be This has legs.

joe: All

nick: right so

maybe we can

set ourselves on fire

joe: and not, [00:36:00] not die.

nick: So would it be safe to say that he doesn’t get sick then, or No?

joe: I think he’s still gonna get

nick: because I mean, if you’re raising the body temperature at the same

david: You’re

basically autoclaving yourself.

nick: yeah, you, you may. right. We

david: there could be some downsides to microbiome, right?

joe: so we just said that we were leaving all internal organs alone, so we were gonna try to maintain physiological temperature nor, uh, normal

nick: physiological

temperature.

But your body has to raise temp either way. No.

joe: Maybe just on the outside,

nick: which is still the inside.

joe: Hold on. What?

geo: No, but

nick: I mean, if you’re ha

david: I mean on LSD.

nick: a,

joe: you’re gonna have a, you, so

nick: you would have multi

Yeah.

but like, you

do get, you do get

fevers, right? So hold on. I’m saying that for the flame

on we’re going to,

joe: we’re gonna now have.

Several specialized layer new layers of skin, one a jelly layer

nick: to kind of

joe: insulate us, the jelly

david: Yes. Yes. Yes,

joe: gonna have then the,

you’re gonna have the [00:37:00] oozing layer that, that generates. And then you’re gonna have

nick: may, maybe, actually no,

joe: that back. You wanna have the, the jelly layer.

nick: and then

you would

joe: have some sort of other skin layer that might be a little more thermal resistant, can have this kind of, the kind sits on and off. And

nick: then I

joe: you would have your ooze layer

nick: and you would have

joe: kind of on top there. And now you would have, you

would have the ooze come through

but also in his mouth as well, is what we

david: You had, you had.

nick: You just said

only thing about

joe: the mouth was that the pain receptors were different. You didn’t say fire shoots out the mouth. No.

nick: No,

but

joe: means that his pain we said also that this pain receptors might also be modified so that he doesn’t really feel the pain.

nick: His temperature would go up. So it if it’s all around your mouth, you’re still having that pain receptors in there.

You’re not getting burnt every time you talk.

joe: Yeah. I mean, yes.

nick: And he talks all the time. I think the

joe: issue you’ve brought up and andour than the mouth is the eyeballs. I don’t,

david: Oh,

joe: know, I, I have, I

nick: don’t, he has some gooey [00:38:00] balls.

geo: he has go eyes.

david: Just always like gga.

nick: he probably has really dry eyes,

right? Yes.

joe: yes. See you.

geo: so

nick: They’re not gooey. I didn’t, I didn’t. Or

joe: Or, or you have some sort of like a membrane that forms already eyes

david: yeah.

joe: So there you go. Okay.

david: A heat re a heat shield.

nick: And you

might have

joe: membranes in your nose and your, your mouth. You might have specialized, like, you know,

david: Lids.

joe: Lids, yes.

nick: Cats.

joe: breathe, uh, uh, alternate breathing apparatus. So that

david: Yep. Yep. ABAs.

nick: yes,

geo: this sounds so plausible. Breathing’s

nick: gonna

joe: be difficult also. So, I mean, I wonder if he can hold his breath for a long time. How long can he flame on? Like, it’s like indefinitely, right? Yeah.

david: he can also fly, right?

So,

nick: is,

joe: flying is its own thing.

nick: What? He’s projecting it

david: but you could propel, yeah, you can propel

right?

geo: like Iron Man. Yeah.

nick: so I think,

joe: I think that before we go to flying, we should talk about projecting the flame, because that’s what you need to do. You [00:39:00] gotta do that before you can fly

geo: like a flame

david: I see.

nick: which he can project. An identical version of himself.

joe: Oh man, come

nick: He can’t,

geo: No, I’m done. That’s, I’m gonna

nick: throw

that

joe: in hand away.

nick: He calls ’em fmo, rip that magazine out,

joe: that comic up.

nick: He would bring it out.

Yes.

So I mean, yeah.

joe: you would have to, the projection system here is, is what you need. And, and there are organisms that project, you know, like the bomber day or beetle.

I think they

david: Oh yeah.

joe: Uh, some,

nick: exo, an

exothermic. I forgot

geo: about the bomb.

nick: I mean, how did you forget that? An

exothermic, uh,

david: Baba Doba Dome

geo: I

joe: it’s like a hundred degrees. I think it’s like a little,

nick: it gives

joe: its enemies a little surprise. It’s like you’re messing with me and

david: and the ladies.

nick: and the,

joe: so

nick: you would need, you would need this, a projectable flame,

joe: maybe gland.

I, I just like, we’re going with glands. Like you, you would have to have some built in, almost

like Spider-Man his web gland,

nick: are you [00:40:00] talking about? Spider-Man uses web fluid, not all of them.

Mm. That was in

joe: MCU. They had the

nick: no, it wasn’t in the MCU. He did it.

He

joe: well, that comes out

nick: of you. Oh, that

joe: That there? Yep.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

nick: I mean, I, I don’t count him as in the MCU, but he’s in the MCU now, you know?

Once again, everyone was confused by him.

geo: what are some other, what are some other like fictional outta

nick: wait, it comes out of you just there,

joe: That

geo: that set themselves on fire?

I writer.

nick: Yep. I was gonna say, say, I think a Nicholas Cage, right?

Cage. There it is. Element, yeah.

geo: Nick Cage, cage

joe: Element also goes on fire

nick: element. You have,

geo: Cole? Yes.

nick: you have the, you don’t know who Element does

geo: No.

nick: No. Look on your face when you said that. Oh yeah. Element Stephen

joe: King’s fire starter. Oh, drew

nick: Barry

joe: Moore in the early eighties.

nick: that’s

geo: been a really long time since I saw that, and I really enjoy that

joe: she, her

nick: thing she didn’t

claim one, but

joe: projected the fire

geo: the, everything would be on f

joe: Well,

nick: that’s once you

joe: a little fire, then the[00:41:00]

geo: becomes a big fire.

joe: fire though,

geo: But it seemed like it just all of a sudden became really

joe: got that.

We didn’t start

geo: Yeah, we, we know, we know.

joe: Okay. Um, moving

nick: on.

stopped. That’s

geo: have, I

nick: have a list. I

joe: I have a

nick: a list of,

joe: of pre early fire controlling fictional characters pre Johnny Storm, 1961.

david: Ah, nice.

joe: so I was gonna go through a few of these. Uh, the Flame first appeared in Wonder World Comics number three

nick: wasn’t who 1939 inspired Johnny.

I mean, I think

joe: these kind of inspired, uh, that was 1939. You

nick: had the Human Torch,

joe: Jim Hammond, that’s the one right there. That was Marvel Comics number 1,

geo: 39. Woo.

nick: Mm-hmm. And

he was a synthetic

joe: Android who ignites into flames, flies, and protects fire. So he was an

nick: Android.

geo: I was gonna

nick: Android I

david: that

makes sense. Yeah.

Engineered. Yeah.

joe: You had, uh,

david: get, get around all the, all the biocompatibility.

joe: you had Prince Flame from Fiction House, planet [00:42:00] Comics

geo: Prince Flame. I

nick: thought he

david: at first I thought you were talking about Prince.

joe: Yes.

nick: Purple rain.

And

So Purple Rain and purple fire. Yeah.

He had full body flame control

joe: and he had fire projection. It was more a sci-fi. And we were talking about so many sci-fi in the golden age of comics like these sci-fi based, uh, comics.

We had fireman and dynamic comics, number 3, 19 41. And he gains fire powers from exposure to a volcano. He can flame on and off at Will, and he shoots flame and resists heat. Um, so very similar to Johnny Storm,

Man,

1941, punch Comics number one. He also shoots fire, super heat body abilities, wears a costume to contain or direct a flames.

geo: Like, um, the guy in the stand that started all the filming. Oh, right.

joe: Yes.

nick: What was his,

geo: he? Oh,

joe: that guy’s name.

Yeah,

nick: Gasoline.

geo: man.

No. Um,

joe: Gas man. No

nick: gas man. I

geo: I don’t know.

nick: know. It’ll probably, I don’t wanna be anywhere [00:43:00] near someone named that.

That’s a scam up.

geo: I know you read that so many

times.

joe: I

geo: Trashcan man.

Ooh, trash Can man.

joe: Trashy. Oh, trashy trash can man.

david: All right.

joe: Turkey tide.

nick: Okay. Yeah, and then there were, there were a number of,

joe: could imagine of kind of mythological folks who, who

david: Prometheus, right?

nick: Prometheus.

joe: You know, you had, uh, cer, , and Norris mythology was, uh, you know, the Ragnar Rock

You know, the giant who wields a flaming sword and engulfs the world of in Ragnar Rock.

So. Yeah, you had, um, you know, fre and uh, Islamic mythology.

david: Where do dragons come in?

nick: Dragons.

joe: yeah. Right. I think, you know, also they would, they breathe fire, so they have this ability. So they, that’s, and

so that got

me thinking, that’s why I went external with, with Johnny and trying to

david: Mm-hmm.

joe: a way to hand w them, because now you don’t have to explain [00:44:00] internal structures because you’re, uh, I think to David’s point, you have a lot more organs and systems that would be much more responsive and heat

damaging

effects that would, may take a long time to recover.

Our, our skin is very flexible and pliable and so, you know, a little more resistant to damage

nick: Was that a hint at the next episode?

david: Ooh.

joe: you mean the episode before this?

geo: Yeah. Flexible.

nick: Oh, oh, flexible. I don’t know where you’re going with it. Come on.

geo: yeah. It’s so confusing. Skin

nick: Flexibility.

joe: gotta have flexibility.

Um,

geo: I think Joe, you could be the solo stove man.

joe: A solo stove. I don’t wanna be the solo stove,

david: that’s another source of heat. that’s what you are in my phone now. Solo stove. Am

joe: I a solo stove man?

nick: Solo stove man.

joe: So, yeah.

Thinking about projection. Let’s go back ’cause I don’t know if we’ve solved that problem.

I guess we had the gland and you could [00:45:00] shoot out the gland.

geo: Is that like the goo

nick: Is that like the go? The No, the oohs,

geo: The goo in the lava lamp.

joe: Sure. Yeah, yeah. yeah. David’s point. Yeah. it. You

david: You know?

nick: wait, what

joe: a controlling,

nick: Why would that be? What

joe: a controlling gland to

nick: actually focus the fire

out? That

only

david: exactly you need to play. You need a way to focus.

Once you can focus, I feel like release is a little easier.

joe: Yes. ’cause

nick: a ‘

david: cause that’s,

nick: release

joe: stuff, like we talked about the bomb,

david: yeah. Like you dissipation. So once you have a, a channeling, uh, yeah. Anyway you, you generate the heat and then you localize it, and then you

And that can be done. I think that’s downhill.

joe: Yeah. once That’s downhill. the initial flames over your body squirting out

david: Once you have the

scaffolding,

joe: The

david: yeah, you can.

nick: squirting out.

your, oh, stop saying that. Goo.

I know There’s so many, there’s so many

david: just like another appendage.

geo: there’s so

nick: many [00:46:00]

geo: icky words. I think the, the only other thing,

joe: and so Johnny’s

kind of biology would be interesting ’cause we, we made all these modifications of skin and

david: Yeah. Right.

So how do you control it? Yeah.

joe: and things like that to, to actually have that.

nick: And if he loses

joe: his pain receptors, that already suggests that there’s been some neurological reworking

david: Some different type of feedback.

Yeah,

joe: that would happen. The turn on, turn off.

nick: I don’t, the

joe: thing I, I haven’t. Is quenching the fire? Is that as simple as stopping

nick: the

joe: release? I’m not gonna say ooze anymore. The release of

david: Right. Do or do you need an active shutdown?

I think you could I think release is as bad.

a, a closing of the channels. A closing of

the channels. That’s better.

joe: better. The of the channels.[00:47:00]

He’s finished.

Yes. But yeah, I mean that’s, yeah. And, and that, that fuel source, that, that could be lipid. That

geo: we figure out the dehydration thing?

joe: Well, we we talked

the protective jelly layer. Oh, gel layer. Okay. In there we talked about the conduits that might help with dehydration.

So as you have these stress events, you could be protecting or instead of having a proteins that, that’s, uh, d de nature, which means they just unfold. So proteins have a, usually a complex folding structure, and that’s what allows ’em to work and do specific work. You de nature, you’re just stretching that back out and then it can’t work any longer.

geo: And then is that when people die,

joe: People will die if there are proteins in nature. Yes. Okay. That’s, that’s generally what it happens.

david: People

Die.

joe: think

about the

frying egg. or a You heard it here first. Your

proteins Do not proteins We’re all gonna die,

geo: Defold

nick: You can’t be [00:48:00] folding yourself. And

they fold and, and usually they, they fold back in the same order so that you might go, what happens?

joe: You take the temperature down, so they actually denature then they start to kind of bundle up like spaghetti into clump and yeah, there’s problems. So,

david: then you get a LS or something.

joe: yeah, you get something bad. Let’s, um, don’t do that. People,

nick: um,

joe: yeah. So

nick: I

geo: that’s,

maybe we should list all the things you shouldn’t do.

nick: I just have a

david: set yourself on fire. There’s been a lot of don’ts

here. can end on some dos. Yeah.

joe: So,

Nick, what do you got? You said you had some hard hitting research coming in.

nick: Did I, I thought we were already go going over that, or, or, or, well, I

think he brought

geo: a lot in as far as like some of fans

joe: and. Extremophiles.

nick: have nothing on that stuff. No. He

dropped

geo: whole mouth thing. He

nick: He brought out, of like the, the setting of

geo: water on fire and then taking the heat.

nick: right.

And so the, the water on [00:49:00] fire,

joe: the set, you know. How big was this lake? A

nick: pond? It was like a small

joe: pond. Like some, a backyard pond.

nick: I mean, I don’t know what a backyard pond is. What is a backyard pond.

Joe, you don’t have a pond in your backyard

pond that would fit in

david: Was it? Yay big.

joe: Was he like

nick: a little, a

little pot of water? I mean, I can You know, end to the other. I this a fantastic, scooped out the few koy goldfish and,

joe: and on

david: we talk in Arizona golf course or New England golf course.

nick: I, I, I don’t know where either of those are, so I’m gonna go New England. I feel like they don’t have a lot of water there.

david: Oh yeah, I should have said something. Swampy

joe: Arizona doesn’t have a lot of water either. Come

by not a lot water, you would go Arizona,

nick: I don’t know, man.

It’s dry heat.

joe: Yeah, it’s, it’s dry

nick: I’m not from Arizona guys. Um, George is over here trying to fry eggs on sidewalks in Arizona. The

thing with, with

geo: Hey

joe: did he have, um, is his outfit specially [00:50:00] designed? Yeah. Does that give him some also protection? Potentially?

nick: It keeps unstable being nude. It’s every time he lights up is

in a nude. It, Sony doesn’t have the fashion It comes out

Buck

naked. No. It saves him from being Oh yeah. It’s so that he’s just like flame on and he comes

off. It’s so he doesn’t have a fashion Like, um, I

david: Hi.

nick: the first, first, until

the

fabric was made, he, he would just

stroll out flame. Pretty much. Yeah.

joe: just, you’re like, whoa, that guy is buck naked

nick: fly. Yep.

joe: on fire. Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Um,

david: when you got it, flaunt it.

nick: what about his hair?

Hair.

That’s right. His hair doesn’t burn off. His

hair not burn off, which I think it would, that would be a nice fuel source. Yeah. I think that’s a

david: Oh yeah.

joe: the come, he should be shaved, he should have a shaved head.

nick: I mean, he was, has a mustache now

joe: have the

geo: the hair flaming,

joe: but then it, it burns off.

nick: But then we already established, that doesn’t happen to him. His eyebrows, he hold

the whole and body, Unless it’s made of a substance that helps to dissipate heat.

joe: but then how [00:51:00] biological substance. Yeah.

david: Like some, some keratin derivative.

joe: or something. Yeah. Or some other protein structure. Is this hair fluffy and light, or is it coarse and brittle?

nick: I.

david: Does it conduct

nick: You know,

joe: No. Yeah.

nick: this is on the pages of a comic. I have

no, once again, thank He’s an expert on that. You know, I, I, I don’t know.

joe: a comic, he might have fluffed his hair, like, you know, like a model, like, you know, we, a video. You

david: like flock of seagulls?

nick: That’s right.

joe: yes.

nick: Like Bobby, he throws his hair back. I don’t know man. He’s got a mustache. Yeah. Yeah.

joe: Yeah.

geo: That

nick: problem. Yeah. Hair.

joe: I think, I think he should be hairless. Like, we’re gonna do this. Right. He should be hairless, no

david: Full alopecia.

nick: That’s right.

So he, to glue him on every time

And I think all of his orpheus

should have

joe: membrane guards.

Like he should

david: Yes.

joe: Yeah. I [00:52:00] think nose, eyes, ears, mouth.

nick: Wait, so what is a membrane guard now? Like, is is it supposed to be like a flap?

geo: it.

joe: Yes,

nick: exactly.

This is

disgusting. He

geo: about it.

nick: Yeah, but he didn’t really go over it. He

just, it was like a lid.

Spanked their

flap. Also, man, you

geo: a lid

joe: You know, you have everything there.

nick: So you’re, you’re, you’re just pretty much putting corks in everything,

joe: the holes,

nick: corks in every hole.

joe: They’re

nick: not, you got a hole, we’re gonna cork it.

Flaps,

david: plug you.

joe: they’re membrane All right. And that’s, I mean, that’s in nature that are a lot of animals that have There are, Kind of, uh, protection.

geo: Well, is that what our, is that what our islands are?

joe: ways yes, but there are, I think all, I mean is it alligators? I’m trying to think of so many aquatic animals that are amphibious

david: With, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

joe: when they actually go into water, they have another membrane that will cover their

david: like STO in plants, right? STO are a great

nick: Stomata for

joe: gas exchange.

And so they allow gas [00:53:00] exchange between the environment. So maybe Johnny has some Sada and

david: Yeah.

joe: he can have

nick: some gas exchange

Johnny

geo: Ada.

in The gas exchange hanging with . Oh my,

david: Oh,

nick: look out Look out

geo: that gas exchange.

joe: Torchy.

david: well that explains the heat.

joe: He’s rigging a heat. But yeah.

nick: But that,

joe: I think that would be the way.

Now if flying is I don’t know. I got nothing for that.

david: I got nothing for flying.

I mean, unless we got gas exchange propulsion.

joe: It’s

nick: shooting it down. ’cause you guys have glands now

shooting down.

david: just like a whoopy cushion,

geo: Yeah.

nick: But you, gotta, he’s shooting out the flame it’s a, you also

have to generate enough

joe: for lift. you, you just can’t shoot like a little, like

nick: to set you on

joe: fire. I just need to shoot a little flame at you and you’ll

nick: go. But he doesn’t just web it out. It’s[00:54:00]

joe: yeah. He shoots it out like his

nick: hands.

Yeah. Which is what

geo: have. It’s like

nick: gland in his

geo: Ironman. That’s how he takes off.

david: hand glands,

joe: he,

nick: but, but he’s, he’s

joe: some propulsion, right? So you’re generating force to push, to give you lift. And he has, he has boots. He has like the propulsions on his boots and so he lifts

nick: off. He’s got the propulsions on his feet too.

joe: That’s

david: he, he stands

on his grand gland

hands.

joe: Johnny.

nick: Yeah. Oh, he has

joe: glands in his feet.

nick: I mean, I’d assume so.

joe: He has feet glands. We didn’t talk about that. I

I guess

if he has skin, he could shoot,

he could have glands all over the place. You’re right.

nick: He is a gland.

joe: we gave him a new layer of skin

geo: gland, man.

joe: That’s

nick: why his skin looks so good. Stop. Maybe

that’s

joe: his skin looks so good. He looks so

david: Oh yeah.

Glow up,

nick: But now he’s just gonna be hairless. He’s just

joe: just hairless

nick: Beautiful skin.

Skin though.

joe: skin though

geo: Hair.

david: but but yeah,

joe: What kind [00:55:00] of jelly do you apply to your

david: because it’s on fire.

nick: And so, yeah. So then I had

joe: you, you asked about I think you asked about the caloric intake.

Yeah.

david: Oh yeah.

joe: if we go with this whole process where you are you know, I mean, all sorts of stuff. You know, this new skin, skin regeneration. , this jelly, whatever it’s made out of, , maybe something like aloe vera kind of product in there. That’s, that’s very insulating.

nick: Yeah. I mean

joe: I’m, you’re probably just base metabolism.

You’re, you’re 10, 20,000. Um, I think if you’re an

nick: even ex skirting all the goose going,

joe: I think if you’re, you’re, I think that’s just chilling. I think it’s the most like wolverine level that, that this might be 50, 50,000, I mean, the cellular regeneration, the,

david: Yeah. Yep,

joe: You might need increased hemoglobin for oxygen, you know, we talked about.

So you don’t suffocate as you’re flaming on and depleting oxygen.

nick: I

joe: do think that you would, yeah, I think you would burn some significant calories

nick: in this burn

[00:56:00] process, no pun intended.

joe: yes. But yeah. So I’m, I’m on a high end 50 a hundred K per minutes of flaming on like, I think

david: brushing eggs all day.

joe: you’re just gonna be

nick: chewing through calories. Big Max Golo. Oh my.

joe: Just line ’em up.

nick: But

joe: they’re fantastic for, they’re pretty wealthy. Yeah,

nick: yeah.

joe: Yeah. So,

nick: I mean, they can afford

it.

joe: need to go to trial. I mean, that’s why they were doing unsanctioned

nick: space exploration

joe: led to this all, you know,

nick: this whole catastrophe.

because scientists are just normally wealthy.

david: we’re just great. in it. That’s right. Just hanging out We’re taking

with extremo foils.

joe: at the extreme of files. We’re going,

We’re gonna

go some un unsanctioned space Odyssey,

I’m Oh, yeah. Let’s go. Yeah,

let’s do it. I’m in. some, superpowers.

just need my

get little

nick: get little degree. Yeah,

david: [00:57:00] Just your honorarium and a vial of LSD.

geo: I’m in. That’s it.

nick: That’s

david: Let’s go

nick: that how we’re gonna get to space? Bunch of

LSD.

david: field research.

joe: get

somewhere.

nick: My car will turn into a spacecraft.

Here I go again.

joe: Yeah. So

nick: cool.

joe: think we did it. I think we pulled Johnny A.

geo: I don’t know what we did, but

nick: I mean, I, I I think we’ve completely made him

joe: Stillman

geo: Ani and

joe: Yes.

nick: Alright.

david: All right.

nick: Yeah,

david: Well, thanks. Thanks you all. It was a treat to be on here as always. I, I hope to get a green jacket on my third appearance,

so uh,

joe: there you go. Yeah, yeah. You got something

nick: you’re, you’re gonna be on for

david: I’ll get something.

nick: Season three.

geo: gonna get an honorary degree.

joe: We’re gonna get you

david: Oh yeah. Awesome.

nick: a nice suit, some

joe: Yeah, some oozing glance. That’s, uh, that’s it.

david: May we all have oozing glands.

nick: Oh no.[00:58:00]

david: Alright.

joe: on that note, you have, uh, you have me, Joe.

nick: Yeah. Nick.

joe: You got Nick. Got Nick. We’ve got Georgia and David and Oh, we got David still there. He already said bye when he said bye again.

david: Yeah, but I’m still here,

so yeah.

joe: We

nick: didn’t cut you

off. Bye.

You,

joe: We

nick: don’t

do that

today, guys. We let it,

joe: we let it ride out. And did we?

nick: I think we set some holes of flame

joe: We

geo: We

david: All right.

nick: Some hot holes. Holes.

david: will actually leave now.

nick: we’ll see you

david: Thanks Everyone.

nick: Bye-Bye Love.

joe: y’all.

Fantastic 4 series: Episode 38: The Thing: Strong Skin 

Click the link to listen or search Rabbit Hole of Research where you find your other podcasts:
EP38: Ben Grimm and The Thing About Skin
NYT bestselling author Jonathan Maberry joins us to explore the handwavium, biology, and symbolism behind strong skin—from the Thing’s rocky dermis to memory tattoos and the scars that shape identity.

Transcript:

joe: [00:00:00] Hey,
welcome to the Rabbit Hole of Research. We’re down here in the basement studio with another exciting episode in our Fantastic four
series. We’ll be focusing
a little bit on the thing and
all things strong, tough skin. As usual, we have the whole crewhere. You have me, Joe, you got
geo: Nick, we’ve gotNick and Georgia.
joe: We’ve got Georgia.
geo: And
joe: have a specialguest with us.
geo: And for our
joe: we
geo: let the guestsintroduce themselves.
joe: Please.
Jonathan: Hi, I’mJonathan Mayberry. I’m a New York Times bestselling author. Multiple genres. Iwrite horror, science fiction, fantasy, whatever. And also a comic book writerwrote for Marvel for a bunch of years, dark Horse, IDW doing some freelanceprojects. Now they’re a lot of fun. I also edit Weird Tales magazine and keepmy myself pretty immersed in the pop culture world, which is my home space.
My, that’s my comfort zone.
joe: Yeah. Awesome. No,it should be fun. Hopefully we can fit [00:01:00]you, fit right in here with our witty banter at times. I don’t know. So you
nick: I do have tosay that I’ve read a lot of your stuff that I did not realize was yours untilabout a month ago. I was like, I read that. Oh wait, I know his stuff. It wasjust
Jonathan: get a lotof that from folks at events too. And that, that’s cool. It’s always a readingthis stuff that’s what matters most, but. When I was at the the world premiereevent for the Black Panther, Wakanda forever I not only did were peoplesurprised that I had written anything that became part of that movie.
Everybody there was surprised I was white including RyanCoogler. Ryan Coogler had came up to me in the, at the after party. He, you’rewhite. I’m like, I am. Oh my God. He had no idea. He thought I was black. Interms of talking about skin, that’s interesting.
joe: Yeah.
geo: There you go.That’s a great segue.
nick: Yeah. Sousually
joe: I
geo: have
joe: a definition thatget us grounded and I have a
geo: list
joe: so I’ll do thedefinition what is skin. [00:02:00] But I dohave a special list for Jonathan because I know he likes facts and he alwayshas posts on social media.
If you follow him on all the different flavors of social media,he has. Tell me something new or something. I don’t know. So
nick: I have
geo: a list and
joe: I’ll see how manyof those facts, but I’ll
geo: start with thedefinition to get us started. What is skin? Skin is biological armor.
joe: It’s a sensorinterface, a site of cultural
geo: inscription
joe: and a metaphor foridentity.
It’s the most visible and tactile representation of self and infiction, a canvas onto which transformation, trauma and power are projected. SoI think that’s
Jonathan: Wow. Nicelyphrased. I like that.
joe: you.
nick: Yeah. And so wewere,
geo: as I said,talking
joe: the FantasticFour.
geo: And,
joe: We already had thefirst episode on a Fantastic four come out.
And but just a recap. It’s a fictional
superhero team uh, by Marvel,
created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first appeared in Fantasticfour, number 1, 19 61 Marvel
comics. [00:03:00] consideredMarvel’s first superhero team, or the
first family and helped establish a more human,
flawed,
family driven style that defined Marvel storytelling.
Ben was one of the members of that team. He was Reed Richard’scollege roommate and former football star.
Jonathan: Yep.
joe: And Ben had he, hewas
geo: after a
joe: trip
illegal
and or
A unscripted trip into space they
were bombarded by
cosmic rays Ben got disfigured and he was given this kind ofrocky, orange,
scaly skin
that was superhuman strength impenetrable and had all thesekind of nearly imper impervious to damage and things like that.
So yeah, that’s the character.
nick: Yeah. So I dohave to say that it is always so interesting seeing him in the comics becausethey tend to show the strength of his skin. ’cause are, [00:04:00] we’re considering it skin. Yes. I would
geo: consider
joe: skin. Yes. As the,
probably the
outer later the dermis was modified in some way, but,
nick: Yeah. And it’salways so fascinating ’cause I was reading an issue I’ll have to put it in theshow notes where they it was they were pulling him apart and like you just sawall of his skin. It looked like a gum being pulled. And it was just like, whoa.Like the amount of pain that has to be, I’m assuming it’s like a scab thatwould just be like.
Jonathan: Yeah. One,one that’s not ready to fall off, but they’re trying to pull it.
nick: exactly. Andthen I told him, I’m like, oh it’s, yeah. Fantastic. I love that.
Jonathan: And Ialways loved when Kirby would show me him getting a really hard impact. One ofthe ways they would use to emphasize the impact is pieces of rock would beflying off of him.
joe: Yeah.
geo: another
Jonathan: would beblood from a, a busted nose. But for him it was always pieces of rock fallingoff and that kind of defined how hard he was being hit because he’s impervious.
But somebody could [00:05:00]do that, at least to him,
joe: and knock off bitsof skin and or his outer structure, which is interesting. And thinking abouthow that would actually form I think NICU hit on it with and scar tissue wasone that, that immediately came to my mind that as he was bombarded was, wasthat now some scarification and you have this kind of, , in terms of scars, youget fibrous tissue that forms as you get the scar. So is that now
geo: been
joe: modified as DNA?And so you get this kind of overgrowth and then calcification and then almostkind of mineralization there that would form this kind of outer exterior.
then
as you as you were just pointing out, Jonathan, that as it getsdamaged, bits gets knocked off, but presumably is regenerated.
And so that means this is some
geo: active
joe: process thathappens.
Jonathan: And hisskin would have to be, his rock skin would have to have to be at least porousor something. Otherwise he would,
nick: Thanks.
Jonathan: the theskin’s the most important breathing apparatus next to our lungs. And [00:06:00] so he would need that. And funny ’causeI’ve had a conversation about this with Stan Lee years ago at the Houston ComicPalooza, I think it was.
And buttress, we’re talking about different characters and howthe, somehow the conversation come up is how they would get medical treatment.
nick: Oh,
Jonathan: Ben Grimmhad beautiful white teeth. how dentist worked on. Were his teeth set in gums orwere they set in
joe: Rock.
Jonathan: A couple ofus were asking questions of Lee and he is we didn’t think that far.
joe: I mean, Nails,Nonas fingernails.
Yeah. I mean you, you have all of those external
besides breathing and pores, you also have tactile sensation. Askin is our communication to our environment.
So if you lose that you lose a major sense. It’s almost likebeing blind or deaf or any losing any other senses. So that is something that Idon’t know if they cover that in any comic line or,
Jonathan: they touchon it because there are times, even though when he, especially in the earlyFantastic four comics, he and Johnny were always in a a baiting war. They’realways trying to get [00:07:00] you right intoeach other. And sometimes Johnny would try to scorch him and he would, he wouldact, he would run away, he would react to it so he could feel pain, feelpressure but his skin.
It was like being on the other side of a fireproof garment. Youfeel the heat, you just don’t get the actual firm. So that might be where theywere going with it if they even thought that far. But, because presuming thathe, he, something like that could exist.
And the version of it we’re seeing in the most recent trailersfits the old Ben Graham a little more.
How I envision him. He’s more fluid, he is more flexible. It’sless like a rock man trying to move than a man who made a malleable rock. Andit must be malleable.
If he’s going to reach
joe: right?
geo: Yeah.
nick: Be able to grabthings.
joe: Yeah. You have tobe flexible still. And that’s part of it, that when this transformationhappened, when
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: theflexibility can’t just be the subdermal layer because if he was stretching, youwould see gaps as, so it must be the rock itself rocket [00:08:00] that is stretching like an alligator skin and so on,which looks armored, but it still has a degree of flexibility. ’cause otherwisethe thing couldn’t operate couldn’t swim or anything else.
nick: that’s actuallya really good point. Like putting it towards like an alligator skin. I wouldn’thave even thought of that.
Jonathan: Actuallywhere I’ve always gone with the things skin because it has to move and know.You mentioned that I’m a research or knowledge junkie. I am a knowledge junk. Iwas a kid I, that’s what I was trying to figure out how he did that, where theHulk got his extra mass from, because Bruce was maybe 150 pounds and the Hulk.
So there, I knew just enough about science even as a kid. Tohave questions. And some of those I did get to ask, Stan, because I got to knowhim pretty well last few years of his life. And also some of the other folkswho worked on Fantastic Four. I had conversations with John Byrne about it.
J Byrne was more of the, everything’s elastic, just reallytough thing. And I mentioned to him about I called it crocodile skin, but thesame alligator skin, same thing. [00:09:00] Andhe said that, that’s probably exactly what it’s like that just thicker.
joe: Yeah.
nick: A
joe: more adorable or
geo: yeah,
joe: Or calcified insome way.
So you would have that, some combination, maybe armadilloscaling also would, it has some level of flexibility in It’s the way it’sjoined. And
geo: also
Jonathan: he smiles,he laughs, he frowns. All of those require elastic skin of the facial musclesand skin.
joe: And a muscle.Yeah. You, the muscle control of all that’s just not you.
You still have to maintain that. Yeah. Yeah. That
Jonathan: I.
nick: Yeah.
Jonathan: like thataspect of the thing of that, that concept of the thing being more elastic,more, it makes him more human and also makes him more of a scarified victim ofwhat’s going on, rather than a transformed into a monster thing. Because I, hewas always about the monster and he wasn’t a monster.
He was a victim of a reaction, a mutated skin reaction tosomething, it’s a cosmic race. It’s unfair and sad that he became, the [00:10:00] ugly one.
nick: I think you hiton a good thing right there where he does get identified as a monster and seenpeople with different deformities do get, back then people were like, oh,they’re either had a curse put on them or something.
It was just always, this is a monster.
Jonathan: yeah. Andthen we’re leaning in a little bit to the paranoia that was pretty common inthe fifties and sixties, anyone who wasn’t us. That, that other thing, plus,it’s the beginning of the civil rights era. Era, so you have a lot of that,it’s not us thing but that’s also, again, Kirby and Lee leaning into, justbecause it looks different, doesn’t make it not human.
I think there was a little bit of that in there too, which theyexplored with the X-Men and some other things. But I love the fact that BenGrimm is a good guy and I hated the fact that, and so many of the early comics,he’d be walking on the street maybe with a slouch hat and a car up.
Somebody would see him and it would be terrified. First off,why about issue two? They should know he exists.
geo: Right
Jonathan: It, they,Lee and Kurt kept wanting to make the point. And it’s funny [00:11:00] because the point they were making is whatwe in, in, in the novel trade it’s one of the rookie mistakes of assuming thereader doesn’t remember from the last episode to detail play down and keepsneeding to be reinforced.
I can understand it in Fantastic Four ’cause it was the firstMarvel comic, but they kept it going well into I think the forties issue,forties and in that
Still regarded as a monster. And I think even I, I’m Monster Ithink was maybe one of the titles or this man, this monster that was the
So that he’s still trying to get back to being human ’cause hestill is has now bought into the, people see me as a monster, therefore I amone.
geo: Yeah. That
Jonathan: It’s a sad
joe: and that, thatseemed like some of that storyline, if we think about just his identity, thathe was just sweet, caring person, but then he had this external kind of, it wasthis play maybe oversimplification
of these, traits that he had.
And you get that [00:12:00] andI you brought up. Just to segue a little bit to the civil rights movement thingis Luke Cage then in the, who came out, who also then was given tough skinunder different circumstances, this coerced, experimental activity. And thenthe racist the warden or police officer screwed with the
instrumentation.
then he was given, the super strong literally impenetrable kindof skin. So this very tough skin. And so that was a very different. So he wasvery normal on the outside, but society, at, seen him as a monster. So it’sthis this area.
Jonathan: also do youguys, guys know who John Lewis was, right?
nick: Yeah.
geo: Yeah. Yeah.
joe: yes.
Jonathan: So he did acomic called a March for IDW. We did a signing, together at one of, at ComicConone year. And we were talking, and Luke Cage was I think just coming on TV atthe time somewhere around the the Luke Cage era on Netflix.
And we were talking, and he’s in his theory on the, you LukeCage having the armored skin, is that black men, [00:13:00]black people had to be so bulletproof in terms of their reactions to what isbeing
About. That, what they did to Luke, what Luke represented was,no matter what you say, you can’t hurt me.
Was that kind of an approach that was at least John Lewis’stake, and I valid one
joe: Yeah. No, I,
geo: But
Jonathan: but again,I don’t know if the creators had that specifically in mind. It’s like withGeorge Romero in Night of Living Dead. I just wanna jump
A second, because in Ge Night of Living Dead, you had a blackman who was the only strong, intelligent
geo: right.
joe: And
Jonathan: and all thereviewers said, my God, this was this incredible civil rights movie.
It’s about racism. It wasn’t, he was the only good actor whoauditioned.
joe: Yeah,
Jonathan: right,George Romero saw those reactions and from then on leaned into that as theinterpretation of even that first movie. I think I would agree Marvel may becounting its own design aesthetic when, they gave some of these characters,these qualities.
I think they [00:14:00] may,I’m hoping at least on some subliminal level, they were trying to make thatkind of of equitable statement, about just because we are different does notmean we are bad or wrong or evil or monsters or anything. And, Marvel had themore progressive vibe than DC anyway, so I think that may have been, aningredient in the soup at least.
joe: Yeah. No, yeah, Ithink I totally agree with that and see that from that perspective especiallygrowing up in, in America as a a. Person of color, a black man that, that it issomething that you go out in the world and you have to be
as
good or better than your white counterparts at times.
And sometimes you’re the only, and so then you have that weightgoing out into the world, so that, that is also, both. And Luke Cage’scharacter was a large man, almost a John Henry kind of figure. So it wasn’tlike they took a skinny, black man and said, okay you’re now
nick: but superskinny.[00:15:00]
joe: he was
geo: a right,
joe: He was really a,he was
nick: intimidatingfigure. Yeah, that’s
joe: right. For, so
geo: and it wasliterally having tough skin. Literally
joe: skin. And,
geo: And, being ableto deal with
joe: right. And
geo: All, and skin,and
joe: Touch upon it alittle bit. But, enslaved people were used in experiments on skin andparticularly testing of thick skin.
So there was this
geo: theory
joe: that, theseenslaved people didn’t feel pain because they had thicker hides like animals.And so you had
geo: a
joe: number of slaveowners who would do these experiments and torturous experiments and go throughit. So that was it. And those myths persist even today.
That, with pain medication and thing that, that black peopledon’t need, as much, or can tolerate more pain because of these these kind ofracist ideals that, that were put out
nick: and that havecontinued,
joe: has continued.Yeah.
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: there,there was a a poem that may Angelou read at Temple University years ago, [00:16:00] and one of the lines in it, and I’ve triedto find this online, is just because I survived being whipped didn’t mean Iliked it.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: That andthat
geo: kind
Jonathan: speaks alittle bit to this, just because they survived the things that people put themthrough, didn’t mean they were invulnerable.
It meant they, they were committed to survival
It should have been admired rather than looked at as a freak ofnature, thing. But,
joe: No, definitely.Yep. No.
Jonathan: I just
wanna say one more thing about Fantastic Four. I don’t know ifyou know this story, Joe, but that comic first of off, it was my favorite comicand this was the very first comic I ever
joe: Wow. There it is.
nick: Oh damn.
geo: Oh wow.
Jonathan: Bought thatwhen I was a kid.
I was nine years old.
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: The thingabout Fantastic Four is I, my background had a lot to do with skin in thisregard. My father, who was a terrible human being, ran the local chapter of theKKK. So I grew up in a household dominated by racism in a neighborhood inPhiladelphia that was known as White Town, USA.
That was the [00:17:00]nickname of my neighborhood. It’s still rated as the worst neighborhood inPhiladelphia, even, it’s yay team. And it was
joe: which neighborhooddid you grow up in? Kente. Okay. I was gonna try to guess, but I didn’t
Jonathan: never beenthere. If a black family would move in the neighborhood, their house would befirebombed,
joe: Yeah. Wow.
Jonathan: terribleplace.
So when an issue, was it 52 that black Panther showed up? Whenthat character f because I’ve been, even though this was the first, fantasy 466 was the first comic I bought. I’ve been reading comics since I was a littlekid. My brother gave me all his comics before he went off to Vietnam.
So I had, fantasy four, going back to issue two and issue 52 ofFantasy four introduced a black character who was nobody’s sidekick. He was no,he was not comic relief. He was not a start to, he was the king of his ownnation. He was a scientist and he was a superhero. And of course, my fatherwould see that comic, he’d rip it up.
And, I would always rebuy them. And then later on in seventhgrade, I actually went to a, my middle school librarian and brought a co [00:18:00] one of the copies one of the comics in andsaid my father, she knew who my father was. Everybody did, my father hates thiscomic. I don’t really know why.
’cause I was, I hadn’t met any people of color up until seventhgrade. My neighbor was white. And she looked at the issue and said thatparticular, she was about apartheid. I’m like, what? What is that? And sheexplained it and she said do you know about the Jim Crow laws? I’m like, no.
And she said, do you know who Martin Luther King was? I said,yeah, he was this, and unfortunately, I used a racial epithet because that’swhat we were trained to use. I said, he was a bad guy who was killed my father,had to throw a party. And she said, sit down. For two and a half hours.
She gave me a crash course in what intolerance and racism areall about.
nick: the
Jonathan: And theissue that I brought in was interesting because it speaks to the topic hereabout skin. It was the issue where Tal is arrested in the Marvel universeversion of South Africa. I forget what the, what they used to call it in thecomics, but he was arrested, he was in prison.
And Ben and Johnny go to [00:19:00]break him out. Ben is orange, brown, Johnny when he is a is red a brown man anda red man helped a black man out of a prison. That is not an accident. EvenSue. Nowhere in sight.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: And it flewright over the head of a lot of people. But, my my librarian, she said, this islike very clear.
It’s, this is about, the races who have to stick togetherbecause they have a greater enemy. But they’re still people and they should bere regarded based on their actions and, content of their soul or quality ofsoul. But it was so interesting that they had, I think it was Ro Roy Thomasmaybe wrote that episode over that issue, but it was so clear, brown, red andblack.
joe: Wow.
geo: Yeah.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: threedifferent skin tones that were really politically charged at the time, withthat 1971 or so. And it, because it could, they could float it by people in acomic, because you could talk about different skin colors, different skin typesin comics because they’re superheroes or super villain.
geo: Right?
Jonathan: But therewas a group, [00:20:00] there was a percentageof the fan base that was getting it.
joe: Yeah. That’s good.I know
Jonathan: I got ahint of it there. And from then on my views and my father’s views split justsay on an epic level.
geo: wow.
joe: Yes. No,
nick: So I have toask how.
joe: how.
nick: Did he knowthat you wrote for Black Panther and all this? He
Jonathan: He was, hedied before that. But had started studying martial arts on the sly when I wassick because, it was a very bad household to grow up. And my four sisters and Iwere pretty badly, abused. And when I was 14, he and I had it out. We had afight. And from that point on he just say there were no more meetings of theKKK in our house.
And he did not make any statements or put his hands on anyone.But
He did not live long enough to see my Marvel comic stays. SoI’m hoping that he’s in his graves spinning it about war. None. Not only did Iwrite Black Panther, I wrote Black Panther, but the female lead, so I wrote afeminist Black
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: probablyhis bones have probably exploded.[00:21:00]
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: I’m okaywith that.
joe: Yeah.
nick: That is sointeresting to hear like that Is your upbringing like being able to come fromthat kind of background to writing some fantastic stories about minority leadsthat, that’s so in
Jonathan: of thatstory. I got the job at Marvel for this particular thing ’cause Reggie Hu,who’d been writing Black Panther. I was already done. I had done a MarvelZombies, I did a Punisher on Wolverine thing, for Marvel by that point. Andthey were Reggie was thinking of stepping down.
He had been the writer for Black Panther. And they were lookingfor someone to replace him. And the assumption was they would, he would pick ablack writer which makes perfect sense. But he heard me talk on the radio,talking about my childhood and how the Black Panther was the pivotal momentwhere my life began splitting away from my father’s racism.
So he went to bat for me at Marvel and got me the gig. And alsobecause I had spent 35 years of my adult life teaching women’s self-defense, hedecided to [00:22:00] give me an extra littlebonus. He said, look, the last six issues of my run, we’re gonna turn Sureyinto the panther. Why don’t you come and post, write that storyline.
I’ll do the maid storyline, but major storyline. But you do theSurey storyline, so you’ll be the first person to put her in the armor and thenyou’ll pick up the comic after that. That’s what we did.
geo: Wow, that’samazing.
Jonathan: I’m still,I, Reggie was also at the Black Panther, Wakanda forever and we were joking.
He said, that radio, if you hadn’t done that radio interview, alot of this wouldn’t be happening right now. But, it was so surreal.
joe: Yeah,
geo: Wow. So
joe: I do want to touchon one of your characters who has skin
as part of their storyline, and that’s Monk and that,
geo: yeah.
nick: You had to
geo: know that wascoming.
Jonathan: actually, Ididn’t I didn’t, but I’m glad you brought up. Monk is one of my favorite
geo: It’s, I love himso much. Glip is like, one of my all time favorite novels. Yeah.
joe: Georgia had, she
geo: and that’sprobably why I
joe: on our chalk boardin our kitchen, and she
geo: Did you, Ialready read
joe: book. And I wasI’ve [00:23:00] been reading your stuff for awhile. And Georgia picked up that book ’cause it was just laying in, in thehouse. And then she was like, oh, this is did you read this line?
I was like, I read the whole book. Yes, I
geo: know.
Jonathan: Monkappears in two other novels and in a short story collection. He’s in Inc.
joe: Yep. Yeah, sure.
Jonathan: BurnedShine, the latest Joe Ledger
joe: Yep.
nick: If you can seethey geeked out and had all your
Jonathan: yeah, thereyou go. And of course, monk Addison’s
geo: That’s right.Yeah.
Jonathan: But hestarted off as a comic book character.
Actually.
geo: Oh, wow.
Jonathan: at onepoint IDW was going to do a shared horror universe, kinda like the DC and theMarvels with the a shared, so it was gonna be Steve Niles Joe Hill, myself, oneor two other guys. We were gonna create monsters that lived in the same world,but were also like heroic monsters.
And we were all ready to go. And then there was a managementchange at Marvel at the IDW rather than never happened. So I took the characterback and I decided to make a short story out of him. And it intended to be aone-off. But as soon as I start writing, I just love the concept of someone whois [00:24:00] haunted by what he does and bythe, the faces of dead people on his
And their ghosts never leave him,
joe: and
Jonathan: are we’regetting a little bit of interest in for film. VIN Diesels reading Ink rightnow.
nick: Oh,
joe: That would be,that, that would be incredible. I can
nick: totally see.That’s really cool.
geo: Oh
joe: and to folks whoare listening you should go read one of the, we’ll put in the show notes, oneof the many stories that Monk is in, but he’s a, an a private
Jonathan: I couldBrenda, he’s a former special ops soldier who then became a private militarycontractor, burned out, went on the pilgrims road to find who he was. And hefound out like he got a tattoo at one point. And he realized that when thetattoo was completed, it was a face of someone.
He was able to then relive their death. And there, there was alittle girl that was murdered and he is able not only relive her death, but seewhat she saw when she was dying, which gave him clues to be able to go out andfind the killers. And that became his road to, it’s hard to call it salvation’cause he isn’t going out killing people.
But at the [00:25:00] samepoint, he’s, it’s a, he’s doing something that is a redemption story, not areligious story, but a redemption
And he has all faces all over him of all these murder victims.And when the tattoo is completed, he, relieves the death, goes finds the killerand if he can stop this person, not as revenge, but to prevent the person fromdoing more killing, and he takes the guy off the board, but the ghost that kindof hired him to do this is always with him.
So he’s surrounded by all the ghosts of the people that he’s,that were murdered and he killed their killers, but they’re always with himlike 24 7. And it, it’s a tough life, but he’s one of my favorite characters.There’s a lot of the thing in him in that with the thing. You always know wherehis moral compass is pointing. He’s not a conflicted character. He is notreally a gray area of character. Reed gets real gray at times. The thing, if hehas your back’s covered. Monk is the same way. Monk’s a dangerous guy. He’s notnecessarily [00:26:00] friendly, he’s not, I’mnot even sure he is likable, for the people who know him. But if he has yourback,
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: You’reokay. You’re gonna be okay. He will not ever hurt the innocent. And that’sthere’s, so there’s a little bit of Ben Grimm in him for sure.
joe: yeah,
geo: Wow.
joe: it’s That ideathat the tattoos are speaking through him, to him, I was looking up some stufffor this episode and preparing is the Skin Ego it’s this kind of theory Dieter,I. And Zoey and suggests that the skin serves as a metaphorical container for theego and provides a sense of boundary and containment for psychic content. TheSkin Ego is like the physical skin, and it’s the boundary that separatesindividual from the external world and also holds to psychic apparatus togetherbody boundaries reflecting kind of psychological boundaries. So it, it was indigging around I was, trying to make the science of monk work a little.
nick: bit.
geo: So I,
Jonathan: Yeah,actually I need to find that thing you were talking about, I [00:27:00] needed to read that. It sounds like it’sreally the right thing for me because if we’re gonna be pitching Monk for filmor tv, I want to be able to build a pitch that really digs deep into thispsychology of it. Most people don’t know this, but Vin Diesel’s an actuallyreally well read individual.
nick: Oh yeah,
joe: Yeah,
Jonathan: He doesn’talways play those types of characters. Unlike Johnny Bernthal plays ThePunisher, the two of them look like together. Based on some of the charactersthey played looks like together, they, collectively of the IQ of about 60. Butin reality, both really good, down to earth nice guys.
Some of the press isn’t always this. I think the press defines’em by their characters more than by them.
But
joe: VIN Diesel, beforethe Fast
geo: Series,
joe: was in BoilerRoom, which I thought was just an incredible movie where it wasn’t Muscle andBraun. It was a very, it was a, a. Thinking movie, I guess if we’re gonnaclassify
nick: Guns
geo: versus,
joe: Yeah.
But I, that was some of his early stuff before he got into theaction. And he found this stride [00:28:00]and, I think that happens. Like he’s a beefy dude and he plays those rolesreally well, but Yeah.
Jonathan: hilariousthough that he’s a DD dungeon master, though.
geo: Yep.
joe: Oh yeah.
nick: Yeah. And he’sa giant nerd.
geo: Oh, wow. Yeah,
Jonathan: actuallyhas a cloak with the hood when he plays
geo: wow.
joe: Wow.
nick: I’ve read that
Jonathan: Becausehe’s one and Henry CA’s one too, and you got these two guys who are, they’redefined a lot by their ability to punch things
Yet, they’re both book nerds, fantasy nerds, pop culture nerdsmakes me like them a lot more,
geo: I think that’sperfect for playing Monk. Because he is such a tough guy, but is introspectiveand do you know what I mean? So that just Yeah.
Jonathan: Sure. Andmonk is trying to find, there, there’s a, I have a long game with the characterof Monk. He’s trying to find his way to the fire zone, which is referenced in acouple different works. And it’s a book I will be actually writing called TheFire Zone that, that kind of TERs together.
But he, he wants peace,
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: he’s doneso much harm in his life. As a, first not asking questions, who he [00:29:00] has to shoot when he was wearing a uniformand asking even fewer questions when he was a private military contractor, hehas, to quote black Widow a lot of red in his ledger and he
And, that isn’t usually done by doing pretty stuff. But alsohe’s good at it and he knows he’s good at it. And there’s a burden there too.When somebody is good at something, even if it’s something that hurts them, butit benefits other people. It’s hard to lay down your sword and shield on thatone.
nick: Yeah,
joe: No, that’s good.Now,
geo: monk also, it’snot just about getting the tattoos and having the ghosts, it’s also what’s inthe, it’s the actual blood, right?
Of,
Jonathan: Yeah. Bloodis mixed with holy water and tattoo ink to create these these tattoos. And hisbest friend Patty Cakes is the tattoo artist. It was her daughter that wasmurdered and that was his first, first of these tattoos. It’s,
joe: I think I thinkonly one of it I, as I’ve heard you talk about this and you do not have atattoo, Jonathan, is that right? Or do you, okay.
geo: Yeah.
joe: You’re like me.
geo: I don’t have,but
Jonathan: We’re lessthan a month [00:30:00] away from me being agrandfather
nick:congratulations.
geo: Oh, wow.
Jonathan: thanks. My,my son and his fiance are, are expecting and the baby’s gonna be named Orion,
geo: Oh, nice.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: so afterthe baby’s born and healthy and mama’s healthy and everything else. Sam, my sonand I are gonna go out and get Orion constellation tattoos.
joe: Awesome.
nick: cool. Verycool. Honestly, it just feels like a cat scratch.
joe: So I
nick: was gonna say,Nick has, I have multiple, yeah. It, oh, you got that thick skin right here.
joe: Oh boy.
nick: There,
joe: now
Jonathan: it’s beenpunctured enough times. I used to be a bodyguard, so I had been stabbed withice pick screwdrivers, knives chopped in the shoulder with a meat cleaver andet.
nick: o yeah.
joe: Yeah. So
nick: So
joe: I,
Jonathan: I have, myskin is not impervious Wish. It was really
joe: If
geo: it was, you wentto get medical
joe: That’s always init. You
nick: brought that upearlier
joe: how do you get,how do you get treated if you need
geo: someone
nick: needs to goinside of
geo: you to
joe: fix something.That’s
Jonathan: I thinkthat’s a missed opportunity for Marvel to do a TV series about, ’cause theyhave [00:31:00] damage control and they had thenight nurse. But I think a clinic for superheroes would be
joe: Yeah.
geo: In Luke Cage,they tried to, they were trying to Netflix. They got
joe: shot with thebullet
nick: that
joe: the kind ofexploding drill tip.
geo: And then she wastrying to get,
joe: she took ’em backto the
geo: original Right.
joe: and cooked them inthe,
geo: there was a,
joe: whole clam.
And it’s interesting ’cause mollus
geo: actually, thereare
joe: that have ironkind of formation in their foot. So in the, so they can scrape algae off ofrocks and fer those out there, mullis are like octopuses cuttlefish clams.Those are classified as mollus.
And they have
geo: shell
joe: they have a footthat can come out and they. They can do work. And so that’s one. And then theyhave, there’s another mole that has like teeth, like kind of iron teeth tocrack shells and things like that. So it is a,
Are some real world. And so that was the idea there that,that’s, and the show, they played on that, that’s what was in this soup.
And they were gonna heat ’em up and then that would [00:32:00] loosen the structure, the molecularstructure, which a
nick: little, a lotof hand waving
joe: as a, so
nick: I was like, oh,
joe: does this work?
geo: But yeah,
joe: it was they didcover
geo: that. At leastthey, at least they tried to cover it. Yeah. Tried attempt to
joe: explain it.
But,
Jonathan: Yeah. Andthey used the night nurse character, I’m forgetting her, Claire, they usedClaire as,
joe: Yep. Yep.
Jonathan: as thego-to person for Daredevil and so
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: I wouldlove to have seen that become a secret department within the hospital sheworked
I might pitch it to Marvel
joe: yeah.
geo: I like that.
Jonathan: doctorfriends. We could some people who would advise me, so
nick: that would be areally cool, like just medical series. Yes. Yeah,
joe: if you’re lookingfor a writer, then, happy to write something for you.
geo: Nonetheless
nick: the other thingI was
joe: say about thetattoos and you, another thing I was looking up was all of the kind of dermalsensors.
I, I didn’t really know a lot about that till I was looking itup, but the MIT had a project where they were using bio sensitive inks in therethat was a reactive to glucose, pH, sodium kind of to monitor [00:33:00] health . And so this tattoo ink was biowas actually bio censored.
And so you have this kind of.
Jonathan: They’reworking on diabetics to be able to like literally flash a little warning when,things like that. Cancer sensors and other things. And also the, one of thethings they’re, they’ve been talking about, I don’t know if they’ve gottenthere quite yet, is an implant that will sense the onset of seizures of onekind or another, and then transmit immediately to 9 1
Or to the, the contact person for, care. It’s a great idea. Andthat’s the kind of body mods I’m okay with. I’m not a big fan of body mod forthe most part, but that one, those sort of things, when science is used for theright thing,
Right? I’m
joe: Yep.
Jonathan: doing upone of my upcoming Joe Ledger novels is going to deal with cybernetics and allof its different good and bad phases.
And I started doing some research and man, it’s amazing what’sunder RD right now. And it’s freaky that we’re so much further along than Ithought we were. A lot of the stuff is there, it’s just a matter of getting theright funding, right grants and [00:34:00]getting it past people who don’t want that kind of thing attached to them.
They’ll find with going out and getting a barcode or a QR codetattooed on them, not something, that’s not stylish, but their health.
joe: Yeah. I think theso at the University of Chicago where I do research at and work I’m part of thethe cube, which is a quantum NSF funded facility where they’re
geo: where they’re
joe: trying to developquantum sensors for biological applications like that. And so that is, it’sreally, so I was just in a meeting because I’m a biologist, so I go and try tointerface with the physicist and chemists talk about applications.
So that’s where. I come in,
geo: I know
joe: enough to talkabout qubits and, how entanglement works, but I’m not, that is not myexpertise. But and going over how these sensors can work to report informationout is super important. So yeah it’s a fascinating as I got into that and hearabout some of the things and, ’cause it’s like, how do we get this
geo: thing that
joe: in cells on aPetri dish now into a body or what’s the [00:35:00]mechanism?
And, it’s
geo: the, you’reright
joe: it is
geo: some of the
joe: stuff that’s insci-fi and, it’s now making its way and it’s that’s more real than you think,
Jonathan: sciencefiction has always been one of the reasons they called it speculative fictionor, it’s a lot of people looking forward. The cell phones, we’re clearlyinspired by the communicators on Star Trek, but we do more, much more now. Thecell’s far more, it’s like the communicator, the tri-quarter, about 15 otherthings.
In our phone now, but that’s where the idea came from for itsstructure. And a lot of other things, what I grew up reading, the reprints, theban of reprints of the old doc Savage novels, man of bronze, if you’ve everread any of those. They published 175 of them published in the thirties andforties.
And he always had advanced technology that he developed and alot of it’s stuff we have now.
geo: Wow. Yeah.Contact
Jonathan: lensesanswering machines, planes that, this is 1934 planes that flew 500 mile anhour.
Have that. All so many of the things that, that Lester Dent,who wrote most of the novels, put in the stories for [00:36:00]things that people were just saying, wouldn’t it be cool if
writers threw that stuff into fiction and some of the peoplereading that fiction grew up three scientists.
joe: Yes. That’s theway it works sometimes.
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: one of mybest friends, one of my best friends, Ronald Coleman, who’s now actually acharacter, ongoing character in my Joe Ledger stories.
But he’s a molecular biologist, stem cell scientist. And I’mconstantly talking to him about wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?
And sometimes he’s yeah we did that in
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: Or we’reall come up with, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this? Would this even bepossible? He is not yet, but maybe by the time the book is out, because I knowworking on grants for that, I love science and I love the fact that keepsmoving forward.
What I don’t like is that there are groups that, that aretaking this science, and of course the biggest funding is for DARPA and thingslike that. The military research,
nick: Yeah.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: I’ve talkedto those guys a bunch of times and yeah, some scary nerds.
joe: right?
nick: The best kind,scary nerds. So I do have a question, Joe. How likely is it to have [00:37:00] skin? Like the thing, because I know thereis that syndrome where
joe: yeah,
nick: guy had thetree skin,
joe: Your skin can cal,calcification of skin and I’m trying to think of the disorders.
Like FFAP, FOP or something
nick: I think it’ssomething around there. Yeah. And so
geo: your,
joe: yeah, you justhave this kind of all your fibrous tissues begin to calcify and over calcifyinto bony structures. The problem with that, you’d have to make this next leapbecause as we talked about earlier, how do you make that flexible, right?
Because those folks usually are fairly, they come very stiff intheir structure and they, and rigid. So you need to, now how do you make that.So almost, it can’t be an internal structure. It has to be external in terms ofthe way you would form it. So that would have to be either a new fourth skinlayers
nick: created
geo: that
joe: then give you thisextra properties and or your dermis would now excrete something some material, [00:38:00] either, one of these iron
geo: sulfide kind of
joe: compounds or couldbe even calcified.
We talked about diatoms in I think the plant episode. And sowhere they produce silicate or coral, they produce a calcium kind of deposit.So there are organisms that do excrete these materials. And you could havethese snails That’s right, snail shells, right? So there are these bio your
nick: teeth
joe: a biomaterial,right?
And so there’s a lot of folks Working on that. I know some ofthose folks, and it’s fascinating because the interface between biology and,this kind of this biomaterial is unique and, difficult to reproduce. That’s whyyou go in for dental work or implants stay, they don’t stay all the time orthey, it’s a interesting field there.
But yeah I
Jonathan: One of theconceits within comics though on that topic though, is that when, they neverconsidered that a lot of these mu mutations would be detrimental to
joe: Yes. Yep. Yes.
Jonathan: withinskin, the [00:39:00] way it is, he would be a,a patient in a hospital somewhere. He would be walking around punching the.
nick: Yes. When wetalked about
joe: the cosmic rays inthemselves would be pretty damaging, so you would have to be a mutant alreadyto tolerate the cosmic race from not just being a cancer patient. You’re right.He would be in those the, instead of tough skin, it would just have tumors allover him and, a ruined thyroid because he’s been,
geo: On your chest,
joe: You’re now beendevastated by cosmic race unshielded and exposed to cosmic race.
Which, you know, so Yeah. It you’re right. About that.
nick: Yeah, so
joe: And so
geo: it
Jonathan: It doescreate a, an opening though for stories to be told that would explain it. Andjust like there have been a lot of folks that come along and tried to explainthe physics of Star Trek or Star
geo: right.
Jonathan: On thephysics of Superman. There are plenty of books out there where, scientists likeyourself are trying to say, okay, if that is
joe: right. That’sright
Jonathan: then how.
I played with this, actually not on, on the skin subject, but Idid a book called Zombie, CSU, where I [00:40:00]interviewed a couple hundred people in the real world about what would happenif zombies were real. If zombies were here, inarguably here, I would beresearch, react, respond, whatever. And, talked to scientists, talk to, all thedifferent types of scientists military and everyone else, everyone has atheory, but it would be, it would need to be a new there wouldn’t have to bethere.
Somebody have to be, throw a hell of a lot of money intoresearch to finding out how these people are not dying as a result of thesechanges. And I think that opens up a lot of storytelling possibility for comicstoo. But I would love to do an anthology, a prose anthology where scientistswrite superhero stories that explain the superheroes.
joe: Yeah.
geo: No.
nick: there you
geo: there you go.No,
Jonathan: I do know abunch of scientists, writers.
joe: Yeah.
geo: Yeah,
joe: Yeah. right. Yes.
Jonathan: Some inthis room.
geo: that’s
nick: That’s what
joe: that’s what we tryto do on the podcast. Nick could throw me that question. I
geo: know. Yeah, it’s
joe: I
geo: do think,
joe: and you talk aboutsome of those things, like you have other heroes Colossus who has, he puts themetal armor on and you talk about your skin [00:41:00]breathing, he’d have to take that off pretty quick and, or is there some othermechanism that he’s using to actually dissipate heat and things like that.
So you do have these kind of these characters who have thisthese abilities. And then to form a metallic skin and then take it away alsorequire some level of. Rapid metabolism. And on this, on the podcast, we alwaystry to explain things in terms of how many Big Macs would you have to eat tocompensate for the caloric load of doing some of these modifications quickly.
Jonathan: Yeah.
joe: that’s right.Yeah.
geo: Which no talks
joe: the calories, sothat’s why
Jonathan: Yeah withColossus, it would make a little more sense if instead of it just being steel,it was plates that,
joe: Yes.
Jonathan: Under whichair could get through
joe: Yes.
Jonathan: Evaporationhappen and so on. But again, the comic book writers are not scientists. We’rein the 21st century. We’re 25 years into century.
It’s time to level up and let the nerds come out to play andmake the comics make sense, which I think would bring [00:42:00]in whole group of readers because a lot of people dismiss comics foolishly assaying that they’re not literature, they’re not good, but they are, they’rereally
geo: Absolutely.
Jonathan: if, youcould use comics as a way to teach stem, STEM
joe: I agree.
geo: Definitely
Jonathan: much,there’s a lot of good science there.
But there’s also what if science and what if science is whatdrives science forward?
joe: We talk aboutzombies. That was so that how I got into, I always wanted to do science,education and outreach. And I realized a lot of adults don’t know anythingabout science. And I had a friend who was doing these art and science talks,and he approached me with this idea and he said, oh, I’m doing these talks, butno one shows up to hear about the science lectures.
And I was like, oh. So this was some years ago. And it’s how Idiscovered your view because I was I said I’m a big zombie fan and that’s kindsof zombies and how it works. So I started reading everyone at, had the zombiestuff and kind of where they’re at. Where’s the literature at? All the [00:43:00] movies.
And so I pitched to my friend, I said, Hey, we should do theart and science to science of zombies. And he looks at me and who, and he ofthe sciences also, he goes, but no one does research on zombies.
geo: I go, I know,but if you want people to show up, then
joe: talk aboutsomething that’s super fun and then we’ll sneak science in on em.
And I’m a cell biologist, so we’ll do all cell biology and kindof talk. And it was, we filled this art gallery up with people. It was standingroom only. And he was like, wow, this really worked. And so now as he does it Ithink he’s stopped or taking a pause, but every time he does it, he has somelittle hook like that now.
And I’m like, yeah, let’s keeping going. And so that was then,how we arrived to this podcast was at that idea, but that was the start of it.Zombies was the the fun and figuring out how you would get the infection eventand then what would happen after that. In fast zombies.
nick: you love fastzombies.
Jonathan: yeah. In mydead at night series, I worked with scientists to come up with a parasitedriven one. Toxic plasma, green jewel wasp, whole bunch of other
And
joe: sometimes[00:44:00]
geo: you,
Jonathan: You can geta certain distance toward doability, toward, actual rea realizing it for some,if you talk to the right scientist and get them to really, put their mind toit, you get a lot further and closer to it than is comfortable sometimes.
But you’re talking
geo: right
Jonathan: the artgallery thing here in San Diego. We have the Fleet Center, which is a sciencecenter attached to the the astronomy center. And I was on a panel there. Theyhad also been trying to do panels and nobody was showing up to them. So becauseComic-Con is in San Diego, they decided to start bringing in comics people totalk to scientists.
The very first panel where I met the scientist I mentionedearlier, Dr. Ronald Coleman. It was Kevin Eastman, the artist who co-createdthe Ninja Turtles and myself. We were comic creators. And then the two, therewas a var Virologist who’s sadly named, I’m blanking on Nancy something, Ican’t remember her last name.
And Ronald Coleman, who’s, said a stem cell scientist. And wewere asking them questions and they were, they they were asking us questions.The [00:45:00] audience was asking questions.Kevin, the artist from Ninja Turtles, he wa he was like, goo or whatever. So wejust, we need, we needed a thing.
We just call it that. That’s total there. Or my V wars thing, Iwanted it to be a genetic disorder that was latent. And, as melting polar rice,softened permafrost, all diseases were. And I, that’s an idea I had before thatactually started happening, by
geo: Oh boy.
Jonathan: Before wegot to the popular press I subscribed to some science newsletters and I read anarticle back in 2010 about melting rice, releasing old bacteria and possiblyviruses.
And I’m like. That’s scary as hell. Let me write a book,
geo: right?
Jonathan: not the TVwars,
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: But
joe: yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan: thezombies, the fun thing about zombies is, each individual thing it does, can beexplained by nature. Like the fact that it has a lower metabolism be, so itdoesn’t rot as much. There are animals, the ground squirrel the, I forget thename of the frog, that, that freezes solid every year and then falls, withoutthe tissue damage because of the way [00:46:00]the sugars,
That exists.
The if the motor cortex was working. Or even on a minimallevel, the zombie could walk, bite, chew, swallow. Without the motor of cortex,it couldn’t, unless there’s respiration, a zombie couldn’t moan. And we knowzombies moan. You can make an argument that zombies are not dead, they’re notalive, they’re living dead.
A third state of existence based on a great a rate ofmetabolism so greatly reduced that they appear dead to the point where theirouter tissues become necrotic, but they’re still not actually dead.
joe: It’s
geo: yeah, I hadthought
joe: In my own head andwe’re getting off, I gonna get back to skin ’cause we’re gonna have to closethe episode a little bit.
But yeah I had a dual infection event. One of the mind, butalso, people forget about the second brain and that’s our gut, which is justfilled with bacteria.
So as our control systems, entropy starts to take over, thenthat would be your driving force. And those bacteria then would have somepreservation of [00:47:00] self. Especially ifthe brain was now infected by something else, it might not have as tight ofcontrol over the system, so you can then have this dual function.
That also explains why in movies you have this, not everyone’sinfected by a splatter of blood or something like that, because you need bothparts to become infected. And so you could
geo: be primed.
joe: And then onceyou’re primed and maybe you have a death event,
geo: and now
joe: the brain parasitecan take over, and then the gut ones can now go, oh, you know what?
There’s no more control. Everything’s leaky, leaky gutsyndrome. We
geo: can get inthere, we can now invade.
joe: And we now we canhave this kind of two brain system in control. And hence why, your movementsare shambling and things like that. Not necessarily because your coronation isbad, but because you your, you have two.
Competing entities in inside one, one body. But
geo: That’s
nick: Anotherepisode, another rabbit
geo: hole.
joe: But
Jonathan: That one
nick: you’re in,
joe: you’re in,
nick: so I do wanna,
geo: I’m gonna touchon my
joe: [00:48:00] fun fact list. I promise a list and I’dlike to deliver,
geo: but
nick: There’s awebsite
joe: maybe you’refamiliar with it. I just learned about it. It’s called bio numbers.
geo: and it’s this
joe: fun website, atleast I think it’s
geo: fun where
nick: you
joe: search fordifferent topics and it will give you these kind of biology relevant numbers.
And so how many proteins are inside of a cell or
nick: how,
geo: so
joe: I put in, aboutskin and then it has the paper reference, which then I clicked on links becausethat’s what I do. And
nick: So it was just
geo: fun. Things
joe: and it saved mesome time on this weight
geo: of skin.
joe: On average isabout nine pounds or 4.1 kilograms for the folks who wanna go to metric.
The
nick: number of
joe: skin cells, about1 billion on average number of bacteria in skin, about 1 trillion. So that’s alot of bacteria, which we didn’t even talk about. The skin kind of, how wouldbend skin the bacterial that keeps that, that
geo: are very
joe: and beneficial?How are they living?
How are they getting along?
nick: Do you think hehas to [00:49:00] moisturize?
geo: when he gets
joe: fungal infection,like ringworm underneath those
geo: rocks. Yeah.What kind of lotion does he use?
nick: foot, athlete’sfoot there?
Jonathan: a story.Somebody needs to write that story.
nick: Yeah. I wouldjust assume the human torch is just Hey, I’ll get that. Hold on.
geo: 90% of the humanbody
joe: covered in hair. Ididn’t realize that, but that was
geo: how much? 90%.90%.
nick: Is that it?Density of
joe: procars, soprocars are bacteria. So these are organisms without a nucleus versuseukaryotes, which we are ourselves are eukaryotic.
The density of procars in the skin of humans. And this is cellsper centimeter squared. It’s about a thousand to 10,000 and you’re growing andunder your arm, it’s about a million. Per centimeter, per centimeter squared,or that’s about 0.78 inches squared for those who think in inches.
So that was and
geo: and this allcame from that one website,
joe: website. The
geo: term of
joe: in your entireepidermis is about 26 to [00:50:00] 27 days. Soyou got, so yeah, so you,
nick: it’s
geo: oh, all that,
nick: that dried dead
joe: skin you’regenerating, that’s you’re danner.
So that’s another for Ben. How’s he dealing with
nick: I thought itwould just be rock dust. No, that’s
geo: to us. That’s
Jonathan: that when,I wish that when skin generated, it would take scars away. ’cause I got
geo: yeah. So
joe: that was those aresome fun. And then I, the concentration on microbes in human gut, I just hadgot, I, that one was there and that’s in the tens of billions of cells and,number of human cells.
’cause it, this was something I always think about are we morebacteria than than human? But the number of total number of human cells in yourbody is about 10 to 30 trillion. So you’re, so you got about hundreds ofbillions of. Bacteria on you, in you, but you still are a little more human.
Just,
nick: Slightly morehuman than bacteria.
geo: Yeah.
nick: I don’t,
Jonathan: quitehuman. But
joe: yeah, that’sright.
geo: So there you go.There’s
Jonathan: I thinkthey’re more bacteria,
joe: so those are somefun, just some fun skin facts and others,
geo: But yeah, bio
joe: I can,
Jonathan: Oh, I’mdefinitely gonna be hitting that. I wrote [00:51:00]it down.
joe: yeah. Yeah.
geo: It’s a fun,
joe: and when I learnedof it, I was in a lecture and someone had these cool numbers and I went, I waslike, how do you get these, did you just guess at this stuff?
And they were like, no, there’s this website, bio numbers. Andthe first thing I did when I got back to my office pile numbers,
Jonathan: I love thatthere is nerd porn for scientists too.
nick: it exists.
joe: Like we, we keepit secret. It’s our
nick: own little
Jonathan: Like nerdporn for writers is the TV troops website. If you ever been to TV troops,
geo: oh,
Jonathan: that, allof the tropes of everything and a
joe: in there.
nick: Interesting.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: days on it.I,
joe: Wow.
Jonathan: So much ofmy stuff’s on there and I, somebody said, oh, you’re on, I saw you on TV trope.
I’m like. TV tropes when there’s a whole bunch of my stuff andthey’re breaking witch tropes and which variations of tropes are used and soon. But I love the, that’s fun. I gotta grab that because, sometimes when ascientist in a story wants to, as Bob, that sort of thing when they’re infodumpy moment, you do want your details.
My science guy I normally go to, he [00:52:00]actually does work a day job. But so I have to catch him when he’s available.
geo: Yeah,
joe: you go. You canhave some numbers to throw out there
geo: and the paperreferences so
joe: you can look it upand see where to get the numbers. ’cause it is it was interesting. So there wasa lot of cool things in there, but yeah.
There you go. Yeah. So I
Jonathan: I knowwe’ve just about run outta time, but is there one, was there another topic onskin that we need to go back to that we didn’t cover?
geo: I
joe: do you guys,unless
geo: you havesomething
joe: you want to do,
nick: please. I havea whole list of
Jonathan: the
geo: We have another,yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah. Youmentioned the human torch
joe: Yep.
nick: yep.
Jonathan: how thehell does he not dehydrate? Like
joe: That’s right.
geo: So we’ll have,
joe: we’re gonna do anepisode on all the Fantastic Fours.
Jonathan: Okay.
joe: have,
geo: we actually
joe: are gonna have aDr. David Pincus from University of Chicago on for that episode. And so hejoined us for actually the permafrost episode,
geo: Was
nick: which was
joe: of the funniest
geo: episodes.
joe: yeah he kind ofstudies, the impact of environmental changes on organisms short term and longterm.
And one of the things [00:53:00]is heat stress and heat shock. So I think it, I
geo: so that’ll be agreat question for him.
joe: it would be. Yeah.We’ll pose that to
geo: him.
Jonathan: Ice Man.Ice Man
nick: Iceman. Yeah,that’s
joe: right now,
geo: Man. Oh yeah.
joe: Yes. So how doeshe live in that ice state? That’s a whole nother, that’s another episode Ithink.
nick: And movingthose arms with ice on him.
joe: without cracking.Yes.
geo: How’s he stayflexible?
Jonathan: I have, Ijust have this idea that somewhere there’s a DARPA lab where a couple of guysare trying to figure out how to make the sup, make the Fantastic Four
nick: Right.
joe: Yes.
nick: I’m in
geo: Cosmic Rays
joe: is not the answer.I’m gonna go right there.
geo: That’s,
nick: We can’t rollthat out yet, Joe. I will.
Jonathan: actually,one of the funny things is guys have seen Night of Living Dead, right? The
joe: yes.
nick: Yes, of course.
Jonathan: So one, oneof the conceits there is that the major theory in the first film is thatradiation from returning space probe. George Romero was a huge fan of theFantastic Four, and that was his nod to the
joe: interesting. Wow.
Jonathan: though onespace probe returning does not explain global, I [00:54:00]busted George a lot on this because,
geo: Neither livingDead. Was
joe: it truly global orwas it local? Just in Western Pennsylvania, because that was that clear
Jonathan: wanted itto be global because people were talking about it in Washington and other
joe: Okay. Yeah. Imight’ve been on the radio. Yep.
Jonathan: clearlywas, but the first one, he was the first one he actually expected it to be,defeated.
It was never intent to be a series, but he immediately, decidedto go further with it. His next film actually explored another aspect of it,the Crazies,
nick: Oh yeah. Of
joe: the
geo: I love thecrazies.
Jonathan: rage
joe: Yeah. That’sright.
Jonathan: That wewouldn’t have 28 weeks, 28 days
joe: That’s right. No,that’s exactly right.
Jonathan: genres,
joe: Yes. The crazieswas it. Yeah. Yeah. But
Jonathan: but Iactually wrote dead of Night because I wanted to as a, like a thank you note toGeorge Romero, how he and I became friends.
Actually, he read the book and loved it. We became friends. Wedid an anthology together. But I couldn’t stand that. The science made no sensein the book, in the movie. It me, 10 years old, it bugged me.
geo: right? Yeah.
Jonathan: The thing,the thing, his skin the [00:55:00] Hulk, hismass Reed Richards, every bodily function when he’s stretching.
joe: right. We have,we’re gonna have a MD on to Maria do at Northwestern University is gonna be onthat episode. So yeah, we’re gonna have, we’re gonna get into a little bit morescience. So the first. Was it Sue, we had a comic critic in review to open up theseries and now we’ve, we have you, Jonathan, on skin and yeah.
Then we have a couple scientists and a MD coming in to, toround out the fences of force. Yeah. So we’ll
Jonathan: befollowing these episodes. This is speaking to my nerdvana
geo: Yeah.
joe: yeah. No
geo: Science forweirdos.
joe: Science forweirdos is what someone told me. We, someone, we were out and someone said, oh,
geo: you do that
joe: And they go, yeah.It’s like we, I’ve been listening to it, it’s like science for weirdos andthat’s my thing, and
nick: I’m like,
joe: oh, I kinda likethat.
geo: It’s
nick: I
Jonathan: I, I thinkthat is dead on. Yeah. That’s, yeah.
geo: yeah. It’s beenjust
joe: a greatconversation
nick: thank you somuch for joining us.
geo: Go ahead and [00:56:00] plugs
joe: anything? You havesome new stuff coming out. I know for sure. So it’s,
Jonathan: yeah, I gotI, I’m, I got a lot of stuff going. I always have a lot of stuff coming out. Iwrote
geo: I saw your lastpost that you were outta
Jonathan: novel everythree minutes. Yeah.
joe: it said
geo: your brain wasoutta words.
nick: Yeah.
Jonathan: was, butI’ve already started the next novel.
nick: Novel,
joe: Congratulations.That’s awesome. Your inspiration to us young novelists
Jonathan: am I have agraphic novel coming out in June Joe Ledger and Violin Hearts and Minds, whichis a comic original story. Ba is set in my Joe Ledger world. Crystal lake isputting that out. And last year I had a really fun one was Godzilla versusKullu Comic.
geo: Oh, wow.
joe: Yep.
Jonathan: Comic orcome on games. But next up for me is the next Necro tech book deep Space Book,crafting Horror.
And we are in discussions with an anime company in Japan
joe: Cool.
Jonathan: based onthat series. Giant Me, mech Robots that Are Shape-Shifting piloted by the Ghostof Dead Pilots.
nick: Oh, damn.
joe: Yeah.
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: [00:57:00] the book that I just finished the otherday was the third in that series.
joe: That’s cool.
Jonathan: I love thefact I’m leaning more and more into science fiction these days.
I’ve got two different science fiction series running now. I.And it’s fun because, and this is one little thing I wanna just throw in beforeI skedaddle, is that one of the reasons I love working with scientists, talkingto experts in various fields for my books, there’s an old calm man saying, usenine truths to sell one lie that really applies great to any kind of fiction.
Because if you can build your fiction on a structure ofplausibility, it makes it so much easier for suspension of disbelief and alsothe trust when they know you’re stepping off that the top of that scaffold intofiction, they know that you’ve done your homework. So the fiction is gonna be areasonable extension of the non of the nonfiction, and they’ll go with you forthat.
But if you’re just making shit up so that you can tell ascience fiction story, there’s no structural basis to it, you’re only going toget the people who don’t know science. And that’s an increasingly small [00:58:00] number, I hope, because there’s a lot ofanti-science going on right now.
geo: right.
Jonathan: But
nick: Fingers
Jonathan: yourfingers crossed there are still people who want it to believe in it. They wantto believe that we can have superheroes. They want to believe that people cando this, that people will become stronger, that maybe somehow we’ll be able tosurvive a polluted planet and get wise enough to fix the planet.
So I love doing that. I love working with scientists. It’s fun.It’s so much fun for me to be on a podcast with people who understand scienceuntil I, that, that
joe: Thank
nick: you
geo: coming on andus. Yeah,
nick: What,
joe: Nick and Jordan
Jonathan: Nerds getit by extension. I’m not a scientist either, but all my science addictedfriends, we all love the fact that’s, that there’s real scientists out there
geo: right?
Jonathan: manyscientists are actually in the nerd
joe: Yeah.
nick: Oh, a hundred
joe: And I
geo: want,
joe: Jonathan, youdidn’t mention it, but we have some, I’m sure there’s some writer friends thatlisten, but you do a great masterclass series and so on different topics in thewriting, both [00:59:00] writing the art ofwriting, but also the business side of writing.
And, I’ve attended several
geo: of them
Jonathan: and they’refundraisers.
nick: And
joe: They’re alsofundraisers, right? The money goes to the no kill shelter or the
Jonathan: kill animalshelters, women’s shelters, homeless shelters. And these are programs thatprovide meals for children in, areas where they’re not getting it, family don’tenough income and 50 cents can buy a whole meal. I do a hundred percent of themoney from my workshops goes there.
It does a lot of good. And also, I hope people can use materialto get into the writing business because it’s more fun when there are more kidsin the playground.
nick: Definitely.
joe: No, so check itout, you writers out there,
nick: One lastquestion for you, if you don’t mind. Who is your favorite? Unbreakable skincharacter.
geo: Oh.
joe: oh,
geo: Oh, the
Jonathan: Oh, theHulk. I’m sorry.
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: Sorry. Thething has always been my favorite unbreakable character because of the factthat he’s the hu the Hulk I liked, but the Hulk was Jekyll and Hyde with,dipped and green. The, it’s that, but the thing [01:00:00]he was always leaning into his humanism, An empathetic character and empath,when you have a character who looks like basically a big rock monster, butempathy is his trues super strength, man.
I gotta love a character like
nick: I’m so glad wehave you on this episode, because he is your favorite,
Jonathan: yeah. Andvery first comic I ever bought has him on the cover of it,
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: 4 66.Believe that’s 1967. Good lord.
geo: That’s it.
joe: Awesome. Thanksagain for joining us. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, just a lot of cool nerdingout in pop culture,
nick: very much
Jonathan: and thanksfor inviting me on too. I had a lot of fun. I wish I had a little time rightnow, but I hope you guys will invite me back ’cause I’ll
joe: I will do. Yeah,no, definitely. No you already brought up several topics that we will have tohave you on now for, and, you know
nick: wait, are yougonna be the fourth rabbit in the hole?
joe: right.
Jonathan: And also I,with one of my upcoming classes, we haven’t set the date yet, but my, mymolecular biologist friend is going [01:01:00]to co-teach a class with me on working with
joe: Cool. That’d beawesome.
geo: That’s
Jonathan: be a lot offun too, ’cause a lot of writers don’t know how to ask the right questions andthey don’t know how to follow it down that rabbit hole into.
A plausible story and having a scientist on there would be fun.And if I’ll give you a free pass of that one, Joe, so you can join theconversation
joe: be fun. Yeah, no,
geo: and also theother way too, scientists don’t always know how to translate. That’s right.Their science communication is big,
joe: right?
That’s right. Yeah. And
geo: so they can use
A writer or they can use someone that the, the scientist just
joe: did a piece andthey, I was interviewed for, it was oh, it was like speculative fiction in, Howspeculative fiction and bench science kind of merge. And so they
Jonathan: that arecent
joe: of us.
It was, it came out last month. I can send you a link to it.Yeah, it was a fun, it was a few of us in it.
Jonathan: get thatand read it. I need to renew my subscription to the Scientist
joe: yeah. Yeah, no, itwas a fun article and had a couple quotes in there. So I was happy that [01:02:00] something came outta my interview.
Jonathan: I might betapping some information too. Getting a walk on in something.
geo: anytime, man,anytime I’ve helped
joe: other people ortried to help. ’cause sometimes people, you’re right they call and then they’relike, I wanna do this thing with this equipment. And I’m like, you can’t dothat thing with that equipment. Or there’s practical reasons why you won’t getthe image you think you’ll get, it’ll charge, it’ll look bad.
geo: And they go
joe: I need this is ifI can’t do it with that piece of equipment then my story fails. And I’m like
geo: you need,
Jonathan: story
nick: I’m like, weneed
geo: to, let’s have alonger conversation
joe: and figure thisout. And and some I, we did, it was like, you need this piece of equipment. Butthey’re like, but that’s not in that room.
And I’m like you need to have this scene happen in this roomnow because, so yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah. I’veactually had to repl whole novels because I talked to a scientist and found outthat my assumption, like writers, we have a lot of information in our head.Doesn’t mean we’re experts on it, but it’s enough to get us into trouble orhopefully to ask the right questions.
And I had this really great idea for something and I asked to acouple people who were into [01:03:00] nuclearscience, power plants and so on. My idea made no sense. It was laughably naive.I was like, oh shit. Glad I didn’t write the book. ’cause my editor didn’t knowit was a bad idea
Working with scientists, big important thing.
geo: Yeah, no.
joe: And experts andthings like that. No, it’s awesome.
geo: I’m
Jonathan: I’m theexpert that a lot of my friends tap for
geo: Martial arts.
nick: know. Yeah. I
joe: I was that’sawesome. I have a a friend, I don’t know if he joined the last one, I told himhe should get on, but I know he has a lot of action and fighting scenes and hedid wrestling and jiujitsu, so I was like, oh, you should jump on, becauseJonathan, he’s, that’s his background, especially writing those scenes andgetting it across.
Jonathan: Years now.
joe: yeah. Yeah.
geo: Cool. I
joe: know you need torun and so
Jonathan: stuff, sothanks. This guy, guys. I can hang with you
geo: I
nick: know. Yeah. I’mlike, Hey,
joe: That’s why I’mlike, Hey,
Jonathan: I will behappy to come back and and nerd out with you guys again.
nick: Absolutely.Anytime. Thank you.
geo: Thank you. Havea good night. Cheers.
nick: Thank you.
Jonathan: bye.
geo: Bye.
joe: you have me, Joe.
geo: We got Nick. Wegot
joe: Nick, we’ve got
geo: Georgia.
Georgia,
joe: and we’ve
nick: gone down some[01:04:00]
geo: holes,
joe: some tough skin
nick: tough skin.
joe: I dunno.
nick: Bye-bye.
joe: Hey, you stay safeout there. Stay strong.

Transcript:

joe: [00:00:00] Hey,
welcome to the Rabbit Hole of Research. We’re down here in the basement studio with another exciting episode in our Fantastic four
series. We’ll be focusing
a little bit on the thing and
all things strong, tough skin. As usual, we have the whole crewhere. You have me, Joe, you got
geo: Nick, we’ve gotNick and Georgia.
joe: We’ve got Georgia.
geo: And
joe: have a specialguest with us.
geo: And for our
joe: we
geo: let the guestsintroduce themselves.
joe: Please.
Jonathan: Hi, I’mJonathan Mayberry. I’m a New York Times bestselling author. Multiple genres. Iwrite horror, science fiction, fantasy, whatever. And also a comic book writerwrote for Marvel for a bunch of years, dark Horse, IDW doing some freelanceprojects. Now they’re a lot of fun. I also edit Weird Tales magazine and keepmy myself pretty immersed in the pop culture world, which is my home space.
My, that’s my comfort zone.
joe: Yeah. Awesome. No,it should be fun. Hopefully we can fit [00:01:00]you, fit right in here with our witty banter at times. I don’t know. So you
nick: I do have tosay that I’ve read a lot of your stuff that I did not realize was yours untilabout a month ago. I was like, I read that. Oh wait, I know his stuff. It wasjust
Jonathan: get a lotof that from folks at events too. And that, that’s cool. It’s always a readingthis stuff that’s what matters most, but. When I was at the the world premiereevent for the Black Panther, Wakanda forever I not only did were peoplesurprised that I had written anything that became part of that movie.
Everybody there was surprised I was white including RyanCoogler. Ryan Coogler had came up to me in the, at the after party. He, you’rewhite. I’m like, I am. Oh my God. He had no idea. He thought I was black. Interms of talking about skin, that’s interesting.
joe: Yeah.
geo: There you go.That’s a great segue.
nick: Yeah. Sousually
joe: I
geo: have
joe: a definition thatget us grounded and I have a
geo: list
joe: so I’ll do thedefinition what is skin. [00:02:00] But I dohave a special list for Jonathan because I know he likes facts and he alwayshas posts on social media.
If you follow him on all the different flavors of social media,he has. Tell me something new or something. I don’t know. So
nick: I have
geo: a list and
joe: I’ll see how manyof those facts, but I’ll
geo: start with thedefinition to get us started. What is skin? Skin is biological armor.
joe: It’s a sensorinterface, a site of cultural
geo: inscription
joe: and a metaphor foridentity.
It’s the most visible and tactile representation of self and infiction, a canvas onto which transformation, trauma and power are projected. SoI think that’s
Jonathan: Wow. Nicelyphrased. I like that.
joe: you.
nick: Yeah. And so wewere,
geo: as I said,talking
joe: the FantasticFour.
geo: And,
joe: We already had thefirst episode on a Fantastic four come out.
And but just a recap. It’s a fictional
superhero team uh, by Marvel,
created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first appeared in Fantasticfour, number 1, 19 61 Marvel
comics. [00:03:00] consideredMarvel’s first superhero team, or the
first family and helped establish a more human,
flawed,
family driven style that defined Marvel storytelling.
Ben was one of the members of that team. He was Reed Richard’scollege roommate and former football star.
Jonathan: Yep.
joe: And Ben had he, hewas
geo: after a
joe: trip
illegal
and or
A unscripted trip into space they
were bombarded by
cosmic rays Ben got disfigured and he was given this kind ofrocky, orange,
scaly skin
that was superhuman strength impenetrable and had all thesekind of nearly imper impervious to damage and things like that.
So yeah, that’s the character.
nick: Yeah. So I dohave to say that it is always so interesting seeing him in the comics becausethey tend to show the strength of his skin. ’cause are, [00:04:00] we’re considering it skin. Yes. I would
geo: consider
joe: skin. Yes. As the,
probably the
outer later the dermis was modified in some way, but,
nick: Yeah. And it’salways so fascinating ’cause I was reading an issue I’ll have to put it in theshow notes where they it was they were pulling him apart and like you just sawall of his skin. It looked like a gum being pulled. And it was just like, whoa.Like the amount of pain that has to be, I’m assuming it’s like a scab thatwould just be like.
Jonathan: Yeah. One,one that’s not ready to fall off, but they’re trying to pull it.
nick: exactly. Andthen I told him, I’m like, oh it’s, yeah. Fantastic. I love that.
Jonathan: And Ialways loved when Kirby would show me him getting a really hard impact. One ofthe ways they would use to emphasize the impact is pieces of rock would beflying off of him.
joe: Yeah.
geo: another
Jonathan: would beblood from a, a busted nose. But for him it was always pieces of rock fallingoff and that kind of defined how hard he was being hit because he’s impervious.
But somebody could [00:05:00]do that, at least to him,
joe: and knock off bitsof skin and or his outer structure, which is interesting. And thinking abouthow that would actually form I think NICU hit on it with and scar tissue wasone that, that immediately came to my mind that as he was bombarded was, wasthat now some scarification and you have this kind of, , in terms of scars, youget fibrous tissue that forms as you get the scar. So is that now
geo: been
joe: modified as DNA?And so you get this kind of overgrowth and then calcification and then almostkind of mineralization there that would form this kind of outer exterior.
then
as you as you were just pointing out, Jonathan, that as it getsdamaged, bits gets knocked off, but presumably is regenerated.
And so that means this is some
geo: active
joe: process thathappens.
Jonathan: And hisskin would have to be, his rock skin would have to have to be at least porousor something. Otherwise he would,
nick: Thanks.
Jonathan: the theskin’s the most important breathing apparatus next to our lungs. And [00:06:00] so he would need that. And funny ’causeI’ve had a conversation about this with Stan Lee years ago at the Houston ComicPalooza, I think it was.
And buttress, we’re talking about different characters and howthe, somehow the conversation come up is how they would get medical treatment.
nick: Oh,
Jonathan: Ben Grimmhad beautiful white teeth. how dentist worked on. Were his teeth set in gums orwere they set in
joe: Rock.
Jonathan: A couple ofus were asking questions of Lee and he is we didn’t think that far.
joe: I mean, Nails,Nonas fingernails.
Yeah. I mean you, you have all of those external
besides breathing and pores, you also have tactile sensation. Askin is our communication to our environment.
So if you lose that you lose a major sense. It’s almost likebeing blind or deaf or any losing any other senses. So that is something that Idon’t know if they cover that in any comic line or,
Jonathan: they touchon it because there are times, even though when he, especially in the earlyFantastic four comics, he and Johnny were always in a a baiting war. They’realways trying to get [00:07:00] you right intoeach other. And sometimes Johnny would try to scorch him and he would, he wouldact, he would run away, he would react to it so he could feel pain, feelpressure but his skin.
It was like being on the other side of a fireproof garment. Youfeel the heat, you just don’t get the actual firm. So that might be where theywere going with it if they even thought that far. But, because presuming thathe, he, something like that could exist.
And the version of it we’re seeing in the most recent trailersfits the old Ben Graham a little more.
How I envision him. He’s more fluid, he is more flexible. It’sless like a rock man trying to move than a man who made a malleable rock. Andit must be malleable.
If he’s going to reach
joe: right?
geo: Yeah.
nick: Be able to grabthings.
joe: Yeah. You have tobe flexible still. And that’s part of it, that when this transformationhappened, when
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: theflexibility can’t just be the subdermal layer because if he was stretching, youwould see gaps as, so it must be the rock itself rocket [00:08:00] that is stretching like an alligator skin and so on,which looks armored, but it still has a degree of flexibility. ’cause otherwisethe thing couldn’t operate couldn’t swim or anything else.
nick: that’s actuallya really good point. Like putting it towards like an alligator skin. I wouldn’thave even thought of that.
Jonathan: Actuallywhere I’ve always gone with the things skin because it has to move and know.You mentioned that I’m a research or knowledge junkie. I am a knowledge junk. Iwas a kid I, that’s what I was trying to figure out how he did that, where theHulk got his extra mass from, because Bruce was maybe 150 pounds and the Hulk.
So there, I knew just enough about science even as a kid. Tohave questions. And some of those I did get to ask, Stan, because I got to knowhim pretty well last few years of his life. And also some of the other folkswho worked on Fantastic Four. I had conversations with John Byrne about it.
J Byrne was more of the, everything’s elastic, just reallytough thing. And I mentioned to him about I called it crocodile skin, but thesame alligator skin, same thing. [00:09:00] Andhe said that, that’s probably exactly what it’s like that just thicker.
joe: Yeah.
nick: A
joe: more adorable or
geo: yeah,
joe: Or calcified insome way.
So you would have that, some combination, maybe armadilloscaling also would, it has some level of flexibility in It’s the way it’sjoined. And
geo: also
Jonathan: he smiles,he laughs, he frowns. All of those require elastic skin of the facial musclesand skin.
joe: And a muscle.Yeah. You, the muscle control of all that’s just not you.
You still have to maintain that. Yeah. Yeah. That
Jonathan: I.
nick: Yeah.
Jonathan: like thataspect of the thing of that, that concept of the thing being more elastic,more, it makes him more human and also makes him more of a scarified victim ofwhat’s going on, rather than a transformed into a monster thing. Because I, hewas always about the monster and he wasn’t a monster.
He was a victim of a reaction, a mutated skin reaction tosomething, it’s a cosmic race. It’s unfair and sad that he became, the [00:10:00] ugly one.
nick: I think you hiton a good thing right there where he does get identified as a monster and seenpeople with different deformities do get, back then people were like, oh,they’re either had a curse put on them or something.
It was just always, this is a monster.
Jonathan: yeah. Andthen we’re leaning in a little bit to the paranoia that was pretty common inthe fifties and sixties, anyone who wasn’t us. That, that other thing, plus,it’s the beginning of the civil rights era. Era, so you have a lot of that,it’s not us thing but that’s also, again, Kirby and Lee leaning into, justbecause it looks different, doesn’t make it not human.
I think there was a little bit of that in there too, which theyexplored with the X-Men and some other things. But I love the fact that BenGrimm is a good guy and I hated the fact that, and so many of the early comics,he’d be walking on the street maybe with a slouch hat and a car up.
Somebody would see him and it would be terrified. First off,why about issue two? They should know he exists.
geo: Right
Jonathan: It, they,Lee and Kurt kept wanting to make the point. And it’s funny [00:11:00] because the point they were making is whatwe in, in, in the novel trade it’s one of the rookie mistakes of assuming thereader doesn’t remember from the last episode to detail play down and keepsneeding to be reinforced.
I can understand it in Fantastic Four ’cause it was the firstMarvel comic, but they kept it going well into I think the forties issue,forties and in that
Still regarded as a monster. And I think even I, I’m Monster Ithink was maybe one of the titles or this man, this monster that was the
So that he’s still trying to get back to being human ’cause hestill is has now bought into the, people see me as a monster, therefore I amone.
geo: Yeah. That
Jonathan: It’s a sad
joe: and that, thatseemed like some of that storyline, if we think about just his identity, thathe was just sweet, caring person, but then he had this external kind of, it wasthis play maybe oversimplification
of these, traits that he had.
And you get that [00:12:00] andI you brought up. Just to segue a little bit to the civil rights movement thingis Luke Cage then in the, who came out, who also then was given tough skinunder different circumstances, this coerced, experimental activity. And thenthe racist the warden or police officer screwed with the
instrumentation.
then he was given, the super strong literally impenetrable kindof skin. So this very tough skin. And so that was a very different. So he wasvery normal on the outside, but society, at, seen him as a monster. So it’sthis this area.
Jonathan: also do youguys, guys know who John Lewis was, right?
nick: Yeah.
geo: Yeah. Yeah.
joe: yes.
Jonathan: So he did acomic called a March for IDW. We did a signing, together at one of, at ComicConone year. And we were talking, and Luke Cage was I think just coming on TV atthe time somewhere around the the Luke Cage era on Netflix.
And we were talking, and he’s in his theory on the, you LukeCage having the armored skin, is that black men, [00:13:00]black people had to be so bulletproof in terms of their reactions to what isbeing
About. That, what they did to Luke, what Luke represented was,no matter what you say, you can’t hurt me.
Was that kind of an approach that was at least John Lewis’stake, and I valid one
joe: Yeah. No, I,
geo: But
Jonathan: but again,I don’t know if the creators had that specifically in mind. It’s like withGeorge Romero in Night of Living Dead. I just wanna jump
A second, because in Ge Night of Living Dead, you had a blackman who was the only strong, intelligent
geo: right.
joe: And
Jonathan: and all thereviewers said, my God, this was this incredible civil rights movie.
It’s about racism. It wasn’t, he was the only good actor whoauditioned.
joe: Yeah,
Jonathan: right,George Romero saw those reactions and from then on leaned into that as theinterpretation of even that first movie. I think I would agree Marvel may becounting its own design aesthetic when, they gave some of these characters,these qualities.
I think they [00:14:00] may,I’m hoping at least on some subliminal level, they were trying to make thatkind of of equitable statement, about just because we are different does notmean we are bad or wrong or evil or monsters or anything. And, Marvel had themore progressive vibe than DC anyway, so I think that may have been, aningredient in the soup at least.
joe: Yeah. No, yeah, Ithink I totally agree with that and see that from that perspective especiallygrowing up in, in America as a a. Person of color, a black man that, that it issomething that you go out in the world and you have to be
as
good or better than your white counterparts at times.
And sometimes you’re the only, and so then you have that weightgoing out into the world, so that, that is also, both. And Luke Cage’scharacter was a large man, almost a John Henry kind of figure. So it wasn’tlike they took a skinny, black man and said, okay you’re now
nick: but superskinny.[00:15:00]
joe: he was
geo: a right,
joe: He was really a,he was
nick: intimidatingfigure. Yeah, that’s
joe: right. For, so
geo: and it wasliterally having tough skin. Literally
joe: skin. And,
geo: And, being ableto deal with
joe: right. And
geo: All, and skin,and
joe: Touch upon it alittle bit. But, enslaved people were used in experiments on skin andparticularly testing of thick skin.
So there was this
geo: theory
joe: that, theseenslaved people didn’t feel pain because they had thicker hides like animals.And so you had
geo: a
joe: number of slaveowners who would do these experiments and torturous experiments and go throughit. So that was it. And those myths persist even today.
That, with pain medication and thing that, that black peopledon’t need, as much, or can tolerate more pain because of these these kind ofracist ideals that, that were put out
nick: and that havecontinued,
joe: has continued.Yeah.
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: there,there was a a poem that may Angelou read at Temple University years ago, [00:16:00] and one of the lines in it, and I’ve triedto find this online, is just because I survived being whipped didn’t mean Iliked it.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: That andthat
geo: kind
Jonathan: speaks alittle bit to this, just because they survived the things that people put themthrough, didn’t mean they were invulnerable.
It meant they, they were committed to survival
It should have been admired rather than looked at as a freak ofnature, thing. But,
joe: No, definitely.Yep. No.
Jonathan: I just
wanna say one more thing about Fantastic Four. I don’t know ifyou know this story, Joe, but that comic first of off, it was my favorite comicand this was the very first comic I ever
joe: Wow. There it is.
nick: Oh damn.
geo: Oh wow.
Jonathan: Bought thatwhen I was a kid.
I was nine years old.
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: The thingabout Fantastic Four is I, my background had a lot to do with skin in thisregard. My father, who was a terrible human being, ran the local chapter of theKKK. So I grew up in a household dominated by racism in a neighborhood inPhiladelphia that was known as White Town, USA.
That was the [00:17:00]nickname of my neighborhood. It’s still rated as the worst neighborhood inPhiladelphia, even, it’s yay team. And it was
joe: which neighborhooddid you grow up in? Kente. Okay. I was gonna try to guess, but I didn’t
Jonathan: never beenthere. If a black family would move in the neighborhood, their house would befirebombed,
joe: Yeah. Wow.
Jonathan: terribleplace.
So when an issue, was it 52 that black Panther showed up? Whenthat character f because I’ve been, even though this was the first, fantasy 466 was the first comic I bought. I’ve been reading comics since I was a littlekid. My brother gave me all his comics before he went off to Vietnam.
So I had, fantasy four, going back to issue two and issue 52 ofFantasy four introduced a black character who was nobody’s sidekick. He was no,he was not comic relief. He was not a start to, he was the king of his ownnation. He was a scientist and he was a superhero. And of course, my fatherwould see that comic, he’d rip it up.
And, I would always rebuy them. And then later on in seventhgrade, I actually went to a, my middle school librarian and brought a co [00:18:00] one of the copies one of the comics in andsaid my father, she knew who my father was. Everybody did, my father hates thiscomic. I don’t really know why.
’cause I was, I hadn’t met any people of color up until seventhgrade. My neighbor was white. And she looked at the issue and said thatparticular, she was about apartheid. I’m like, what? What is that? And sheexplained it and she said do you know about the Jim Crow laws? I’m like, no.
And she said, do you know who Martin Luther King was? I said,yeah, he was this, and unfortunately, I used a racial epithet because that’swhat we were trained to use. I said, he was a bad guy who was killed my father,had to throw a party. And she said, sit down. For two and a half hours.
She gave me a crash course in what intolerance and racism areall about.
nick: the
Jonathan: And theissue that I brought in was interesting because it speaks to the topic hereabout skin. It was the issue where Tal is arrested in the Marvel universeversion of South Africa. I forget what the, what they used to call it in thecomics, but he was arrested, he was in prison.
And Ben and Johnny go to [00:19:00]break him out. Ben is orange, brown, Johnny when he is a is red a brown man anda red man helped a black man out of a prison. That is not an accident. EvenSue. Nowhere in sight.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: And it flewright over the head of a lot of people. But, my my librarian, she said, this islike very clear.
It’s, this is about, the races who have to stick togetherbecause they have a greater enemy. But they’re still people and they should bere regarded based on their actions and, content of their soul or quality ofsoul. But it was so interesting that they had, I think it was Ro Roy Thomasmaybe wrote that episode over that issue, but it was so clear, brown, red andblack.
joe: Wow.
geo: Yeah.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: threedifferent skin tones that were really politically charged at the time, withthat 1971 or so. And it, because it could, they could float it by people in acomic, because you could talk about different skin colors, different skin typesin comics because they’re superheroes or super villain.
geo: Right?
Jonathan: But therewas a group, [00:20:00] there was a percentageof the fan base that was getting it.
joe: Yeah. That’s good.I know
Jonathan: I got ahint of it there. And from then on my views and my father’s views split justsay on an epic level.
geo: wow.
joe: Yes. No,
nick: So I have toask how.
joe: how.
nick: Did he knowthat you wrote for Black Panther and all this? He
Jonathan: He was, hedied before that. But had started studying martial arts on the sly when I wassick because, it was a very bad household to grow up. And my four sisters and Iwere pretty badly, abused. And when I was 14, he and I had it out. We had afight. And from that point on he just say there were no more meetings of theKKK in our house.
And he did not make any statements or put his hands on anyone.But
He did not live long enough to see my Marvel comic stays. SoI’m hoping that he’s in his graves spinning it about war. None. Not only did Iwrite Black Panther, I wrote Black Panther, but the female lead, so I wrote afeminist Black
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: probablyhis bones have probably exploded.[00:21:00]
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: I’m okaywith that.
joe: Yeah.
nick: That is sointeresting to hear like that Is your upbringing like being able to come fromthat kind of background to writing some fantastic stories about minority leadsthat, that’s so in
Jonathan: of thatstory. I got the job at Marvel for this particular thing ’cause Reggie Hu,who’d been writing Black Panther. I was already done. I had done a MarvelZombies, I did a Punisher on Wolverine thing, for Marvel by that point. Andthey were Reggie was thinking of stepping down.
He had been the writer for Black Panther. And they were lookingfor someone to replace him. And the assumption was they would, he would pick ablack writer which makes perfect sense. But he heard me talk on the radio,talking about my childhood and how the Black Panther was the pivotal momentwhere my life began splitting away from my father’s racism.
So he went to bat for me at Marvel and got me the gig. And alsobecause I had spent 35 years of my adult life teaching women’s self-defense, hedecided to [00:22:00] give me an extra littlebonus. He said, look, the last six issues of my run, we’re gonna turn Sureyinto the panther. Why don’t you come and post, write that storyline.
I’ll do the maid storyline, but major storyline. But you do theSurey storyline, so you’ll be the first person to put her in the armor and thenyou’ll pick up the comic after that. That’s what we did.
geo: Wow, that’samazing.
Jonathan: I’m still,I, Reggie was also at the Black Panther, Wakanda forever and we were joking.
He said, that radio, if you hadn’t done that radio interview, alot of this wouldn’t be happening right now. But, it was so surreal.
joe: Yeah,
geo: Wow. So
joe: I do want to touchon one of your characters who has skin
as part of their storyline, and that’s Monk and that,
geo: yeah.
nick: You had to
geo: know that wascoming.
Jonathan: actually, Ididn’t I didn’t, but I’m glad you brought up. Monk is one of my favorite
geo: It’s, I love himso much. Glip is like, one of my all time favorite novels. Yeah.
joe: Georgia had, she
geo: and that’sprobably why I
joe: on our chalk boardin our kitchen, and she
geo: Did you, Ialready read
joe: book. And I wasI’ve [00:23:00] been reading your stuff for awhile. And Georgia picked up that book ’cause it was just laying in, in thehouse. And then she was like, oh, this is did you read this line?
I was like, I read the whole book. Yes, I
geo: know.
Jonathan: Monkappears in two other novels and in a short story collection. He’s in Inc.
joe: Yep. Yeah, sure.
Jonathan: BurnedShine, the latest Joe Ledger
joe: Yep.
nick: If you can seethey geeked out and had all your
Jonathan: yeah, thereyou go. And of course, monk Addison’s
geo: That’s right.Yeah.
Jonathan: But hestarted off as a comic book character.
Actually.
geo: Oh, wow.
Jonathan: at onepoint IDW was going to do a shared horror universe, kinda like the DC and theMarvels with the a shared, so it was gonna be Steve Niles Joe Hill, myself, oneor two other guys. We were gonna create monsters that lived in the same world,but were also like heroic monsters.
And we were all ready to go. And then there was a managementchange at Marvel at the IDW rather than never happened. So I took the characterback and I decided to make a short story out of him. And it intended to be aone-off. But as soon as I start writing, I just love the concept of someone whois [00:24:00] haunted by what he does and bythe, the faces of dead people on his
And their ghosts never leave him,
joe: and
Jonathan: are we’regetting a little bit of interest in for film. VIN Diesels reading Ink rightnow.
nick: Oh,
joe: That would be,that, that would be incredible. I can
nick: totally see.That’s really cool.
geo: Oh
joe: and to folks whoare listening you should go read one of the, we’ll put in the show notes, oneof the many stories that Monk is in, but he’s a, an a private
Jonathan: I couldBrenda, he’s a former special ops soldier who then became a private militarycontractor, burned out, went on the pilgrims road to find who he was. And hefound out like he got a tattoo at one point. And he realized that when thetattoo was completed, it was a face of someone.
He was able to then relive their death. And there, there was alittle girl that was murdered and he is able not only relive her death, but seewhat she saw when she was dying, which gave him clues to be able to go out andfind the killers. And that became his road to, it’s hard to call it salvation’cause he isn’t going out killing people.
But at the [00:25:00] samepoint, he’s, it’s a, he’s doing something that is a redemption story, not areligious story, but a redemption
And he has all faces all over him of all these murder victims.And when the tattoo is completed, he, relieves the death, goes finds the killerand if he can stop this person, not as revenge, but to prevent the person fromdoing more killing, and he takes the guy off the board, but the ghost that kindof hired him to do this is always with him.
So he’s surrounded by all the ghosts of the people that he’s,that were murdered and he killed their killers, but they’re always with himlike 24 7. And it, it’s a tough life, but he’s one of my favorite characters.There’s a lot of the thing in him in that with the thing. You always know wherehis moral compass is pointing. He’s not a conflicted character. He is notreally a gray area of character. Reed gets real gray at times. The thing, if hehas your back’s covered. Monk is the same way. Monk’s a dangerous guy. He’s notnecessarily [00:26:00] friendly, he’s not, I’mnot even sure he is likable, for the people who know him. But if he has yourback,
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: You’reokay. You’re gonna be okay. He will not ever hurt the innocent. And that’sthere’s, so there’s a little bit of Ben Grimm in him for sure.
joe: yeah,
geo: Wow.
joe: it’s That ideathat the tattoos are speaking through him, to him, I was looking up some stufffor this episode and preparing is the Skin Ego it’s this kind of theory Dieter,I. And Zoey and suggests that the skin serves as a metaphorical container for theego and provides a sense of boundary and containment for psychic content. TheSkin Ego is like the physical skin, and it’s the boundary that separatesindividual from the external world and also holds to psychic apparatus togetherbody boundaries reflecting kind of psychological boundaries. So it, it was indigging around I was, trying to make the science of monk work a little.
nick: bit.
geo: So I,
Jonathan: Yeah,actually I need to find that thing you were talking about, I [00:27:00] needed to read that. It sounds like it’sreally the right thing for me because if we’re gonna be pitching Monk for filmor tv, I want to be able to build a pitch that really digs deep into thispsychology of it. Most people don’t know this, but Vin Diesel’s an actuallyreally well read individual.
nick: Oh yeah,
joe: Yeah,
Jonathan: He doesn’talways play those types of characters. Unlike Johnny Bernthal plays ThePunisher, the two of them look like together. Based on some of the charactersthey played looks like together, they, collectively of the IQ of about 60. Butin reality, both really good, down to earth nice guys.
Some of the press isn’t always this. I think the press defines’em by their characters more than by them.
But
joe: VIN Diesel, beforethe Fast
geo: Series,
joe: was in BoilerRoom, which I thought was just an incredible movie where it wasn’t Muscle andBraun. It was a very, it was a, a. Thinking movie, I guess if we’re gonnaclassify
nick: Guns
geo: versus,
joe: Yeah.
But I, that was some of his early stuff before he got into theaction. And he found this stride [00:28:00]and, I think that happens. Like he’s a beefy dude and he plays those rolesreally well, but Yeah.
Jonathan: hilariousthough that he’s a DD dungeon master, though.
geo: Yep.
joe: Oh yeah.
nick: Yeah. And he’sa giant nerd.
geo: Oh, wow. Yeah,
Jonathan: actuallyhas a cloak with the hood when he plays
geo: wow.
joe: Wow.
nick: I’ve read that
Jonathan: Becausehe’s one and Henry CA’s one too, and you got these two guys who are, they’redefined a lot by their ability to punch things
Yet, they’re both book nerds, fantasy nerds, pop culture nerdsmakes me like them a lot more,
geo: I think that’sperfect for playing Monk. Because he is such a tough guy, but is introspectiveand do you know what I mean? So that just Yeah.
Jonathan: Sure. Andmonk is trying to find, there, there’s a, I have a long game with the characterof Monk. He’s trying to find his way to the fire zone, which is referenced in acouple different works. And it’s a book I will be actually writing called TheFire Zone that, that kind of TERs together.
But he, he wants peace,
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: he’s doneso much harm in his life. As a, first not asking questions, who he [00:29:00] has to shoot when he was wearing a uniformand asking even fewer questions when he was a private military contractor, hehas, to quote black Widow a lot of red in his ledger and he
And, that isn’t usually done by doing pretty stuff. But alsohe’s good at it and he knows he’s good at it. And there’s a burden there too.When somebody is good at something, even if it’s something that hurts them, butit benefits other people. It’s hard to lay down your sword and shield on thatone.
nick: Yeah,
joe: No, that’s good.Now,
geo: monk also, it’snot just about getting the tattoos and having the ghosts, it’s also what’s inthe, it’s the actual blood, right?
Of,
Jonathan: Yeah. Bloodis mixed with holy water and tattoo ink to create these these tattoos. And hisbest friend Patty Cakes is the tattoo artist. It was her daughter that wasmurdered and that was his first, first of these tattoos. It’s,
joe: I think I thinkonly one of it I, as I’ve heard you talk about this and you do not have atattoo, Jonathan, is that right? Or do you, okay.
geo: Yeah.
joe: You’re like me.
geo: I don’t have,but
Jonathan: We’re lessthan a month [00:30:00] away from me being agrandfather
nick:congratulations.
geo: Oh, wow.
Jonathan: thanks. My,my son and his fiance are, are expecting and the baby’s gonna be named Orion,
geo: Oh, nice.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: so afterthe baby’s born and healthy and mama’s healthy and everything else. Sam, my sonand I are gonna go out and get Orion constellation tattoos.
joe: Awesome.
nick: cool. Verycool. Honestly, it just feels like a cat scratch.
joe: So I
nick: was gonna say,Nick has, I have multiple, yeah. It, oh, you got that thick skin right here.
joe: Oh boy.
nick: There,
joe: now
Jonathan: it’s beenpunctured enough times. I used to be a bodyguard, so I had been stabbed withice pick screwdrivers, knives chopped in the shoulder with a meat cleaver andet.
nick: o yeah.
joe: Yeah. So
nick: So
joe: I,
Jonathan: I have, myskin is not impervious Wish. It was really
joe: If
geo: it was, you wentto get medical
joe: That’s always init. You
nick: brought that upearlier
joe: how do you get,how do you get treated if you need
geo: someone
nick: needs to goinside of
geo: you to
joe: fix something.That’s
Jonathan: I thinkthat’s a missed opportunity for Marvel to do a TV series about, ’cause theyhave [00:31:00] damage control and they had thenight nurse. But I think a clinic for superheroes would be
joe: Yeah.
geo: In Luke Cage,they tried to, they were trying to Netflix. They got
joe: shot with thebullet
nick: that
joe: the kind ofexploding drill tip.
geo: And then she wastrying to get,
joe: she took ’em backto the
geo: original Right.
joe: and cooked them inthe,
geo: there was a,
joe: whole clam.
And it’s interesting ’cause mollus
geo: actually, thereare
joe: that have ironkind of formation in their foot. So in the, so they can scrape algae off ofrocks and fer those out there, mullis are like octopuses cuttlefish clams.Those are classified as mollus.
And they have
geo: shell
joe: they have a footthat can come out and they. They can do work. And so that’s one. And then theyhave, there’s another mole that has like teeth, like kind of iron teeth tocrack shells and things like that. So it is a,
Are some real world. And so that was the idea there that,that’s, and the show, they played on that, that’s what was in this soup.
And they were gonna heat ’em up and then that would [00:32:00] loosen the structure, the molecularstructure, which a
nick: little, a lotof hand waving
joe: as a, so
nick: I was like, oh,
joe: does this work?
geo: But yeah,
joe: it was they didcover
geo: that. At leastthey, at least they tried to cover it. Yeah. Tried attempt to
joe: explain it.
But,
Jonathan: Yeah. Andthey used the night nurse character, I’m forgetting her, Claire, they usedClaire as,
joe: Yep. Yep.
Jonathan: as thego-to person for Daredevil and so
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: I wouldlove to have seen that become a secret department within the hospital sheworked
I might pitch it to Marvel
joe: yeah.
geo: I like that.
Jonathan: doctorfriends. We could some people who would advise me, so
nick: that would be areally cool, like just medical series. Yes. Yeah,
joe: if you’re lookingfor a writer, then, happy to write something for you.
geo: Nonetheless
nick: the other thingI was
joe: say about thetattoos and you, another thing I was looking up was all of the kind of dermalsensors.
I, I didn’t really know a lot about that till I was looking itup, but the MIT had a project where they were using bio sensitive inks in therethat was a reactive to glucose, pH, sodium kind of to monitor [00:33:00] health . And so this tattoo ink was biowas actually bio censored.
And so you have this kind of.
Jonathan: They’reworking on diabetics to be able to like literally flash a little warning when,things like that. Cancer sensors and other things. And also the, one of thethings they’re, they’ve been talking about, I don’t know if they’ve gottenthere quite yet, is an implant that will sense the onset of seizures of onekind or another, and then transmit immediately to 9 1
Or to the, the contact person for, care. It’s a great idea. Andthat’s the kind of body mods I’m okay with. I’m not a big fan of body mod forthe most part, but that one, those sort of things, when science is used for theright thing,
Right? I’m
joe: Yep.
Jonathan: doing upone of my upcoming Joe Ledger novels is going to deal with cybernetics and allof its different good and bad phases.
And I started doing some research and man, it’s amazing what’sunder RD right now. And it’s freaky that we’re so much further along than Ithought we were. A lot of the stuff is there, it’s just a matter of getting theright funding, right grants and [00:34:00]getting it past people who don’t want that kind of thing attached to them.
They’ll find with going out and getting a barcode or a QR codetattooed on them, not something, that’s not stylish, but their health.
joe: Yeah. I think theso at the University of Chicago where I do research at and work I’m part of thethe cube, which is a quantum NSF funded facility where they’re
geo: where they’re
joe: trying to developquantum sensors for biological applications like that. And so that is, it’sreally, so I was just in a meeting because I’m a biologist, so I go and try tointerface with the physicist and chemists talk about applications.
So that’s where. I come in,
geo: I know
joe: enough to talkabout qubits and, how entanglement works, but I’m not, that is not myexpertise. But and going over how these sensors can work to report informationout is super important. So yeah it’s a fascinating as I got into that and hearabout some of the things and, ’cause it’s like, how do we get this
geo: thing that
joe: in cells on aPetri dish now into a body or what’s the [00:35:00]mechanism?
And, it’s
geo: the, you’reright
joe: it is
geo: some of the
joe: stuff that’s insci-fi and, it’s now making its way and it’s that’s more real than you think,
Jonathan: sciencefiction has always been one of the reasons they called it speculative fictionor, it’s a lot of people looking forward. The cell phones, we’re clearlyinspired by the communicators on Star Trek, but we do more, much more now. Thecell’s far more, it’s like the communicator, the tri-quarter, about 15 otherthings.
In our phone now, but that’s where the idea came from for itsstructure. And a lot of other things, what I grew up reading, the reprints, theban of reprints of the old doc Savage novels, man of bronze, if you’ve everread any of those. They published 175 of them published in the thirties andforties.
And he always had advanced technology that he developed and alot of it’s stuff we have now.
geo: Wow. Yeah.Contact
Jonathan: lensesanswering machines, planes that, this is 1934 planes that flew 500 mile anhour.
Have that. All so many of the things that, that Lester Dent,who wrote most of the novels, put in the stories for [00:36:00]things that people were just saying, wouldn’t it be cool if
writers threw that stuff into fiction and some of the peoplereading that fiction grew up three scientists.
joe: Yes. That’s theway it works sometimes.
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: one of mybest friends, one of my best friends, Ronald Coleman, who’s now actually acharacter, ongoing character in my Joe Ledger stories.
But he’s a molecular biologist, stem cell scientist. And I’mconstantly talking to him about wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?
And sometimes he’s yeah we did that in
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: Or we’reall come up with, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this? Would this even bepossible? He is not yet, but maybe by the time the book is out, because I knowworking on grants for that, I love science and I love the fact that keepsmoving forward.
What I don’t like is that there are groups that, that aretaking this science, and of course the biggest funding is for DARPA and thingslike that. The military research,
nick: Yeah.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: I’ve talkedto those guys a bunch of times and yeah, some scary nerds.
joe: right?
nick: The best kind,scary nerds. So I do have a question, Joe. How likely is it to have [00:37:00] skin? Like the thing, because I know thereis that syndrome where
joe: yeah,
nick: guy had thetree skin,
joe: Your skin can cal,calcification of skin and I’m trying to think of the disorders.
Like FFAP, FOP or something
nick: I think it’ssomething around there. Yeah. And so
geo: your,
joe: yeah, you justhave this kind of all your fibrous tissues begin to calcify and over calcifyinto bony structures. The problem with that, you’d have to make this next leapbecause as we talked about earlier, how do you make that flexible, right?
Because those folks usually are fairly, they come very stiff intheir structure and they, and rigid. So you need to, now how do you make that.So almost, it can’t be an internal structure. It has to be external in terms ofthe way you would form it. So that would have to be either a new fourth skinlayers
nick: created
geo: that
joe: then give you thisextra properties and or your dermis would now excrete something some material, [00:38:00] either, one of these iron
geo: sulfide kind of
joe: compounds or couldbe even calcified.
We talked about diatoms in I think the plant episode. And sowhere they produce silicate or coral, they produce a calcium kind of deposit.So there are organisms that do excrete these materials. And you could havethese snails That’s right, snail shells, right? So there are these bio your
nick: teeth
joe: a biomaterial,right?
And so there’s a lot of folks Working on that. I know some ofthose folks, and it’s fascinating because the interface between biology and,this kind of this biomaterial is unique and, difficult to reproduce. That’s whyyou go in for dental work or implants stay, they don’t stay all the time orthey, it’s a interesting field there.
But yeah I
Jonathan: One of theconceits within comics though on that topic though, is that when, they neverconsidered that a lot of these mu mutations would be detrimental to
joe: Yes. Yep. Yes.
Jonathan: withinskin, the [00:39:00] way it is, he would be a,a patient in a hospital somewhere. He would be walking around punching the.
nick: Yes. When wetalked about
joe: the cosmic rays inthemselves would be pretty damaging, so you would have to be a mutant alreadyto tolerate the cosmic race from not just being a cancer patient. You’re right.He would be in those the, instead of tough skin, it would just have tumors allover him and, a ruined thyroid because he’s been,
geo: On your chest,
joe: You’re now beendevastated by cosmic race unshielded and exposed to cosmic race.
Which, you know, so Yeah. It you’re right. About that.
nick: Yeah, so
joe: And so
geo: it
Jonathan: It doescreate a, an opening though for stories to be told that would explain it. Andjust like there have been a lot of folks that come along and tried to explainthe physics of Star Trek or Star
geo: right.
Jonathan: On thephysics of Superman. There are plenty of books out there where, scientists likeyourself are trying to say, okay, if that is
joe: right. That’sright
Jonathan: then how.
I played with this, actually not on, on the skin subject, but Idid a book called Zombie, CSU, where I [00:40:00]interviewed a couple hundred people in the real world about what would happenif zombies were real. If zombies were here, inarguably here, I would beresearch, react, respond, whatever. And, talked to scientists, talk to, all thedifferent types of scientists military and everyone else, everyone has atheory, but it would be, it would need to be a new there wouldn’t have to bethere.
Somebody have to be, throw a hell of a lot of money intoresearch to finding out how these people are not dying as a result of thesechanges. And I think that opens up a lot of storytelling possibility for comicstoo. But I would love to do an anthology, a prose anthology where scientistswrite superhero stories that explain the superheroes.
joe: Yeah.
geo: No.
nick: there you
geo: there you go.No,
Jonathan: I do know abunch of scientists, writers.
joe: Yeah.
geo: Yeah,
joe: Yeah. right. Yes.
Jonathan: Some inthis room.
geo: that’s
nick: That’s what
joe: that’s what we tryto do on the podcast. Nick could throw me that question. I
geo: know. Yeah, it’s
joe: I
geo: do think,
joe: and you talk aboutsome of those things, like you have other heroes Colossus who has, he puts themetal armor on and you talk about your skin [00:41:00]breathing, he’d have to take that off pretty quick and, or is there some othermechanism that he’s using to actually dissipate heat and things like that.
So you do have these kind of these characters who have thisthese abilities. And then to form a metallic skin and then take it away alsorequire some level of. Rapid metabolism. And on this, on the podcast, we alwaystry to explain things in terms of how many Big Macs would you have to eat tocompensate for the caloric load of doing some of these modifications quickly.
Jonathan: Yeah.
joe: that’s right.Yeah.
geo: Which no talks
joe: the calories, sothat’s why
Jonathan: Yeah withColossus, it would make a little more sense if instead of it just being steel,it was plates that,
joe: Yes.
Jonathan: Under whichair could get through
joe: Yes.
Jonathan: Evaporationhappen and so on. But again, the comic book writers are not scientists. We’rein the 21st century. We’re 25 years into century.
It’s time to level up and let the nerds come out to play andmake the comics make sense, which I think would bring [00:42:00]in whole group of readers because a lot of people dismiss comics foolishly assaying that they’re not literature, they’re not good, but they are, they’rereally
geo: Absolutely.
Jonathan: if, youcould use comics as a way to teach stem, STEM
joe: I agree.
geo: Definitely
Jonathan: much,there’s a lot of good science there.
But there’s also what if science and what if science is whatdrives science forward?
joe: We talk aboutzombies. That was so that how I got into, I always wanted to do science,education and outreach. And I realized a lot of adults don’t know anythingabout science. And I had a friend who was doing these art and science talks,and he approached me with this idea and he said, oh, I’m doing these talks, butno one shows up to hear about the science lectures.
And I was like, oh. So this was some years ago. And it’s how Idiscovered your view because I was I said I’m a big zombie fan and that’s kindsof zombies and how it works. So I started reading everyone at, had the zombiestuff and kind of where they’re at. Where’s the literature at? All the [00:43:00] movies.
And so I pitched to my friend, I said, Hey, we should do theart and science to science of zombies. And he looks at me and who, and he ofthe sciences also, he goes, but no one does research on zombies.
geo: I go, I know,but if you want people to show up, then
joe: talk aboutsomething that’s super fun and then we’ll sneak science in on em.
And I’m a cell biologist, so we’ll do all cell biology and kindof talk. And it was, we filled this art gallery up with people. It was standingroom only. And he was like, wow, this really worked. And so now as he does it Ithink he’s stopped or taking a pause, but every time he does it, he has somelittle hook like that now.
And I’m like, yeah, let’s keeping going. And so that was then,how we arrived to this podcast was at that idea, but that was the start of it.Zombies was the the fun and figuring out how you would get the infection eventand then what would happen after that. In fast zombies.
nick: you love fastzombies.
Jonathan: yeah. In mydead at night series, I worked with scientists to come up with a parasitedriven one. Toxic plasma, green jewel wasp, whole bunch of other
And
joe: sometimes[00:44:00]
geo: you,
Jonathan: You can geta certain distance toward doability, toward, actual rea realizing it for some,if you talk to the right scientist and get them to really, put their mind toit, you get a lot further and closer to it than is comfortable sometimes.
But you’re talking
geo: right
Jonathan: the artgallery thing here in San Diego. We have the Fleet Center, which is a sciencecenter attached to the the astronomy center. And I was on a panel there. Theyhad also been trying to do panels and nobody was showing up to them. So becauseComic-Con is in San Diego, they decided to start bringing in comics people totalk to scientists.
The very first panel where I met the scientist I mentionedearlier, Dr. Ronald Coleman. It was Kevin Eastman, the artist who co-createdthe Ninja Turtles and myself. We were comic creators. And then the two, therewas a var Virologist who’s sadly named, I’m blanking on Nancy something, Ican’t remember her last name.
And Ronald Coleman, who’s, said a stem cell scientist. And wewere asking them questions and they were, they they were asking us questions.The [00:45:00] audience was asking questions.Kevin, the artist from Ninja Turtles, he wa he was like, goo or whatever. So wejust, we need, we needed a thing.
We just call it that. That’s total there. Or my V wars thing, Iwanted it to be a genetic disorder that was latent. And, as melting polar rice,softened permafrost, all diseases were. And I, that’s an idea I had before thatactually started happening, by
geo: Oh boy.
Jonathan: Before wegot to the popular press I subscribed to some science newsletters and I read anarticle back in 2010 about melting rice, releasing old bacteria and possiblyviruses.
And I’m like. That’s scary as hell. Let me write a book,
geo: right?
Jonathan: not the TVwars,
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: But
joe: yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan: thezombies, the fun thing about zombies is, each individual thing it does, can beexplained by nature. Like the fact that it has a lower metabolism be, so itdoesn’t rot as much. There are animals, the ground squirrel the, I forget thename of the frog, that, that freezes solid every year and then falls, withoutthe tissue damage because of the way [00:46:00]the sugars,
That exists.
The if the motor cortex was working. Or even on a minimallevel, the zombie could walk, bite, chew, swallow. Without the motor of cortex,it couldn’t, unless there’s respiration, a zombie couldn’t moan. And we knowzombies moan. You can make an argument that zombies are not dead, they’re notalive, they’re living dead.
A third state of existence based on a great a rate ofmetabolism so greatly reduced that they appear dead to the point where theirouter tissues become necrotic, but they’re still not actually dead.
joe: It’s
geo: yeah, I hadthought
joe: In my own head andwe’re getting off, I gonna get back to skin ’cause we’re gonna have to closethe episode a little bit.
But yeah I had a dual infection event. One of the mind, butalso, people forget about the second brain and that’s our gut, which is justfilled with bacteria.
So as our control systems, entropy starts to take over, thenthat would be your driving force. And those bacteria then would have somepreservation of [00:47:00] self. Especially ifthe brain was now infected by something else, it might not have as tight ofcontrol over the system, so you can then have this dual function.
That also explains why in movies you have this, not everyone’sinfected by a splatter of blood or something like that, because you need bothparts to become infected. And so you could
geo: be primed.
joe: And then onceyou’re primed and maybe you have a death event,
geo: and now
joe: the brain parasitecan take over, and then the gut ones can now go, oh, you know what?
There’s no more control. Everything’s leaky, leaky gutsyndrome. We
geo: can get inthere, we can now invade.
joe: And we now we canhave this kind of two brain system in control. And hence why, your movementsare shambling and things like that. Not necessarily because your coronation isbad, but because you your, you have two.
Competing entities in inside one, one body. But
geo: That’s
nick: Anotherepisode, another rabbit
geo: hole.
joe: But
Jonathan: That one
nick: you’re in,
joe: you’re in,
nick: so I do wanna,
geo: I’m gonna touchon my
joe: [00:48:00] fun fact list. I promise a list and I’dlike to deliver,
geo: but
nick: There’s awebsite
joe: maybe you’refamiliar with it. I just learned about it. It’s called bio numbers.
geo: and it’s this
joe: fun website, atleast I think it’s
geo: fun where
nick: you
joe: search fordifferent topics and it will give you these kind of biology relevant numbers.
And so how many proteins are inside of a cell or
nick: how,
geo: so
joe: I put in, aboutskin and then it has the paper reference, which then I clicked on links becausethat’s what I do. And
nick: So it was just
geo: fun. Things
joe: and it saved mesome time on this weight
geo: of skin.
joe: On average isabout nine pounds or 4.1 kilograms for the folks who wanna go to metric.
The
nick: number of
joe: skin cells, about1 billion on average number of bacteria in skin, about 1 trillion. So that’s alot of bacteria, which we didn’t even talk about. The skin kind of, how wouldbend skin the bacterial that keeps that, that
geo: are very
joe: and beneficial?How are they living?
How are they getting along?
nick: Do you think hehas to [00:49:00] moisturize?
geo: when he gets
joe: fungal infection,like ringworm underneath those
geo: rocks. Yeah.What kind of lotion does he use?
nick: foot, athlete’sfoot there?
Jonathan: a story.Somebody needs to write that story.
nick: Yeah. I wouldjust assume the human torch is just Hey, I’ll get that. Hold on.
geo: 90% of the humanbody
joe: covered in hair. Ididn’t realize that, but that was
geo: how much? 90%.90%.
nick: Is that it?Density of
joe: procars, soprocars are bacteria. So these are organisms without a nucleus versuseukaryotes, which we are ourselves are eukaryotic.
The density of procars in the skin of humans. And this is cellsper centimeter squared. It’s about a thousand to 10,000 and you’re growing andunder your arm, it’s about a million. Per centimeter, per centimeter squared,or that’s about 0.78 inches squared for those who think in inches.
So that was and
geo: and this allcame from that one website,
joe: website. The
geo: term of
joe: in your entireepidermis is about 26 to [00:50:00] 27 days. Soyou got, so yeah, so you,
nick: it’s
geo: oh, all that,
nick: that dried dead
joe: skin you’regenerating, that’s you’re danner.
So that’s another for Ben. How’s he dealing with
nick: I thought itwould just be rock dust. No, that’s
geo: to us. That’s
Jonathan: that when,I wish that when skin generated, it would take scars away. ’cause I got
geo: yeah. So
joe: that was those aresome fun. And then I, the concentration on microbes in human gut, I just hadgot, I, that one was there and that’s in the tens of billions of cells and,number of human cells.
’cause it, this was something I always think about are we morebacteria than than human? But the number of total number of human cells in yourbody is about 10 to 30 trillion. So you’re, so you got about hundreds ofbillions of. Bacteria on you, in you, but you still are a little more human.
Just,
nick: Slightly morehuman than bacteria.
geo: Yeah.
nick: I don’t,
Jonathan: quitehuman. But
joe: yeah, that’sright.
geo: So there you go.There’s
Jonathan: I thinkthey’re more bacteria,
joe: so those are somefun, just some fun skin facts and others,
geo: But yeah, bio
joe: I can,
Jonathan: Oh, I’mdefinitely gonna be hitting that. I wrote [00:51:00]it down.
joe: yeah. Yeah.
geo: It’s a fun,
joe: and when I learnedof it, I was in a lecture and someone had these cool numbers and I went, I waslike, how do you get these, did you just guess at this stuff?
And they were like, no, there’s this website, bio numbers. Andthe first thing I did when I got back to my office pile numbers,
Jonathan: I love thatthere is nerd porn for scientists too.
nick: it exists.
joe: Like we, we keepit secret. It’s our
nick: own little
Jonathan: Like nerdporn for writers is the TV troops website. If you ever been to TV troops,
geo: oh,
Jonathan: that, allof the tropes of everything and a
joe: in there.
nick: Interesting.
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: days on it.I,
joe: Wow.
Jonathan: So much ofmy stuff’s on there and I, somebody said, oh, you’re on, I saw you on TV trope.
I’m like. TV tropes when there’s a whole bunch of my stuff andthey’re breaking witch tropes and which variations of tropes are used and soon. But I love the, that’s fun. I gotta grab that because, sometimes when ascientist in a story wants to, as Bob, that sort of thing when they’re infodumpy moment, you do want your details.
My science guy I normally go to, he [00:52:00]actually does work a day job. But so I have to catch him when he’s available.
geo: Yeah,
joe: you go. You canhave some numbers to throw out there
geo: and the paperreferences so
joe: you can look it upand see where to get the numbers. ’cause it is it was interesting. So there wasa lot of cool things in there, but yeah.
There you go. Yeah. So I
Jonathan: I knowwe’ve just about run outta time, but is there one, was there another topic onskin that we need to go back to that we didn’t cover?
geo: I
joe: do you guys,unless
geo: you havesomething
joe: you want to do,
nick: please. I havea whole list of
Jonathan: the
geo: We have another,yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah. Youmentioned the human torch
joe: Yep.
nick: yep.
Jonathan: how thehell does he not dehydrate? Like
joe: That’s right.
geo: So we’ll have,
joe: we’re gonna do anepisode on all the Fantastic Fours.
Jonathan: Okay.
joe: have,
geo: we actually
joe: are gonna have aDr. David Pincus from University of Chicago on for that episode. And so hejoined us for actually the permafrost episode,
geo: Was
nick: which was
joe: of the funniest
geo: episodes.
joe: yeah he kind ofstudies, the impact of environmental changes on organisms short term and longterm.
And one of the things [00:53:00]is heat stress and heat shock. So I think it, I
geo: so that’ll be agreat question for him.
joe: it would be. Yeah.We’ll pose that to
geo: him.
Jonathan: Ice Man.Ice Man
nick: Iceman. Yeah,that’s
joe: right now,
geo: Man. Oh yeah.
joe: Yes. So how doeshe live in that ice state? That’s a whole nother, that’s another episode Ithink.
nick: And movingthose arms with ice on him.
joe: without cracking.Yes.
geo: How’s he stayflexible?
Jonathan: I have, Ijust have this idea that somewhere there’s a DARPA lab where a couple of guysare trying to figure out how to make the sup, make the Fantastic Four
nick: Right.
joe: Yes.
nick: I’m in
geo: Cosmic Rays
joe: is not the answer.I’m gonna go right there.
geo: That’s,
nick: We can’t rollthat out yet, Joe. I will.
Jonathan: actually,one of the funny things is guys have seen Night of Living Dead, right? The
joe: yes.
nick: Yes, of course.
Jonathan: So one, oneof the conceits there is that the major theory in the first film is thatradiation from returning space probe. George Romero was a huge fan of theFantastic Four, and that was his nod to the
joe: interesting. Wow.
Jonathan: though onespace probe returning does not explain global, I [00:54:00]busted George a lot on this because,
geo: Neither livingDead. Was
joe: it truly global orwas it local? Just in Western Pennsylvania, because that was that clear
Jonathan: wanted itto be global because people were talking about it in Washington and other
joe: Okay. Yeah. Imight’ve been on the radio. Yep.
Jonathan: clearlywas, but the first one, he was the first one he actually expected it to be,defeated.
It was never intent to be a series, but he immediately, decidedto go further with it. His next film actually explored another aspect of it,the Crazies,
nick: Oh yeah. Of
joe: the
geo: I love thecrazies.
Jonathan: rage
joe: Yeah. That’sright.
Jonathan: That wewouldn’t have 28 weeks, 28 days
joe: That’s right. No,that’s exactly right.
Jonathan: genres,
joe: Yes. The crazieswas it. Yeah. Yeah. But
Jonathan: but Iactually wrote dead of Night because I wanted to as a, like a thank you note toGeorge Romero, how he and I became friends.
Actually, he read the book and loved it. We became friends. Wedid an anthology together. But I couldn’t stand that. The science made no sensein the book, in the movie. It me, 10 years old, it bugged me.
geo: right? Yeah.
Jonathan: The thing,the thing, his skin the [00:55:00] Hulk, hismass Reed Richards, every bodily function when he’s stretching.
joe: right. We have,we’re gonna have a MD on to Maria do at Northwestern University is gonna be onthat episode. So yeah, we’re gonna have, we’re gonna get into a little bit morescience. So the first. Was it Sue, we had a comic critic in review to open up theseries and now we’ve, we have you, Jonathan, on skin and yeah.
Then we have a couple scientists and a MD coming in to, toround out the fences of force. Yeah. So we’ll
Jonathan: befollowing these episodes. This is speaking to my nerdvana
geo: Yeah.
joe: yeah. No
geo: Science forweirdos.
joe: Science forweirdos is what someone told me. We, someone, we were out and someone said, oh,
geo: you do that
joe: And they go, yeah.It’s like we, I’ve been listening to it, it’s like science for weirdos andthat’s my thing, and
nick: I’m like,
joe: oh, I kinda likethat.
geo: It’s
nick: I
Jonathan: I, I thinkthat is dead on. Yeah. That’s, yeah.
geo: yeah. It’s beenjust
joe: a greatconversation
nick: thank you somuch for joining us.
geo: Go ahead and [00:56:00] plugs
joe: anything? You havesome new stuff coming out. I know for sure. So it’s,
Jonathan: yeah, I gotI, I’m, I got a lot of stuff going. I always have a lot of stuff coming out. Iwrote
geo: I saw your lastpost that you were outta
Jonathan: novel everythree minutes. Yeah.
joe: it said
geo: your brain wasoutta words.
nick: Yeah.
Jonathan: was, butI’ve already started the next novel.
nick: Novel,
joe: Congratulations.That’s awesome. Your inspiration to us young novelists
Jonathan: am I have agraphic novel coming out in June Joe Ledger and Violin Hearts and Minds, whichis a comic original story. Ba is set in my Joe Ledger world. Crystal lake isputting that out. And last year I had a really fun one was Godzilla versusKullu Comic.
geo: Oh, wow.
joe: Yep.
Jonathan: Comic orcome on games. But next up for me is the next Necro tech book deep Space Book,crafting Horror.
And we are in discussions with an anime company in Japan
joe: Cool.
Jonathan: based onthat series. Giant Me, mech Robots that Are Shape-Shifting piloted by the Ghostof Dead Pilots.
nick: Oh, damn.
joe: Yeah.
geo: Wow.
Jonathan: [00:57:00] the book that I just finished the otherday was the third in that series.
joe: That’s cool.
Jonathan: I love thefact I’m leaning more and more into science fiction these days.
I’ve got two different science fiction series running now. I.And it’s fun because, and this is one little thing I wanna just throw in beforeI skedaddle, is that one of the reasons I love working with scientists, talkingto experts in various fields for my books, there’s an old calm man saying, usenine truths to sell one lie that really applies great to any kind of fiction.
Because if you can build your fiction on a structure ofplausibility, it makes it so much easier for suspension of disbelief and alsothe trust when they know you’re stepping off that the top of that scaffold intofiction, they know that you’ve done your homework. So the fiction is gonna be areasonable extension of the non of the nonfiction, and they’ll go with you forthat.
But if you’re just making shit up so that you can tell ascience fiction story, there’s no structural basis to it, you’re only going toget the people who don’t know science. And that’s an increasingly small [00:58:00] number, I hope, because there’s a lot ofanti-science going on right now.
geo: right.
Jonathan: But
nick: Fingers
Jonathan: yourfingers crossed there are still people who want it to believe in it. They wantto believe that we can have superheroes. They want to believe that people cando this, that people will become stronger, that maybe somehow we’ll be able tosurvive a polluted planet and get wise enough to fix the planet.
So I love doing that. I love working with scientists. It’s fun.It’s so much fun for me to be on a podcast with people who understand scienceuntil I, that, that
joe: Thank
nick: you
geo: coming on andus. Yeah,
nick: What,
joe: Nick and Jordan
Jonathan: Nerds getit by extension. I’m not a scientist either, but all my science addictedfriends, we all love the fact that’s, that there’s real scientists out there
geo: right?
Jonathan: manyscientists are actually in the nerd
joe: Yeah.
nick: Oh, a hundred
joe: And I
geo: want,
joe: Jonathan, youdidn’t mention it, but we have some, I’m sure there’s some writer friends thatlisten, but you do a great masterclass series and so on different topics in thewriting, both [00:59:00] writing the art ofwriting, but also the business side of writing.
And, I’ve attended several
geo: of them
Jonathan: and they’refundraisers.
nick: And
joe: They’re alsofundraisers, right? The money goes to the no kill shelter or the
Jonathan: kill animalshelters, women’s shelters, homeless shelters. And these are programs thatprovide meals for children in, areas where they’re not getting it, family don’tenough income and 50 cents can buy a whole meal. I do a hundred percent of themoney from my workshops goes there.
It does a lot of good. And also, I hope people can use materialto get into the writing business because it’s more fun when there are more kidsin the playground.
nick: Definitely.
joe: No, so check itout, you writers out there,
nick: One lastquestion for you, if you don’t mind. Who is your favorite? Unbreakable skincharacter.
geo: Oh.
joe: oh,
geo: Oh, the
Jonathan: Oh, theHulk. I’m sorry.
geo: Yeah.
Jonathan: Sorry. Thething has always been my favorite unbreakable character because of the factthat he’s the hu the Hulk I liked, but the Hulk was Jekyll and Hyde with,dipped and green. The, it’s that, but the thing [01:00:00]he was always leaning into his humanism, An empathetic character and empath,when you have a character who looks like basically a big rock monster, butempathy is his trues super strength, man.
I gotta love a character like
nick: I’m so glad wehave you on this episode, because he is your favorite,
Jonathan: yeah. Andvery first comic I ever bought has him on the cover of it,
joe: Yeah.
Jonathan: 4 66.Believe that’s 1967. Good lord.
geo: That’s it.
joe: Awesome. Thanksagain for joining us. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, just a lot of cool nerdingout in pop culture,
nick: very much
Jonathan: and thanksfor inviting me on too. I had a lot of fun. I wish I had a little time rightnow, but I hope you guys will invite me back ’cause I’ll
joe: I will do. Yeah,no, definitely. No you already brought up several topics that we will have tohave you on now for, and, you know
nick: wait, are yougonna be the fourth rabbit in the hole?
joe: right.
Jonathan: And also I,with one of my upcoming classes, we haven’t set the date yet, but my, mymolecular biologist friend is going [01:01:00]to co-teach a class with me on working with
joe: Cool. That’d beawesome.
geo: That’s
Jonathan: be a lot offun too, ’cause a lot of writers don’t know how to ask the right questions andthey don’t know how to follow it down that rabbit hole into.
A plausible story and having a scientist on there would be fun.And if I’ll give you a free pass of that one, Joe, so you can join theconversation
joe: be fun. Yeah, no,
geo: and also theother way too, scientists don’t always know how to translate. That’s right.Their science communication is big,
joe: right?
That’s right. Yeah. And
geo: so they can use
A writer or they can use someone that the, the scientist just
joe: did a piece andthey, I was interviewed for, it was oh, it was like speculative fiction in, Howspeculative fiction and bench science kind of merge. And so they
Jonathan: that arecent
joe: of us.
It was, it came out last month. I can send you a link to it.Yeah, it was a fun, it was a few of us in it.
Jonathan: get thatand read it. I need to renew my subscription to the Scientist
joe: yeah. Yeah, no, itwas a fun article and had a couple quotes in there. So I was happy that [01:02:00] something came outta my interview.
Jonathan: I might betapping some information too. Getting a walk on in something.
geo: anytime, man,anytime I’ve helped
joe: other people ortried to help. ’cause sometimes people, you’re right they call and then they’relike, I wanna do this thing with this equipment. And I’m like, you can’t dothat thing with that equipment. Or there’s practical reasons why you won’t getthe image you think you’ll get, it’ll charge, it’ll look bad.
geo: And they go
joe: I need this is ifI can’t do it with that piece of equipment then my story fails. And I’m like
geo: you need,
Jonathan: story
nick: I’m like, weneed
geo: to, let’s have alonger conversation
joe: and figure thisout. And and some I, we did, it was like, you need this piece of equipment. Butthey’re like, but that’s not in that room.
And I’m like you need to have this scene happen in this roomnow because, so yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah. I’veactually had to repl whole novels because I talked to a scientist and found outthat my assumption, like writers, we have a lot of information in our head.Doesn’t mean we’re experts on it, but it’s enough to get us into trouble orhopefully to ask the right questions.
And I had this really great idea for something and I asked to acouple people who were into [01:03:00] nuclearscience, power plants and so on. My idea made no sense. It was laughably naive.I was like, oh shit. Glad I didn’t write the book. ’cause my editor didn’t knowit was a bad idea
Working with scientists, big important thing.
geo: Yeah, no.
joe: And experts andthings like that. No, it’s awesome.
geo: I’m
Jonathan: I’m theexpert that a lot of my friends tap for
geo: Martial arts.
nick: know. Yeah. I
joe: I was that’sawesome. I have a a friend, I don’t know if he joined the last one, I told himhe should get on, but I know he has a lot of action and fighting scenes and hedid wrestling and jiujitsu, so I was like, oh, you should jump on, becauseJonathan, he’s, that’s his background, especially writing those scenes andgetting it across.
Jonathan: Years now.
joe: yeah. Yeah.
geo: Cool. I
joe: know you need torun and so
Jonathan: stuff, sothanks. This guy, guys. I can hang with you
geo: I
nick: know. Yeah. I’mlike, Hey,
joe: That’s why I’mlike, Hey,
Jonathan: I will behappy to come back and and nerd out with you guys again.
nick: Absolutely.Anytime. Thank you.
geo: Thank you. Havea good night. Cheers.
nick: Thank you.
Jonathan: bye.
geo: Bye.
joe: you have me, Joe.
geo: We got Nick. Wegot
joe: Nick, we’ve got
geo: Georgia.
Georgia,
joe: and we’ve
nick: gone down some[01:04:00]
geo: holes,
joe: some tough skin
nick: tough skin.
joe: I dunno.
nick: Bye-bye.
joe: Hey, you stay safeout there. Stay strong.

Transcript: Fantastic 4 series: Episode 37: Sue Storm Richards: Invisibility

Click link to listen or search Rabbit Hole of Research where you find your other podcasts:
EP37: Sue Storm and Invisibility* What does it take—biologically—for a human to vanish? Guest: Writer and cultural critic Nick Ulanowski.

Transcript:

joe: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the Rabbit Hole ofResearch down here in the basement studio. As
nick: who’s talking?I can’t tell. I hear a voice, but I don’t see anyone Stop it.
joe: Stop it. Lemme getmy intro
geo: I can’t seeanything
joe: guys now doingthis thing here
nick: where we
joe: you just starttalking over me. Come on. Yeah, we are going to go over the Fantastic Four andso there’s four members and so we’re gonna do four episodes and today we’regonna be talking about the Invisible Woman.
Sue Storm,
geo: And ininvisibility in general,
joe: invisibility inother characters who kind of factor in there. So yeah. We do have a guestjoining us on the Zooms. So you wanna introduce yourself?
nick_u: I’m NickRomanowski. I’m the author of MasterCard at The Comic Shop. It’s a horror novelabout a comic shop owner, his friends are, and his friends and regularcustomers, and a mask toxic fan, killing them off at the chainsaw. I’ve alsowritten comic book reviews for CBR, formerly known as [00:01:00]comic book resources.
However, I’m now writing comic book reviews and reporting oncomic book news on Substack at starving author.substack.com.
joe: Yep. And we’llthrow that in the show notes so you guys can find that and go check out Nickand stuff. He writes about, he does great reviews, so I’ve been reading themand. My college comic knowledge has improved greatly. So it
geo: a long ways togo, but
joe: I’m not saying I’mat the the pinnacle yet, but,
nick: Thanks forjoining us, Nick.
joe: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Soyou wanna jump in? Do this
nick: Yeah. You got alist for us, Joe?
joe: I’m gonna do I’mgonna do it a description. I’ve been doing descriptions, like descriptionheavy, so I’m gonna go
geo: can
joe: a littledescription
geo: no lists.
joe: have lists. Ialways have lists.
You’re just not gonna get
geo: I’m not sure whyyou’re
joe: I’m not sure whyyou’re, we’re gonna get into
geo: between list
joe: I kind of wannatalk about, introduce the Fantastic four. Oh, okay. Maybe some people don’tknow who the Fantastic Four are.
nick: Yes. Who arethe Fantastic
geo: to say I wasn’tthat interested until I saw Pedro [00:02:00]Pascal gonna be in the movie. Now I’m really interested.
nick: George waslike, I have a crush on Pedro.
joe: Yeah. There you
nick: go.
geo: So
nick: anyway yeah,the
joe: Fantastic Four,they’re a fictional superhero team. They were created by Stanley and JackKirby. They first appeared in Fantastic Four, number one in 1961. For MarvelComics and they were Marvel’s first superhero team of the modern era and kindof established a more human, flawed and family driven style that defined Marvelstorytelling.
nick: AKA, the firstfamily,
joe: AKA,
nick: the firstfamily.
joe: And there’s fourmembers, so I’ll go over their powers. Like I said, we’re gonna have an episodeon each Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic. He can stretch his body, compress,reshape. He’s a brilliant scientist, dabbles in engineering and, exploring theboundaries of science In the multiverse we have Johnny Storm, human Torch.
He his pyro Canis so he can send his body ablaze fly Projectfire [00:03:00] And his background, he’s Sue’syounger brother, cocky, impulsive. Often comic relief.
nick: And
joe: we have Ben Grime.He’s the thing. And he has supernatural strength and near and vulnerableorange, rocky skin. He is Reed’s best friend, a former astronaut test pilot,has to deal with the pain of his transformation.
He’s the only one that became disfigured in all this. And thenthe woman of the hour is Susan Storm, the Invisible woman. Her power isinvisibility and she can force field generation background. She was initiallyportrayed as a team’s heart and emotional center, but later developed into atactical powerhouse.
She’s a second in command and her powers are among the mostversatile and potentially the most powerful in the Marvel universe. So that’sthe four. And just their origin story. ’cause every good comic story has anorigin story because they took an unauthorized space mission. To study cosmicrays.
Yeah, I’m [00:04:00] always,
geo: And
joe: the minute you sayunauthorized, something bad’s gonna happen. All four who are exposed to intenseradiation, but instead of dying their body’s mutated, giving each member thepowers that we just discussed when they’re based on their personalities. So readintelligent, flexible, mentally flexible sue, social invisible literal kind ofinvisibility.
Johnny Hotheaded, he became he,
geo: what was that?
joe: I don’t know.
nick: think that camefrom Joe, probably he became
joe: his fire powersand then tough exterior. Literally the thing with the rocky exterior. So Ithink I’ll stop there and dive in. We can talk we have the comic itself and therole that Sue plays, but then we have the biology of how one.
Might get or become invisible.
nick: So it ispossible.
geo: Yeah. What’s theplausibility of
joe: It’s a significantamount of handwaving.
geo: How many bigMacs would you have to eat to become invisible?
joe: It’s swing back tohow[00:05:00]
geo: although youprobably, it goes the other way, right?
joe: You would, no youneed to to become invisible.
And there are animals that, that have some transparency or nearinvisibly mostly marine organisms, like jellyfish x-ray fish,
nick: They don’t turntransparent. They are transparent. They are
joe: exactly right. Soyou have to
geo: Like I was gonnasay, like in a certain situation, they become more transparent.
joe: They, no, they’realways transparent, but you have to,
nick: to get there,you’re gotta say, we have something.
geo: there are somebiology
joe: Yeah, that’sright. Okay. And in cephalopods, cuddle fish, octopuses, squids, they cancamouflage, they have mechanisms to actually blend in.
And so they have, on the fly almost so not invisible onceagain, have to manipulate their.
nick: whole body.
Body
joe: to right tochange, so
nick_u: do you mindif I add a little something to your synopsis
joe: Yeah. That’s I,yes, please.
nick_u: Absolutely. Ithink that it should also be noted that, there’s a superhero. The super genreis very versatile a lot of ways, and [00:06:00]the Fantastic Four often used to tell more science fiction centered stories,necessarily hero teams.
I think that’s important to,
joe: Yeah
nick: I do feel likethey also have a little bit more human aspects to them. There’s more dramabetween the four members. Of themselves,
joe: Yeah.
nick_u: AlthoughMarvel’s whole thing in the sixties was that they were, oh, DC at the time, allthe superheroes were Godlike and Marvel came in we’re gonna give real, we’regonna establish real people with real problems, with flaw, with character flawsthat DC didn’t have at the time. And now that’s a lot more common in superherostories, but at the time it was a lot less prevalent.
And I would say the X-Men have probably actually have even more
nick: oh, a hundredpercent. Yeah.
nick_u: But yeah.
geo: and the factthey’re a family too. That’s,
nick: Yeah.
joe: Yeah, no, I thinkthat’s the storytelling elements in there and that’s a good point you madeabout being more sci-fi than just a typical action comic was that one of thefirst [00:07:00] kind of
nick: Sci-fi
joe: Of
nick_u: There was alot of weird stuff in the golden Age, but certainly, since in the sixties itwas definitely known for being more sci-fi.
joe: Yeah, definitely.And, getting their powers. That was
nick: Definitely. And
geo: have a question
It’s the mom and dad,
nick: right?
joe: No, it’s justhusband, wife, a younger brother of Sue, and then best friend of
geo: So no kids. No
joe: No kids.
nick: No, not yet.Okay. They come later down the line. Okay. Oh,
geo: you’re spoilingit.
nick: I am sorry thatyou are not caught up on your comic books.
geo: actually,anything you say today will spoil
joe: it. Did
nick: the
joe: the
and half powers,
nick: I believe bothof them do correct. Nick?
nick_u: Yeah, Ibelieve so. Yeah.
nick: They have twokids. Because
geo: when you werefirst talking about it I automatically was picturing the Incredibles.
joe: The Incredibles.Yeah. No, I think that’s a
geo: And I was likebut then I was thinking, oh, that’s interesting, because their kids were reallyyoung but the, [00:08:00] these weren’t kids.
These were like the
nick: Okay.
joe: Going on anunauthorized space journey.
geo: Got it.
nick: But you’re
joe: right, theIncredibles, like when you watch it, the styling of the Incredibles.
Probably mid, mid modern and 60 esque, and I think it was adefinite kind of, nod to the Fantastic four in their setup.
nick_u: It definitelywas. There’s people who say that there can’t be a fan, a good, fantastic horrormovie, and that’s absolutely not true. Look at The Incredibles,
joe: yeah.
nick: A hundredpercent.
joe: That’s right.Which is, yeah, hopefully in the new movie I do
nick: have high hopesfor it, but I really hence why we’re doing this series. Yeah. I have high hopesfor this. And I think
geo: you always haveto kinda keep your expectations like moderate
joe: Some of that,
nick: that,
geo: sometimes youlike hype yourself, Yeah.
Out
nick: of
geo: enjoyingsomething. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? I
joe: mean?
I think it also with the MCU, and this goes to the movie that’scoming out and their story, their general, when they stick to their characterbuilding and they [00:09:00] have a compellingvillain. They have compelling protagonists, heroes, and they complete thosestories. I think those are the best MCU movies. I think it gets complicatedwhen they try to weave in other storylines and then they dilute
geo: Oh, we’replanning on making that movie in five years and we wanna make a tie in, solet’s just throw this random character.
And it’s
nick: but with itbeing Marvel’s first family, I feel like they are going to be sticking more tothe story building of the characters.
joe: Yeah. Andintroducing Doom. I know, right? So that’s, that was one of their majorvillains besides, and the Silver Surfer Galacto, like you, you see these otherstorylines are gonna come in, but you just can’t throw it all in one movie and,
nick_u: Yeah. AndDOMA is a very compelling character ’cause he believes he’s right, all thebest, all believe that they’re a good guy in some way,
geo: and then I thinkit’s interesting, like you said, that it’s a brother and a
nick: sister,
joe: so Yes.
geo: Wanda, [00:10:00] right?
joe: And her brother,
nick: Paid
geo: maybe that Ijust, is there very many brother and sister
nick: Superhero,teens?
joe: Yes. I think thereare a few.
nick: Yeah,
joe: You’re right thatthey, yeah,
geo: I don’t know.
I just,
joe: Yeah.
nick_u: Yeah, that, Ican’t think of too many other than
nick: Yeah.
joe: It’s yeah, thereare, but
nick: We’ll throw itin the footnotes. Yeah.
joe: We’ll get in theshow notes there. We’ll look at that. We’ll
geo: I think thatautomatically becomes an interesting dynamic
joe: Yeah. You, I wouldimagine that in the X-Men kind of storyline, there would be more siblinginteractions.
’cause if one sibling got. Mutant power is you wouldpotentially, there’s high potential that the other sibling would also have somelevel of power,
nick: Scott Summershas a brother that also has, yeah. Superpower or is also a mutant
joe: Reen and sabertooth. They’re brothers technically, yeah. Yeah.
geo: So you saidthat, and I’m sorry, are already forgot her name.
Is it[00:11:00]
nick: Sue.
joe: Sue. Sue Susan.
geo: You said she wassecond in command? Second in command.
joe: Second in command
nick: who’s Reed?
joe: Reed?
geo: and
joe: the husband.
geo: Okay. Is herhusband.
nick: husband.
joe: Mr. Fantastic.We’ll talk all about him in his own episode.
geo: Yeah. Yeah. Idon’t, eh, we can wait on him, but okay.
joe: Yeah, you get intothat also with Sue being, she’s the woman of the team and she has invisibilityand Nick touched on like the, some of the sixties themes, but one just womenempowerment and that was part of her story arc, and she started out. Limited inher powers
nick_u: that soundsright. Yeah
joe: yeah. They regaher
geo: do you thinkthat she was limited in her powers or she just held back because she was awoman
joe: Prior the story inthe comics, she was, she had limited powers. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
geo: then she wasable through something that
nick: happened,
joe: all comic books.
They, yeah. New authors, new writers.
geo: they go to, didthey go on another unauthorized trip?
joe: No, I don’t thinkthey did. I think it was just, that, that they had a storyline gets clipped andthey [00:12:00] had, but they enhanced theirpowers with that, the force field. So instead of just being invisible, she thencould cast these, she did some of that, but she could do it much more extreme.
Like she could build the force field inside of someone andexplode ’em essentially. You could just, wow. Only think about, and then shecould control the entire visible white spectrum. So not just her own body, butshe could start to manipulate, make weapons, make, it was yeah.
So she had this, her voice got stronger too in thestorytelling. But also that’s that idea that women are invisible and then, theygo to this kind of position of power
geo: and some,
joe: yeah. Yeah. Yeah.And I think
geo: in some ways,women’s power can be their invisibility.
Because you just ignore, like you just disregard.
And then that’s when the person has
Sneaks up on you with their great power.
nick: is that whywomen make great spies? Exactly.
geo: I think that’sexactly right.
nick: real andfictional. Yeah,
geo: because you
nick: black widow, [00:13:00] that whole operation is females that are,yeah. I think that’s assassin essence.
joe: That’s right.
Right.
nick_u: I think onthis note it we should acknowledge Ms. Marvel, which later became captain, backin the seventies I believe, that was actually pretty controversial that hername was Ms. Marvel. ’cause it was viewed as being very feminist. And I get alot of angry letters about that.
nick: Yeah.
joe: Yeah. Yeah, andeven in the comic world, there’s some, a lot of progressive storytelling.
We highlight the X-Men, they’re probably the most allegory ofcivil rights, but I think they, Stan and Jack, they really weaved in these kindof social issues through their storytelling. So and
geo: I have animportant question. So when she would turn invisible her suit, her super suitwould also turn
joe: What’s that?
nick: That’s
geo: do they everexplain that? Except they did in the
nick: read, readcreated a, what was it? Unstable fabric?
joe: Yeah. I forgetwhat yeah.
nick: Could adapt totheir powers, which is why.
Her clothes go invisible with her, but later on she is able to [00:14:00] change all of her clothes. Invisible aswell as other people.
joe: That’s right.That’s
geo: can change otherpeople to
joe: could make otherfolks
Yeah.
nick: Okay. If she’son a mission with Reed or they’re out somewhere,
joe: What
nick: I was readingsomething recently and she had both her and Reid go invisible.
geo: that’s handy.
joe: So then I thinkher power essentially is that she can bend light around her body. So inmatching the index or refractive index. Of what her surroundings. So that’s theway to power. And then she can extend that
nick: to someone
joe: to cover otherpeople. And Ben so you’re projecting some sort of, you’re projecting a field.
geo: So is there anyplausibility for to have clothing that would go invisible?
joe: go invisible
geo: You know what Imean? Because there’s like probably no, like a person probably can’t goinvisible. But can clothing go
joe: You can. I meanyou, so there are technologies now where using materials that you can bend thelight and essentially reflect what’s [00:15:00]behind and to front.
So that, as you look at it a couple ways, it could be thematerial, but also gonna be cameras. If you have cameras set up, you then cancreate a projection that would fool you and have you look at that. So thosetechnologies do exist, but they’re materials or equipment, they’re not,
geo: they seemcumbersome.
joe: Yeah.
Lot of, there are folks who characters who go invisible thathave. Potentially tiger from the Thundercats he has the belt and that’s whatgives him his invisibility. And generates the field, if you think of it thatway. Not an innate biological phenomenon.
nick_u: Do you knowoffhand when Susan Storm got more powers? Was that in Jonathan Hickman’s run?Because I know that’s when, that’s the, those are some of the very belovedmodern fantastic four
joe: yeah. I don’t knowthe exact
geo: Who was
joe: was writing thatstoryline, but Yeah.
nick: I’m so bad withknowing who’s write, who I’m reading from, like currently I’m trying to gothrough what was like the last few like story runs I’ve been reading and it’s [00:16:00] oh man, there’s so many of them that I’vegone through and I’m like, oh wait, which one are we on now?
But go ahead.
geo: Oh, I haveanother question related to the physical things being
nick: invisible.
geo: how plausiblethat is. And I think that’s a very important question, but is it possible tohave an invisible jet?
joe: They are workingon materials that would be able to do that, right? If you just, you reflectrain.
The whole idea is to bend light around optically fool the eye,right? That’s, yes, they’re working on that type of thing. I know there’stanks, ships, all sorts of, and if it’s a material thing, they can do it. It’sreally the person that you would go and that’s, so it’s a little bit ofbiology, so her powers are even more kind of awe-inspiring because not only isshe invisible to the eye where you bend light, okay, maybe we can figure out a [00:17:00] machine or something to do that.
But she’s also visible from infrared. She’s invisible her smelllike so no one smells her. So you have all these things that also no heat
geo: and sound. Isthe sound totally gone?
joe: think she stillcan talk. You can hear, she’s, her thermal signature is gone. Wow. So you’remanipulating all of this the MAs stat.
So that, that’s where this idea of the field, the force fieldmakes sense. So if you generate some sort of forward field that you emanate outof your skin or your body, then you can start to explain these other thingsthat happen. Along there that she cannot be detected. So
geo: Back to theInvisible Jet. No I always
joe: I didn’t wanted toget to this,
geo: no, that’s my
nick: only
joe: you’re here isWonder Woman that’s gonna say Wonder Woman,
nick: I know.
geo: And those werelike my favorite episodes, but they were so silly because she’s flying along inthe air and you could totally see her, but you know what I mean? Her jet wasinvisible, but she still, you could see her flying in there. So that was just
joe: I [00:18:00] think she would turn invisible also in areal world. Like
nick: yeah, itwouldn’t make sense just to have because then you could see the rest of thestuff inside
joe: Hey, look, there’sa lady. It looks like Wonder Woman
geo: that’s justsitting there flying through the air
nick_u: feel likemodern writers have moved away from the invisible jet thing ’cause
joe: Yeah. Yeah.
geo: Oh
joe: So you do havelike vehicles in, in movies. There’s tons of those. The Visible Jet, the shieldhe carrier the Rolin, Warbird and Star Trek. The Predator goes invisible.
geo: and thepredator. You saw the heat signature though, right?
nick: I don’t
joe: know. He would seeother people’s heat signatures.
Oh, that’s right. Yeah. He had the, but I don’t know. I guessno one ever looked, but he,
geo: that would’vebeen a smart thing
joe: He bleeds and youcan kill him. Yeah, the the Quinjet.
geo: Was gonna say,in like some of the modern Marvel movies, right? That’s right. Hasn’t thathappened?
joe: Yep.
Yep. The Blackbird and the
nick: the X-Men
joe: the Tardis. Wejust had the doctor [00:19:00] episode earlierthis season. But yeah, the TARDIS does become invisible to people. The Observercan’t look at it because that’s the other I
nick: I thought itturns into something that blends in. Yeah,
joe: I thought it could
geo: more likecamouflage.
nick: like camouflagealso.
I thought it was more camouflage than Goes Invisible. I couldbe wrong. I don’t remember. That episode was a while back.
joe: we gotta bring theexpert back in Dr. Who fan. Chime in there. Let us know.
nick: So I, why doesinvisibility go hand in hand with a force field like. I feel like those
joe: Yeah. Yep.
nick: yeah. Arepretty hand in hand with damier every care hero that has that power.
joe: I think it’seasier to explain, right? So we had to make a human or anything invisible. Wehave a lot of problems. You might go, okay, skin is transparent. But if youlook at like the aquatic examples, I point out earlier, you still see theirbones, their organs your blood is pigmented.
So the hemoglobin, so you [00:20:00]gotta de pigment that. Your bone structures certain organs, your eyes, you havepigments that produce colors throughout your body. So to go invisible, youwould have to find some means to get rid of all of that, and so that’s
geo: But you’resaying, but you’re saying with a force field, it’s possible,
nick: or is that justthe bubble that keeps it encased?
joe: yes, That’s thebubble that you’re hiding in. It’s like a cloak then.
geo: Okay. And I wasgonna say, I really dislike someone and I don’t want to talk about their booksand I don’t even wanna bring it up. But I also enjoyed,
nick: got beef andthis is Georgia’s beef corner.
Can
geo: talk about theinvisibility cloak without talking about
joe: Oh yeah.
geo: who had that?
nick: So
joe: the, that’s, thatconcept has been used throughout mythology. So you can talk about the cloak ofArthur. That’s King Arthur mantle of invisibility and mythology, welsh’smythology kind of thing.
Or the rings of the Gorges. So there’s all sorts of referencesto a [00:21:00] physical object that allows youto become invisible. And the cloak is, one of these things that this particularauthor used I think a lot these elements were scattered through folklore and,mythology.
So Sure. You could
geo: we can just skip
joe: Yeah, you’re gonnaskip. Yeah. I see.
nick: and
geo: talk about Yeah.
nick: So
joe: So you can go backto the
nick: I don’t knowwhich one you’re talking about. Georgia. Yes.
geo: you do.
joe: you’re you are,where you’re just bending light, right? You’re reflecting light and you’rematching then the index of the surroundings, right?
So when light passes through things or interacts with somethingit reflects, it bends, refracts, and so can you use that and can you just bendthe light? So essentially, light rays are hitting everything. So can you justbend a light around you from what’s behind you? So that way then when you look,it’s oh, I don’t see you, I see what’s behind you.
So if you have a cloak like that made outta some mythicalmaterial or has some sort of magical powers. Or an energy source, and it’s got,so right. So then you can just do that. You can have it and hide [00:22:00] behind it. So yeah, the cloth, actually,the cloak may be the most plausible of all the invisibility,
geo: and why is thatmore plausible than like a
nick: vehicle? Is itbecause it covers the whole you?
geo: any, anythingthat’s like a physical thing that’s not a human
joe: non biology. Yes,that’s right. Yes. Okay. So there’s the bi the biology to get to someone that’sinvisible. You could start, you go, okay, that’s difficult.
But there could be other things, like it could be some sort ofquantum kind of shift. So I. The observer effect, we talked the observer effectwhere once you look at something, it locks it into some state. The weepingangels in the Dr. Who,
nick: so have yougone back to Dr. Who recently? I’m going back. You feel like you’ve beenbringing it
geo: like he needs toI
nick: He’s trying toredeem himself. Yeah.
geo: he’s got a lotof ground to
joe: I got a lot ofbeef for only watching a couple episodes,
nick: so
joe: Don’t stop givingme a hard time. I was like the Lord of the Rings. I get there. I get
nick: Which I’mshocked that you haven’t brought up that the ring turns ferdo invisible.
joe: You to talk aboutthat.
nick: Oh, you did.You just did.
joe: this is a perfect,[00:23:00]
nick: So
joe: you, this is agreat segue. Thank you, Nick. That’s why, because I was gonna say that if youare tapping into the multiverse that you are, you may not be invisible, but youmay have gone to another.
Dimensional space and therefore,
geo: and that’s whathappened in Lord of the Rings, he went to another
joe: Yeah.
nick: it was,
joe: yeah. Some fi it
nick: was, oh,
geo: Ooh, anotherdimension like Twilight Zone.
joe: is there aninvisibility episode?
geo: Oh my gosh, Idon’t know. I gotta do some research.
nick: Can’t believeyou Georgia,
joe: But you could havethat type
geo: I bet you thereis, don’t
joe: that type ofthing. And I always think of when I think of that as an infants and their, theconcept of permanence.
nick: Oh, so likeplaying peekaboo.
joe: They playing
geo: They love peek
nick: invisible tothem.
joe: You do. Yeah. Soit
nick: is,
geo: just disappear.
joe: So you could do,That was the thing with the
geo: I can’t waittill we have video for
joe: Oh my gosh.
geo: that
joe: but the shadow inthe thirties. He was a noir detective, pro nore, ’cause thirties that what [00:24:00] happened and he was manipulate minds.
He had a cloud of kind of illusion and people would not see himand
nick_u: that sounds,yeah. And yeah, he predates a lot of pretty much any superhero,
joe: Yeah. Yeah. That’sright. Yeah.
geo: Yeah. I wasactually thinking about that. Maybe it was, it wouldn’t even be that someonewouldn’t see it, but that someone’s controlling that person’s mind where theydon’t see
joe: That’s right.Yeah. Yeah. So you could do that. You could become, so there’s a number of waysto get there without. Trying to,
geo: though that ispretty, not very plausible
These are not the droids you’re looking for.
joe: That’s right.Yeah.
nick: I,
geo: droids areinvisible.
joe: I’ll say that theFantastics four science nose dives into hand avium early on with theirinteractions with the cosmic these cosmic particles these high energy. Sourcesof energy bombarding their bodies. Generally, 99.99% of the time you’re gonnadie a horrific, normally cancerous tumorous death.
geo: Normally that is[00:25:00] not,
nick: but there’s achance, is what you’re telling me. I’m
joe: yes. Yeah,
nick: There still isa chance, but
joe: we have a soup, wehave a meal and a suit. That’s a and a spaceship. Let’s go.
geo: It’s likethinking, oh, it’s a good idea to go in a little tiny submarine and under thewater. That sounds like a good idea.
joe: Yes. No, I thinkit’s a,
nick: a
nick_u: and that,that’s a lot of oh, superhero, super villain origin stories though. But likerealistically, they would just die. Electro for instance, got electrocuted andit became a,
nick: Sandman. It’salways some kind of experiment gone wrong.
joe: Yeah.
nick_u: right.
nick: But
joe: did, since we leftthat small door open, I think one you could go, maybe as they passed and he isgot bombarded by these cosmic rays
nick: Okay.
joe: that potentiallytheir ship could have had some level of shielding.
geo: And
joe: so our selectiveprotection, so maybe as they were getting [00:26:00]bombarded, that’s why their powers are different. It affected ’em differently.Maybe the radiation activated dormant kind of genes transposons or theseretroviruses that are contained in our bodies and started to do careful geneticand what you have.
Is you essentially they probably speciate in real time.
nick: So
joe: they
nick: became, is itpossible that they were mutants that got accelerated along the lines of aninhuman? And
geo: and thosemutations are what got activated.
nick: That’s
joe: exactly right.That’s where I was headed. The speciation.
Because now they’re just they’re the proto X-Men.
geo: It’s like thatexact perfect.
Moment in the exact Perfect.
joe: So that’s why
nick: circumstancesmade this
joe: And that’s why Iwas asking
geo: And that’s why Iwas asking, it’s kinda like Dr. Strange would say that is a one in a like 5trillion chance that
joe: I don’t think hesaid 5 trillion, but
geo: know. I’m justmaking that
nick: up.
joe: I was gonna say,that’s why I asked about the Children’s, because mutants, if you look at theX-Men story, when mutants have kids, [00:27:00]they generally have powers. The Incredibles, they have their kids off, sobecause those are genetic inheritable traits. But if they were not, they werepoint mutations, they didn’t infect the kind of your genome of your
nick: sperm.
joe: and egg, that’s,when you have kids, they would just be normal human kids.
nick: So wouldn’t youneed to have another super to the, alright, so
joe: I dunno wherewe’re going.
nick: This is, if theIncredible Hulk
joe: Yes.
nick: was with anyoneother than a superhero, wouldn’t it still hold a massive amount of radiation?
joe: So Go ahead Nick.You
nick_u: No I actuallyjust didn’t understand the question.
joe: Oh yeah.
nick: so
joe: this isreproductive biology 1 0 1 here.
nick: We all knowthat. The incredible hu is it’s extremely radiated. He has all kinds of riddledradiation,
geo: it probablywouldn’t even be safe to get [00:28:00] busywith.
nick: Exactly. Unlessit he’s with another super. That can withstand that.
joe: But he doesn’temanate radiation, does he? He, in a, especially MCU, comics, he’s around
geo: I think he he,
joe: I think he wasjust mutated.
P got the large blast of gamma
geo: What about thefact that he stayed the incredible
nick: ho now
geo: Now that hasnothing to do with it. Nevermind
nick: Yeah.
nick_u: yeah. Thewhole thing with units is that they’re born
nick: But if itaffects, but
joe: if you I think thepoint is of that. If you become, and I think that was a line in some of theX-Men storylines, like who is considered a mutant and who isn’t? Do you havepowers that you were innately born with? Or did you inherit the powers becauseyou licked the rock and you
geo: you, are youjust really wealthy and you can build it in a cave
nick: Scraps?
nick_u: Okay.
joe: where’s the thatidea of speciation that, that was magneto’s push, was that the mutants were thenext evolutionary step of humans. Like they, [00:29:00]they became speciated to something else, but from a total species, they stillcould reproduce with regular heat.
So
nick_u: yeah. Hohomo,
joe: Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
nick_u: Yeah. Yeah.And yeah.
nick: But
joe: yeah.
nick_u: I was justhomo superior instead of homo.
joe: superior, right?Is that what that was it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
geo: I think that’sdefinitely his point of view, right?
joe: Yeah. No, and asNick pointed out earlier, that the villains often think they’re a hundredpercent correct and,
nick: But likeMagneto was,
geo: I was gonna say,I was gonna say you have these special powers.
You, you and these special mutations. You are superior, right?You, if you’re stronger, faster, or whatever, that makes you, what are youdefining as
joe: superior?
nick: You know whatI’m saying?
nick_u: Magneto isone of those characters that there’s a lot of different interpretations of him.I think sometimes he’s more right. Sometimes he’s less Right. Depending onwho’s writing
nick: Exactly. Yeah.It’s like sometimes he’s written, even though he’s still [00:30:00] a bad guy, he’s a hero. It makes sense,or,
joe: or,
nick_u: Yeah.
nick: but it dependson who he’s going against and what side he’s standing against.
geo: seems so muchmore realistic.
nick: Oh, a hundredpercent.
joe: Yeah. Very nuancedapproach to that.
geo: Okay. I wantedto bring up something, but I should have done a little research,
joe: Okay.
nick: but
geo: Kevin Macon,
joe: The Invisible man.
geo: No. Wasn’t itHollow Man?
Was it called Hollow
joe: I don’t know. Theydidn’t not get the IP to invisible.
I don’t, and Right. But yes, it was hollow man, but I think itwas just the invisible man and,
nick: and
geo: I’m just like,you know how I’m number one fan? And Kevin, if you are listening, I’m numberone fan. But
nick: she has a lotof number one fans,
joe: your number onefan.
geo: And I guess thisgoes back to the invisible man, I can’t remember what happened that made himinvisible.
nick: Yeah.
joe: There was aformula
nick_u: Yeah, he was,it was an experiment that went wrong.
joe: Yeah. Again, itwas an unauthorized experimentation.[00:31:00]
geo: So he was liketrying to do something else, and then he realized
nick: he was, I
geo: I can’t, I justcan’t remember. All I can remember is
nick_u: Wasn’t hetrying to make
joe: invisible? Yeah.That was his goal was to become invisible. So he, it, I guess it succeeded.
Yeah. But then he went
nick_u: Yeah.
geo: yeah.
joe: and all sorts ofstuff. Yeah. But he changed the reflective, the refractive index of his body.That was the idea. That’s that we were talking about. You’d have to do. But he,it clothes didn’t disappear, so he was just be walking around
nick_u: So how muchof a tangent would it be to talk about ghosts or is that a whole other episode?
joe: We are planning aghost episode, but Yeah. If you wanna touch on it. Yeah. Go forward. Yeah.’cause they were. Yeah.
nick_u: Yeah. I I wasjust I’m just thinking that there’s a lot of ghosts and fiction, including incomics, there’s a comic called Cyrus Perkins in the Haunted Taxi Cab, which isa very indie comic, but it is all about, how this guy can’t be seen. He’sinvisible and how frustrated he feels with that.
I know with ghost, sometimes they have, it’s, they leavetrails. I can’t think of [00:32:00] the termoffhand, but yeah, I just, that’s, something that we see a lot in fiction. Theghosts are invisible,
nick: definitely.
joe: are. Yep. As youdon’t see ’em, they’re
geo: Except sometimesin
nick: likephotographs and stuff.
joe: Yeah, inphotographs.
geo: No,
nick: look at thisphotograph. Georgia.
geo: They have allthose things where yeah,
nick: but so whenyou’re talking about ghosts being
joe: invisible. Yeah.But
nick: they do havethat ability to make themselves known, right?
So would that be a power of them then? ‘ cause they are able toshow themselves, but their regular state is so it’s like a reverse invisibility, right?
nick_u: Yeah. I thinkit depends on another thing that depends on the writer. I think Ghost Ghostsare sometimes that way, and sometimes they’re not. I know the Remember Me booksby Christopher Pike, there were also, there was also about, the character beinga ghost and frustrated with not being seen, and she couldn’t make herself seen.
nick: Yeah. Yeah.
joe: No ghosts. Yeah,you’re right. I don’t know what their base state is.
nick: Because I feellike in any story, ghosts can always see other [00:33:00]ghosts, but humans can’t always see the ghost.
nick_u: Yes. Thatsounds accurate. Yeah.
nick: I feel like itwould be the willingness to wanna be seen in that.
Where for invisibility, it’s the willingness to not wanna beseen. I don’t know.
joe: Or to, it could bethe perception of the observer. So you have that, you also have that to keep inmind is that, are you prepared to see what and believe?
I think there’s that’s the other idea. There’s some belief andthings like that cooked into the ghost lore.
nick: We’ll find outsoon enough, Joe. We’re
joe: We’re gonna findout soon enough,
geo: And this is atotal tangent, but like daredevil. Okay. Daredevil is blind, so he can’t see.But then he does see
nick: everything
geo: and that’sbecause it’s like he can hear echo,
joe: Yeah. I thinkthat’s his ability there. Yep.
nick: So would he beable to pick up Sooth storm?
Like
nick_u: I guess youwould
joe: he would. Hewould, yeah. Yeah.[00:34:00]
nick_u: Done beforein
joe: Yeah.
geo: It was done.
nick_u: I wonder ifthere’s a comic where that has been done
joe: over. Yeah.
geo: Oh yeah. That’sa good question.
joe: she, yeah, it’sinteresting because he relies on the echolocation, but also smell and heatsignatures. He picks up on all of sensory is, and, but Sue actually mass allthat. She becomes
nick: minus thesound,
joe: invisible. I don’tthink she makes sound unless she wants to talk.
nick: See,
geo: the, myquestion. Like
joe: I don’t think,
I don’t think
geo: able to say,okay, no sound. Exactly. Yeah. Or does she just, she can just get really quiet,’
nick: cause her force
joe: fields can fly.She can float ’em. So you wouldn’t have to make any sound. It, you’re, she’spretty powerful, when you think of her as a character and what her powers areand how she could exploit those powers
nick: and within thebubble, she probably can’t be smelled.
geo: That’s what hewas
joe: That’s what sayingThat’s right. Yeah.
nick: Huh.
joe: I get funky inthat bubble.
I always, with force fields, I’m always like, what’s the flowof oxygen? You need [00:35:00] to breathe andso how big is your force field? How much oxygen was in that force field whenyou got contained? Is there some passive, can
nick: you fit throughthis door
joe: molecules likeoxygen flow through? Yeah I’m always, ’cause the force fields are impenetrable.I mean they’re, so maybe it’s a size, maybe it’s a speed of projectile. I don’tknow. But that’s always something that’s not really explained. It’s like we gottaa force field around us.
Let’s go do some work. And it’s and that was in the IncrediblesViolet, she can also make force fields. That was her part of her power set.
nick_u: Nice. Yeah.
joe: And I was gonnasay I had other characters, but in that timeframe, in, in the sixties, it wasinteresting that you have a few the shadow thief from DC Comics in 61.
Was
geo: was
joe: invisibledimensional. He is a dimensional dimen, dimen meter. It was a tech
geo: Can you saythat?
Three
joe: No, I am not
nick: wait, I wasn’tpaying attention. What is that Phantom girl?
joe: 61 also. And shehad phase shift to other dimensions. It was all this kind of [00:36:00] dimensionality shifting. We were talkingabout one way to become invisible.
DC also had a 63 chameleon. Boy, explain. I didn’t evenrealize. I was,
geo: was gonna say,these are all like band names. This is like
joe: the
nick: one I realize
joe: the spot. But hehas inter interdimensional portals usage. So
nick: I wouldn’tconsider the spot invisible.
joe: It dips out,right? So if someone’s there and they leave,
nick: that’s notgoing invisible. That’s dipping out.
joe: Yeah. But if youshow up again, you’ve, if you go to a different dimension. That’s the sameidea. That’s just inter, so if you’re here, it’s like playing
nick: people that’sjust leaving.
joe: weaving.
geo: Just,
nick: that’s just,hold on. I’m gonna walk out this door, but I’m going invisible. Don’t worry.
geo: Yeah. I have toagree with Nick on that one because if you’re not there, then what? What? Yeah,
nick: can
joe: come back. You caninstantly,
nick: I can walk outand come back in.
joe: Yeah. But I cansee you.
nick: You didn’t oncethe door shut.
joe: Yeah. I don’tknow. What do you think, Nick?
nick_u: I’m not sure.
joe: He
nick: He wasn’t gonnahelp you on this one. Joe, [00:37:00] knows I’mright. He sticks with the nick because
geo: ’cause. Thewhole idea of being invisible is that you’re still there, but people don’t seeyou. If you are just suddenly not there, then how is that?
joe: If you if when Suestorm goes invisible, she generates this force field, what if it’s aninterdimensional force field?
What if she goes away,
geo: Then she’ll missout on some important information.
joe: Maybe she can hearit.
geo: she won’t be agood spy. Maybe
joe: she can hear theinformation. Still
nick: from adifferent German dimension.
geo: a different what
nick: dimension?
joe: Okay, I’ll skipit. So 87 you had Ghost
nick: Unrevealed
joe: ID and Iron Man.Two 19 Marvel.
That was quantum stealth tech. So yeah, you guys have shut
nick: Oh, was
nick_u: MilesMorales, and I didn’t know how that’s modern though.
joe: Yeah. Yep.
nick_u: My MilesMorales shirt right now.
nick: Hell
joe: Yep. Yeah, he did.Yeah. Like a bio bioelectric. Camouflage. Was that his, [00:38:00] that was how he went invisible, right? Yeah. Yeah.
nick_u: Yeah. And Iwonder are there actual spiders that can do that? And that’s where they got theidea.
Dennis got the idea.
joe: I, I don’t know ifthere’s, there may be spiders that can camouflage themselves that wouldn’t beout the realm. That’s like the
geo: bet there
joe: cephalopods, thechameleon itself. Like they can blend in so
geo: And spiders arerelated to,
joe: They are related.
But I don’t know, I don’t know any off the top of my head thatdo that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were,
geo: like I
joe: I said, I blendinginto your environment as a chameleon or as the CE epha pods do. I think that’s
That’s within the realm of,
geo: The most
joe: critical, right?
Yes.
geo: It’s like theguy in guardian guardians of the galaxy.
joe: Oh Drax. I’m gonnamove so slow.
nick_u: Yeah,
geo: I
nick: He learned thatfrom Gru
geo: That’s so good.
nick_u: invisible to.
joe: Yeah. Yeah,exactly.
nick: I’m standing.So still.
geo: Was
joe: I eating the Znuts or [00:39:00] zar nuts?
geo: z nuts?
joe: Yeah. Then therewas a whole bunch of like
nick: cool characters
joe: I’ve found throughcomics that have these things and we can, I don’t know, split hairs if it’s, ifquantum. Dimensional traveling to, to disappear is becoming invisible or not?
nick: I feel likethat one is a stretch.
geo: Ooh. Good pun
joe: All right, Mr.Fantastic.
nick: But yeah I feellike to be invisible, you have to be still present in this dimension.
joe: So you can’t be ina different dimension.
nick: No,
geo: put that outthere. So anyone listening to this weigh in on that.
nick_u: Yeah. Yeah,that does sound accurate. If you’re still here, you’re just invisible. You’rein this.
geo: I think it, it’sa different definition,
joe: but you could be,you could beat us in super position, right? You could be in both states. So you
geo: oh, now you’retrying to change it. It could be
joe: in this otherdimensional space, right? So you are still present, but you’re not Well,
nick: but going backto the spot, he’s not, unless he has another portal there, which he still [00:40:00] visible.
joe: Yeah I’m, okay,I’ll give you the spot one. But all the other ones I’m going to,
nick: I wasn’tpushing back on any other one, but the
joe: The spot. So I hadnight crawler also. But that’s the same, you’re, you’re probably gonnadisappearing,
geo: But
nick: thendisappearing
joe: is becominginvisible.
nick: That’steleportation. No,
geo: but then you’renot there once you disappear.
You’re not there even if you reappear super fast.
joe: But you are, he isthere, right? I don’t
geo: gosh. Okay. All
joe: Yeah. No.
nick: That’steleportation. We’ve already covered this,
joe: but we didn’t saythey could become invisible with it, right?
You guys are a hundred percent hand waving on now I gotta makethese yeah.
nick_u: Yeah. Yeah. Ifeel like if you can split yourself and we’re, you’re also in anotherdimension, a whole other power,
joe: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,early fiction the Invisible Man by HG Wells, the 1897
geo: an accident gonewrong? Yeah, that was the same as The Hollow Man.
joe: Yeah. Hollow Man.Yeah. And then Topper’s Ghosts. So we had this, the ghost that was once again [00:41:00] came up and
geo: Topper’s Ghost,are you talking about like Carrie
joe: 1937, the film?
geo: Yeah. Oh my God,I’m so impressed.
I love Topper. I love
joe: The InvisibleAgent film 1942. Yeah, that, and then in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,there was a,
nick_u: Nice.
nick: the invisible
joe: man, right? Yeah.So it was the Invisible man.
nick: I wonder whyinvisibility did become as well known as it is, like beyond like superherorealms.
It’s also in the scientific realm where it’s oh, if they weretrying to go with an experiment to do this why? What was the purpose for thatthen?
joe: You mean
geo: I’m not sure Iunderstand what
nick: mean. Yeah.Like why were they trying to go invisible?
joe: You mean in reallife or in the,
nick: in, I thinksome of it’s in like the Invisible Man or hollow man.
joe: I think he wasdoing it just to do it right. And I think it had practical kind of tech imple,you could sell us to, [00:42:00] industries
nick: but it wasn’ttech. It wa it was experimenting. Yeah.
nick_u: the madscientists with a precursor to the. Tech, the Mad Tech guy.
joe: You can imagineThat was in 18, 18 96, 7. That’s,
geo: I think
joe: Not buildingIronman suits.
geo: I think thedesire to be able to be somewhere without being seen, I think that’s somethingthat probably like people have always wanted to do,
nick: That’s becauseit’s creepy
joe: to be present
geo: But also to belike, you find out a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
joe: Or situationallyyou may wanna be, not seen and that’s an invisible man, the novel. That’s
geo: you said, alwayssay I want oh, I would’ve liked to been a fly on the wall. Because people don’tpay attention to the flies on the wall unless there’s a lot of ’em.
Then they do.
joe: Yeah. Yeah. Idunno where we’re headed today.
nick: I get veryannoyed if there’s a fly in the room.
geo: I really dislikeflies.
joe: But the invisibleman, the novel. That was what it was about being invisible in society and.
There. So I think becoming invisible [00:43:00]can have both as a power where you can spy on people.
Creep on people.
geo: Like we weretalking about the women, women not being taken seriously and then sneaking upon you.
joe: What are yousaying, Nick? Oh,
nick_u: yeah. And the2020 Visible Man was essentially about gaslighting where he an abuse tacticwhere make making everyone think she’s crazy when, ’cause no one’s believingher, that he turned himself invisible and that these things,
joe: Yeah.
nick: As I said, itgoes back to being creepy.
joe: Yeah.
nick_u: right?
nick: I think
joe: you also just go,I think in a lot of these they were playing off the mad scientist trope, butthen also just losing your mind. ’cause now you are invisible right now, nomatter how cool that power is, no one can see you.
You could be in a space
nick: but
joe: seen. That’salmost
nick: it does havethat social commentary where there are people that do just feel invisiblebecause of X, Y, and Z where they exist. But no one like the ghost Taxi or itwas Ghost.
nick_u: Oh, Cyrus [00:44:00] Perkins in the haunted taxi camp. It’s a,yeah, it’s a horror comic from the, about 10 years ago.
nick: I haven’t readit, but it did catch my interest already.
geo: know. I justlove the title. Yeah.
joe: Yeah. That’s cool.We’ll throw that in the show notes.
nick: just to seewhere that goes, because I don’t know if you can. Comment on this, but what isthe general social commentary for that? ’cause it feels like it’s just a driverthat just everyone ignores.
nick_u: Yeah, I thinkthat’s act. It was been some time since I’ve read it, but I read it when it wasnew and I think it was about 10 years ago, 2015 ish. It, it was definitelysaying something about class I remember that much where, people, like peoplejust don’t pay attention to the taxi driver.
It’s like he is invisible, and they’ll just say whatever theywant in front of a taxi driver,
nick: yeah. And thatmakes extreme sense.
joe: Yeah. And just foreveryone out there, don’t know, that was Ralph Ellison, his novel I wasreferencing
geo: and it hadreally nothing to do with
joe: to do with beingphysically
geo: Invisible Man isvery [00:45:00] different
nick: than the
joe: Yes. HG Invisibleman. So I wanted to make sure the commentary was there that the Ralph Ellison’sbook was a social commentary about being black in America.
And being invisible.
geo: it was in, andit’s so timely. And it was written in the forties, but
joe: yep. Yeah. Let’s,good read, put it in show notes. Cool.
nick: so Nick who isyour favorite invisible person?
nick_u: That’s a goodquestion. As far as superheroes, I guess would be Miles Morales love the 2020Invisible Mad movie that, that guy’s so creepy.
joe: Yeah. Yeah.
nick: I feel likethere’s a good reason why there aren’t that many men who are invisible.
joe: It’s probably,yes.
nick: At least Milesis a genuine person where it’s okay, I can trust this character with thispower.
nick_u: right.
nick: Any other onesyou’re like, ah, let’s not,
nick_u: and that’sthe whole thing with great power
joe: Yeah. Exactly.Yes.
nick_u: bad thingswith this power. Or you can do horrible things
joe: right?
nick_u: [00:46:00] I’ll, excuse me. You can do good thingswith the power. You can make the world a better place or you can do horriblethings with it and self selfish things with it.
joe: Yeah. That’s oneof the special things with Sue is that she can control the invisibility.Because a lot of folks, you, you’re either invisible all the time and there isno coming back.
So like the invisible man, he was just invisible and then hehad to live with that state for the rest, for the rest of his life and docreepy stuff. Then you just start,
If you’re like, I’m just be invisible, why not? Why not creepout? I don’t know.
nick: Why not creepout Joe? Oh, no.
geo: Okay. Okay.Nick, what’s your favorite?
nick: Oh, so I thinkit’s a, it’s probably a tie between Sue and Miles because both of them havesuch a strong personality.
joe: Yeah.
nick: And both usetheir powers in different ways. And their range of powers goes to two endswhere miles is very much more contained.
Where Sue. [00:47:00] Does havemore of a ability to blend others as well and other objects. So it’s like
joe: Protective role,right? Yeah. So she has that
nick: a veryprotective, motherly figure.
joe: Yes. That she cando that, use her powers, Georgia.
geo: Yeah. Since,like I said, I’m not super familiar with Sue.
I would,
I look forward to finding out more about her.
I don’t know if I really have a favorite invisible character.Yeah. ’cause the jet, that’s not a person. Jet, I
joe: but Jet, I knewyou were gonna say that. Jet Georgia
nick: No. And
geo: and I would sayKevin Bacon’s character, but that actually, to be honest, is not one of myfavorite Kevin Bacon
joe: Yeah. The HollowMan.
geo: You know what Imean?
yeah, it’s tough to,
nick: I’m shocked
that you didn’t go violet.
You,
geo: I actually, Iwas just gonna say
joe: yeah. Violet.Violet par.
geo: and the Yeah.
joe: Yep. From theIncredibles. Yeah, that’s a good one.
geo: that is a goodone.[00:48:00]
joe: And yeah I I’mwould go with Tiger from the Thundercats 85. That’s, that was,
nick: that was
joe: was right. Thatwas right in my wheelhouse there.
So I’m gonna do it. That was. I love me some Thundercats.
geo: How could younot like someone named Tigris?
joe: tig.
geo: Oh, sorry.
joe: But you’re right.Tigris
nick: want to takethat again? Georgia?
geo: I like Tigressand I like tiger.
joe: Maybe a quickquestion for everyone. Would you want the power of in. Invisibility and maybeto make it a little more difficult, you’re stuck with it.
You, you are invisible or you’re not you get to pick.
nick: Nick, you wannastart off?
nick_u: I think Iwould like the power if I could turn it
joe: Yeah. Yeah.
nick_u: but I.
geo: Yeah. I agree. Iwouldn’t want it if I could’ve turned it off.
nick: I know Inormally go with yes for most of these, but I’m gonna go back to being theinvisibility power gets creepy with guys, and
joe: Yeah. You don’tthink you could control, you don’t think you would serve restraint.[00:49:00]
nick: I like to fuckwith people. This would just enhance that ability.
geo: Then, but youwould enjoy it.
nick: It wouldn’t befor anything good.
geo: Okay.
joe: Yeah. Okay. Yeah
nick_u: I feel likeit’s power could used to expose powerful people or the corrupt very easily, ordo behind closed.
nick: exactly.
joe: Yeah.
nick: but thenthere’s the element of I can really make this person. You start gaslightingbillionaires
joe: and that’s stillit becomes a slippery slope. Because that’s when you get on it. You might bedoing something in your head. As Nick pointed out, like most good villains,they feel just in their actions that they’re doing it for the right reason.
nick: And
joe: if you write, ifit’s a good storytelling and well written, you go, you know what they do have apoint. I think they’re going about the wrong way,
nick: all right. Yousold me. I can keep this job as a podcaster.
joe: Yeah.
geo: And in a waywe’re, we are invisible.
nick: Our liveperformances just could be me recorded.
joe: Yeah, that’sright.
nick: here? Yeah, I’mright here.
joe: Nick at?
nick: Just
[00:50:00] behind the curtain,I promise. What about you, Joe? You taking the power?
joe: Yeah. I
think I’m a pass, I’m gonna pass on this one. I think if Icould, I threw that little disclaimer in ’cause if I could control it.
I would do that, but I’d eat a lot of Big Macs. So
nick: do you neverdid go over like I, is it calorie count for being able to
joe: so yeah. I don’t,speculating out what you would have to do to generate and bend light, are youcountering energy? What’s the role of that?
You probably are gonna be burning some galleries to throw forcefields over other people or yourself, or to make weapons. And if you’redimensionally traveling, that also is, gonna cost some,
nick: no one was, noone brought that one up.
joe: We did bring itup. It was there, it works. Yeah. So
nick: I didn’t knowif that would be more of a mind thing over like a physical
joe: We had, we touchedon a couple different ways. One could. Get to invisible. One was mind control,like the shadow in the
geo: and then, so if
nick: Controlling [00:51:00] the force field with your mind. Yeah.
joe: We didn’t talkabout some of that.
I think to, to go invisible and then come back, you probablyare gonna have to have some neural reworking. You might have a new layer ofskin. You might actually have to physically have all this ’cause your reactiontime has to be fast in a control ad.
You’re now controlling almost another sense in some ways to goinvisible. So you’re right. I think, from a, from some level, I think it’s I’msurprised people haven’t, I guess they were just bombarding themselves withcosmic rays trying to recreate invisibility or get that what genes were turnedon or off.
nick: So now I have aquestion. Is for the invisible man, is he just not smart enough to turn it off?Yeah, I don’t,
joe: yeah I, go ahead
geo: but I think.
nick_u: I don’t thinkthat what, that’s what
joe: Yeah. I don’tthink it was about him not being
geo: I think itdepends on the mechanism. I think if it’s the force field mechanism, you’reable to turn it off Do you know what I mean? I don’t [00:52:00]that’s,
joe: I’m
nick: like, is itjust that part of your brain that you’re not like. Focusing on. See,
geo: I don’t thinkit’s a part of your brain. I don’t know.
joe: I think I thinkthat’s, that was a, that point about is it genetically viable? Because I thinkin the Invisible Man story where it got turned on, he drank some sort of potionor a compound that then remove pigmentation like that was, he wasn’t generatinga force field.
He was going more the way. The cephalopods would do it, orchameleons, like they, he was actually trying to modify the refractive index ofhis body to have light pass through without being seen or Ben. So
geo: That makes itperfectly clear.
nick: Yeah.
joe: yeah. Yeah.
nick: Crystal. Allright. Nick you want to go ahead and run through your plugs for us one moretime?
nick_u: Sure. Yeah, Iam. I’m Nick. I am [00:53:00] currently writingabout books on Substack, starving author.substack.com. I have a horror novelcalled Massacre at the comic Shop. And I’ve written two books of poetry as wellAmerican Bug and as the Moonlight Shines. And and I also wrote about comic booksfor comic book resources.
You can check those reviews out. Oh, I’m no longer at thecompany. The thing that I really want people to check out is my substack, whichwhere I’ll be updating on the first and third Friday of every month. And notjust writing comic book reviews, but also reporting on comic book news,especially any indie comic books that I don’t see.
Any of the websites talking about I’ll, I might occasionallywrite an article about that.
geo: Nice.
nick: Very cool. Arethere any specific articles you want people to check out?
nick_u: For comicbook resources, I wrote an article titled a Action Comics Number one is one ofthe greatest works of anti-fascist art ever made where I write about and it’sconsidering that Superman movies coming out soon. You should definitely checkthat out.
nick: hell yeah.
nick_u: I in theoriginal [00:54:00] action comics, the firstappearance of Superman and widely considered to be the first superhero comicbook, not necessarily the first superhero story, but, or even the firstsuperhero comic, but comic book and where Superman, beat up a domestic abuser, gotan innocent woman off death row.
And and went after a lobbyists. And that was the originalSuperman and how it was created by two Jews in the 1930s during, the rise ofAdolf Hitler and global antisemitism and and how there were a lot of Jewishrefugees at the time and people didn’t accept refugees. It was the union polls,actually, if you compare it to I’m getting, I’m just diving into the wholearticle right now, but it’s
nick: Yeah. Yeah.
nick_u: But if youactually compare it to opinion polls in the 1930s, the attitude towards Jewishrefugees 1930s were significantly worse than the attitude towards Muslimrefugees today, believe it or not people.
In America hated them. And and I don’t think it was acoincidence that when they wrote [00:55:00]Superman, they made him a refugee. And I view it as statement of solidarityagainst other people that have, were being mistreated by society. And and it’s,again, the article settled Action Comics number one is one of the greatestworks of anti-fascist art ever made.
joe: Nice. cool. Yeah.Cool, cool. We’ll have that in the show notes for people to check out. Yep.
right. On that note let’s wind it down. You got me, Joe, here,you got Nick.
nick_u: How’s it?
joe: Gotcha. We
geo: Nick, we haven’tgot,
nick: And we got Nick
joe: we got anotherNick. And we have Georgia.
geo: Bye. See youlater.
nick: Thanks again,Nick, for joining
joe: Thank you. Thankyou.
nick: And
we went down an invisible hole. I
geo: I can’t seeanything.
joe: stay visible outthere. Stay safe.
Love y’all.