Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Candice Kanner. And Candice and
Speaker 1: I are both really big fan of the TV show Lost,
Speaker 1: Love Lost. Sarah got me hooked over the summer. I
Speaker 1: broke my foot and couldn't move, so Little Jupiter the
Speaker 1: jack Wrestle and I sat around and watched almost the
Speaker 1: entire series of Lost. She still has season six to watch,
Speaker 1: So for this episode, we're gonna have to be careful.
Speaker 1: I guess about what we reveal at the very end
Speaker 1: of Lost. I don't want to ruin anything for you
Speaker 1: in the podcast, I came back as a favorite to
Speaker 1: my fabulous friend, Sarah said, on't blow lass. All right,
Speaker 1: So this is a pretty unusual episode. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about characters and Lost who share the names of
Speaker 1: famous philosophers, famous physicists, and all the fag connections between
Speaker 1: what these people believed and did in their lives and
Speaker 1: what the characters Unlost do to hold up those points
Speaker 1: of view. We're kind of blown away after looking into
Speaker 1: some of these lives in more detail. How carefully the
Speaker 1: writers must have researched all of this and planned for
Speaker 1: all of it. It's pretty amazing, it is. And to
Speaker 1: keep his light and fun for all of you, We're
Speaker 1: not going to go into a lot of heavy details.
Speaker 1: We're going to give you the gist of some different
Speaker 1: philosophies and then start a conversation with you about the characters.
Speaker 1: So if we cover your favorite philosopher in five minutes,
Speaker 1: don't get too offended. No, just think it's it's lost.
Speaker 1: Things are supposed to be the culture, y'all be fun
Speaker 1: and crazy. So the first one on our list is
Speaker 1: John Locke. Of course, he is one of the major
Speaker 1: characters on the show. He's the quote man of faith
Speaker 1: and he always thinks that everything happens for a reason,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of this pitiful character but also inspiring sometimes.
Speaker 1: He never he never really comes into his own I
Speaker 1: guess he's always searching, right. Um. So, the real John Locke,
Speaker 1: which he's probably the most famous or most easily identifiable
Speaker 1: philosopher name from the show. The real John Locke is
Speaker 1: this anti authoritarian British philosopher and he's best known for
Speaker 1: theories about personal identity and for believing in religious tolerance.
Speaker 1: And he was a father of political liberalism and modern
Speaker 1: philosophical empiricism. And if you if you know his name,
Speaker 1: it's probably in connection with the Declaration of Independence or
Speaker 1: the U s Constitution, or just helping kick off the
Speaker 1: Age of Enlightenment. Young John Locke had a fairly tumultuous childhood.
Speaker 1: He came of age during the English Civil Wars, so
Speaker 1: he's immediately a little skeptical of the king's divine right
Speaker 1: to rule. He's well educated, he studies some medical chemistry,
Speaker 1: and he writes his first major political work in sixteen sixty,
Speaker 1: which is ironically the same year that the monarchy is restored,
Speaker 1: and it's called Two Tracks on Government. And not long
Speaker 1: after that he grows very close to this lord and
Speaker 1: benefactor interestingly named Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper. You might recognize
Speaker 1: the name Anthony Cooper. It is Locke's father, his wayward
Speaker 1: father on the show Crushy Weltha Balcony Foss Steal your organ, father, um.
Speaker 1: But this John Locke becomes the Lord's physician and helps,
Speaker 1: you know it, just helps run his household, picks up
Speaker 1: a lot of his ideas. They have this weird organ
Speaker 1: connection which again on the show strange organ donation. Um
Speaker 1: Locke devises the silver tube, and it inserts it into
Speaker 1: the Lord's liver. This tumor and his liver. It helps
Speaker 1: drain it away when it's getting inflamed. Sounds awful. I
Speaker 1: don't think I would want the silver tube inserted into
Speaker 1: my liver, but if you need one. His biggest philosophical
Speaker 1: piece is an essay concerning Human Understanding. It doesn't publish
Speaker 1: until six eighty nine, but it takes about his whole
Speaker 1: life to work on distilling these ideas he comes up
Speaker 1: with in his youth. UM it publishes when he's fifty
Speaker 1: seven years old, and most of his major works published
Speaker 1: after that. That's another connection we saw because John Locke
Speaker 1: unlost is he's a He's probably in his late fifties
Speaker 1: or so, and clearly this is the most exciting interesting
Speaker 1: time in his life. He worked at a box factory
Speaker 1: before um. But John Locke the philosopher was really interested
Speaker 1: in the idea that human reason could grant access to
Speaker 1: moral truth, and in sixteen sixty four Essays on the
Speaker 1: Law of Nature, he wrote, since man has been made
Speaker 1: such as he is equipped with reason and his other
Speaker 1: faculties and destined for this mode of life. They're necessarily
Speaker 1: result from his inborn constitution, some definite duties for him
Speaker 1: which cannot be other than they are. That sounds a
Speaker 1: little familiar, a lot familiar. Now he has a purpose,
Speaker 1: he has a duty. Um. So John Locke comes back
Speaker 1: to England. He's been in and out of the country
Speaker 1: with his benefactor who keeps falling in and out of favor,
Speaker 1: comes back to England after the Glorious Revolution, actually on
Speaker 1: the same ship, within the same party as the future
Speaker 1: Mary the Second, and um just sort of works a
Speaker 1: little more on setting up this new government, helps write
Speaker 1: the English Bill of Rights, and then retires to a
Speaker 1: friend's house and lives with her and her family until
Speaker 1: his death. And just to give you one last picture
Speaker 1: of John Locke's major, huge, broad philosophies encompassed into a
Speaker 1: short kernel of information. He argued that humans would be
Speaker 1: able to eke out the natural laws that make us
Speaker 1: understand right and wrong by ourselves. We should be able
Speaker 1: to do that by ourselves, and therefore we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: too much controlled by government or police. Even though he
Speaker 1: conceded that a few rules here and there certainly help
Speaker 1: people do the right thing. But he thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: we had the rights to our own bodies into the
Speaker 1: labor that comes from our bodies, and because we're capable
Speaker 1: of this thought, um, we should have a fair amount
Speaker 1: of power over ourselves. I think that again kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting connection. The philosopher certainly seems a lot more
Speaker 1: confident in his ideas than the island man, but still
Speaker 1: some some connections about just how they see the world. Well.
Speaker 1: Number two on our list, yes we have a list,
Speaker 1: just like the others had their list is Jean Jacques Rousseau,
Speaker 1: and he was born in seventeen twelve, and he's often
Speaker 1: grouped him with the Enlightenment thinkers, but some of his
Speaker 1: thoughts were a little bit more romantic, and I'll elaborate
Speaker 1: on that in just a second. So what he proposed
Speaker 1: was that as we become more invested in science and art,
Speaker 1: we become more bankrupt. But despite that belief, he went
Speaker 1: on to Paris in seventeen forty two to become a musician,
Speaker 1: and one of the works that he composed was an
Speaker 1: opera titled The Village Soothsayer, which leads me to point out,
Speaker 1: in case you need to be hit over the head,
Speaker 1: that his uh lost mirrored person is Danielle Rousso, who
Speaker 1: was a village soothsayer in her own right. So uh
Speaker 1: Russo the philosopher had five children with his partner, but
Speaker 1: he turned all of them over to the Paris orphanage,
Speaker 1: which is ironic considering that Danielle Rousso spent her entire
Speaker 1: adult life on the island seeking out the one child
Speaker 1: that she had had. Alex So Rousseau suspected that a
Speaker 1: lot of philosophers were actually self serving and they were
Speaker 1: alienating people from nature. And I think that this point
Speaker 1: of view is really nicely summed up from the Stanford
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Philosophy. Rousseau essentially sought to preserve human freedom in
Speaker 1: a world where human beings are increased only dependent on
Speaker 1: one another for the satisfaction of their needs. And if
Speaker 1: you need a visual to part with that, think about
Speaker 1: the camp on the beach where all the lost, these
Speaker 1: lived people are incredibly dependent on someone to fish for
Speaker 1: them or help them make a shelter. And so no
Speaker 1: one can be entirely self serving. But Danielle Rousso, by contrast,
Speaker 1: lives on her own, but she's not self serving. She
Speaker 1: is self sufficient. Do you see the difference there, okay.
Speaker 1: So Russo goes on to state that everyone needs to
Speaker 1: have an identity independent from society's opinions of them. But
Speaker 1: you may wonder, and an autonomous community, can everyone actually
Speaker 1: be equal? Or is it better to live alone? And
Speaker 1: if you flash back to some of the power struggles
Speaker 1: that we saw in the Lost Camp, you may think
Speaker 1: Danielle really did have the right idea, striking out on
Speaker 1: her own. So I mentioned that some of his ideas
Speaker 1: were more romantic in nature. So if you think about
Speaker 1: romantic poets like Blake or words Worth or Coleridge, who
Speaker 1: marvel at mountains and seasons, native populations are essentially communing
Speaker 1: better with nature, and that's what Rousseau thought that we
Speaker 1: should be doing. So Danielle Roussel, we say, living alone
Speaker 1: and in nature, being totally self sufficient. What are some
Speaker 1: other similarities that she might have with Rousseau the philosopher.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting how she liked music and
Speaker 1: how delighted she was when Zaid repaired her music box.
Speaker 1: She never could quite bring herself to assimilate with the
Speaker 1: Losties at their camp, but she was definitely there when
Speaker 1: they needed her helpful. She was very helpful. Uh. And
Speaker 1: if that's not enough of a connection between Danielle Roussel
Speaker 1: and Russo the philosopher, I'll point out one more Rousseau
Speaker 1: who she could be connected with, and that's en Ri Rousseau,
Speaker 1: the French painter, and he primarily painted jungle scenes, even
Speaker 1: though he never really left France to step foot in
Speaker 1: a jungle. I have a poster of his on my desk,
Speaker 1: the Tiger in the Jungle in the rain, and he
Speaker 1: once said that he had no teacher other than nature,
Speaker 1: and among his jungle scenes, he had two more that
Speaker 1: stood out to me as being interesting and perhaps pointing
Speaker 1: to Danielle Rousseau. And those titles are the Boat in
Speaker 1: the Storm and Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest. And
Speaker 1: you can google image those to see for yourself. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like she's a combination of these two, I
Speaker 1: would say, so pretty interesting. So the next guy on
Speaker 1: our list, he is a Scottish philosopher that gives you
Speaker 1: a little hint. His name is David Hume and his
Speaker 1: character double is Desmond Hume, who is the constant. The
Speaker 1: rules don't apply to Desmond. He's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: characters and he's kind of our first outsider character. He's um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. He stands out compared to the other ones,
Speaker 1: considering he had this horrible isolated time where he's living
Speaker 1: in the hatch by himself. Um, he's a little more
Speaker 1: adjusted than the crash survivors, I think. But the real
Speaker 1: David Hume was born seventeen eleven. He's a Scottish flow suffer.
Speaker 1: He's a historian. He's an economist, and he attempted to
Speaker 1: understand the mind and came to the conclusion that we
Speaker 1: can only know what we experience, which I think I
Speaker 1: can see a little connection there. He was inspired by
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton and surprise, surprise, John Locke. He was born
Speaker 1: in Edinburgh and the son of a small time ward.
Speaker 1: He got into law but never really practice it, didn't
Speaker 1: really like it. Um His most famous works were written
Speaker 1: in his twenties, even though he later came back to
Speaker 1: it revised it over and over again. But some of
Speaker 1: his more popular works came in seventeen fifty one, where
Speaker 1: he started to revise some of his earlier writings, and
Speaker 1: in this work, The Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,
Speaker 1: he suggested that the internal consciousness or ideas came from impressions,
Speaker 1: which were things that we actually experienced, so so your
Speaker 1: ideas come from or impressions. And he also developed a
Speaker 1: theory of causality, where one impression or idea would bread
Speaker 1: another one. So if I dropped a book, Candice knows
Speaker 1: that it'll fall um it's it's just what you can
Speaker 1: assume will happen, because everything else in your life has
Speaker 1: told you that's what will happen. And it was this
Speaker 1: causality that he believed was in itself belief if the
Speaker 1: ground was wet, it must have reigned earlier. And he
Speaker 1: defined this belief as a vivid idea, so it was
Speaker 1: more than just a regular idea. It was a lively
Speaker 1: idea or a vivid idea. It was something extraordinary. It
Speaker 1: had a lot of faith behind it. In his middle age,
Speaker 1: he got a job keeping the Advocates Library at Edinburgh
Speaker 1: and he became a historian there, which is something he
Speaker 1: had always wanted to do. He wrote a history of England.
Speaker 1: It went through fifty editions. It was really influential at
Speaker 1: the time, like very readable and about all sorts of
Speaker 1: people besides king, and comparably impartial to a lot of
Speaker 1: histories written at the time, and these make him famous.
Speaker 1: The Catholic Church actually bands his all of his writings,
Speaker 1: which is a true measure of fame for an author.
Speaker 1: And in seventeen sixty three he goes to Paris and
Speaker 1: meets up with none other than Jean Jacques Rousseau, and
Speaker 1: Rousseau doesn't treat him very well, so um Hume takes
Speaker 1: him back to England Rousseau is being persecuted, you know,
Speaker 1: offers him a place to stay. But Rousseau is a
Speaker 1: little paranoid, you know, like another Ussons, and starts suspecting
Speaker 1: there's a plot against him. Flees back to Paris in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and starts slandering Hume, saying
Speaker 1: you know he was after me. Um Hume is forced
Speaker 1: to publish all of their correspondence together to clear his
Speaker 1: name to prove no, I didn't I wasn't planning on
Speaker 1: doing anything evil to Rousseau. But he returned to Edinburgh
Speaker 1: in seventeen six to nine and died there in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six. And even though he's not that well known today,
Speaker 1: he proved to be quite influential to later philosophers, including
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, who's going
Speaker 1: to pop up a little later on our list. It's
Speaker 1: another name you might recognize. But before we get to
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham, let's talk about the Russian anarchists on our list,
Speaker 1: and that is Mikhail Vakunen, who shares the exact same
Speaker 1: name with his last counterpart. Although I don't have a
Speaker 1: whole whole lot to say about him, and not too
Speaker 1: many similarities to draw from, but I figured having the
Speaker 1: exact same name, you all would be upset if I
Speaker 1: did not delve into it, so here goes. He was
Speaker 1: born in May eighteen fourteen, and one of his first
Speaker 1: accomplishments was translating Hagel into Russian. And a very famous
Speaker 1: line from his first essay that gives us a taste
Speaker 1: of Bakunen's ideas is this the desire for destruct is
Speaker 1: at the same time a creative desire to And he
Speaker 1: ended up being sentenced to death in eighteen forty nine
Speaker 1: for revolutionary activity, but that sentence was commuted to life
Speaker 1: in prison. But he was very productive. This is where
Speaker 1: he did some of his best writing. And here was
Speaker 1: the idea that Bakkunen had about government. The problem with
Speaker 1: government was that it existed. He had a big problem
Speaker 1: with authority, and what he was promoting instead was something
Speaker 1: called instinctive socialism. What this means is that the people
Speaker 1: would revolt against the established society and after the revolution,
Speaker 1: they will instinctively find a type of labor that appeals
Speaker 1: to their natural skills and then organize themselves according to
Speaker 1: their labor. However, uh, there needs to be some sort
Speaker 1: of secret organization that can just oversee society, keep an
Speaker 1: eye on things. But this can't be a typical state
Speaker 1: run government. Has to be sort of a big brother,
Speaker 1: some sort of initial too, if you will, because a
Speaker 1: state run government would end up being too powerful and
Speaker 1: self serving. So what do we have to say about
Speaker 1: our our lost Mikhail. Basically, as you remember, he came
Speaker 1: to the island after responding to the newspaper ad would
Speaker 1: you like to save the world? And perhaps he did,
Speaker 1: or perhaps he just wanted to get away from one
Speaker 1: point he did. Yeah, he had hopes that he could reform,
Speaker 1: he could revolutionize, and yet he liked to live alone
Speaker 1: and work alone. So they installed him at the flame.
Speaker 1: Took a bunch of c four in his basement. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right, And not surprisingly, he defied death several times,
Speaker 1: perhaps the most defiant act being when he stepped inside
Speaker 1: the pylons and foamed at the mouth and blood from
Speaker 1: the ears. Good John the guy. All that was really dramatic,
Speaker 1: but he was really good at taking orders to preserve
Speaker 1: the island. He responded to that secret level of government.
Speaker 1: He knew he had to listen while he was doing
Speaker 1: his job, and he finally died of his own accord
Speaker 1: when he detonated the hand gar name in the looking glass.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting. So our next entry is actually just
Speaker 1: kind of another famous dead man, Jeremy Bentham, and he's
Speaker 1: he's not a real person at all. This is John
Speaker 1: Locke's alias when he returns to the real world in
Speaker 1: this attempt to get the Oceanic Six to return, and
Speaker 1: he starts off really confident, really brave. You know, he's
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna get everybody to come back. He's going
Speaker 1: to rescue all the people stuck on the island. He
Speaker 1: ends up with a new surround his neck, having this
Speaker 1: heart to heart with Benjamin Linus, and um, things are
Speaker 1: are very good. That's a dark, dark scene and lost
Speaker 1: one of the darkest, I'd say, But the real guy
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham. He's a moral philosopher, and he's best known
Speaker 1: for his ideas on utilitarianism, which was the belief that
Speaker 1: we should evaluate actions by how they create happiness. Um,
Speaker 1: even if that was like the happiness of the greater good,
Speaker 1: and you try to create happiness for as many people
Speaker 1: as possible, which I think can apply to our our
Speaker 1: lost alias as well. Bentham was also a critic of
Speaker 1: law and a legal reformer as well. Um. He's influenced,
Speaker 1: not too surprisingly by John Locke and David Hume. So
Speaker 1: I feel like the writers must have had all of
Speaker 1: these guys in the same philosophy class. They took her something.
Speaker 1: But Jeremy Bentham was born in London. He came from
Speaker 1: this family of attorneys, and he was really precocious. He
Speaker 1: starts learning Latin at age four. He doesn't I know
Speaker 1: I did, um. But his first book is sometimes called
Speaker 1: the Beginning of philosophic Radicalism, and it catches the eye
Speaker 1: of a Lord Shelburne, who reads the essay and calls
Speaker 1: on Bentham and makes him his friend and his patron,
Speaker 1: and by five Bentham starts traveling, ultimately heading to Russia.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe he could meet some anarchists there.
Speaker 1: He had stressed to visit his brother and writes his
Speaker 1: first essay and economics and starts to get into prison
Speaker 1: reform too. He's a man of many talents. Comes back
Speaker 1: to England hoping to get into politics. That doesn't work out. Instead,
Speaker 1: he starts writing about legislation, writing about law, and publishes
Speaker 1: an Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in
Speaker 1: which he defines utility as quote that property in any
Speaker 1: object whereby it tends to produce pleasure, good, or happiness,
Speaker 1: or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or
Speaker 1: unhappiness to the party whose interest is concerned. And he
Speaker 1: assumed that men work to avoid pain to pursue pleasure
Speaker 1: and happiness. And therefore legislation should cater to the quote
Speaker 1: greatest happiness of the greatest number. Ak A, you six
Speaker 1: people should go back to the island and save all
Speaker 1: those other people. Um. He became pretty famous at home
Speaker 1: and abroad. He was made a French citizen. Um. And
Speaker 1: then this is honestly my favorite fact about this guy.
Speaker 1: It's just really weird. Okay. After he dies, he asks
Speaker 1: that his body be dissected in front of his friends,
Speaker 1: his head be momified, his skeleton mounted and then talked
Speaker 1: with this new wax head, and then the whole thing
Speaker 1: would be dressed in his old clothes and mounted and
Speaker 1: preserved in a glass case. And you can still see
Speaker 1: it at the University College in London. And I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: I think this is why they picked a Bentham here.
Speaker 1: I definitely agree. The fancy body weird stuff, the fancy
Speaker 1: body weird. I like where you're going with that, al right.
Speaker 1: Next on our list is C. S. Lewis, or Clive
Speaker 1: Staples Lewis, who is our lost mirror of Charlotte Staples.
Speaker 1: Lewis a redhead like myself, so of course she's my
Speaker 1: favorite character. So a little bit on C. S. Lewis. First,
Speaker 1: he's known primarily as a Christian apologist. He was a
Speaker 1: Christian as a child, and then when he went to
Speaker 1: Oxford University he became an atheist, and then leader in
Speaker 1: his life would convert to Christianity. And this is all
Speaker 1: chronicled in the Pilgrim's Regress. If you want to read
Speaker 1: his words for yourself, so when C. S. Lewis went
Speaker 1: to Oxford, it was during a time of heated debate
Speaker 1: between realists and idealists, and realism explained that the universe
Speaker 1: is composed of unalterable, fixed truths that don't depend on
Speaker 1: you believing in them or a god or absolute being
Speaker 1: to control them. And the idea here is that life
Speaker 1: can be meaningful without a god. Louis ultimately was a
Speaker 1: joy seeker. This is how he describes himself. He thought
Speaker 1: that realism would bring him the joy that he sought,
Speaker 1: and when he searched for it, he trusted only empirical evidence,
Speaker 1: things that he could see, things that he could touch,
Speaker 1: facts and figures. However, when his tutor W. T. Kirkpatrick died,
Speaker 1: he began to doubt that realism could actually bring him joy.
Speaker 1: And so this is when he starts turning to Theism
Speaker 1: and then eventually Christianity. And it's very hard to sum
Speaker 1: up a lifelong spiritual pilgrimage, but perhaps this phrase from
Speaker 1: him will help. It is more important that heaven should
Speaker 1: exist than that any of us should reach it. So
Speaker 1: something joyful to strive for. And when you think about
Speaker 1: Charlotte and lost Uh, some obvious similarities being that she
Speaker 1: was also Oxford educated, but she was striving for something
Speaker 1: her whole life, and that was the Island because after
Speaker 1: she left it as a child, her mother denied that
Speaker 1: it existed, and she was determined throughout her whole life
Speaker 1: to get back there, and this is why she became
Speaker 1: an anthropologist. And even though she was very serious, we
Speaker 1: did see moments of joy from her. So think back
Speaker 1: to the moment in Tunisia when she discovers that polar
Speaker 1: bear skeleton and big Big grin ecstatic. So if we're
Speaker 1: to look at Charlotte's life like C. S. Lewis is lying,
Speaker 1: we see that completion of the pilgrimage from the land
Speaker 1: of Joy to a world with plenty of doubt and
Speaker 1: empirical facts, back to a place where she found much joy.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for Charlotte to finally proclaimed that this place
Speaker 1: was death, I don't know that it was too joyful.
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder if if they brought her, since
Speaker 1: she is a character from late in the series. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they brought her in after so many people
Speaker 1: Compare Loss to Narnia the Chronicles of Narnia, which is C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis's most famous work. Right, that's a very valid point.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember Narnia too well, but I do
Speaker 1: think that one of the characters tried to affirm that
Speaker 1: Narnia existed and was told by a parent that now,
Speaker 1: in fact, it was false. So those of you out
Speaker 1: there who've read it can assure me of that. So
Speaker 1: now we're going to move away from the philosophers a
Speaker 1: little bit and head into the realm of physics, although
Speaker 1: the character is still going to match up somebody who
Speaker 1: arrived with Charlotte, another fun character, Charlotte's love, Charlotte's true love,
Speaker 1: and that of course this Daniel Faraday, also known as Twitchy,
Speaker 1: and he's the skinny tie wearing physicist, and he's a
Speaker 1: very helpful introduction to the series because he can explain
Speaker 1: what on Earth is going on with all this time
Speaker 1: shifting and traveling, and he can explain when everything starts
Speaker 1: flashing and they hear the terrible noise and grab their
Speaker 1: ears that were unstuck in time and send John Lock
Speaker 1: back as Jeremy Bentham to try to remedy. So Daniel
Speaker 1: Faraday is named after Michael Faraday, who was born in
Speaker 1: seventeen at and surprise, surprise. He's a physicist. He's best
Speaker 1: known for his experiments and discoveries in electro magnetism, and
Speaker 1: he was the first guy to produce electric current from
Speaker 1: a magnetic field and invented the first electric motor and dynamo. Um.
Speaker 1: He's a pretty well known chemist as well. He wrote
Speaker 1: a book on chemistry. He discovered several organic compounds. But
Speaker 1: he has this great Cinderella scientist story, like Rag stir
Speaker 1: Riches all the way. He was born the son of
Speaker 1: a blacksmith and a very intelligent wife, and his father
Speaker 1: was six so he couldn't work very much and the
Speaker 1: kids were often hungry. Um. But he starts working as
Speaker 1: a paper boy and he takes the time to read
Speaker 1: the papers. He's also working at a book binder's shop,
Speaker 1: you know, just sort of running errands, but using every
Speaker 1: spare moment he can to to read some of the
Speaker 1: stuff he's delivering. And eventually he got an apprenticeship with
Speaker 1: a bookbinder, and he got really inspired by an article
Speaker 1: on electricity that he read in the third edition of
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica. After that he started conducting his own experiments,
Speaker 1: building his own We'll take pile and stuff, and his
Speaker 1: life really changes when he's given a ticket to see
Speaker 1: Sir Humphrey Davies speak of the Royal Institution in London,
Speaker 1: and young Faraday is absolutely mesmerized by a speech. He
Speaker 1: takes all these notes, and he must be a super
Speaker 1: fan because he binds his notes and sends them off
Speaker 1: to Davy and asks for a job. And there isn't
Speaker 1: one available immediately, but as soon as one comes up,
Speaker 1: as soon as this other assistant inspired for brawling, Davy
Speaker 1: thinks of this precocious boy and hires him on as
Speaker 1: a lab assistant. And this is eight twelve. They worked
Speaker 1: together for almost ten years and Faraday just learns everything
Speaker 1: he can. You know, he's had a pretty light education
Speaker 1: up until this point. But by the time he strikes
Speaker 1: out on his own in eighteen twenty, he's a master
Speaker 1: of chemistry and finds his fame as a chemist. Initially,
Speaker 1: he's called on by courts as this expert witness, which
Speaker 1: I kind of like the sound of. That said that
Speaker 1: a case would need and the physicist witness, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: He starts producing compounds of carbon and chlorine, and he
Speaker 1: discovers benzene and then he starts getting into his first
Speaker 1: love again, electrical experiments experimentation, and he creates the first
Speaker 1: electric motor in one and publishes a related work on that.
Speaker 1: But the main idea about electricity that kept him going
Speaker 1: was he just didn't think that electricity was a fluid,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people thought at the time. I
Speaker 1: can kind of see that if you look at lightning,
Speaker 1: maybe you would think it was just something flowing down
Speaker 1: from the sky. He didn't think it was a fluid though.
Speaker 1: He thought that instead it was this vibration or a force.
Speaker 1: And he also thought that all electricities were probably the same,
Speaker 1: so that the lightning that came down from the sky,
Speaker 1: the static on my purple fleece, they're ultimately the same thing.
Speaker 1: And he set about trying to to prove that some way,
Speaker 1: and he discovered electromagnetic induction in eighteen thirty one, which
Speaker 1: it meant that electricity could finally leave the realm of
Speaker 1: fun interesting but not very applicable experiments and becomes something
Speaker 1: possibly very useful for man because it's the principle behind
Speaker 1: the electric transformer and the electric general both understandably pretty
Speaker 1: useful things. He helped coin words like electrode and cathode
Speaker 1: and ion, And in eighteen thirty two he started those
Speaker 1: experiments to prove that all electricities were the same, and
Speaker 1: his findings ultimately drew him into a theory of electric chemistry. Um.
Speaker 1: He owes work. You can imagine it takes a toll
Speaker 1: on him, kind of like very day. You know, he's
Speaker 1: a little worn down. Um. And in eighteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: he has a nervous breakdown. It takes him years to
Speaker 1: recover from it, and then by eighteen fifty five his
Speaker 1: mind is beginning to fail. Victoria offers him a house
Speaker 1: and knighthood just because he's been such a tremendous asset
Speaker 1: to the country for so long. He will only accept
Speaker 1: the house. He turns down the knighthood. He just doesn't
Speaker 1: ever want to have to devote himself to things outside
Speaker 1: of science. Any word on whether Victoria gave him a
Speaker 1: leather bound journal. Oh, possibly with a with an inscription,
Speaker 1: and he could he could maybe write something about Desmond
Speaker 1: Hume in it. Well, the very last famous person on
Speaker 1: our historical name dropping lost list is someone really wacky
Speaker 1: and Um. As Sarah mentioned at the beginning of the podcast,
Speaker 1: I have not yet made it through season six, and
Speaker 1: as I understand, this person comes alive and really becomes
Speaker 1: unfolded like all the layers of an onion in this
Speaker 1: final season. So she's going to help me out a
Speaker 1: little bit when we move from the historical reference to
Speaker 1: character importance, the lost reference. Uh Richard Alpert, oh, the
Speaker 1: man with eyeliner A Sawyer called him. He is a
Speaker 1: strange character and he is actually as someone who really
Speaker 1: lived in history, played a very significant role in Still
Speaker 1: Alive today. But you will not find Richard Albert if
Speaker 1: you go searching for him online. You will find Rom Doss,
Speaker 1: the guru Rom Doss, And I'll tell you why momentarily. So,
Speaker 1: Richard Albert started out his career with a PhD from
Speaker 1: Stanford and went to work at Harvard University. And he
Speaker 1: has one of the most famous co workers and all
Speaker 1: of US history, and that's Timothy Learry, who Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: once called the most dangerous man in America. And Timothy
Speaker 1: Leary and Richard Albert were a dangerous duo because they
Speaker 1: were testing psychedelic substances on willing students and prisoners. They
Speaker 1: would conduct sessions where people would trip and the record observations.
Speaker 1: This was the beginning of the counterculture movement, and Albert
Speaker 1: really thought that psychedelic drugs would revolutionize that was his word,
Speaker 1: psychology and religion. Now he was forced to leave Harvard
Speaker 1: with Leary, but they continued their experiment in a Boston
Speaker 1: neighborhood where Albert bought a home on Kenwood Avenue in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, and the neighbors tried to get it
Speaker 1: shut down, but Albert's father, George, was a lawyer and
Speaker 1: appealed their complaint. Now this house existed long before it.
Speaker 1: Leary had his his mansion, his country home where he
Speaker 1: continued on with his experiments, so it was just focus
Speaker 1: on the little neighborhood home. Leary is the one who
Speaker 1: came up with the line turn on, tune in, dropout,
Speaker 1: and this was the idea behind the counterculture movement, that
Speaker 1: you could essentially change your life with these drugs. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to be the buttoned up nineteen fifties businessman
Speaker 1: that your father was. And Don Latin, who wrote a
Speaker 1: book about the two men called the Harvard Psychedelic Club,
Speaker 1: describes Leary as the charmer of the experiments and Albert
Speaker 1: as the intense professorial type intense. Would you say that
Speaker 1: lost Richard is intense? I think it's him now, Richard
Speaker 1: Albert became friends with an under graduate named Ronnie Winston
Speaker 1: who had approached him with his friend Andy while about
Speaker 1: getting involved in these experiments. But because they were only eighteen,
Speaker 1: they said, now that was not going to be okay
Speaker 1: with Harvard. Ronnie is the same Winston whose family is
Speaker 1: the Harry Winston diamond family, so he had plenty of
Speaker 1: money and had a lot in common with Albert that
Speaker 1: came from wealthy backgrounds, with a lot of class and prestige,
Speaker 1: and they formed a very intimate but not sexual relationship. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Ronnie's friend Andy, who had also appealed to Albert but
Speaker 1: had been turned down and didn't get into this inner
Speaker 1: circle of friendship. Uh. He became the now famous Dr
Speaker 1: Andrew Wile, who is the face of integrative medicine, and
Speaker 1: you've probably seen his vitamins or his picture by the
Speaker 1: Origins counter in your favorite department store. He was not
Speaker 1: pleased at being shut out of the circle, and he
Speaker 1: eventually exposed the professor's practices and the Harvard Crimson newspaper,
Speaker 1: which was one of the factors that led to are
Speaker 1: being dismissed from the faculty. So all of that background
Speaker 1: at school leads us to the fact that in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, after the house on Kenwood Avenue he left.
Speaker 1: He went to India to study yoga and meditation, and
Speaker 1: while he was there, Albert became Guru Ramdass, which means
Speaker 1: servant of God. And when he returned to the United States,
Speaker 1: he began a foundation to help prison inmates find their
Speaker 1: spiritual moorings, and he became associated with a Dying Project
Speaker 1: which aids terminally ill people and their caretakers as they
Speaker 1: consciously accept that they're dying. And a stroke in seven,
Speaker 1: which was a year after Timothy Leary died, left him
Speaker 1: partially paralyzed. But if you go to Ramdass's website you
Speaker 1: can see that he still has online materials and videos
Speaker 1: and waits for you to learn more about him. As
Speaker 1: for our friend Richard Albert Unlost, I think we can
Speaker 1: definitely give him the title of spiritual intermediary. Definitely. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a he's helpful guy. He he acts as the
Speaker 1: intermediary between Jacob, which is I mean, without giving away
Speaker 1: too much to Candice who has not seen season six again.
Speaker 1: You know, he he accepts that role. He wants it
Speaker 1: because he feels that Jacob's hands off approach is not
Speaker 1: really working. But um, ultimately he's kind of frustrated by
Speaker 1: how little he knows, which I think is interesting that
Speaker 1: this Richard Albert leaves. He goes to India to study
Speaker 1: yoga and meditation, looking for something else, you know, something
Speaker 1: to help explain what he's been doing and what his
Speaker 1: life is about. So you could say that Lost Richard
Speaker 1: also leads a countercultural movement of sorts by changing the
Speaker 1: way that the island has been lead and conducted and
Speaker 1: ushering a new Richard era in very interesting. Uh. Something
Speaker 1: else about Lost Richard is that even though he perhaps
Speaker 1: stands for a greater good that is sometimes terrified ing
Speaker 1: and inexplicable, he's pretty non violent. He seems to be
Speaker 1: um inclusive of others. When young Ben approaches him and
Speaker 1: says that he wants to join the others, he he
Speaker 1: agrees to take him in, but he's going to have
Speaker 1: to be patient, He's going to have to become in light.
Speaker 1: He's a patient man. He's for man for most of
Speaker 1: the show, and then he's not anymore. And that is
Speaker 1: as much as I know about Richard, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that some of you listening are itching to list off
Speaker 1: more comparison, So I would advise you to send your
Speaker 1: thoughts and ideas to Sarah via email, and as soon
Speaker 1: as I catch up with season six, I will have
Speaker 1: to join that conversation. And again, we know that there
Speaker 1: are plenty more famous people in history who share names
Speaker 1: with people un lost, So perhaps you can send us
Speaker 1: your favorite characters and the historical counterparts and draw some
Speaker 1: conclusions and similarities or even striking dissimilarities of your own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can email us at History podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Also, if you want to read a
Speaker 1: little more about loss, you know, if you're sort of
Speaker 1: starting to miss it, it's about the time of year
Speaker 1: when you start getting geared up for the next season.
Speaker 1: I think I'm starting to miss it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But if you want to read some on it, you
Speaker 1: can go to the website and search for the Dharma Initiative.
Speaker 1: Tracy Wilson wrote an article a few years ago, pretty
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. You can find it on our web page.
Speaker 1: It's www dot how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics because it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com The how stuff Works dot com.
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