Digital Minds and Endless Miles

The Box of Oddities

John Elliott and Kat Walls

Society & Culture, True Crime, Comedy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Can a Brain Live Without a Body? | Digital Immortality, Ancient Curses & the World’s Most Brutal Race What if the first creature to outlive its own body… wasn’t human? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive into one of the most unsettling scientific breakthroughs in recent memory: researchers have successfully mapped and simulated the entire brain of a fruit fly—every neuron, every connection—and brought it to life inside a computer. Is it thinking? Is it aware? Or is it something stranger—something in between? From digital consciousness and the eerie implications of “connectomes” to the philosophical nightmare of uploading the human mind, this story blurs the line between science and science fiction in a way that’s hard to unsee. But that’s just the beginning. We also crack open the ancient world to explore chilling Egyptian tomb curses—warnings etched in stone that promise everything from fiery deaths to supernatural retribution. Were they symbolic… or something more? And why do so many of them involve birds with a serious attitude problem? Then, in a completely different flavor of human endurance (or madness), we explore the Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race—an almost incomprehensible ultramarathon where competitors run the same city block in Queens… for up to 52 days straight. No scenery. No escape. Just miles, repetition, and whatever starts to surface in your mind when there’s nowhere left to hide. Is it spiritual enlightenment… or psychological unraveling? This episode asks big questions: * Can consciousness exist outside the body? * Are we inching toward digital immortality? * What happens when the brain becomes data? * And why would anyone willingly run 3,100 miles in circles? If you like your science unsettling, your history cursed, and your human behavior just a little unhinged… you’re in the right place. Inside this Box: * The first fully simulated fruit fly brain (and why it matters) * The disturbing implications of digital consciousness * Ancient Egyptian tomb curses that still haunt modern imaginations * The world’s longest certified footrace—and the minds that survive it Subscribe, follow, and join the Freak Family. You won't regret it. Probably. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to True Spies.
0:02.0	The podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.
0:08.0	Suddenly out of the dark that's appeared in Laubman.
0:10.0	You'll meet the people who live life undercover.
0:13.0	What do they know? What are their skills?
0:16.0	And what would you do in their position?
0:18.0	Vengeance felt good.
0:20.0	Seeing these people pay for what they'd done felt righteous.
0:24.6	True spies from Spyscape Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31.8	The Box of Oddities.
0:35.2	You know when we were sitting outside last night and there was a kid out in the
0:39.2	park flying a kite? It reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad wanted to make a kite
0:45.4	for me and yeah, it was like a really wholesome kind of moment. That is really sweet. He decided to
0:52.5	make me one of those big Chinese style kites. It was large. I don't know. I was like four, so I'm thinking, you know, probably will. It was bigger than I was. Maybe three feet. And he made it out of brown paper. And it was his shape of a fish. It was really kind of cool. And we worked on it together for, I don't know, a week or two.
1:11.7	And then he took me to an area in my hometown called Garrison Hill. And he thought, well,
1:17.9	it's up on a hill. There'll be a lot of a lot of breeze, a lot of wind. And we get up there
1:22.6	and the damn thing wouldn't get off the ground. And so for the longest period of my life, I thought kites were a hoax. I didn't think kites were a real thing. I thought it was just something in the movies. Cites are fake. Fuck you, Mary Poppins. It really bummed me out because I wanted to believe in kites. Sure. But you just couldn't. I just couldn't after that. It was just too much. I couldn't suspend my disbelief. That's traumatic. Long enough. Yeah. Kites are a hoax. That would be a great new t-shirt for our merch store. Yeah. That's really funny. Cites aren't real. But what is real is the story I have for you. This is really
2:04.6	weird and it's pretty recent news. So let me start by asking you this question. What if the very
2:10.6	first creature to outlive its own body wasn't a human, not a billionaire trying to chase immortality with cryogenics or something.
2:20.8	Or upload style?
2:22.3	Right, right.
2:23.6	But it is upload style, but not with a person, with a fruit fly.
	...

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