Dreams of a Gastro Automaton

Invention

iHeartPodcasts

Science, Natural Sciences, History

4.6 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2019

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sometimes necessity ISN’T the mother of invention. Case in point: Humanity’s long-standing desire to create machines that poop. In this episode of Invention, Robert and Joe discuss Vaucanson’s digesting duck and modern takes on the technology.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	from iHeart podcast before social media before cable news there was alan berg he was the first
0:06.8	and the original shock shock that scratchy irreverent kind of way talking to people and telling
0:13.2	them that you're an idiot and i'm going to hang up on you this is live wire the loud life and
0:17.9	shocking murder of alan berg and he pointed to the denver book and said, well, there are probably two million suspects.
0:24.9	Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:32.8	Welcome to Invention, a production of IHeart Radio.
0:38.6	Hey, welcome to Invention. a production of IHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Invention.
0:40.7	My name's Robert Lamb.
0:41.7	And I'm Joe McCormick.
0:43.2	And I want to start by bringing everybody's mind back to a famous quote from Plato.
0:50.7	Okay.
0:51.0	This is from Plato's Republic, Book 2.
0:54.0	And this is particular to the Joit translation. Okay. This is from Plato's Republic, book two. And this is particular to the Joet translation.
0:58.0	Quote, then I said, let us begin and create an idea a state.
1:03.0	And yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
1:08.0	And then Joet also applied a more direct translation, which may be, quote, our need will be
1:15.1	the real creator.
1:16.4	Oh, so this is the origin of that phrase.
1:18.5	Necessity is the mother of invention.
1:20.3	Exactly.
1:20.9	Which it sometimes is, but as we've discussed plenty of times on the show before, there are a
1:25.1	lot of mothers of invention, and many of them are not quite necessity.
	...

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