Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: is this episode is coming to all you guys and
Speaker 1: gals out there. It is, of course coming to your rights.
Speaker 1: We're leading up into St. Patrick's Day, which I have
Speaker 1: always loved St Patrick's Day. I don't have I'm basically
Speaker 1: of Scotch German heritage, so I don't have that you know,
Speaker 1: distinctive Irish roots link to it, and I don't have it,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have the like the Catholic link
Speaker 1: to it either. But from a very early age, like
Speaker 1: my family was always into St. Patrick's Day. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom's mom is a kindergarten teacher, so we would
Speaker 1: have green things. We would eat green treats, green beer, well,
Speaker 1: no green beer, but like maybe like a green cake
Speaker 1: or a cupcake or something. And I still with St.
Speaker 1: Patrick's Day comes around, I'm like, I need to eat
Speaker 1: something that's green. I need to get like a pistatio
Speaker 1: cupcake if the statuo pudding um. But more importantly, we
Speaker 1: would to a certain extent, we would celebrate the the
Speaker 1: Irish myth of the the lepri Con. We would always
Speaker 1: watch Darby O Gil and the Little People, that classic
Speaker 1: Disney film with Sean Connery in it. Wow, you guys
Speaker 1: did it up. Yeah. Yeah, we were big into the holidays,
Speaker 1: so we would always watch Darbo Gil and the Little People.
Speaker 1: Sean Connery would sing and it was awesome. Lepri Cons
Speaker 1: would run around, there was a banshee. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it was just it was a great film. I still
Speaker 1: watch it from time to time. I just I feel
Speaker 1: like this is really informed, like your ideas of creatures
Speaker 1: in the world. Like somehow this is like an early
Speaker 1: influence on you. Yeah, definitely. I mean we we really
Speaker 1: got into Halloween and then we would really get My
Speaker 1: big thing on on holidays is that if a holiday
Speaker 1: has magic to it, then in creatures specifically, then it's great.
Speaker 1: Like I can obviously Halloween. I love Christmas, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, the Christmas season can get a bit annoying
Speaker 1: with this over commercial realization, but ultimately it's a season
Speaker 1: in which, on one hand, you have a magical man
Speaker 1: sneaking into your house to give you gifts. There's there's
Speaker 1: Crampus running around beating people there's what's his name, Brumschnickel,
Speaker 1: the the other Germanic holiday visitor. There at various takes
Speaker 1: on St. Nick and then and if you get into
Speaker 1: the more religious aspect of it too, you have like
Speaker 1: the Son of God being born on earth. They're they're
Speaker 1: all these fantastic things happening. St. Patrick's Day is also
Speaker 1: in that vein, unlike Valentine's Day, where it's just about
Speaker 1: people in love and stuff. But but St. Patty's Day
Speaker 1: there's this backbone of myth and legend to it, and
Speaker 1: uh and it's awesome. So so what is your background
Speaker 1: with Leprika? Well, quickly, Valentine's Day clearly needs some sort
Speaker 1: of creature because it's lacking that. We should really get
Speaker 1: into the idea of brainstorming that with our listening. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another a side project for all of us. Um
Speaker 1: But for me, St. Pat's has just always been St. Pat's.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, in my family it was sort of
Speaker 1: like their Santa Claus is really like the dude down
Speaker 1: the street who's dressing up in um Lepricrons don't exist
Speaker 1: July really and happy fourth Birthday. I'm just kidding, no,
Speaker 1: but really that wasn't. That's not really something that we
Speaker 1: celebrated much. But I will say that the diminutive, diminutive
Speaker 1: stature of lepri consays thought were fascinating as a little kid.
Speaker 1: And what I find even more fascinating is that there
Speaker 1: is a type of hallucination that deals with this, this
Speaker 1: Liliputian quality um. And that's what we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about today, because again in celebration of Patty's Day, but
Speaker 1: also as a further investigation into how the mind works
Speaker 1: and how it scales our reality. Yeah, so in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're kicking off with a little pop culture lepricn shenanigans. Here.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk just a little bit about the
Speaker 1: myth of a lepricn because I think it's it's ultimately
Speaker 1: far deeper than Lucky Charms and Darby O Gill, and
Speaker 1: I want to make sure I do that justice. And
Speaker 1: then we're going to get into hallucinations and how uh
Speaker 1: some of these hallucinations can contribute and and or possibly
Speaker 1: are responsible for our visions of little people. That's right,
Speaker 1: because as as we have mentioned, this is a sort
Speaker 1: of sub type of hallucinations that exist across various conditions
Speaker 1: that we'll get into. All right, So the Leprechnu from
Speaker 1: Irish folklore, this is a fairy shoemaker uh and he's
Speaker 1: and he goes by various names that include it really
Speaker 1: depends on where you are in particular region of Ireland
Speaker 1: uh and or the history books. So you have lucar
Speaker 1: Pan and again this basically translates to little body. And
Speaker 1: then there are various versions of that lubrican, Lubrican, lucar Pan, Luprican.
Speaker 1: They are all these various takes on it. But as
Speaker 1: the one that we really go with today, of course
Speaker 1: is Leprecn. And the Lepricn is a is again a shoemaker.
Speaker 1: You generally would see him with just a single shoe.
Speaker 1: There would never be a second shoe around, which is
Speaker 1: a little suspect and should have been a tip off.
Speaker 1: Two people who end up messing with said Lepricn. This
Speaker 1: is like waste management job, like you know, maybe that's
Speaker 1: for Lepricn, the being issuemaker. Yeah, like you should be
Speaker 1: a little aware that where's the other shoe. There's something
Speaker 1: fishing going on also, and this is something that will
Speaker 1: come up with especially if the Lepricn is pressed about
Speaker 1: his personal belongings. Uh, he carries a purse, but the
Speaker 1: purse only contains a single shilling, much like a pizza
Speaker 1: delivery boy only carries twenty dollars or less. The idea
Speaker 1: here is, oh, you're gonna try and steal me gold.
Speaker 1: I only have this one shilling, but I may have
Speaker 1: lots of gold elsewhere. That's the big thing. This idea
Speaker 1: grows that lapricns have access to a massive quantity of gold,
Speaker 1: and and certainly in the mythology they do. They're paid
Speaker 1: by the ferry folk for what I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: guess repairing that one shoe over and over again. So
Speaker 1: and there they save up their money and then they're
Speaker 1: laundering the money. What kind of kind of money Launders
Speaker 1: the lepricns up. But people get this in their mind, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lepricn. If I capture the lepricn, then I
Speaker 1: can get access to his fabulous gold. I can make
Speaker 1: him tell me where it is. And later you get
Speaker 1: into the idea of the lepricn gives you three wishes.
Speaker 1: But ultimately the route is, if you catch a lepricn,
Speaker 1: you can totally rob him of everything he owns. That's
Speaker 1: how the the average lepri con chasing uh individual was
Speaker 1: was thinking. So what would typically happen. I should say
Speaker 1: that the classic story, of course, is the guy catches
Speaker 1: the Lepricn and says, oh, take me to your gold.
Speaker 1: And you have to know that if you look away
Speaker 1: from the Lepricn at all, then he can vanish, he
Speaker 1: can turn it visible. He's a supernatural creature with these
Speaker 1: powers at his disposal. So what happens is the Lebricn says, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll take you to the bush that I have the
Speaker 1: gold buried beneath and so, and who knows if this
Speaker 1: bush actually has the gold under it or not. Um
Speaker 1: it works. The trick works well either way. But it
Speaker 1: takes him out there and says, oh, it's under this bush.
Speaker 1: And then the guy who's captured the Lepricn realizes I
Speaker 1: don't have a shovel. I have no way of digging
Speaker 1: up this goal. So he says, I know what I'll do.
Speaker 1: I'll take this red bandana or this, uh, this kerchief
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I'll tie it, tie this red kerchief
Speaker 1: to this bush. Then I'll go home and I'll get
Speaker 1: my shovel and I'll come back, So he lets the
Speaker 1: lepricn free goes back home. He gets the shovel, comes back,
Speaker 1: and what is the lepricn done. The lepricund is tied
Speaker 1: the red kerchief to every bush and tree in sight,
Speaker 1: so there's no way for him to remember which bush.
Speaker 1: What's he gonna do dig up all of them? He'll
Speaker 1: try for a little bit before he loses his mind,
Speaker 1: I guess. But that's the trickster aspect of the Lepricn. Okay,
Speaker 1: see that just takes me back to the thirty rock maxim,
Speaker 1: which is never follow a hippie to a second location.
Speaker 1: Same thing with with the leprichn. Right, yeah, so he
Speaker 1: the Elepricns engage in various tricks like this. They are
Speaker 1: largely solitary creatures, though they do have a king name Lubden.
Speaker 1: They're all males too, correct. Yeah, I did see some
Speaker 1: possible mention of female Lepricns in the idea, being that
Speaker 1: female lepricns do exist, but they're even more tricky, so
Speaker 1: they're I guess they're harder to observe in nature. They're
Speaker 1: making that second shoo, yeah, or may be their lesson
Speaker 1: to messing around and and and deceiving humans. Because ultimately
Speaker 1: the idea here is that lepricns are a type of
Speaker 1: fairy folk. They are fairies and fairies. The notion of
Speaker 1: fairy varies greatly around the world, but there exists a
Speaker 1: nearly global idea of diminutive, magical humanoids and that are
Speaker 1: out there in the world. Um often generally hidden from view,
Speaker 1: kind of an underworld taking place, or you know, or
Speaker 1: in the natural world or underground or you know, somewhere
Speaker 1: that the humans are less likely to see them during
Speaker 1: the course of their day. Uh. And they they vary
Speaker 1: in temperament depending on the myths. Sometimes they are they're benign,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're mischievous, sometimes they're they help humans out. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they steal babies from cribs and replace them with changelings.
Speaker 1: It it varies. Now. Folkustorian Carol rose Um, who I love,
Speaker 1: I've always loved her, just to Encyclopedia's One about Monsters,
Speaker 1: one more about Fairies, and uh uh I keep always
Speaker 1: keeping by my desk next to Brewers and my other
Speaker 1: monster books. But she divides fairies into two types. You
Speaker 1: have trooping fairies, and these are fairies that have communities,
Speaker 1: kingdoms and governments. And then you have solitary fairies. And
Speaker 1: these are the ones kind of like the Lebricn, they're
Speaker 1: more associated with up one place and they don't really
Speaker 1: necessarily have as much to do with the rest of
Speaker 1: their kind. So for the Irish, the most famous solitary
Speaker 1: fairies are the Lebricn of course uh arguably the Banshee Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you also have they're more famous trooping fairies,
Speaker 1: the Dinners She formerly known as the two if the
Speaker 1: Day Diana and which means the people of the Goddess Dna,
Speaker 1: and these are a legendary race of super beings who
Speaker 1: overthrew two other ancient people in primoral primordial Ireland that
Speaker 1: included the monstrous fear bowls. These were the second inhabitants
Speaker 1: of Ireland, Squat and Dark also known as the Corka
Speaker 1: o d c the people of Darkness or the Corka
Speaker 1: Do Widney the people of night Um. When the tu
Speaker 1: efaddani Uh defeated, then they forcing the retreat into the
Speaker 1: mountain caves and they kind of um, you know, devolved
Speaker 1: into grotesque goblin like creatures in the ground. And then
Speaker 1: they also defeated the Fomorians, who were themselves transformed into
Speaker 1: grotesque demons when they fell to the invading fur box. So. Um,
Speaker 1: what's really great about about Irish legend and myth is
Speaker 1: that when you get past the Leprecn and the Banshee,
Speaker 1: when you get past Darby O Gill and Lucky Charms
Speaker 1: and the the awful Lepricn movies, there's this rich, powerful
Speaker 1: epic story of these uh, these genocidal wars between these
Speaker 1: different races of super beings. Because the dynasty, the Efaddan,
Speaker 1: and they had all these intense magical powers at their disposal.
Speaker 1: They could turn invisible, they could shape shift, they could
Speaker 1: blink out of existence here and blink back into existence
Speaker 1: over there. Uh. And they were always fighting these wars.
Speaker 1: For instance, uh, they were fighting at one points against
Speaker 1: the Fomorian chief bowler, who had an evil eye in
Speaker 1: his forehead, destroyed all who looked upon it. And uh
Speaker 1: and sometimes you see this is kind of like a
Speaker 1: third eye in his head. Some depicted that way, others
Speaker 1: depict him he's like a one eyed man with like
Speaker 1: a Uh. The in the one eye has to be
Speaker 1: covered because if anybody makes side contact with it, they die.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite artistic examples of this, though, is
Speaker 1: the idea that he has like one eye where his
Speaker 1: two eyes should be, but his brow has grown out
Speaker 1: into this grotesque flap that falls over his face, and
Speaker 1: so to unleash the power of his eye in battle,
Speaker 1: he has to have two people with like a wooden
Speaker 1: pole come up and use that wooden pole to lift
Speaker 1: his floppy brow up so that he can destroy them
Speaker 1: with his sight. So, well, one more and then I'm done. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then also uh, the two fo they had done,
Speaker 1: and they had a they had a king named Nuada,
Speaker 1: and Nuada lost an arm in battle. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: they replaced it with a silver arm, which they men
Speaker 1: grew flesh over. So we had this amazing like magical
Speaker 1: cybernetic arm. So okay, I'll stop now. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: when we get into prosthetics series, it's pretty crazy. Um.
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to say is that they have a
Speaker 1: rich cultural history UM, and some amazing mythology going on
Speaker 1: there beyond the lepricn but all of this relates to
Speaker 1: fairy for like. Eventually, the idea is that even these
Speaker 1: magical people were defeated by essentially the modern day Celts.
Speaker 1: And they drive all these magical people out into the
Speaker 1: peripheries of the world, but you can still glimpse them,
Speaker 1: you still see them sometimes. Well. See, this is what
Speaker 1: I think is so interesting about it is that it
Speaker 1: is so deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric, particularly and
Speaker 1: when we talk about lebri cons in Ireland right, and
Speaker 1: how this really informs everybody's perception of life. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to point out a couple of things. One is
Speaker 1: that lebri cons are protected under European Union law. Kid you, yes,
Speaker 1: at least the ones that dwell in calling Ford in Ireland.
Speaker 1: The directive is an effort to preserve the rich biodiversity
Speaker 1: of the area called that's leab Foy Loop, which is
Speaker 1: now a protected area for flora, fauna, wild animals and
Speaker 1: lepri cons. And this is a directive that was stemmed
Speaker 1: in part by a group of lobbyists who recounted a
Speaker 1: tale in nine of p J O'Hare who happened to
Speaker 1: be over by wishing well. This man and he heard
Speaker 1: a scream, and he said he went to the wishing
Speaker 1: well and he found um, first of all, a patch
Speaker 1: of burnt ground. And beside this patch he found a
Speaker 1: little hat, jacket and trousers with four gold coins in
Speaker 1: the pockets. The close of the naked lepre coron, as
Speaker 1: this leapricon is called, are actually on display at Pj's
Speaker 1: pub in carling Ford. So you know, is this a
Speaker 1: tourist trap? Absolutely, But again is it part of the imagination,
Speaker 1: the cultural fabric? And um, you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that PJ. O hair was that he actually witnessed. You
Speaker 1: know this. What we see is that maybe a streaking
Speaker 1: lebre con gone gone wild. But um, but but perhaps
Speaker 1: p J O'Hare was also participating and um, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of cultural tradition. Maybe he had too much
Speaker 1: to drink, or maybe he had a hallucination. Okay, And
Speaker 1: this is where this really comes into play because according
Speaker 1: to Oliver Sacks and his World Science Festival interview about
Speaker 1: his new book on hallucinations, he says that hallucinations really
Speaker 1: are cultural in nature and specific to the individual's background.
Speaker 1: So he said that seeing miniature people is one type
Speaker 1: of hallucination, as we said, a subtype. But depending on
Speaker 1: the person's cultural background, the miniature person could be a lepricn,
Speaker 1: a dwarf, a fairy. So that's why I think this
Speaker 1: is fascinating because is uh, if you have this hallucination,
Speaker 1: it is colored by your perception what you have grown
Speaker 1: up with, the sort of stories that maybe the warfare,
Speaker 1: maybe the prosthetic arm of a lebri con got lodged
Speaker 1: into your brain, and this is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that might be expressed depending on certain external conditions or
Speaker 1: neurological conditions that you have. So, of course, if we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about these Liliputian hallucinations, and that's what
Speaker 1: they're called, we should first sort of give a little
Speaker 1: bit of an intro on hallucinations. Yeah, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that hallucination is we're discussing here. It's just one way
Speaker 1: of looking at essentially paranormal experience. As we discussed in
Speaker 1: our alien abduction episode. People have always seen weird things
Speaker 1: in the woods and the skies. It used to be fairies.
Speaker 1: Then depending on your cultural flavoring, maybe it's angels or
Speaker 1: maybe sci fi flavoring makes you see UFOs. We've always
Speaker 1: seen things. We've all we've always had these experiences, and
Speaker 1: there are various ways you can explain them that range
Speaker 1: from simple imagination the youngster to neurological disorder and uh
Speaker 1: and and it's it's definitely happening for the person who's
Speaker 1: experiencing them. Yeah, and um. When we talk about hallucinations,
Speaker 1: we're talking about many different sensory modalities, turning about visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory,
Speaker 1: tactile and other um. And you can actually if a
Speaker 1: person is undergoing a hallucination at the same time that
Speaker 1: they're going m R right, you can actually try to
Speaker 1: figure out the type of hallucination there have having by
Speaker 1: looking at the blood flow to the region of their brains. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you see increased blood flow to the
Speaker 1: fusiform gyus, which is where you detect face faces, then
Speaker 1: you know someone is having some sort of um visual
Speaker 1: hallucination having to do with perhaps even a little person. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of funny to me because when we
Speaker 1: talk about hallucinations, we really think about them as being
Speaker 1: apart from us and otherworldly. Yeah, we tend to think
Speaker 1: of them. An hallucination is seeing something in the world
Speaker 1: as it is, not it's seeing the world wrong, but
Speaker 1: that that really implies that there is a correct and
Speaker 1: definitive way to experience reality. Yeah. And because I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this. We really do have a very tenuous
Speaker 1: line between imagination and reality. And I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this in the context of our blue sky, right, because
Speaker 1: what is the blue sky butt an allusion to us,
Speaker 1: Because if you think about it, the only reason why
Speaker 1: we're seeing a blue sky is because violet and blue
Speaker 1: have the shortest wavelengths and they scatter a lot more
Speaker 1: than long ones, and particles like oxygen and nitrogen molecules
Speaker 1: are present, So those are the ones that are most
Speaker 1: apparent to us. So that's what we see when we're
Speaker 1: looking up in the sky. And then it's not that
Speaker 1: we just see a purple and a blue sky. No,
Speaker 1: the mind can't even really sort of deal with that
Speaker 1: because the machinery that we have um with our perception
Speaker 1: of color, it kind of has to mix some of
Speaker 1: that with white until it turns out to this cohesive
Speaker 1: blue that we look up in the sky. Yet Yeah,
Speaker 1: and is is pointed out in the Excellent Colors episode
Speaker 1: of Radio lab Um. It's it's arguable that too, that
Speaker 1: individuals who do not have a preconceived notion of blue
Speaker 1: would not really see the sky as blue. Like there's
Speaker 1: also that level of cultural layering of it. So it
Speaker 1: really makes you think to what extent am I experiencing
Speaker 1: the world around you? I mean, ultimately, our brain it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's inside of some bone, it's inside of some skull.
Speaker 1: It depends on these sensory uh mechanisms to experience the
Speaker 1: world and then translate that into data. So essentially the
Speaker 1: brain is blind anyway. Well, and it's highly sensitive to suggestion.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned this before, but there's a study at Whole
Speaker 1: University in the UK and it asked participants to imagine
Speaker 1: a color while looking at a gray pattern. And what
Speaker 1: they found is that those people who were most susceptible
Speaker 1: to hypnosis in other words, given to suggestion, they were
Speaker 1: able to actually hallucinate the colors at will when they
Speaker 1: were asked to you, which was corroberated by an m R. I.
Speaker 1: So again there's this idea of you know, what is
Speaker 1: you know, we bring this up a lot, like what
Speaker 1: is reality? And how much of it is colored by
Speaker 1: our perceptions? Yeah? So so much of the I mean
Speaker 1: you can argue that our perception of reality itself is
Speaker 1: a is an hallucination, and any um alteration of that
Speaker 1: is just a it's just a change in the flavoring um.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's a close eyes visualization closed eye hallucinations
Speaker 1: that occur. When I was a kid, I would do
Speaker 1: this a lot, where I would close my eyes. No
Speaker 1: guests to his board, and generally you see colors moving around.
Speaker 1: It's like an instant fireworks show. Maybe I was just
Speaker 1: easily amused. I don't know, I was. I was. I
Speaker 1: was an only child for a bit until my my
Speaker 1: sister's were born, so I just s been a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, a certain amount of time by myself. But
Speaker 1: even now, as I've discussed before in yoga, when I'm
Speaker 1: engaged in Shivasana, the corpse pose meditation, at the end
Speaker 1: of the yoga session, I'm closing my eyes and I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: and I'll end up seeing colors and ultimately I'll see
Speaker 1: forms and figures and faces even and uh and really
Speaker 1: that is an example of closed eye hallucination. I'm not
Speaker 1: doing anything to my body in this an instance, except
Speaker 1: working out with yoga for a little bit and then
Speaker 1: sort of calming myself. But I'm seeing things that are
Speaker 1: are not there within my mind. That's interesting because when
Speaker 1: I was little, one of my favorite things to do
Speaker 1: was to close my eyes and pretend I was on
Speaker 1: a grid and shrink myself and then expand myself on
Speaker 1: that grid. And I thought I was a little bit insane,
Speaker 1: but you know, I felt my body doing that, and
Speaker 1: so it's it's interesting that there's part of our brain
Speaker 1: that we can really tap into to manipulate our experiences
Speaker 1: like this. Um, We're gonna take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: when we get back, though, we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about this specific type of hallucination that deals with the
Speaker 1: detection of tiny things, tiny people, tiny animals. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. And in this episode, we of course started
Speaker 1: off by talking a little bit about fairy folk and
Speaker 1: Leaprikaans paranormal experience essentially, and we're getting into into discussion
Speaker 1: of how hallucination, it's particular modes of hallucination make us
Speaker 1: see tiny people and tiny things. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: before we start talking about um, about this perception or
Speaker 1: this illusion of tiny people or things, I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out that it is amazing when you think about it,
Speaker 1: that our eyes and our minds are able to visually
Speaker 1: reconstruct things. So for instance, if you have you know,
Speaker 1: a plate on the table and the fork next to it,
Speaker 1: and you continue to look back and forth at those items.
Speaker 1: Your brain has to over and over again visually reconstruct
Speaker 1: those items and also do that, um, you know, in
Speaker 1: the context of moving back and forth. So it's got
Speaker 1: the movement element. And what we're talking about here is
Speaker 1: perceptual constancy. So what your mind is doing is saying
Speaker 1: that plate is still a plate, and is still the
Speaker 1: demension that it is, is still the scale that it is.
Speaker 1: And this is a lot of work for your brain
Speaker 1: to do, in your eye to do to take in
Speaker 1: all of this data and make us feel as though
Speaker 1: we are on the same, uh, constant state where things
Speaker 1: are the same and have a constancy to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that this discussion of hallucination really
Speaker 1: drives home is that site and our perception are the
Speaker 1: mental processes that makes site possible are pretty complex, and uh,
Speaker 1: the least little bit of something can can go wrong
Speaker 1: or or change, and it can can have some pretty
Speaker 1: dramatic effects on how you perceive reality. Yeah. It's funny
Speaker 1: because you really do take it for granted how stable
Speaker 1: the images are around you and how stable the story
Speaker 1: that that your perception is telling you is all because
Speaker 1: of these different parts of your brains working in concert.
Speaker 1: There is something called micropsha or alice in Wonderland syndrome,
Speaker 1: and this is when objects actually appear smaller. And it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the mechanics of the guys, but it's really
Speaker 1: the repretation of the data that causes the objects in
Speaker 1: the visual field to appear minuscule. So when you have
Speaker 1: these littlopuction hallucinations, um, they are forming complex visual hallucinations
Speaker 1: of people, objects, or animals that are greatly reduced in
Speaker 1: size or sometimes exaggerated. Yes, sometimes exaggeration also ends up
Speaker 1: going into all sorts of mythological possibilities there as well. Right,
Speaker 1: we've got some examples too that that really sort of
Speaker 1: dwell in this and the hallucinations are vivid and they
Speaker 1: evoke varied responses including fear, anxiety, or even pleasure. Um,
Speaker 1: they've been seen across the board and people who are
Speaker 1: experiencing delirium tremens from alcohol withdraw, people who have eyesight
Speaker 1: problems such as macular degeneration, and people with mental disorders
Speaker 1: like schizophrenia. Although in schizophrenia, even though hallucinations are are
Speaker 1: more common, this type of hallucination, this littlocution is very rare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of most of the cases that we're looking at
Speaker 1: with lillipution, Uh, it's a it's a situation where the
Speaker 1: person is otherwise mentally fine. They're not. They're not a
Speaker 1: disturbed individual or a quote unquote crazy person. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: that crazy person on the streets seeing little people. Of
Speaker 1: course they are, they're crazy. No. It's for instance, one
Speaker 1: of the cases that Oliver Sacks talks about in in
Speaker 1: his book Hallucinations, which is excellent, Highly recommend anyone at
Speaker 1: all interested in this pick that up. It's very readable,
Speaker 1: just a great book. Uh. In his book, he talks
Speaker 1: about a patient that he refers to his Zelda, who
Speaker 1: he treated in two thousand nine. She was an historian,
Speaker 1: and some of the hallucinations that she uh ended up
Speaker 1: seeing included she saw a great granddaughter. She saw a
Speaker 1: trio of witches. She saw her hair rising up in
Speaker 1: the mirror like it was waitless. She saw tiny people
Speaker 1: crawling out of the TV. She saw gaily dressed figures
Speaker 1: sort of trading around. She saw six ominous tall men
Speaker 1: in brown suits around her hospital bed. She saw a
Speaker 1: little men in green caps, and she saw small fairy
Speaker 1: like children. Uh, sort of moving around as well, just
Speaker 1: to give you an idea, because a lot of these hallucinations,
Speaker 1: again it's things are larger or smaller than they need
Speaker 1: to be. Um, So you're you're encountering giants, you're encountering
Speaker 1: little people. Oftentimes they're they're really brilliant to the whole
Speaker 1: The color scheme will be amazing, so you in the costuming,
Speaker 1: if they costumes are perceivable, the costumes will be crazy
Speaker 1: and exotically bright. So you can really see where the
Speaker 1: idea of a fairy folk can emerge from this, because oh,
Speaker 1: they were little people, and they were dressed like they
Speaker 1: were from another world, and the colors were unreal and magical. Well,
Speaker 1: and they were mischievous to write, a lot of times
Speaker 1: these accounts have um the little people that are running
Speaker 1: around doing various things that we are nefarious or yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're disappearing or they're reappearing necessarily obeying the physical
Speaker 1: laws of our world. Now, these are called release hallucinations
Speaker 1: because it's thought that they are released or instigated by
Speaker 1: the removal of normal visual afferent input into the association
Speaker 1: core texts. So in the case of Zelda, there was
Speaker 1: reduced blood flow to the optical and parietal lobes, and
Speaker 1: so this caused the hallucinations, um, but probably one of them.
Speaker 1: One of the things that is most associated with this
Speaker 1: is something called the Charles Bonnet syndrome YES or CBS,
Speaker 1: and this is a common condition among people with compromised vision.
Speaker 1: So when that compromised vision, of course, we're not saying
Speaker 1: the person is necessarily completely blind. Uh, they might be
Speaker 1: suffering from just age related necular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic
Speaker 1: eye disease. The site may be somewhat limited, but they're
Speaker 1: still able to visually perceive the world to a certain degree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea is that the information received from your eyes
Speaker 1: actually stops the brain from creating its own pictures. So
Speaker 1: when you lose your sight, or partially lose your sight
Speaker 1: or it's damaged, your brain is not receiving as much
Speaker 1: information from your eyes as it's used to, and it
Speaker 1: begins to fill in those gaps by creating this sort
Speaker 1: of fantasy pictures or patterns. And then when this occurs,
Speaker 1: you experience the images short in your brain as hallucinations.
Speaker 1: It's kind of this idea that the world that we
Speaker 1: live in because you can we look at like when
Speaker 1: we're just looking around our room, we're looking at particular
Speaker 1: little spaces, and then then we're looking in another little
Speaker 1: space where we're kind of basically the world that we're
Speaker 1: in exists in our minds, and we use our vision
Speaker 1: to constantly upgrade the details of that mental image that
Speaker 1: we interact with. There was a one case of a misssy,
Speaker 1: an eighty year old woman. She complained of little people
Speaker 1: dressed in blue and gray leaves hiding in her cup
Speaker 1: for cupboards, and she also saw tiny black cats from
Speaker 1: time to time, and her chief complaint was that the
Speaker 1: little people like to watch her undressed. So of course
Speaker 1: she was examined. They found that her cognitive functions were
Speaker 1: fined find fine and uh and that really again it
Speaker 1: came down to impairments in her visual field, again creating
Speaker 1: in this story from this lack of information that was
Speaker 1: being processed. Another interesting aspect about lilocutions, especially as a
Speaker 1: as related to CBS. All for Sax points out that
Speaker 1: most CBS hallucinations are ultimately it's inspiring, pleasant, even friendly.
Speaker 1: Um not to say they all are. There. There will
Speaker 1: be some that are a little serving, such as the
Speaker 1: brown uh, dressed men that are really tall. They're around
Speaker 1: Zelda's hospital that was that was ominous in nature. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, they tend to be lighter and
Speaker 1: more amusing and magical in a in an uplifting sense.
Speaker 1: Whereas there's a lot that goes on with with paranormal experience,
Speaker 1: be it alien abduction, that is rude scenario, which is
Speaker 1: rooted in say, sleep paralysis, which is terrifying because your
Speaker 1: your mind body connection is doing something weird and add
Speaker 1: a little flavoring to it from whatever your worldview or
Speaker 1: mythology is, and it's it can be a terrifying situation.
Speaker 1: But with CBS you tend to see these more sort
Speaker 1: of like, huh, there are little people in my closet.
Speaker 1: That's totally cool, but I would rather than not look
Speaker 1: at me while I'm naked. Ye. There's this idea too
Speaker 1: that perhaps, um, you know, it has an adaptive function
Speaker 1: in terms of people who in general with hallucination is
Speaker 1: not just little people. That if someone has lost someone,
Speaker 1: and particularly in the elderly, if they hallucinate, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a loved one who has departed, that this is
Speaker 1: a source of comfort to them. Bereavement hallucinations that this
Speaker 1: is a whole area as well. Um yeah, it's this
Speaker 1: idea that we're as one. If we're losing our ability
Speaker 1: to update the mental image in our head, we're having
Speaker 1: to update it internally. Like imagine you're inside your house
Speaker 1: and you're wanting to paint an image of your backyard.
Speaker 1: So you look out the back window every day, and
Speaker 1: you paint a little more of this image, and you
Speaker 1: updated a little more, and then one day your windows
Speaker 1: are walled up or they're frosted over and you can't
Speaker 1: see out them all that. Well, well then you have
Speaker 1: to maybe you're listening, maybe you're you're drawing on your
Speaker 1: memory to try and and and and alter that picture
Speaker 1: and make it as accurate as possible. But then inevitably
Speaker 1: you're bringing in errors, you're bringing in even magical creations
Speaker 1: into that pain. That reminds me of Anton syndrome when
Speaker 1: they're you have someone who is trying to replace I'm
Speaker 1: putting quote their their reality with a hallucination to simulate eyesight.
Speaker 1: Because because this occurs in telling people that are really
Speaker 1: like totally blind, extremely deteriorating, totally blind from cortical damage.
Speaker 1: Um and and that damage can be caused by stroke
Speaker 1: um and this affects the optic lobes. So these people
Speaker 1: are absolutely unaware of their blindness and they insists that
Speaker 1: they can still see. Yeah, like they'll say, they'll they'll
Speaker 1: say like, hey, you you're blind. Don't try and walk
Speaker 1: across the living room because their toys all over the floor,
Speaker 1: and they'll say, I can totally see, and like they
Speaker 1: believe they can see now, they'll they'll end up stepping
Speaker 1: on the toys because ultimately they that they can't they
Speaker 1: are blind. But but to them, they feel they're experiencing. Now,
Speaker 1: if you tell them, hey, describe that person setting on
Speaker 1: the couch over there, they won't blink. They'll just describe
Speaker 1: the person. The description may be completely wrong, or it
Speaker 1: may be reasonably correct based on previous knowledge of the individual,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, but but they won't hesitate because in
Speaker 1: their in their mind, they do see and see. I
Speaker 1: find that example so fascinating just because that really does
Speaker 1: point to this adaptive function, because if you have lost
Speaker 1: your your eyesight and you are lacking that's stimuli, then
Speaker 1: your brain is just making us some sme alacrum of
Speaker 1: that of reality, which I think is just fascinating. Sacs
Speaker 1: also shared an account of a patient who in the
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, uh would a blind patient went
Speaker 1: on a drinking binge and saw again while in the
Speaker 1: midst of this drinking, like the next morning remembered having
Speaker 1: seen as if his side had returned. But it was
Speaker 1: a hallucination hallucination. But and again it's just all a
Speaker 1: lot of this really drives home just how complex side is,
Speaker 1: and how how complex are our observation of the world
Speaker 1: is to it and to what extent is is all
Speaker 1: of our site hallucination. Yeah, again, this idea that there's
Speaker 1: this uh, this visual constancy that goes on that we
Speaker 1: just that's running in the background and we don't even
Speaker 1: think about how tenuous that is. So, as Oliver Sex
Speaker 1: points out, Liliputian hallucinations can also occur in migraines. Particularly,
Speaker 1: He points out the Migraine Blog by a series host
Speaker 1: of it on New York Times, which is a blog
Speaker 1: just about the author's experiences with migraines. Now, I do
Speaker 1: experience migraines. I do. Yeah, what what are they like
Speaker 1: for you? Do you ever see anything with them? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: I've seen lights and actually a good many of the
Speaker 1: females in my family have histories of really like pretty
Speaker 1: intense histories with migraines, and they complain of something they
Speaker 1: call an aura, it's a feeling, and and they also
Speaker 1: get the Strobe light effect. Interesting. I've never experienced a migraine.
Speaker 1: My father used to get them, and I think my
Speaker 1: sister experiences and from time to time as well. But
Speaker 1: in their their more extreme nature there it's almost like
Speaker 1: a supernatural experience, like it's it's like something from another
Speaker 1: world is reaching out and touching your brain rather painfully. Uh,
Speaker 1: but in in a certain way, illuminating le for a
Speaker 1: few seconds or minutes or what have you. Um. And again,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is uh a sort of impairment
Speaker 1: of the visual feeling here right. Yeah. People will see lights,
Speaker 1: like you said, geometric patterns, uh, flashes of light, zigzags,
Speaker 1: blind spots, shimmering spots or stars are as, and in
Speaker 1: some cases tiny man and tiny animals uh. In On
Speaker 1: the Migraine blog, the author I was talking about how
Speaker 1: they were reading a reading a book lying there, um
Speaker 1: and they looked down and they saw a small pink
Speaker 1: man and his pink ox, perhaps six or seven inches high,
Speaker 1: so the obviously, as they were perfectly made creatures, and
Speaker 1: except for their color, they looked very real. They didn't
Speaker 1: speak to me, but they walked around and I watched
Speaker 1: them with fascination and a kind of um amiable tenderness.
Speaker 1: They stayed for some minutes and then disappeared. I have
Speaker 1: often wished they would return, but they never have. Um
Speaker 1: which is this is just amazing to think of that.
Speaker 1: And you know, you just said there's migraine hits and
Speaker 1: you look down and there's a little pink farmer in
Speaker 1: his ox and they're they're not really concerned with you,
Speaker 1: which which ties in nicely with when you were talking
Speaker 1: about very experiences and in alien ex paranormal experiences around
Speaker 1: the world. They vary so much. Sometimes it is a
Speaker 1: terrible experience where you're like, oh, I'm being abducted by
Speaker 1: aliens or I'm tormented by demons. But in other cases
Speaker 1: it's it's just a matter of for a brief second,
Speaker 1: you have a peek into a magical world just beyond
Speaker 1: our own. Well. I think anybody who has ever had
Speaker 1: a really bad migrant can attest to one of the
Speaker 1: things that is probably interesting to them as well as
Speaker 1: me is that when you have an awful one, it
Speaker 1: feels like the fog is rolling in, and it's to
Speaker 1: some degree it does feel like your vision is being affected,
Speaker 1: not just with the strobe Lde effect, but as if, um,
Speaker 1: something's just kind of moving over your brain like a cloud.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to see that that sort of deprivation
Speaker 1: of stimulation or stimuli might manifest itself with a Liliputian hallucination. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In in the book, Sax points out that in a migraine,
Speaker 1: a wave of quote, electrical excitation slowly moves across the
Speaker 1: visual cortex and on the way, it's possible that it
Speaker 1: directly directly stimulates clusters of orientation sensitive neurons in the
Speaker 1: visual cortex, and this direct stimulation causes patterns patients to
Speaker 1: see shimmering light, zigzag fortifications, et cetera. As we and
Speaker 1: as we see the wave move through the brain during
Speaker 1: a migraine, when we're looking at brain scans, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's matching the movement of the shimmering bars
Speaker 1: in the patient's site. Huh. So that that's very interesting
Speaker 1: that that sense of movement isn't necessarily an illusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's amazing. I mean, I'm not envious
Speaker 1: of people who have to deal with migraines because, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's just a normal headache suffer. Um. I
Speaker 1: would see my father get these migraines, and I it
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, how can a headache do that bad?
Speaker 1: That you just you know that you're you're just you know,
Speaker 1: gripping your skull Like I've never had had a had
Speaker 1: a headache that bad. Uh. But But now that now
Speaker 1: that I see a little bit more that what's involved
Speaker 1: in it, I can totally get it. Well, there you go. Uh.
Speaker 1: I hope that everybody has a wonderful St. Patrick's Day
Speaker 1: and that you keep in mind these little Abutian hallucinations
Speaker 1: as you go about your day clad in green drinking
Speaker 1: green beer, and and maybe thinking a little more about
Speaker 1: about leprecons, being respectful of them, knowing not to chase them,
Speaker 1: don't try and kidnap them and rob them because they
Speaker 1: will trick you. And maybe also when you're when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about about Irish culture and Irish mythology, know that
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of rich stuff in there. In
Speaker 1: addition to the LEPrecon in addition to Lucky Charms and
Speaker 1: and uh the and the awful lepricn horror movies. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have the two Eth the Day then and and
Speaker 1: and they're pretty fabulous and and post Lebricnism transformations with
Speaker 1: prosthetics that exists for futurists, we can transform into labricns. UM. So,
Speaker 1: if if anyone has anything you would like to share,
Speaker 1: be it on Irish smith and legend, be it on
Speaker 1: your own history with lebricns, but more importantly on your
Speaker 1: your your thoughts on the hallucination aspect of this episode. UH.
Speaker 1: Do you deal with migraines? And if you do, what
Speaker 1: kind of UH hallucinatory experiences do you encounter? We would
Speaker 1: love to hear about that. Do you see the grid
Speaker 1: pattern the fortification? Have you ever seen little people uh
Speaker 1: due to migraines, due to cb s tow due to
Speaker 1: any other kind of UH paranormal experience. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you if we you know, and because
Speaker 1: we're curious about about how other people perceive the world
Speaker 1: and about how neurological things can contribute to that uh
Speaker 1: and and if we share your material, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we're going to do some in a respectful manner. So
Speaker 1: so let us know. In the meantime, let's call the
Speaker 1: robot over and do some quick listener mail we received.
Speaker 1: We recently, of course, did the slime episodes and we
Speaker 1: did the Valentine's Day episode about slugs, which there there
Speaker 1: you go. If you need a monstrous creature to to
Speaker 1: associate with Valentine's Day, the slug is perfect, in particular
Speaker 1: the banana slug, which is a penis chewing slug, yes,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and it is also the it is
Speaker 1: also a mascot, yes, you see Santa Cruz, which we
Speaker 1: mentioned and we had a bit of a laugh about.
Speaker 1: And lo and behold, we heard from a listener who
Speaker 1: is a PhD candidate at the USC You see Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1: So she writes in with this fabulous postcard for starters
Speaker 1: and says, hi, I just wanted to say thanks for
Speaker 1: the shout out to w c SC in your podcast
Speaker 1: Slug Life. Uh. It came out the same week I
Speaker 1: handed in my PhD dissertation on lizard making behavior not slugs.
Speaker 1: And by the way that the title of the the
Speaker 1: paper is Maile aggression varies with throat color and two
Speaker 1: distinct populations of the mesquite lizard. She continues, It was
Speaker 1: still a perfect timing, though, because your podcast, UM has
Speaker 1: helped me through many long hours in the lab. Please
Speaker 1: enjoy some slug theme goodies at the token of appreciation. Beth. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she sent a box that contained, first of all,
Speaker 1: some some uh some buttons uh and these I don't
Speaker 1: mind them. One of them says one slug, which um,
Speaker 1: you know means that you're one behind this team and
Speaker 1: they're they're slug scot. And then there's also this other
Speaker 1: button that UM that I actually don't mind either, that
Speaker 1: says that that has the university insignia, and then has
Speaker 1: his cartoon slug that's reading the works of Plato and
Speaker 1: he has a g little glasses on itable and he
Speaker 1: has arms for some reason. So I can stand that too,
Speaker 1: because that's right, all right, he's a slug sort of
Speaker 1: and he's also he's reading playto he's he's he's even
Speaker 1: more intelligent than we thought. But then she also said this,
Speaker 1: there's another UM portion of the care box that is
Speaker 1: kind of horrifying. Okay, so this is a box of chocolates.
Speaker 1: What could be horrifying about that? Well, because they're all
Speaker 1: shaped like slugs. They're beautiful they and some of them
Speaker 1: are banana slugs, yeah. Some of them are yellow coated
Speaker 1: in something and uh, and others are just more like
Speaker 1: a dark chocolate and some seem to have like a
Speaker 1: white chocolate infusion that gives them kind of that model
Speaker 1: of color that is common to slugs. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that looks like the leopard slug, as we know,
Speaker 1: is the gymnast of the sexual reproductive world. Um, this
Speaker 1: is so cool, Beth, Thank you so much, and um congratulations.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we could be in your in your
Speaker 1: ear holes with you while you are working on your dissertation.
Speaker 1: And I think that's just awesome. Indeed, we always love
Speaker 1: to hear from listeners who all listeners, but also when
Speaker 1: they have you some sort of science in their their lives.
Speaker 1: It's always fun. And thank you for aking Robert squirm
Speaker 1: with that chocolate. I do not know if I will
Speaker 1: ever eat one of these, um, but we were talking.
Speaker 1: It would be an interesting experiment to see to what
Speaker 1: extent people of the office here actually ate them, and
Speaker 1: if they did, where they only eat the rear portions
Speaker 1: of the slug Because for me. If I had to,
Speaker 1: I would break off the rear end of the slug
Speaker 1: and eat that, because, as we discussed in the podcast,
Speaker 1: all sorts of horrible stuff happens at the front of
Speaker 1: the slug. The rear of the slug where you're you're safe.
Speaker 1: The front's got the penis the anus. But we'll definitely
Speaker 1: need a control box of chocolates to place alongside it
Speaker 1: to do a representation of what happens here. But all
Speaker 1: of this is awesome, So thank you Againbeth. So. If
Speaker 1: you would like to reach out to us, um you
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook. You can find us on tumbler.
Speaker 1: We're stuffed with all your mind on both of those.
Speaker 1: On Twitter, we go by the handle blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: And if you ever do get a wild hair and
Speaker 1: you want to send us a letter or something, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, feel free to send us some some snail
Speaker 1: mail or slugmail if you will. You can find our
Speaker 1: address on the house Stuff Works website. Just do a
Speaker 1: search for how stuff Works dot com contact and you'll
Speaker 1: find the page that has the mailing address. And you
Speaker 1: can always contact us by sending us an email at
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For more on this,
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?
Speaker 1: Dot com