A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Fans of the sci-fi world of "Dune" are waiting for the next episode of "Dune: Prophecy" to drop on Max. Key to the story are two mysterious substances - the water of life and spice.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DUNE: PART ONE")
JOE WALKER: (As character) For the Fremen, spice is the sacred hallucinogen which preserves life and brings enormous health benefits. For the Imperium, the spice is used by the navigators of the Spacing Guild to find safe paths between the stars.
MARTÍNEZ: The water of life is also used in hallucinogenic rituals. Both come from giant sandworms found on the planet Arrakis. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but there are similar substances right here on Earth. Maddie Stone is a contributing writer for National Geographic and told me about the closest example she could find.
MADDIE STONE: The Sonoran Desert toad, like the sandworms of Arrakis, is an inhabitant of a desert environment, and it produces a milky white venom that contains a substance - a cardiac glycoside, so this is something that affects your heart muscles - that an enzyme in the toad actually converts into 5-MeO-DMT, which is a really powerful hallucinogen. And so this can transport users - as one expert told me - into a state of, quote, "existential enlightenment" and has these really mind-expanding properties, very similar to what we see from the secretion of these desert worms.
MARTÍNEZ: So even though we're not talking about the same thing - a one-for-one comparison - is it fair to say that we're in the same ballpark, more or less?
STONE: I think we see a really strong parallel. To give you a completely different example of some really strong parallels to properties of the spice, we have worms on earth called nematodes, much smaller than the desert sandworms of Arrakis. They tend to go unnoticed, but they live in soils and other environments all over the planet. And they produce substances called ascarosides that can alter their anatomy, can dramatically expand their lifespan, can even act as a sort of aphrodisiac. Now, these are all things that the spice in "Dune" and the water of life are shown to do at different points throughout Frank Herbert's series.
MARTÍNEZ: In "Dune," spice is so coveted that there are political and military battles over who can control its production. Maddie, has that dynamic ever had an Earth equivalent?
STONE: Absolutely. I think shortly after the original "Dune" novel was published in 1965, it was very quickly compared with oil. And it's not the worst comparison because oil, like the spice, really fuels the modern economy of Earth. And it has been the source of wars and geopolitical tensions.
MARTÍNEZ: I know, Maddie, that you are not a futurist. But can you ever see a situation where the Earth is locked into that same kind of internal war within who controls a certain element, say, whether it's from an animal or from a plant, like this?
STONE: From an animal or a plant, I have a hard time seeing such an element really being the center of a global power struggle. But I do see parallels in some of the rare minerals that are needed today for modern technology, things like rare earths or cobalts that are in iPhone batteries and also electric vehicle batteries. We are dependent on these specific resources that are often mined in one or a small number of locations on Earth. And as we become more technological as a civilization, as we transition away from fossil fuel energy to different forms of energy, our dependency on these mineral resources is only going to grow.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Maddie Stone, a National Geographic contributing writer. You can find her story on real-world spice at natgeo.com. Maddie, thanks.
STONE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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