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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode.

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Speaker 1: This is part two of the series that we did

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Speaker 1: on the Mirror. This originally published August. We hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 1: I was guiding the tour that Sandra Bates, his brother,

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Speaker 1: was a part of when he got his look into

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Speaker 1: your precious Delver mirror, Spangler. He was perhaps sixteen, part

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Speaker 1: of a high school group. I was going through the

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Speaker 1: history of the glass and had just got to the

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Speaker 1: part you would appreciate, extolling the flawless craftsmanship, the perfection

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Speaker 1: of the glass itself, when the boy raised his hand, um,

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Speaker 1: but what about that black splotch in the upper left

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Speaker 1: hand corner that looks like a mistake. And one of

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Speaker 1: his friends asked him what he meant, so the Bates

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Speaker 1: boy started to tell him, then stopped. He looked at

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Speaker 1: the mirror very closely, pushing right up to the red

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Speaker 1: velvet guard rope around the case. Then he looked behind him,

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Speaker 1: as if what he had seen had been the reflection

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Speaker 1: of someone of someone in black standing at his shoulder.

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Speaker 1: It looked like a man, but I couldn't see the face.

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Speaker 1: It's gone now, And that was all. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with

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Speaker 1: part two of our discussion of the mirror. In the

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Speaker 1: last episode, we talked about some of the science of optics,

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Speaker 1: about how mirrors work, why they work. We talked a

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Speaker 1: little bit about mirror psychology and some of the earliest

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Speaker 1: mirrors from the archaeological record, specifically obsidian mirrors found associated

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Speaker 1: with the ancient Proto city of Chattel Hoyak in southern Anatolia. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that that cold read that we opened the episode with.

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Speaker 1: That's an excerpt from Stephen King's Wonderful Haunted Mirror short

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Speaker 1: story The Reaper's Image, collected in ve short story compilation

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Speaker 1: Skeleton Crew. So I highly recommend anyone who hasn't read

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Speaker 1: that go read that story if you want a creepy

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Speaker 1: mirror story. For my money, just as creepy as anything

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Speaker 1: he ever wrote, you know, as creepy as the likes

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Speaker 1: of the Boogeyman or the Jaunt. You know. I was

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Speaker 1: saying in the last episode that I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: an accident that there are so many horror movie scenes

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Speaker 1: and ghost stories that involve a mirror. There there seems

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Speaker 1: something really special about mirrors that uh takes people's minds

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Speaker 1: to two supernatural and unsettling places more so than other

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Speaker 1: household objects. And I think it's pretty obvious why that

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Speaker 1: would be. That there appears to be something alive on

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Speaker 1: the other side of the mirror, and the mirror gives

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Speaker 1: you you know, it's not just that you see yourself

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Speaker 1: and you see something animate in it, but that you

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Speaker 1: can also see what's behind you. In a mirror, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you it allows you to seeings that you cannot directly see, uh.

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Speaker 1: And that's always been one of the attractive aspects of

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Speaker 1: mirrors in everything from I mean the very practical usage

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Speaker 1: of like we mentioned mirrors utilized by the roadside and

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Speaker 1: it turns and whatnot so you can see who's coming

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Speaker 1: or or even in in corridor, so you can see

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Speaker 1: who is around the corner. Uh. Two other things like

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Speaker 1: those those ridiculous sunglasses that have little mirrors in them

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Speaker 1: so you can see behind you. Oh. I got some

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Speaker 1: of those when I was a kid, and I thought

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Speaker 1: that was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, or driving a car,

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Speaker 1: just think about it, The very act of driving a

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Speaker 1: car were utilizing at least three different mirrors at all times.

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Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's just every day we take it

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Speaker 1: for granted, but it's, uh, it's kind of strange when

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Speaker 1: you think about it. Though. Of course, at least the

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Speaker 1: mirrors warned you that that reality and reflection do not

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Speaker 1: necessarily match up. Oh that's funny if like every mirror

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Speaker 1: came with a disclaimer the way the rear view mirrors

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Speaker 1: on a car do. Yeah, yeah, does not reflect reality.

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Speaker 1: But as a segue to one of the first things

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Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about today, it's worth noting that

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Speaker 1: prehistoric Anatolia is not the only place, uh, in the

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Speaker 1: ancient world where there was the use of obsidian mirrors.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Evidence of mirrors, and especially obsidian mirrors in

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Speaker 1: Mesoamerica date back at least as far as six b c. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There there might be some earlier dates, but I think

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Speaker 1: that was the earliest date. I was I was coming

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Speaker 1: across in my research, and so they were used by

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Speaker 1: the Maya, they were used by the Aztecs. And when

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Speaker 1: they were used by the Aztecs, particularly by Aztec priests,

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Speaker 1: they were used in various scrying rituals in the worship

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Speaker 1: of of the god that tezcot Li PoCA, whose name

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Speaker 1: actually means Lord of the smoking Mirror. Uh. So there

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Speaker 1: were black mirrors used by his priests. Uh. And he

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Speaker 1: has this just overall connection to dark volcanic obsidian. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so scrying is a practice that's found in cultures

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Speaker 1: and religions all throughout the world. The arc type example

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Speaker 1: you see is gazing into the crystal ball, right, Um,

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Speaker 1: But but scrying really refers to any form of divination, prophecy,

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Speaker 1: or revelation that involves gazing into some kind of medium,

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Speaker 1: often a reflective medium such as a mirror or a

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Speaker 1: crystal ball. Yeah. But I would say one of the

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Speaker 1: things about tes Catlet Polca is that, like he is

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Speaker 1: really the mirror deity par excellence because his name means

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Speaker 1: smoking mirror. Like, like, that's how closely connected he is

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Speaker 1: with this. Um. He's he's a fascinating character. I think

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Speaker 1: we've we've we've mentioned him a few different times on

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Speaker 1: the podcast. He's said to have lost his right foot

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Speaker 1: in a battle against an earth monster, and as such

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Speaker 1: he's often depicted with a prosthesis of gleaming obsidian that

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Speaker 1: may sometimes resemble a serpent. And I decided to go

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Speaker 1: a little deeper for this episode. So I was reading

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Speaker 1: about him in a book titled Tess Catl PoCA, Trickster

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Speaker 1: and Supreme Deity, edited by Aztec scholar Elizabeth Baquedano. And

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Speaker 1: in this book, in a chapter titled Enemy Brothers or

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Speaker 1: Divine Twins, author Gillium Oliver points out that test Catlet

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Speaker 1: PoCA was associated quote with untamed space and night, though

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Speaker 1: his name is composed of two cultural elements smoke, which

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Speaker 1: comes from the epitome of cultural creations fire and the mirror,

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Speaker 1: undoubtedly one of the manufactured objects whose creation is the

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Speaker 1: most exciting. And now this is in comparison to the

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Speaker 1: animal elements of his rival, quetzal Kotal, who we discussed

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Speaker 1: and at least I think we did a couple of

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Speaker 1: episodes on the on the plume de serpent. Did we not? Oh? Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: But I don't think I really understood this distinction before.

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Speaker 1: So one way of thinking about them is that Ketzel

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Speaker 1: Caudal embodies certain aspects of nature, whereas test Cat Polca

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Speaker 1: embodies something about technology or human artifice. Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: believe that's the That's the point here is that quetzal Kotal,

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Speaker 1: you know, has these natural animal elements that are his makeup,

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Speaker 1: whereas Testcatlipoca is essentially a lord of artifact and invention.

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Speaker 1: So yes, you know that smoke is part of fire,

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Speaker 1: and fire does not require humans. Obsidian um occurs on

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Speaker 1: its own, but of course both of these are brought

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Speaker 1: to new heights by by human invention, you know, the

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Speaker 1: polishing of the obsidian to make a mirror, the utilization

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Speaker 1: of of smoke and fire in in other human activities.

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Speaker 1: So you could you could look at him as a

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Speaker 1: god of technology. I know this is not intended by

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Speaker 1: the people who created these ancient artworks, but some depictions

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Speaker 1: of test Catlipoca do look like a robot. Yeah yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: sometimes that art does have that that kind of appearance

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Speaker 1: to it. Now, according to Michael E. Smith in Um

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Speaker 1: in that author's chapter in this book, uh the Archaeology

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Speaker 1: of Testcatlipoca, various items are associated with with the cult

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Speaker 1: of this deity. The most important are altars, ceramic flutes,

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Speaker 1: and of course obsidian mirrors, and the mirror is likely

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Speaker 1: the most important because on one hand, again it's part

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Speaker 1: of the god's name and identity. It's the substance of

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Speaker 1: his prosthesis, and numerous colt items and costume elements associated

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Speaker 1: with him were obsidian mirrors. Um Now. Mirrors were sometimes

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Speaker 1: associated with other Aztec gods, but apparently circular obsidian mirrors

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Speaker 1: were just central to the worship and identity of Testcatlet PoCA. Now.

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Speaker 1: One of the challenges to archaeological study of this mirrors, though,

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Speaker 1: is that, as as Smith points out, virtually none of

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Speaker 1: them were found under modern archaeological standards um and and

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Speaker 1: this becomes obvious when you consider dr ds as tech

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Speaker 1: obsidian mirror, which is often brought up as like the

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Speaker 1: most one of the most famous examples of this, which

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Speaker 1: has resided in England since at least the late sixteenth century,

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Speaker 1: and during this time it's traveled to other museums a bit,

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Speaker 1: and I think has come as far as the United

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Speaker 1: States on maybe two different occasions, but it's certainly never

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Speaker 1: returned to Mexico. So a lot of these mirrors have

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Speaker 1: been in circulation for a anisle and we're uncovered centuries ago.

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Speaker 1: Now are you aware of is anything actually known about

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Speaker 1: the exact provenance of of John D's mirror, like like

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Speaker 1: how by what route it came to him? Um? There

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Speaker 1: is I have looked at the scholarship on that before. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I guess a couple of things to keep in

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Speaker 1: mind about the mirrors. So, first of all, uh, the

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Speaker 1: are you also find rectangular obsidian mirrors in some collections

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Speaker 1: that are tied to um To Aztec traditions. But some

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Speaker 1: experts argue that these may not be pre Hispanic they

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Speaker 1: may be postconquest artifacts. Um. The mirrors that you see

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Speaker 1: in the various codices are are all circular, so that

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Speaker 1: seems to be a distinction some of the experts are making.

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Speaker 1: Now that the As for the magical speculum as it's

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Speaker 1: called of Dr d Um that does appear, I think

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Speaker 1: all the experts agree, like that isn't that isn't an

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Speaker 1: actual az Tech artifact. Um. I think the previous owner

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Speaker 1: prior to D is known. I can't remember how far back,

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Speaker 1: like the lineage of ownership is known. Um. But one

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Speaker 1: of the things about a lot of these obsidian artifacts

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Speaker 1: is you can you can trace them back to where

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Speaker 1: they came from. So so it's it's with a high

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Speaker 1: degree of certainty that this particular artifact is traced back

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Speaker 1: to Mexico. Is that tracing by geological means, Yes, Yes,

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Speaker 1: it's it's my understanding that you can geologically trace the

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Speaker 1: obsidian to it to at least a certain degree. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that Smith points out about the

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Speaker 1: magical speculum of dr D which is where it's worth

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Speaker 1: looking up a picture of this. I think I've described

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Speaker 1: it before on the show. If you didn't know what

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Speaker 1: you're looking at, you might think it was a component

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Speaker 1: for like an ikea coffee table. It's not. It's not

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Speaker 1: something that instantly looks ancient. It's um. It's it's very

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Speaker 1: plain and um and functional in many respects. It is

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Speaker 1: a circular mirror with kind of a notch at the top,

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Speaker 1: with a hole in it. And apparently Smith points out

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Speaker 1: that the whole at the top of that artifact is

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Speaker 1: likely there so it could be worn as an ammu

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Speaker 1: let across the chest, which is something that we see

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Speaker 1: in the codiceas. So, there seemed to have largely been

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Speaker 1: two standardized types or sizes of these mirrors, there was

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Speaker 1: one size that was intended to adorn a sculpture, and

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Speaker 1: then others like this, like the one that came into

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Speaker 1: Dr De's possession, that was worn as an ornament by priests.

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Speaker 1: But it's also possible that size norms changed over time.

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Speaker 1: Now Nicholas J. Saunders and Elizabeth Bacuadano right quote these

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Speaker 1: reflective devices were powerfully ambiguous, not least because they shone

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Speaker 1: with a quote unquote dark light. They partook of what

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Speaker 1: has been called a pen Amerindian quote aesthetic of brilliance,

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Speaker 1: which accorded sacredness and power to a multimediasemblage of shiny objects.

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Speaker 1: The material metaphors of access to and control of the

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Speaker 1: glowing spirit realm from wind, status and political power flowed.

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Speaker 1: And they also write that quote a presence of absence

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Speaker 1: to finds the ambivalent nature of test catolet PoCA, the

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Speaker 1: supreme deity of the late post classic Aztec pantheon, in

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Speaker 1: the dark ephemeral reflection of his obsidian mirror, in the

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Speaker 1: transient sound of his ceramic flower pipes, lies the sensuous

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Speaker 1: nature of a god who mediates materiality and invisibility with

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Speaker 1: omniscience and omnipresence. So a couple of years ago I

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Speaker 1: actually was lucky enough to see uh John D's mirror, uh,

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Speaker 1: the Aztec of Citian mirror from his collection in the

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Speaker 1: British Museum. It's on display there among the collection of

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Speaker 1: Dr D's treasures, and I recall, yeah, looking into it,

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Speaker 1: you can get a rather unsettling feeling where you you

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Speaker 1: could imagine how a person could could feel the power

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Speaker 1: from the other realm flowing out from this, this sort

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Speaker 1: of conduit or gateway. Yeah. Yeah, this mirror is I

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Speaker 1: think I've mentioned before. I may have seen it when

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Speaker 1: I visited the British Museum, but I did not know

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Speaker 1: about its existence, so I have no specific memory of

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Speaker 1: of seeing it. And again, if you don't know what

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Speaker 1: you're looking for, or you're happy to sort of breathe

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Speaker 1: past it, you might not pay that much attention to it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's part of the British Museum collection. Again,

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Speaker 1: has traveled a little bit, but but not I don't

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Speaker 1: think extensively. Uh So if you visit the British Museum today,

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Speaker 1: there's a good chance you'll be able to find it.

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Speaker 1: They also have it on their website. Now I want

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Speaker 1: to mention one more thing from that book. Um, there's

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Speaker 1: a chapter in there by Susan mill Breath titled the

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Speaker 1: Maya Lord of the Smoking Mirror. And this, this dude

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Speaker 1: paper deals primarily with cal Will, the Maya form of

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Speaker 1: this same deity, but in it the author writes that

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Speaker 1: the mirrors were indeed used in acts of divination. Priests

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Speaker 1: and magicians would use the mirrors to gaze into the future.

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Speaker 1: Quote his obsidian mirror appears in an Aztec account describing

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Speaker 1: a mirror or test cattle that showed the quote stars

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Speaker 1: and fire drill a constellation even though it was daytime,

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Speaker 1: and then revealed an omen forecasting the Spanish invasion. And

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Speaker 1: so they point out that that the mirrors ruling divination

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Speaker 1: may be linked with astrology, because test catlet Polca had

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Speaker 1: numerous astronomical avatars. So it's interesting we see this idea

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Speaker 1: of of reflections in the mirror. It's you know, it's

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Speaker 1: it's clearly associated with reflections of us, but also reflections

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Speaker 1: of of the cosmos. I think that's that's fascinating. And

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Speaker 1: then you get into the idea of the darkness of obsidy,

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Speaker 1: and I guess being like the darkness betwixt the stars.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, thank thank, thank Now, as we talked about

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Speaker 1: in the last episode, there were also obsidian mirrors on

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Speaker 1: the other side of the Atlantic. In the ancient world.

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Speaker 1: The earliest mirror artifacts known of are probably these obsidian

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Speaker 1: discs from prehistoric Anatolia. But I was wondering, okay, where

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Speaker 1: did mirror technology go after that? So I was turning

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Speaker 1: back to a sort of catalog of of different early

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Speaker 1: mirror finds that are listed in a paper by J. M.

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Speaker 1: Enoch in the Journal of Optometry and Vision Science in

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Speaker 1: two thousand six called History of Mirrors dating back eight

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Speaker 1: thousand years and Enoch notes a few types of artifacts

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Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt that have been interpreted as possible mirrors,

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Speaker 1: but but are not quite certain. For example, the English

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Speaker 1: egyptologist Flinders Petrie suggested that stone palettes in pre dynastic

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Speaker 1: Egypt could have been turned into mirrors by wedding them.

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Speaker 1: So you might have an artifact that just looks like

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Speaker 1: kind of a flat stone disc, and that by wedding

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Speaker 1: this disc you could turn it into a rough mirror. Also,

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Speaker 1: egyptologist Christine lily Quist argued that ancient Egyptians may have

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Speaker 1: used ceramic bowls that could be filled with water to

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Speaker 1: function as mirrors inside the home and lily Quist sites

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Speaker 1: findings at Elbadari, which is a site along the Nile

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Speaker 1: and Upper Egypt with a number of artifacts from pre

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Speaker 1: dynastic times. I think this is one of the earliest

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Speaker 1: sites that shows evidence of agriculture in in predynastic egypt Um.

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Speaker 1: But that around Elbadari there is possible evidence of early mirrors,

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Speaker 1: including quote a slab of selenite with traces of wood

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Speaker 1: as a possible frame um and a slate disc also

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Speaker 1: a piece of reflective mica pierced with the whole a

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Speaker 1: possible wall attachment. But moving on from here you start

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Speaker 1: to get signs of metal mirrors, which are obviously you

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Speaker 1: can just imagine, are going to have a very different

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Speaker 1: quality than say a wet stone would. So by the

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Speaker 1: time period of roughly the fourth millennium BC, so four

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Speaker 1: thousand to three thousand b C, there is some evidence

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Speaker 1: of metal mirrors in the ancient Near East, and this

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Speaker 1: includes small copper discs possibly used as mirrors that are

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Speaker 1: found in southern Mesopotamia in what is today Iraq, for example,

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Speaker 1: around the ancient city state of Or. And when I

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Speaker 1: was looking around at these examples, it seems perhaps most

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Speaker 1: or maybe even all of the mirrors recovered from around

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Speaker 1: three thousand BC e in Mesopotamia were copper mirrors. But

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Speaker 1: by the third millennium BC, in moving forward, there are

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Speaker 1: a number of examples of metal mirrors found in Egypt,

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Speaker 1: usually copper early on, and then as as the years

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Speaker 1: go on, there are more copper alloys, and these would

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Speaker 1: fall into the classification of bronze mirrors. But also by

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Speaker 1: the third millennium BC, there are not only these scant artifacts,

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Speaker 1: but actually records of mirrors. So this means mirrors evoked

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Speaker 1: as a concept in texts and in artistic imagery. So

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Speaker 1: Enoch includes some examples of ancient Egyptian artwork from tombs

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Speaker 1: that appears to show mirrors. Uh. For example, Rob, I've

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Speaker 1: got one you can look at here. This is figure

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Speaker 1: three in front of you, but I'll try to describe

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Speaker 1: it is detail from the tomb of mirror Ruca at Sakara.

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Speaker 1: And so this would have been the sixth dynasty of

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Speaker 1: Egypt roughly b C. And what you see is sort

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Speaker 1: of a line of figures depicted in that profile style. Um,

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Speaker 1: and they're they're doing they're they're holding up objects at

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Speaker 1: each other. And I think this may be showing a

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Speaker 1: sequence of the same figures interacting across time. But one

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Speaker 1: of the objects they're holding up it looks like, well,

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Speaker 1: what is that? Is that a ping pong paddle? No,

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Speaker 1: it's probably a mirror. Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see it.

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Speaker 1: I mean they're they're holding it up to their faces

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Speaker 1: as if looking at their own reflection. And way way

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Speaker 1: back into history. Uh, it's clear that mirrors contain not

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Speaker 1: just their practical functions they're used in cosmetics and stuff,

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Speaker 1: but also their religious significance. Uh. Enoch notes that is

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Speaker 1: extremely common across all of these cultures for mirrors to

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Speaker 1: be associated with some kind of supernatural power, to be

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Speaker 1: associated with the gods, or to have some kind of

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Speaker 1: use in divination or or association with the soul. He writes, quote,

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Speaker 1: they served as symbols of the sun or moon, and

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Speaker 1: may have been carried on tops of standards, a one sided,

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Speaker 1: flattened disc symbolized as setting or rising on. Mirrors were

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Speaker 1: sometimes used to symbolize the inner self. They also provided

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Speaker 1: a way to look back. Yeah, this is all especially

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Speaker 1: interesting considering the ancient Egyptians, who of course were very

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Speaker 1: solar oriented culture. Uh So anything that reflects sunlight is

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Speaker 1: going to potentially have some real value. Uh. And I

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Speaker 1: think we've discussed in the show before about the you know,

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Speaker 1: the idea that the the Great Pyramids were once um

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Speaker 1: uh covered in a more reflective surface, so that they

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Speaker 1: would have they would have you know, wouldn't have been

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Speaker 1: like a mirror, but they would have definitely reflected the

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Speaker 1: brilliance of the sun during the day. Yeah. It would

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Speaker 1: have been amazing to be alive at a time when

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Speaker 1: you could have seen that. Yeah. Um. But hey, so

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Speaker 1: there's another thing I came across while while reading up

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Speaker 1: for this episode that I really wanted to do a

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Speaker 1: digression on that has less to do with the technology

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Speaker 1: of a mirror, but I think actually does tie into

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Speaker 1: maybe a lot of these, uh these religious uses of

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Speaker 1: mirrors that we see throughout the ages. And this is

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Speaker 1: an effective mirrors that has come to be known as

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Speaker 1: the strange face in the mirror effect. Yeah, and this

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Speaker 1: is this is great because it's it's one that we

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Speaker 1: can certainly take all of this and apply it to

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Speaker 1: the mirrors that surround us today. But then if we're

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Speaker 1: talking about these various older variations of the mirror that

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Speaker 1: are maybe smoky or darker um, smaller um, it allows

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Speaker 1: even more room for ambiguity. Yeah. So a while back,

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Speaker 1: I did an episode of the artifact that I called

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Speaker 1: the Psychedelic Blindfold. I don't know if you ever got

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Speaker 1: a chance to listen to this one, Rob, but it

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Speaker 1: was one that I've been thinking about a lot ever since.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, though it's called the psychedelic blindfold, there's

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Speaker 1: actually nothing special about the blindfold that was used in

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Speaker 1: the study except that it basically blocks out all light.

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Speaker 1: What was really special about this research was the amount

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Speaker 1: of time that the blindfold was worn. The basic finding

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Speaker 1: in this study again, this was published in the year

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Speaker 1: two thousand four in the Journal of neuro Optomology. The

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Speaker 1: base finding was that subjects who were blindfolded for days

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Speaker 1: at a time started to have elaborate visual hallucinations. And

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Speaker 1: the most interesting part to me was not just that

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Speaker 1: they were hallucinating, but that sometimes they started to visually

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Speaker 1: hallucinate roughly accurate percepts based on other senses. So that

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Speaker 1: might include perceptions of their own limbs or objects that

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Speaker 1: they were manipulating, like a picture of water on a

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Speaker 1: table or other people in the room with them, that

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Speaker 1: they would get pictures of things that were actually there.

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Speaker 1: And this to me raises interesting questions about what site

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Speaker 1: really is. What if you are seeing things in your

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Speaker 1: brain and those things are not whole cloth fabrications but

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Speaker 1: roughly accurate perceptions of real objects around you, except they're

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Speaker 1: not based on light received through the eyes, but based

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Speaker 1: on other senses cognition. So maybe your appropriate reception, you know,

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Speaker 1: your internal sense of where the rest of your body

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Speaker 1: is causes you to hallucinate visual imagery of your body

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Speaker 1: parts in the right places, or your ability to feel

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Speaker 1: objects around you, like a picture of water in your hand,

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Speaker 1: causes you to hallucinate that picture, except it's basically an

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Speaker 1: accurate visual stimulus you're getting is just not based on light. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is a fascinating area of contemplation. It gets back

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Speaker 1: to something we've we've we've we've touched on before, the

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Speaker 1: idea that we think of ourselves. We we often use

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Speaker 1: technological metaphors. We often think about our visual perception as

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Speaker 1: being that of a like a security camera. It is

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Speaker 1: it is filming the world and preserving that that site

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Speaker 1: data as it is. But of course the more we

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Speaker 1: look at it, the more we realize that this is

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Speaker 1: not the case. We have we certainly have have visual

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Speaker 1: data coming in, but then we have the we have

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Speaker 1: other senses involved, we have memory employed, and there's a

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Speaker 1: great deal of a filling in the blanks and the

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Speaker 1: sort of cultivation of an internal model of reality. I

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00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:08,720
Speaker 1: think that's very well put, and that's really going to

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Speaker 1: be relevant to what I'm about to bring up. So

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Speaker 1: all that was preamble to a really interesting series of

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Speaker 1: studies that I was just getting into about the potential

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Speaker 1: psychedelic power of mirrors, much like the potential psychedelic power

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Speaker 1: of a blindfold um And and another thing about this

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Speaker 1: that's interesting is that there are a number of urban

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Speaker 1: legends and folk beliefs about supernatural apparitions that will manifest

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Speaker 1: in a mirror under the right conditions. One example I

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Speaker 1: came across I was reading an article in Scientific American.

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Speaker 1: One of the authors of this article was named Susannah

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Speaker 1: Martinez Conde, and she talks about how thirty years ago,

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Speaker 1: when she was a child growing up in Spain, she

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Speaker 1: said that there was a there was like a superstition

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Speaker 1: that anyone could see the devil's face. And what you

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Speaker 1: had to do to see the devil's face was stare

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Speaker 1: at your her own face in the mirror at the

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Speaker 1: stroke of midnight, and then you would say the devil's

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Speaker 1: name when when midnight tolls, and then you would see

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Speaker 1: the devil in the mirror. Yeah, this is kind of

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Speaker 1: the with the Bloody Mary effect. You could go right.

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Speaker 1: And I gotta admit, I actually remember when I was

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Speaker 1: a child, I for a I don't know how long

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Speaker 1: this will on, for some period of time, I got

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Speaker 1: absolutely terrified about Bloody Mary. After a kid that I was,

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Speaker 1: I was at some summer camp and some guy was

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Speaker 1: telling me about Bloody Mary and uh, and after hearing that,

428
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,720
Speaker 1: I remember I was just like petrified of being alone

429
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:38,680
Speaker 1: in a room with a mirror. I remember this too. Yeah.

430
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this recently because after we recorded

431
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 1: the first episode, I was telling my son, who just

432
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:46,440
Speaker 1: who just entered fourth grade. I was telling him about

433
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: the fish and U and the Borhey's short story about

434
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: the creatures in the mirror, and um, he wasn't terrified

435
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:55,920
Speaker 1: or anything of it, but he would started asking questions

436
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,639
Speaker 1: and then I started thinking back to Bloody Mary, and

437
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: so for they're like, oh wow, I need to careful here.

438
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: He's just the right age where I need to I

439
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:06,640
Speaker 1: need to make sure I cultivate his imagination just so

440
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:09,959
Speaker 1: so that he's not afraid of mirrors. Well, you know,

441
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: it's funny, like I've heard a million ghost stories by

442
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:16,400
Speaker 1: that point. Why was that the one that that got

443
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:19,280
Speaker 1: the hooks in me? And and other ones weren't. It's

444
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: a great question. I mean, on one hand, I think

445
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that the mirror is

446
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: at the center of it, and the mirror is poorly

447
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:30,159
Speaker 1: understood by all of us. It is this weirdness that

448
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: we just kind of stop asking questions about. And then

449
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: if you you add something to the scenario, uh, you

450
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 1: can easily bring that spookiness back into the forefront, you know.

451
00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,119
Speaker 1: But then also with with a lot of like the

452
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: Bloody Marry type stuff we tend to and it involves

453
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:50,200
Speaker 1: not just a mirror, but also a low light or

454
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 1: a flickering candle light, which is just going to augment

455
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 1: the various effects that we're talking about here. Um, you

456
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: can already be weird enough to dear at your own

457
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,199
Speaker 1: face in the mirror for you know, a minute at

458
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:07,160
Speaker 1: a time. But add in flickering and alterating candle light

459
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 1: throw in low light, and as well as this the

460
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,360
Speaker 1: script of the supernatural layered on top of everything, and yeah,

461
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 1: I can start feeling a little freaky. It's funny how

462
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: much what you say is is conforming to the study

463
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,159
Speaker 1: I'm about to bring up, though, I should report, by

464
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,159
Speaker 1: the way that Um, Susanna Martinez Conde. She says in

465
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 1: the article that when she tried to see the devil's

466
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: face in the mirror as a child, nothing happened. So

467
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 1: you know, you win some, you lose some. You gotta

468
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: play a little less more in the background too, I think, right. Um,

469
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: But but given certain recent psychological research, I think there

470
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:45,240
Speaker 1: could be some plausible reasons to assume that some legends

471
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 1: like this of seeing faces in the mirror, seeing the devil,

472
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,439
Speaker 1: or seeing bloody Mary are based on real experiences that

473
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: some people had, because you can get yourself into a

474
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,400
Speaker 1: very vulnerable state when you're steering into a mirror, especially

475
00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: with in low light conditions. And then on top of that,

476
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 1: there are apparently special effects of staring at a face

477
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 1: in a mirror that manifest as a very common predisposition

478
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: to hallucinate. As far as I can tell. This effect

479
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:16,239
Speaker 1: was first observed by a psychologist named Giovanni Caputo of

480
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: the University of Urbino, Italy and published in a report

481
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: in the journal Perception in two thousand and ten. The

482
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,920
Speaker 1: paper was called Strange Face in the Mirror Illusion. So,

483
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 1: in this study, Caputo recruited fifty subjects who were all

484
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: in their twenties, a range of one to twenty nine

485
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 1: years of age, and they didn't know what was being tested.

486
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 1: What happened is Caputo would place them in a dimly

487
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:41,439
Speaker 1: lit room, so it was illuminated only by a twenty

488
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:44,919
Speaker 1: five what incandescent light that was placed on the floor

489
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:48,679
Speaker 1: behind the subject. And then they were asked to stare

490
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: into a mirror that was about zero point four meters

491
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 1: which is about one point three ft in front of them,

492
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: and then just to keep looking at their own reflection,

493
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,159
Speaker 1: staring into their own face for ten minutes. That it

494
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 1: no drugs, no other alterations of consciousness, just a dimly

495
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 1: lit room, staring in your at your own face in

496
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: a mirror for ten minutes. And then afterwards they were

497
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 1: asked to write about the experience and report anything that

498
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 1: they remembered about it, and the results reported by Caputo

499
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:22,159
Speaker 1: are extremely striking. The majority of subjects reported at least

500
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: one of a number of different kinds of broad uh

501
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:31,160
Speaker 1: perceptually strange or even hallucinatory experiences. So to read from

502
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:35,920
Speaker 1: the study quote, descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included

503
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: a huge deformations of one's own face reported by sixty

504
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: six percent of the fifty participants. Be a parents face

505
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: with traits changed eighteen percent, of whom eight percent were

506
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 1: still alive and ten percent were deceased. See an unknown

507
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: person twenty eight percent, d an archetypal face such as

508
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait

509
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: of an ancestor e an animal face such as that

510
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: of a cat, pig, or lion eighteen percent, or f

511
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: fantastical and monstrous beings percent. So like a lot of

512
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 1: people get monsters in there. Yeah, yeah, it's It's impressive

513
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: and and really not surprising at all. I think if

514
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 1: anyone has has spent any amount of time, I mean,

515
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: we've all spent time looking at ourselves in the mirror,

516
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: I think enough to realize. Yeah, the more that you

517
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: look at yourself, the weirder you look um, and most

518
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 1: of us will leave that situation before you get to

519
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: the monster scenario. You know, you're more likely to check

520
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 1: out when you start seeing uh, when you start noticing

521
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 1: resemblance to parents and so forth, and you're like, I

522
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: think I've looked at my mirror enough. I think I

523
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: checked on what I came here to check on. Now

524
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do something else. But ten minutes

525
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:56,400
Speaker 1: that's sas some serious time. And Caputo also reported that

526
00:29:56,440 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: there were effects beyond the purely visual distortions and hallucinations.

527
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 1: There were also sort of conceptual disruptions and and strong

528
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 1: emotional reactions and feelings that people experienced staring into the

529
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: mirror like this again to read from his results quote,

530
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: The participants reported that apparition of new faces in the

531
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: mirror caused sensations of otherness when the new face appeared

532
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,080
Speaker 1: to be that of another unknown person or strange other

533
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: looking at him or her from within or beyond the mirror.

534
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: All fifty participants experienced some form of this dissociative identity

535
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:33,920
Speaker 1: effect at least for some apparition of strange faces, and

536
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: often reported strong emotional responses in these instances, and I

537
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:40,720
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. So it's saying that, like, even

538
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: for people who didn't note any visual distortions or visual hallucinations,

539
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: they did report at least some kind of feeling of

540
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: dissociation with the face that was looking back at them.

541
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: But coming back to the results quote, for example, some

542
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:59,480
Speaker 1: observers felt that the other watched them with an enigmatic

543
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: expression and a situation that they found astonishing. Some participants

544
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: saw a malign expression on the other face and became anxious.

545
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: Other participants felt that the other was smiling or cheerful

546
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: and experienced positive emotions in response. The apparition of deceased

547
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: parents or of archetypal portraits produced feelings of silent query.

548
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 1: Apparition of monstrous beings produced fear or disturbance. Dynamic deformations

549
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: of the new faces, like pulsations or shrinking, smiling, or grinding,

550
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: produced an overall sense of inquietude for things out of control.

551
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,760
Speaker 1: So these kinds of emotional reactions I think makes sense,

552
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: especially given that that so many people were seeing some

553
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: kind of visual disturbance or hallucination. But to come back

554
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: to the visual perceptions themselves, what could possibly explain this

555
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 1: bizarre effect. You look at your own face over time

556
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: and it starts to kind of transform into other things.

557
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 1: You see other people's faces. Maybe you see a cat

558
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 1: face or a monster face. Maybe you become a minotaur,

559
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 1: maybe you become your grandfather. Uh. You know this is

560
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 1: this is strange. So like, what could be leading to this?

561
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: So Caputo offers a few ideas. First of all, the

562
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: the disappearance or attenuation of face traits could very well

563
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: be caused by what's known as truck slur fading. Uh.

564
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: This is a name for a very well documented optical

565
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: illusion that goes like this. Okay, if you if you

566
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: fixate your gaze on a particular point without moving it,

567
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 1: unchanging visual stimuli in the periphery will tend to fade

568
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:36,240
Speaker 1: away the longer you stare at that one fixation point.

569
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:39,360
Speaker 1: This was observed by the eighteenth century English physician and

570
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 1: Pauly math Erasmus Darwin. It was the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

571
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: But it gets its name after being uh discussed by

572
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: a Swiss physician named Ignace Paul Vital truck Sler in

573
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, who did some experiments with patches

574
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: of color against a screen or a wall. But if

575
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 1: you want to try this out for yourself, there are

576
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 1: tons of you know, they're the little like stimulus images

577
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: that you can look up on the internet. Just google

578
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: truk slur fading or truck slur illusion t R O

579
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:08,880
Speaker 1: x L e R and you should be able to

580
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: find something you can try out. Rob But I quite

581
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: easily experienced this illusion. Why I've got one. I'm looking

582
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: at here that is a really menacing, grinning cheshire cat face,

583
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: but it's got an X right in the middle of it.

584
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 1: And if I stare at the X, I think, really,

585
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: it only takes about five seconds before the colors of

586
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: the cat face fade to almost nothing. Alright, staring at

587
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: the X on its nose intently, Yeah, yeah, it does.

588
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: Like the pupils disappear for me pretty quickly, I'd say

589
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: for me, after about five or six seconds of intense

590
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 1: staring at the X, the face is gone, but the

591
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: teeth remain. I only see the grin and after about

592
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 1: like five to ten minutes, it's telling me to go

593
00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: out and remove traffic signs. So it's it's a haunting

594
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: face to stare into too much. I feel great I've

595
00:33:56,520 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: got a brand new religion. I'm about to go buy

596
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: some meal mix in bulk. Well, the chesire cat. I

597
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: think we discussed this a little bit in our MEDUSA episodes,

598
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: like this is a this is a gorgon, this is

599
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: a gorgon space that we're staring at here. It's a

600
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: it's just a a repackaging of the same concept. I mean,

601
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:17,680
Speaker 1: not not that that has anything to do with the

602
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: optical fact going on here, but at any rate, So,

603
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 1: truck slur fading is a specific example of a broader

604
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:36,920
Speaker 1: phenomenon of neural adaptation, the desensitization of sensory neurons to

605
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: unchanging stimuli. And you can think of other examples that

606
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:44,840
Speaker 1: are were there similar effects of this and maybe tactle feelings.

607
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you um put a finger on

608
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: part of your arm, you will feel the touch of

609
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:53,040
Speaker 1: your own finger when it first lands there. But if

610
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:57,000
Speaker 1: you just leave it there, you kind of stop noticing it. Uh.

611
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:00,439
Speaker 1: Similar thing with smells, you know, all kinds of me life.

612
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 1: You're just getting the same sense stimulus over and over

613
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 1: again without changing. Often it will fade into nothing in

614
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 1: your awareness. Right, It's like like with the smell for example,

615
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 1: the idea is you're being alerted to this smell because

616
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 1: something about it is important, like maybe it's potentially dangerous, etcetera.

617
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: But if you're around it enough, it's like it's like

618
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 1: the brain is decided, Okay, he gets the point. We've

619
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: sent the memo, we've done all we can do. We

620
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: just have to trust that he is he either knows

621
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: that this, uh, this particular smell is is not poison

622
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 1: or he's done something about it. Right, And so that

623
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 1: does seem to be an explanation for what's going on

624
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: generally with truck slur fading. You you stare at a

625
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: single point and then other things in the visual field.

626
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,440
Speaker 1: If you're really staring intently, you're not moving your eyes around,

627
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 1: you're not blinking. Those other colors, those other images, they

628
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 1: just kind of like fade away over time you you're

629
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:53,719
Speaker 1: you get used to them, and then they're just going.

630
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: But this is not the full answer to the question, right,

631
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: Because so Caputo's interpretive section continues to say, the trucksler

632
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: fading might be a good explanation for why, like outer

633
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: features of the face might seem to fade or disappear

634
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:11,400
Speaker 1: or possibly distort while we're fixated on a central point,

635
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: like if you're staring at your own nose or staring

636
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: at your own eyes very intently. But a lot of

637
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:20,000
Speaker 1: the subjects reported not only fading or distortion of the

638
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: outer parts of the face, but the sensation of totally

639
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: new visual traits, such as you know, like different features

640
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: or animal faces, monster faces, the faces of other people.

641
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:34,319
Speaker 1: And this part is more difficult to explain. Caputo and

642
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,359
Speaker 1: and other co authors have done subsequent research following up

643
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: on the the strange face in the mirror effect, but

644
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 1: the exact cause of these perceptions does remain somewhat obscure,

645
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: at least as far as I can tell. A part

646
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:50,240
Speaker 1: of the explanation could have to do with the long

647
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: gazing process causing a disruption of the mental faculty that

648
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:59,359
Speaker 1: normally combines individual face traits like nose, eyes, lips, and

649
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:03,920
Speaker 1: so forth into a unified experience of a face. You know,

650
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: that's something you probably know from experience that like, when

651
00:37:07,640 --> 00:37:09,479
Speaker 1: you see a face, you tend to see it as

652
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:13,879
Speaker 1: a face, not as the individual parts of a face. Right,

653
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: And and this is something though I find when I

654
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: am just staring at another person's face for too long

655
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: I stopped seeing it as a unified face, and I

656
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:24,240
Speaker 1: start it's kind of like it's almost like you're seeing

657
00:37:24,280 --> 00:37:26,799
Speaker 1: just parts of the face floating around, you know, like

658
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: you're no longer seeing the face altogether. And it's a

659
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: weird feeling. And I have to look away from the

660
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 1: person's face at that point. Oh you ever, like you

661
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: gaze at somebody's eyes too long, and you maybe somebody

662
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 1: who you find beautiful and you love their beautiful eyes,

663
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 1: and then you look too long and those eyes become eyeballs,

664
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 1: and then you see them as organs, right, and this

665
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 1: is you know, the sclera, and they've got some kind

666
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: of jelly inside them. And then you're like, oh, oh, no,

667
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: I did it. I did the I did the bad. Yeah.

668
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: And then you see the skull beneath the flesh and

669
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 1: it's all done. But to read from Caputo's interpretation of

670
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 1: of what could possibly be causing again, it's it's not

671
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 1: really fully understood. But in his original study in two

672
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: thousand ten, Caputo says, quote, this long term viewing of

673
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: face stimuli of marginal strength. I remember that's especially because

674
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: the low light conditions right may generate a haphazard assembly

675
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: of face traits that generate deformed faces or scrambled faces.

676
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: Frequent apparitions of strange faces of known or unknown people

677
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,800
Speaker 1: support the idea that the illusion involves a high level

678
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:32,319
Speaker 1: mechanism that is specific to global face processing. On the

679
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 1: other hand, the frequent apparition of fantastical and monstrous beings

680
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: and of animal faces cannot, in our opinion, be explained

681
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 1: by any actual theory of face processing. And so yeah,

682
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: there's there's still big questions about what exactly leads to

683
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 1: this effect. It might have something to do with with

684
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:53,680
Speaker 1: transition points. Say like maybe you're staring at a central

685
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:56,479
Speaker 1: part of the reflection, you're looking at your own eyes

686
00:38:56,560 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: or something, and then troksler fading kicks in and the

687
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:01,840
Speaker 1: outer parts of the face start to kind of fade away,

688
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,759
Speaker 1: and you lose some color definition and stuff like that.

689
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,920
Speaker 1: And then and then the visual stimulus is suddenly restored

690
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,240
Speaker 1: when you blink or you move your eyes or something,

691
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:15,399
Speaker 1: and that that part that has faded away snaps back

692
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:18,960
Speaker 1: into focus. Maybe something in that transition causes you to

693
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 1: see something weird. Perhaps their gaps there and the brain

694
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 1: does some strange filling in process, but we don't really know.

695
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:28,120
Speaker 1: But what we do know for sure is that this

696
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: phenomenon is actually not contained simply to mirror gazing. You

697
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:37,800
Speaker 1: can recreate similar effects by having people gaze directly into

698
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: other people's faces for ten minutes in low light. This

699
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:45,240
Speaker 1: was explored in another paper that Caputo published in called

700
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:49,840
Speaker 1: Strange Face Illusions during intersubjective gazing, so people just looking

701
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 1: at each other's faces. This was published in Consciousness and Cognition,

702
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 1: so it definitely happened with pairs of other people. So

703
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,879
Speaker 1: it seems like the mirror is not really the special part.

704
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: The real keys are faces as stimulus, either yours or

705
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: somebody else's, long exposure times, just uninterrupted staring and low light.

706
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:13,799
Speaker 1: So what makes mirrors special in this regard is that

707
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: they are a tool that anybody can use to try

708
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,879
Speaker 1: to experience these strange face effects, you know, without having

709
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 1: to recruit somebody else who is game for a really

710
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:27,400
Speaker 1: awkward experiment. Yeah. Now, the the idea of two people's

711
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:30,279
Speaker 1: faces for ten minutes low light, I mean essentially this

712
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:33,440
Speaker 1: is this is any date night scenario, right, But I

713
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: guess the beauty of date night is that you ideally

714
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: you have maybe a beverage you have some sort of

715
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: at least an appetizer. There there's people watching, or you know,

716
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: ideally there's people watching. There's maybe art on the walls,

717
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:49,719
Speaker 1: there are other things to captivate your attention, and then

718
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: you can keep coming back to the person across from you.

719
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:54,920
Speaker 1: It's not it's not some sort of a you know,

720
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: just a like a blank cell that you find yourself

721
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: engaging with this per sit in. Right. I don't want

722
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:03,359
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like to be judgmental, but I'm

723
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: gonna say, if you're doing date night this way, you're

724
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: doing it wrong. You should not stare uninterrupted without moving

725
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 1: your eyes or blinking at somebody's face for ten minutes.

726
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:14,040
Speaker 1: So it sounds like it's the kind of thing that

727
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:16,799
Speaker 1: could be a dating fat right, Like if someone's like,

728
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,439
Speaker 1: look dating a normal dating scenario, you're just not able

729
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: to bond with the person. You need just ten minutes

730
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:27,879
Speaker 1: of uninterrupted um facial viewing and uh, and then you'll

731
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: know whether this is your soulmate or not, or that

732
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: is a minotaur. You can't really love me until you've

733
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,839
Speaker 1: seen me as a minotaur. Right though, Interestingly enough, that's

734
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: like a show now where they're there's some sort of

735
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 1: a dating show where both people are are covered in

736
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 1: like heavy monster effects makeup. So yeah, I'm serious. I

737
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: am serious. It's a show on Netflix. I have not

738
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 1: watched it, but I watched the trailer for it, and

739
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: the trailer was amusing. Um it at least has some

740
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: cool monster like makeup effects stuff, so it'll be like, uh,

741
00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: you know, two individuals they're doing a blind date thing,

742
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: except one is made up like a bird woman and

743
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 1: the other is I don't know, like a like a

744
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 1: baseball headed mutant, that sort of thing, a baseball headed mutant.

745
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, I can't wait till this like

746
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 1: back reflects onto the pickup line process and stuff. It's like,

747
00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: you know, Darling, let me be your pumpkin head. There

748
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: may be a pumpkin head in it. Yeah. Yeah, listeners

749
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 1: will have to report back because again I'm not going

750
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: to actually watch this show. Just one more thing I

751
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: wanted to mention before wrapping up on the strange face

752
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: in the Mirror research so I said that Caputo has

753
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,120
Speaker 1: done a number of studies following up on this and

754
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:36,480
Speaker 1: reproducing it in different contexts since then. One that I

755
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 1: thought was interesting was published in the journal of trauma

756
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: and dissociation in the year twenty nineteen called strange face

757
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 1: illusions during eye to eye gazing and die adds specific

758
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: effects on derealization, depersonalization, and dissociative identity. Again, the study

759
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 1: reproduced the findings with some new areas of focus. But

760
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: the main thing I wanted to mention from this one

761
00:42:57,200 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: was that fifteen of the test subjects here were sketch

762
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 1: artists who were later asked to reproduce their best approximation

763
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: of some of the strange faces they saw, and Rob,

764
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 1: here you go, you can you can tell me what

765
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,520
Speaker 1: you think of these. One I really like is a

766
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,480
Speaker 1: guy with a furry face with glasses and his eyes

767
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: have mustaches. That one, yeah, that one looks pretty creepy

768
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: and has kind of a you know, blank isn't real

769
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: and can't hurt you kind of a vibe to it,

770
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: as does the big vacant eyed lizard man looking face.

771
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: And then one of them is just kind of a

772
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: muppet and the other one, um, just kind of looks

773
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 1: like a caricature, the monstrous monkey woman. That's what the

774
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:41,080
Speaker 1: big eyed one is called. Here, No, I think you're

775
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: looking at the alien face. The monstrous monkey one is okay,

776
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: I like the muppet one. Yeah, the monstrous monkey woman.

777
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: Then it doesn't look very monstrous to me. Looks looks adorable,

778
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: it looks great. Let this monkey woman teach children about

779
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 1: the alphabet this. This should be on Sesame Street. Now

780
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: it's uh, there's so many additional directions to go in

781
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 1: from this. On one hand, we should point out that, um,

782
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: you know, it's worth noting that there are other reasons

783
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 1: that are facing a mirror may be extra unnerving. Um. There's,

784
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 1: of course what is often referred to as mirrored self misidentification.

785
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: And this is the delusion that wants reflection in a

786
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:23,840
Speaker 1: mirror is some manner of double or a relative or

787
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: something of that nature, but not a reflection of yourself.

788
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:31,920
Speaker 1: And this is actually a right hemisphere cranial dysfunction, uh

789
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: that I think is often tied to like, uh, you know,

790
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 1: major brain disease or some sort of traumatic injury to

791
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:41,760
Speaker 1: the head. I mean. Another way of of re contextualizing

792
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:45,680
Speaker 1: what we've just been talking about is that, um, faces

793
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 1: are powerful. Faces are powerful and profound stimuli that can

794
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:55,080
Speaker 1: cause powerful and profound reactions in the brain, and mirrors

795
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:59,000
Speaker 1: are a way of getting lots of access to face

796
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:02,799
Speaker 1: stimuli without you know, in the in the privacy of

797
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:05,719
Speaker 1: your own bathroom, you know, without anybody judging you or

798
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: judging you for staring at them. Say, you know, I

799
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: think I would love to hear from anyone out there

800
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 1: whose profession requires them to make um, eye contact or

801
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 1: just to stare people's faces for this kind of an

802
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:20,760
Speaker 1: extended amount of time. Because on one hand, and granted

803
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: we we do all of our recordings through zoom now,

804
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: but you know, used to It's like part of our

805
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 1: whole thing is we have these long conversations about topics, um,

806
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:30,760
Speaker 1: you know, used to in the same room, but we're

807
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: also looking at other things. You know, maybe we're looking

808
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:35,840
Speaker 1: over to seth to make sure the recording is going okay.

809
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 1: We're certainly looking at our notes to see where we

810
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: are in the outline, uh, you know, or even looking

811
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the room. But I realized, like some people

812
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 1: were in a profession where like maybe they're a therapist

813
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 1: or or something, and they maybe have to make prolonged

814
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 1: eye contact, prolonged you know, face to face communication. What

815
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: is that like? Do you find yourself susceptible to some

816
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: of these effects. Yeah, what is the appropriate amount of

817
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:04,479
Speaker 1: faith staring? I mean, too little can seem like maybe

818
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 1: you're not making an effort to connect with somebody, and

819
00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:09,840
Speaker 1: too much is creepy and invasive, like you know, balancing

820
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 1: that I think is one of those uh, those ongoing

821
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 1: social ballets we always have to manage. Yeah, Like you

822
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: don't want to talk to somebody who refuses to make

823
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: eye contact with you. But if the eye contact is

824
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: just too like unflinching, it can feel a bit too intense.

825
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:25,839
Speaker 1: You know. It feels like you're playing a game of

826
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 1: of of eyeballs Chicken with them, you know, and it's

827
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:32,319
Speaker 1: no fun. No eyeball Chicken, no eyeball road rage. You know,

828
00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:35,320
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta manage right of way. This reminds

829
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: me of something we talked about in a previous episode

830
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: about sunglasses, about how you have UM if an individual

831
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:45,280
Speaker 1: is wearing sunglasses, uh, the other people are more inclined

832
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:47,760
Speaker 1: to believe that that person is staring at them, versus

833
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 1: if they were not wearing sunglasses at all. Um, So

834
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. Again, We're we're creatures that

835
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,920
Speaker 1: are hyper aware of staring. Um, that know the power

836
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 1: of staring and theertain amount of eye contact is required.

837
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's this careful balance that has to be

838
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,840
Speaker 1: um in effect. And then you throw mirrors into this

839
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: whole scenario and it just it makes everything a little stranger.

840
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:14,479
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the big the big take

841
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:17,200
Speaker 1: homes that we keep coming back to with mirrors is

842
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:21,040
Speaker 1: mirrors make reality a little bit stranger, and in doing so,

843
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:24,799
Speaker 1: reveal strength strange things about our reality. Like one of

844
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:27,560
Speaker 1: those things is that you don't really have a face.

845
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: You have you are, to a certain extent just this

846
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 1: a symbolage of of of organs on the front of

847
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:36,319
Speaker 1: a head. And we don't think about it, but if

848
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: you stare in a mirror long enough, you might come

849
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: to realize that. Likewise, uh, you know, realizations about um,

850
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:44,240
Speaker 1: you know, how much you look like like a parent

851
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:47,320
Speaker 1: or a family member, or like some you know, random

852
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:50,320
Speaker 1: celebrity face or some face in a painting, or even

853
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,919
Speaker 1: the face of a beast or a monster. Very true.

854
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,240
Speaker 1: The concept of a face is a kind of blessed

855
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 1: hallucination that we're always able to you know, we're usually

856
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:01,440
Speaker 1: able to maintain in just a allowing the the the

857
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: face hallucination to decompose into various contours of meat and bone.

858
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 1: Maybe that's one of the you know, we came back.

859
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:09,959
Speaker 1: We've discussed this, I think in both episodes. Why why

860
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 1: the mirror is so often in the toolkit of the

861
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: magician and the priest and the soothsayer and so forth.

862
00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:19,479
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is, you could see,

863
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:23,239
Speaker 1: the mirror is a very basic tool for breaking reality,

864
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: or at least bending reality. You know, it is a

865
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 1: it is a means of of not only you know,

866
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 1: creating effects and creating illusions, but also taking the potency

867
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: out of the the ever present illusion of the way

868
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 1: we perceive the world. Yeah, I think we're gonna have

869
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: to keep thinking about this, and we're gonna have to

870
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:43,959
Speaker 1: come back in part three because there's more mirrors to come.

871
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: We have so much more, there's so much, so much

872
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 1: to talk about with this one. I mean, i'd be

873
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:50,399
Speaker 1: I'd be perfectly happy to to do this one for

874
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:52,919
Speaker 1: you know, four or five episodes. So we'll just we'll see,

875
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:54,879
Speaker 1: we'll see how how much gas is in the tank.

876
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, we'll definitely be back with the part three.

877
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 1: Maybe the oculus will make you forget all of your

878
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:03,279
Speaker 1: past and you'll have to do six seven eight just

879
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:05,479
Speaker 1: on fraternity. Well, I don't know if I could watch

880
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: Oculus again. I found it to be a very enjoyable

881
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:13,839
Speaker 1: horror movie, but but a troubling one. So I wish

882
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:15,640
Speaker 1: there were more haunted mirror movies. I don't know that

883
00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of them. I was looking around

884
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: the other day and I think I found one from

885
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:22,400
Speaker 1: the maybe it's God. I can't rememberich decade, sixty seventies

886
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: or eighties, somewhere in that thirty year period, but there

887
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 1: aren't as many as you might think. I think there were.

888
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: There may be some various anthology episodes concerning mirrors. I

889
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,760
Speaker 1: just googled Haunted Mirror movie got a selection of movie

890
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: posters and covers. They all look really terrible, which is strange.

891
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's also totally understandable because on

892
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: one hand, it seems easy, like, oh, you just need

893
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 1: a creepy mirror. Just go by a mirror, make a mirror, uh,

894
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:48,479
Speaker 1: you know, just as this prop that doesn't actually move.

895
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:51,239
Speaker 1: But you get into how you shoot mirrors and how

896
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: you use the mirror to make things, you know, creepier,

897
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 1: and it gets a little more complicated. I guess that's

898
00:49:55,960 --> 00:50:00,920
Speaker 1: why maybe weird scenes with mirrors are largely more memorable,

899
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 1: you know, like I think of I think of like

900
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 1: the old that, like the nineteen nineteen seventies Macbeth adaptation

901
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: has a great sequence with a mirror in it. So

902
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 1: stuff of that nature comes to mind. All right, we're

903
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 1: gonna go and close it now. We're gonna put the

904
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 1: uh you know, I'm gonna put the cloth back over

905
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: the haunted mirror. But we'll be back to discuss our

906
00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 1: reflections some more in the next episode. In the meantime,

907
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 1: if you would like more stuff to blow your mind,

908
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:28,319
Speaker 1: you can find it wherever you get your podcast. Just

909
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 1: look for the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed We

910
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have Artifacts

911
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, Stuff to blow your Mind on Monday, and

912
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: on Friday's we do a little weird how Cinema. That's

913
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,319
Speaker 1: their time to talk about some strange and interesting film.

914
00:50:41,480 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

915
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

916
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other

917
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:51,319
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello,

918
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

919
00:50:54,239 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

920
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

921
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

922
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.