Sawbones: Superman

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion.

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Tommy is about to books.

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We came across a pharmacy with its windows blasted out.

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones.

It's a podcast.

It's a bird.

It's a podcast.

It's Sawbones.

Hi, I'm your co-host, Justin McRoy.

And I'm Sidney McRoy.

I'm so excited, Sidney.

I know you're excited.

I appreciate that you're excited.

It's helping.

It's helping me recover from my.

I want to tell everybody what happened while I prepare for this.

This is a marital tour of Misguided Medicine.

We're the co-hosts of it.

And usually what happens on the show is that Sydney researches a topic from medical history.

Which I did do.

You did do.

Here's the problem.

Can't say you didn't do it.

We've been doing the show for 11.

Yeah, 11.

11 years.

11 years now.

We've been doing this show.

That's a lot of episodes.

I don't know how many, but you probably do because it's probably listed in the,

probably like next to the episode, right?

Like you can see.

Wonko is 500.

Wonko is our 500.

Over 500.

And

in that time, you forget things sometimes.

Like maybe that you've done an episode before.

And maybe because from my perspective, I know a lot of this stuff already.

Not the history.

Like I'm researching the history.

I don't know all of medical history.

But like the medicine part, I know.

And so it doesn't occur to me.

Oh, I've talked about this before because I knew it.

I don't know.

Anyway, I researched the spleen.

And we made it a good six minutes in.

Oh, honey, we were 15 minutes in.

Yeah, it was deep.

It was deep.

Before Justin said, I think I've heard this before.

And then we realized we have indeed done an episode on the spleen before.

I don't know how I forgot that.

I don't know how I forgot that.

You got a lot going on, Tuts.

But let me tell you, Sid, you don't need to worry because I am here to educate you for a change, even though you probably know a lot of the stuff that I'm probably going to tell you anyway.

But I would like to mark this, take this opportunity of

having an episode where we don't have something to talk about.

I would like to fill that gap by talking to you about the last son of Krypton, Kal El,

Superman.

Specifically, Superman from a medical perspective.

Okay.

I have a text here, a tome.

Many Many remember my Anatomy of the Marvel Universe textbook.

Uh-huh.

This is textbook.

This is my, yes, Sydney.

Textbook?

As you could,

if you look at it, it's quite clearly a textbook.

Okay, what is the formal definition of textbook?

A book with text that is about truth and teaches you things and is a store of knowledge for future generations.

This is Anatomy of a Meta-Human.

It is the same idea where it's talking about the medical science.

So we can finally get over this prove it stuff.

And it's the medical science

of metahumans.

I'm going to say, I think you can call it a textbook because this definition I just googled very quickly is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it.

It doesn't say it has to be

real.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, I think you can, a branch of study could be.

A branch of study is a little bit, I mean,

yeah, I mean, you're right.

This is a textbook.

Thank you, Sidney, for the the uh re

uh re-affiliation i guess it's a textbook i mean i got unless yeah i mean study of a subject your subject is superman and that textbook is telling you about superman so i guess so on the front it says it was written by s d perry and matthew k manning on the inside it's written by batman so i'm pretty sure it was written by batman uh because everything's from sort of batman's perspective but this this is a whole book about meta humans and i'm definitely going to dive into the whole thing but i realize like would there's enough right here just in

Superman the the original superhero uh to talk about okay do you have something that strikes you as funny Sydney the Batman wrote the book is funny I didn't think why wouldn't Batman write the book well you know more about Batman than I do

uh

and I I know that he's a detective yeah like that's part of the Batman thing yeah and I mean there's the bat thing too it's a huge part of it and I know so he's got a lot of like gadgets and stuff 100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't know that researching and creating textbooks.

Okay.

You will actually like that feels slightly different than I made a batarang.

Batman has had his optical problems, but I think that we can all not like literal optical problems because he's got like a variety of bat suits with incredible hyper-optic technology.

I'm saying there's some issues with the way he approaches himself being a rich white dude and how he fights crime or what have you.

I will say I think we can all celebrate the part of Batman's brain who's like, I'm going to keep a file on how to kill Superman.

I am going to be the one.

Everybody's so up with Superman and like, yes, absolutely Superman, but one of us has to think about how to kill Superman and I will be that guy.

Is this outside of this textbook?

I'm going to keep calling it a book.

This is a textbook about how Batman would kill everybody.

Right.

But outside of this textbook, is that canon that Batman?

So there are other comics or movies or something where, no no no where Batman has collected information into a reference file so that he can kill meta humans yes this is this is a thing Batman does not made up that's all I was trying to figure out I didn't know Batman not like so he can hunt them down and kill them but like maybe it's Batman you don't know yes Batman does like to be prepared for every eventuality okay so tell me about um so what do you know about let's no I don't want to talk about meta humans I want to talk about the number one meta human in the DC universe Superman is he a Superman is he a metahuman when he's an alien?

So

this is an interesting question.

He is,

as Batman writes,

Superman is a name that is elegant in its simplicity, yet speaks volumes about what he truly is, a godlike power in the guise of a human.

He's not a human.

No, he cannot be the Superman can't possibly be the best of us when, in fact, he isn't one of us at all.

Batman wrote that.

Very interesting.

Yeah, well, he's not, so he's an alien.

This is going to make

this

harder to apply my knowledge of human medicine to him because he is not human.

That's correct.

But we are, this is what this is, these books are really about is a sort of,

and the fun of it is a sort of speculative anatomy.

So let's.

Speculative science of, okay, you know this person can do these things.

And given the, I want to start with base knowledge where you at Superman in terms of facts.

And we're going to assume that Superman, like in terms of basic structure and function of his body, is similar to humans.

Kryptonians and humans are fairly...

Like the organs are the same.

No.

No, none of that.

None of that.

You should assume.

You should assume he looks like a human being and that's it.

And inside him is a dark, swirling morass of

powers.

So he can fly.

Listen, I have a...

Can you see I have a list in front of me?

I thought you wanted to tell me what this is a list of powers.

I'm asking you, yes.

Okay.

Not about his specific abilities, but about the motivations for his abilities.

What do you know about him as a person, scientifically speaking?

My understanding is that he, I don't, let me say this.

I don't know what power.

This is not a quiz.

I don't know enough about Superman lore to know what powers he had on Krypton.

No powers.

Okay.

So this is interesting.

The sun gives him power, right?

Sun does give him power.

That is.

In part.

So we're going to talk about that.

Okay.

That's, I thought he be, he's powerful because he came to Earth, and on Earth, we've got the Sun.

Well, we don't have the Sun here, you know what I mean.

We do have the Sun here, actually.

Well, you know what I mean?

Like, we don't have it here on it.

We have a yellow one that's different.

There's another one.

There's a Sun shining on us, and it's giving him powers.

And I guess if he went back to Krypton, he wouldn't have them.

Right.

So, this is this is a

excellent starting point for our dialogue here.

Superman is a Kryptonian, which means he is from the planet Krypton, which is bathed in a red

sun's light, not the yellow sun of here.

Now, it does beg the question on how that would impact the visible spectrum of light on Krypton.

Does everything look different and weird?

The answer to that is we cannot tell you what Superman's vision looks like.

It looks different from ours.

It has to be.

He can see electromagnetic fields, okay?

There's no reason to compare these.

He has x-ray vision, doesn't he?

He does not.

We'll get to that.

He doesn't?

Technically speaking, Sydney.

But he can see through stuff.

He can.

But it's not x-ray vision.

So let's start at the beginning.

What's the problems with researching Superman, Sid?

If you were Batman and you have to do research on Superman, this meta-human research, even if Superman's willing and able, what do you think some of the challenges might be?

Well, data collection.

That's where I want to start with you.

I would want to know about other Kryptonians or about Kryptonians in general, anatomy, physiology, that sort of stuff.

Sure, but you have to.

But I wouldn't be able to do that because

I'm assuming there's no books about Krypton here on Earth.

Not that we, I mean, no.

And as far as Superman knows,

he's just a gushy bag of blood.

He has no idea.

To study Superman,

he would need to allow you to do tests on him to do, I would imagine, like some imaging studies.

Okay.

First.

Some MRIs.

First problem.

First problem.

Batcave's technology incapable of fully analyzing his alien physiology.

Needles won't pierce his skin.

Oh.

Conventional radiological imaging devices often fail to penetrate his dense musculature.

So there's a few problems just in the middle.

His muscles are so dense

that you can't use a CAT scan.

I know.

What about the other structures in his body?

He's not just a solid massive muscle, I'm assuming.

There is a

Batman does kick around the possibility that an x-ray machine that uses uses the radiation from kryptonite

could be an option here.

But is that worth the risk to Superman unless he's like swallowed a truck?

What wouldn't it kill him?

We'll get to that.

So, the first thing I want to talk about is what you touched on, his solar, his ability to generate his powers from the yellow sun.

Uh, Batman has some theories about how this happens.

Um, and you, I should, I should explain that Batman

for a lot of this, he's not not going to be able to give you hard data because of this data collection issue.

So a lot of what Batman is cooking up is metaphorical or an analog to what we might understand, even if it's not accurate.

So like

taking this energy and making it into something he can use.

Well, I guess there's a couple options.

If you're comparing him to human physiology, I mean, there's like, I guess UV rays help us convert vitamin D to its active form in our body.

So there are reactions that take place

from being in the sunlight, right?

Like from being in the sunlight.

And it also has hormonal and chemical influences on our brains because our circadian rhythms are very much tied to visual light.

As Batman writes, it seems likely it is that absorption is normal for kryptonians, similar to our own ability to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight.

So you and Batman are basically in lockstep.

Did Batman consider at all, though, that maybe it's plant-like?

Yes.

Membranous in appearance, his

epithelial seals appear to be unique.

I don't know why I sounded like Ill Mitch for a second.

His seals, his epithelial seals appear to be unique, perhaps analogous to a hybrid of animal and plant.

While membranous in appearance, they seem to share characteristics with wild plant cells and are able to photosynthesize and store energy through exposure to sunlight.

See, that was my next question.

Could photosynthesis be part of it because if he is a plant then using the sun for energy is very

i mean that's boring basically yes exactly superman is a plant superman is in part a plant now what about the fact that he can get hurt so much and not and be very tough batman's got a wild theory for this one and it's about cytoplasm

um well okay Let me ask this question.

Is it that he gets hurt and heals quickly, or is it that things cannot heal?

he does both like if i tried to stab him my knife would break correct well

yes it wouldn't penetrate his skin it would it wouldn't go through his skin nothing almost nothing penetrates uh superman's skin

i mean

it used to be that nothing short of i think when he was created by Siegel and Schuster, it was nothing short of like an exploding cannon shell could could penetrate his skin or an exploding tank.

It could generate enough force.

But now it's, I mean, he's basically indestructible.

Well, then it's not, I mean, my question would be: is like that when we talk about like human cells, like epithelial cells, like you talk about skin cells,

his are not the same.

They're not made of that.

So here's what they're made of a different material.

What Batman suggests is that

in his epithelial tissues, particularly his skin, maybe the cytoplasm in there may be similar to a non-Newtonian fluid.

So that

the cytoplasm is a non-Newtonian fluid.

So if you to the touch, it would feel normal.

But if you try to strike it with any sort of force or energy, it would

absorb that in the same way that a

no.

Like when you put,

what is it, cornstarch

and water?

Like when you make, whatchamacallit?

What's that called?

You know, Charlie loves to make that.

Ooblek.

Ooblek.

Yeah.

So he's made of oobleck.

Yes.

So what you've got for me so far so far is that he's a plant whose skin's made of ooblek correct yes but let's talk about i wouldn't have thought that terrible eyes

i mean to be fair this diagram you're showing me of superman's eye nobody's eye would look not great in that cross section that you have there it is that would be disturbing in any yes this is a wild diagram but i want to talk about you we talked about visual capabilities a little bit you mentioned x-ray vision which i want to get to but as we can all uh as well we don't all know but at least some people know superman can also see at extremely long distances and he can see at microscopic levels so he can see way out into space and then he can use his eyes like a microscope i mean i would say there's oh man eye stuff is rough for all of all of my fellow primary care docs out there you know i'm talking about yeah ma'am the eye stuff gets rough i know when the emergencies are happening um generally speaking though i would say one we're talking about the focusing ability and so the lens of superman's eye is capable of doing things that our lens our human lens is not i mean in terms of being able to focus on something that is very far away yeah or very close but then the other thing would be the light like if you're talking about something that's very small

that's like focusing ability but then if you're talking about something that's very far away in space You have to let more light in right right you're not because there's no light reflecting off of that thing That's why we can't see it and so the dilation of the pupil the Convexity and concavity of the lens he's saying so what Batman the best Batman come up with and I think even Batman knows at this point that this is like

Not a good solution.

He says his eyes must contain multiple lenses of varying thicknesses.

So Batman is suggesting that there's a a bunch of lenses in there that Superman is just like adjusting the diff the distance between to adjust his vision.

Now, here's what I'll say, though.

After that, he says, to account for this incredible range in accuracy, his eyes should be much larger.

So, this, I think that's what he's depicting.

So, like, Batman's like, I've got it all figured out.

The only problem is his eyes would need to be like

the entirety of his head.

But this is basically an adorable anime character.

Yada, Yada.

This is how Batman's mission thinks.

I don't think, I mean, what you're dealing with, though, is like you almost need a mechanism by which the lenses flip in and out, kind of like they do

if you've had an eye exam where they spray the lens.

That's what I imagine.

One or two inside

the sillies.

Like, yeah, you would almost have to have that sort of scenario because otherwise, if the light is focusing through all of those lenses and somehow he is using, willing the use of different lenses, or I guess this would have to be on the subconscious.

I mean, like, this can't be a willful action.

Yeah,

it's it's all instinctual.

That's that's a key with all the Superman stuff.

It's it's mostly I think it's more likely that the lens can change

change shape or something.

Yeah, change shape and size.

I don't see any reason, or migrate forward and backward within the globe.

I don't know why, why would you need multiple lenses if you would imagine that he has adapted the ability to,

you know, the lens can adapt to what is needed.

i think that makes more sense

yeah but then you're bumping up against the fact that like where is it retracting and expanding to like

you're at a certain point are you like creating and detracting mass from an object no because i mean if you imagine that his lens is somehow made of some sort of lattice work

of cellular tissue that expands and contracts

so he's eliminating the amount of did they ever make you do you remember when kosai traveled and came to your school and did kosai stuff yeah did they ever make you cut a piece of paper into a shape that would like so a bandage would cover an entire wound did they ever make you do that thing you cut it into this lattice work accordion sort of thing that's the trick that's how you take a piece of paper that's not big enough to cover something and then you cut cut it into this accordion style thing and it stretches further and you can use it to more or less cover the entire area i this is what i'm suggesting about superman's lenses you suggest you also mentioned x-ray vision and that's actually a misnomer he can't see through stuff But

you can tell me more about that after the billing department.

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These poor people have waited long enough to find out how the x-ray vision works.

So he doesn't have it or he does?

He doesn't because he's not irradiating whatever he's looking at.

So it's not x-ray vision.

X-ray vision is a misnomer.

Now, what Batman suggests is that perhaps he can detect particle density patterns or perceive the length of radio and sound waves in complex layers and visually observe how they interact and reflect from matter.

Now, Batman does go even out on a wilder limb than that and says

muons, the detritus of cosic rays, may settle to the surface of our planet at something like, or they settle to the surface of our planet at something like 10,000 per square meter per second.

If Superman were able to sense how these decaying particles interact with matter, the ability might be likened to x-ray vision.

Probably not, though, Batman.

I mean, probably not that, you wild dog.

What does that mean?

I mean, there are muons.

That's a thing.

Muons are a thing, but everything else he said was just like, wouldn't it be, isn't it easier at a certain point to just say it's magic, Batman?

Just say it's magic, man.

I mean, he would have to, in order to be able to look through someone's skin, which, like, that is what we are.

He can look through a solid object.

He He can, yes.

But the muons are interacting with the particles, and he can see that.

He has no idea.

I mean, just has no idea.

I mean, is he using some sort of,

but does he, so he also has the like the can he shoot lasers or heat?

She vision is what we're going to talk about.

Can he emit some sort of wave that can interact with the particles of the object he's trying to look through in order to create something that is momentarily and perhaps just for his vision transparent?

Interesting, maybe the wave that he's, it's almost like an echolocation, but he's like

making his own electromagnetic pulses.

The way that the flash moves through things, right?

Right, yes.

By vibrating at the same frequency that it does.

And now we're talking.

I wonder if like you could use a beam of

radiant heat.

So he creates directed beams of radiation, right?

I don't know why you couldn't use that.

I mean, I know it's different waveforms, but like.

There is this, there is a wild sentence in here.

It says, Clark says that the energy is solar-based, and I have no reason to doubt him.

So it's wild that in this book, Batman wrote, didn't just write, it's solar-based.

He says, Superman says it's solar-based, but how do I know if Superman's telling me the truth or not?

Just so you know, history, he might be lying to me about that.

That sounds like Batman.

He's so paranoid.

That sounds like Batman.

I mean, is he suggesting that he is drawing somehow?

Oh,

this feels like that thing you always say when I'm like but mass cannot matter cannot be created or destroyed and that doesn't make sense and you're like well but they pull it from another dimension right yes this kind of feels like one of those like heat vision at this point yeah like if are we suggesting that he is extracting the heat from the sun and then directly funneling it through his eyes and if so like what is the conduit does he have some sort of now i mean the other thing is does he have some sort of like solar panel in his head i don't know Somewhere, like, does he have an exterior solar panel on his body that it's absorbing?

Is that what the cape is?

We've all wondered.

No, because then, no, because I am certain that if you dug back through all of the Superman media that's ever been created, there is some moment where he uses his heat vision without wearing the cape, right?

Right.

Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.

Well, unless, unless he...

can store, maybe at night he attaches something to himself that's like solar panel-esque and then stores that energy in his optic nerves.

Okay, are you ready for this?

Yeah.

So, Batman talks about that while he studied bats, he saw that bats and other nocturnal mammals have reflective layers of tissue behind their retinas, which allows them to amplify available light.

So, think about if you see like your cat sometimes and they look at you in the right way, it's like, whoa, is that like generating light from your eyeballs?

Your eyeballs glowing.

It's like, no, it's just they have this material behind them to it.

So, like, what Batman is saying is like, okay, for starters, some mammals can do this.

So, maybe Superman is doing that.

And then, he imagines that Superman has a variation of this retro reflector made of some sort of semi-solid optical crystalline material, like a phosphate using laser amplification.

It's possible that the vitreous gel acts as a lasing medium.

Hmm.

Hmm.

It's possible.

It's very possible that stored solar energy could be key to the process.

So the light builds strength through this reflection amplification.

The photons would be produced in the trillions.

And basically, he is, like you say.

And he's also pointing out that mammals have the capacity for endothermic heat generation.

Yeah.

So this is just a combination of maybe those two things.

See, I don't know enough about building a laser to know about like what kind of medium, what kind of material

would the vitreous indeed be an appropriate?

Do you need a medium to focus a laser i don't know i don't know how to build a laser is what i'm telling you now at this point in putting together this document i think batman was starting to get kind of demoralized about the idea that he might have to fight superman someday he just keeps stacking these up he writes here this is the page about freeze breath

he says

As with his heat vision, Superman's freeze breath could also pose a significant threat if he ever chooses to use it offensively.

And then there's another line below that: a single breath would likely have the same effect on a human being as being immersed in liquid nitrogen.

Death would be instantaneous.

It's like, wow, it does sound very hard to fight Superman.

You're right, Batman.

Can the freeze breath freeze anything?

It's cold enough that it can freeze.

He has seen him freeze thousands of gallons of water.

He's frozen

entire waves, saving thousands of lives in the process.

This is from Batman's own notes.

Is it because it's so cold?

Is it just cold?

He's just freezing through the power of cold, or is it like an ice nine kind of situation?

So, oh, isn't that interesting?

No, he thinks that he might have some sacks of liquid nitrogen or ammonia inside of his lungs, as you can see here.

I've got a medical diagram.

You've got a medical diagram that has those.

You can describe that for the listeners.

So, the medical diagram.

So, you've got lungs, and then i don't know if this is sitting in front of or behind his heart it's probably both behind i guess there's like a little sort of mickey mouse head shaped bag oh sack it's so sack because it's in the body it's blue which i think is meant to mean cold because it's liquid so it's like liquid nitrogen or other chemicals right biochemicals

um

batman is like straight up with you like i don't know how this works he's like i actually don't know he's like uh the jewel effect in thermodynamics describes the temperature change of a compressed and insulated gas.

So maybe he's like super compressing the air in some way

inside of him.

And that is what is giving it

coldness.

And that, well, but then when he releases it, you'd have to release it in a pretty concentrated stream to actually freeze something, right?

Because if it was just sort of emanating from him and dissipating into the atmosphere.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like.

Now, I have a few more powers to get through.

I'm sorry.

I got to speed up a little bit.

All right.

Speed speed up with your power.

I'm just on the strength.

So, Superman's strength, according to Batman, comfortably estimates that his muscular strength exceeds five sectillion metric tons of force, which is like he's just so strong.

Does he have like more fibers?

He may possess an alien network of additional tendons and ligaments that fortifies his muscular strength.

100%.

100%.

Possibly he has bivalves and tri-valves between the atria and the ventricles.

More valves.

Oh,

why would you

now that doesn't more valves between the in the heart?

Yeah, there's not look at his why.

Look at his heart, man.

It's crazy.

This is incredible.

I don't know why you would need, like, why would more valves

move the blood faster?

Are we suggesting that we need to get the blood through fast?

Then why doesn't he just have an open circulation?

He's saying it's a more efficient design, so it's more streamlined and it's able to operate better because it's more symmetrical.

Oh.

Now, this is not

because you don't need the same amount of pressure to pump blood through the lungs.

See, that heart,

what you're suggesting is that, I mean, assuming that his circulatory system works the same as a human's, one side of the heart is pumping the blood through the lungs, the other side of the heart is pumping the blood to the entire body, which is why

that side of the muscle is meatier because it's got to pump blood throughout the entire body.

You don't want that same sort of pressure entering the circulatory system of the lungs because you damage it.

And so it is, it is not as strong on that side of the, but that's by design,

unless we are suggesting that the

everything is just hardier.

Yeah, I mean, everything's made of whatever the skin is made of.

Everything, he's saying

tissue has to be like machine-made carbon fiber or something like that.

Something that's like diamond hard.

So he's like part mecha something.

This is, but this is what, this is where Batman really starts to frustrate me.

He says, muscular strength alone can explain how the heavy objects that Superman lifts don't collapse under their own weight or how he's able to protect them and himself from forces like inertia and momentum.

So what Super Batman is asking here is like, even if all this stuff is right, if there's a plane falling from the sky, right, and Superman goes over and comes underneath it and catches it, theoretically, this isn't a good example, but you can

understand how he should just go through it, right?

Like, if he catches a building, the force, the the the weight of that building is then pushing on a very small point which is superman so like

so why doesn't he blast through it he should just blast through it right

um

I mean you would think yeah I mean unless unless again we're we're referring to the oobleck nature of his entire body which can absorb and redistribute that force equally he says that he might he thinks superman might project a field of negative mass effectively negating the weight of objects he encounters Okay, Batman.

Just again, just say you don't know.

Just say you have no idea.

And then he gets to flight.

And it's like, well, it may be the thing I said about the negative mass.

Obviously, that would explain a lot of it.

And if it is the negative mass, that's kind of hysterical that Superman's like, I'm lifting this.

It's like, you're not.

You're just using magic on it.

Yeah, that would be magic at that point.

Here's the thing about the flight.

If you combine,

like,

his muscles are so strong, I assume that's why he can jump high, right?

Because he can leap tall buildings.

Yes.

So he has this like no

strength and then some sort of

elasticity,

the oobleckness, whatever.

You combine that with his speed.

So he also is super fast, right?

Yes.

Yes.

That alone could account for the flight.

Yes, but also he's just got the momentum to get, he's got the, he's got the hop, he's got the hops to get up there, and he's got the momentum to stay in the air.

Right.

That's true.

One thing that I did want to point out, you're covering all the bases that Batman hit.

He's just a plane.

He's basically like a plane, yes.

But he says, in fact, if he can, in fact, create and or interact with magnetic fields, he could conceivably fly sitting or standing.

Batman writes that in the book.

Like, yeah, Batman, I guess he could fly around in a seated position that would look absolutely unhinged.

Have you never seen someone fly around, Batman?

I don't think there's any reason to believe he couldn't fly in any position.

How quick do we speed?

How quick do we turn on Superman if he starts flying around in the upright standing position?

We're done instantly, right?

Well, I think that's a good thing.

We need him super flying or not at all.

When someone, when you see a character in some sort of, you know, whether it's superhero, fantasy, supernatural, something, horror movies do this.

If you see something upright

moving towards you in the air,

that's scary.

That's scary.

We don't like it.

That's scary.

And sitting, go back to crypto.

It's menacing.

It's wild.

It's menacing.

Sitting is not menacing.

Sitting is like, this guy has to go.

Well, I can't be on this.

No, I think it's like, why do you have the time?

What are you careful?

But I think that the laying down positive, the classic Superman flying position, I would assume, is just practicality like it's best aerodynamically yeah um real quick to move on to our last few you mentioned uh he does have super hearing um and i just uh

he's really struggling with this one he writes there's a kind of moth that can hear up to 240 000 hertz normally we can hear between 20 to 20 000 hertz so he's thinking and that is that that is so the moth can avoid being eaten by echo locating bats Batman has a lot of knowledge about bats that he like trots out to see if it connects to Superman.

That makes sense.

Batman's always making it all about him.

He also thinks now.

But how does the moth's ear work?

What is the...

Oh, he doesn't say in here.

He thinks maybe multiple cochleas.

Multiple,

multiple cochleae.

This idea that we just need more of things to make them work.

No, it has to do with the size and shape, the like distance between things.

Like when it comes to sound and the movement of sound waves like more cochlea I don't know why that would make there's also like in this diagram of two cochlea he's like it looks very clearly scribbled out and pinned and I did not do that so it's almost suggested that Batman was like no it's stupid it is stupid that's not no it would I mean like how how thinly stretched is his tympanic membrane and how what is the depth of that canal and like how sound I mean that's what you would talk about maybe a more efficiently shaped ear canal?

Because like our ears are shaped pretty well for hearing, but obviously, oh, and can his ears move like a cat's?

Because that would help.

That's not clear, but I feel like it's probably within the brain.

If I can almost do that, I feel like Superman should definitely be able to.

I would imagine that we have a different, this is a structural thing.

If you look inside his ear with an otoscope, I think you would see a different structure of the ear canal, the bones, the membrane.

He talks about the super speed briefly, and I do want to say he's equally flummoxed by that.

You mentioned the flash earlier.

Matt's getting in touch with like the speed force, but Superman doesn't seem to

interact with the speed force in any sort of meaningful way that he knows.

So it's probably not the speed force.

I mean, if we're we're just talking about the expansion and contraction of like his muscle fibers fire more quickly than the rest of ours.

Yes, but it starts to get into this question of like impact on the environment.

Like why isn't he destroying things around him with the speed that he is theoretically moving?

Now he does not, there are limits to this.

He does not, it says

he does not travel at the speed of light because to do that, he would have to convert it into energy, which he clearly does not.

I would remind Batman that in the 90s

he did momentarily lose his powers and did become energy that was only contained by a special blue suit during the Superman Blue days.

Well, also, didn't he fly around the Earth backwards once and then turn back time?

In

the Richard Donner film, he did do that.

And it is

pretty unhinged.

I'll agree.

Well, I mean, none of that makes sense, but like he definitely would have to fly faster than the speed of light to accomplish.

Also, you don't need to turn the Earth back around, but whatever.

The point is.

The best Batman comes up with is he repeatedly pierces the fabric of space-time, creating wormholes that exist for fractions of nanoseconds.

Batman, just say you don't know.

Just say he's so fast.

And I have no idea how he's winnowing.

He's winnowing, yeah.

He's winnowing like an Akatar.

He's winnowing.

Then, you know, we did want to mention briefly in case you ever need to kill him, he has weaknesses.

Do you know Superman's weaknesses?

Kryptonite.

Kryptonite.

I assume if you remove him from the power of the yellow sun, that would be bad for him?

It slowly weakens him.

It basically hinders his photosynthesis abilities, which sometimes makes him like a regular person and sometimes weakens him.

You're talking about removing him from the yellow sun?

No, I'm talking about the presence of kryptonite hinders his abilities.

The presence of it.

So just it being near him.

Yes.

Because you can't just deprive him of the yellow sun.

You have to actively

undo the process of removing.

kryptonite is a rock it is a it is a mineral it's a meteorite from krypton it's rock

i mean it's a piece of krypton it's what i mean but like what do you mean what do you mean a piece of krypton like dirt no no no the debris that came from krypton was irradiated and the and it's basically like the fact that it is irradiated

by his home planet.

So it's like debris from the krypton explosion.

This is a rock.

Presumably.

It's a green green rock.

Presumably, yes.

And it's emanating radiation.

Correct.

But it doesn't hurt anybody else.

So that it hinders his abilities.

He is also very vulnerable to a red sun radiation.

If you can get him in front of a red sun.

Because it'd make him normal.

And then it'd make him normal.

And then my number one favorite is that is magic.

It's just it's just because people are writing Superman and they could say anything they want but they straight up are just like, no, magic.

Because they came up with Mr.

Mitch's Pitalic, and they had to answer why Superman doesn't just like blast him.

And apparently it's just magic.

Now, I do want to, I want to close out here with one small note.

It's just written in this book here, and it's one of the last things in this section.

And it says, although you won't hear me say it to his face, I consider Superman a friend.

Batman, I would encourage you to let Superman know how you feel about him.

You guys are in a lot of dangerous situations together.

I don't think you should let your machismo get in the way of telling him that, yes, even though you have contingency plan on top of contingency plan about how to kill him, should the need arise, you do consider him a friend.

But that's Batman's whole thing.

You know?

Broody and dark and...

Mysterious.

But he cares.

Deep down.

And he has the mask of being like a jerk that he has to wear when he's Bruce Wayne.

No, it's actually a bat.

It looks like a bat.

I mean, metaphorical.

Metaphorical mask of being like the rich playboy.

What a terrible burden that is.

I know how hard it is.

I'm just saying that he's more complicated.

Oh, yeah.

Superman is more pure.

He's just good.

He's just trying to do good.

He's just good.

If you want to get into the

philosophical underpinnings of these characters, we're going to need a lot more time.

Thank you so much.

I know.

Off-mic then, perhaps.

No, that's not.

Maybe I could interest you in some off-mic conversation.

Thank you so much, the taxpayers, for you to their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program.

Thank you to you for listening.

You're the best.

And I will research a new topic next week that I've not done before.

And I'm sorry.

And I can't believe I did that.

Thanks.

So I don't mind at all.

Sweetheart.

Thank you.

That's going to do it for us this week on Sawbones.

Until next time, my name is Justin McElroy.

I'm Sydney McElroy.

As always, don't drill a hole in your head.

All right.

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