Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode.
Speaker 1: This is part two of the series that we did
Speaker 1: on the Mirror. This originally published August. We hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: I was guiding the tour that Sandra Bates, his brother,
Speaker 1: was a part of when he got his look into
Speaker 1: your precious Delver mirror, Spangler. He was perhaps sixteen, part
Speaker 1: of a high school group. I was going through the
Speaker 1: history of the glass and had just got to the
Speaker 1: part you would appreciate, extolling the flawless craftsmanship, the perfection
Speaker 1: of the glass itself, when the boy raised his hand, um,
Speaker 1: but what about that black splotch in the upper left
Speaker 1: hand corner that looks like a mistake. And one of
Speaker 1: his friends asked him what he meant, so the Bates
Speaker 1: boy started to tell him, then stopped. He looked at
Speaker 1: the mirror very closely, pushing right up to the red
Speaker 1: velvet guard rope around the case. Then he looked behind him,
Speaker 1: as if what he had seen had been the reflection
Speaker 1: of someone of someone in black standing at his shoulder.
Speaker 1: It looked like a man, but I couldn't see the face.
Speaker 1: It's gone now, And that was all. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: part two of our discussion of the mirror. In the
Speaker 1: last episode, we talked about some of the science of optics,
Speaker 1: about how mirrors work, why they work. We talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about mirror psychology and some of the earliest
Speaker 1: mirrors from the archaeological record, specifically obsidian mirrors found associated
Speaker 1: with the ancient Proto city of Chattel Hoyak in southern Anatolia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that cold read that we opened the episode with.
Speaker 1: That's an excerpt from Stephen King's Wonderful Haunted Mirror short
Speaker 1: story The Reaper's Image, collected in ve short story compilation
Speaker 1: Skeleton Crew. So I highly recommend anyone who hasn't read
Speaker 1: that go read that story if you want a creepy
Speaker 1: mirror story. For my money, just as creepy as anything
Speaker 1: he ever wrote, you know, as creepy as the likes
Speaker 1: of the Boogeyman or the Jaunt. You know. I was
Speaker 1: saying in the last episode that I don't think it's
Speaker 1: an accident that there are so many horror movie scenes
Speaker 1: and ghost stories that involve a mirror. There there seems
Speaker 1: something really special about mirrors that uh takes people's minds
Speaker 1: to two supernatural and unsettling places more so than other
Speaker 1: household objects. And I think it's pretty obvious why that
Speaker 1: would be. That there appears to be something alive on
Speaker 1: the other side of the mirror, and the mirror gives
Speaker 1: you you know, it's not just that you see yourself
Speaker 1: and you see something animate in it, but that you
Speaker 1: can also see what's behind you. In a mirror, yeah,
Speaker 1: you it allows you to seeings that you cannot directly see, uh.
Speaker 1: And that's always been one of the attractive aspects of
Speaker 1: mirrors in everything from I mean the very practical usage
Speaker 1: of like we mentioned mirrors utilized by the roadside and
Speaker 1: it turns and whatnot so you can see who's coming
Speaker 1: or or even in in corridor, so you can see
Speaker 1: who is around the corner. Uh. Two other things like
Speaker 1: those those ridiculous sunglasses that have little mirrors in them
Speaker 1: so you can see behind you. Oh. I got some
Speaker 1: of those when I was a kid, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, or driving a car,
Speaker 1: just think about it, The very act of driving a
Speaker 1: car were utilizing at least three different mirrors at all times.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's just every day we take it
Speaker 1: for granted, but it's, uh, it's kind of strange when
Speaker 1: you think about it. Though. Of course, at least the
Speaker 1: mirrors warned you that that reality and reflection do not
Speaker 1: necessarily match up. Oh that's funny if like every mirror
Speaker 1: came with a disclaimer the way the rear view mirrors
Speaker 1: on a car do. Yeah, yeah, does not reflect reality.
Speaker 1: But as a segue to one of the first things
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about today, it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: prehistoric Anatolia is not the only place, uh, in the
Speaker 1: ancient world where there was the use of obsidian mirrors.
Speaker 1: That's right. Evidence of mirrors, and especially obsidian mirrors in
Speaker 1: Mesoamerica date back at least as far as six b c. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there might be some earlier dates, but I think
Speaker 1: that was the earliest date. I was I was coming
Speaker 1: across in my research, and so they were used by
Speaker 1: the Maya, they were used by the Aztecs. And when
Speaker 1: they were used by the Aztecs, particularly by Aztec priests,
Speaker 1: they were used in various scrying rituals in the worship
Speaker 1: of of the god that tezcot Li PoCA, whose name
Speaker 1: actually means Lord of the smoking Mirror. Uh. So there
Speaker 1: were black mirrors used by his priests. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: has this just overall connection to dark volcanic obsidian. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so scrying is a practice that's found in cultures
Speaker 1: and religions all throughout the world. The arc type example
Speaker 1: you see is gazing into the crystal ball, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But but scrying really refers to any form of divination, prophecy,
Speaker 1: or revelation that involves gazing into some kind of medium,
Speaker 1: often a reflective medium such as a mirror or a
Speaker 1: crystal ball. Yeah. But I would say one of the
Speaker 1: things about tes Catlet Polca is that, like he is
Speaker 1: really the mirror deity par excellence because his name means
Speaker 1: smoking mirror. Like, like, that's how closely connected he is
Speaker 1: with this. Um. He's he's a fascinating character. I think
Speaker 1: we've we've we've mentioned him a few different times on
Speaker 1: the podcast. He's said to have lost his right foot
Speaker 1: in a battle against an earth monster, and as such
Speaker 1: he's often depicted with a prosthesis of gleaming obsidian that
Speaker 1: may sometimes resemble a serpent. And I decided to go
Speaker 1: a little deeper for this episode. So I was reading
Speaker 1: about him in a book titled Tess Catl PoCA, Trickster
Speaker 1: and Supreme Deity, edited by Aztec scholar Elizabeth Baquedano. And
Speaker 1: in this book, in a chapter titled Enemy Brothers or
Speaker 1: Divine Twins, author Gillium Oliver points out that test Catlet
Speaker 1: PoCA was associated quote with untamed space and night, though
Speaker 1: his name is composed of two cultural elements smoke, which
Speaker 1: comes from the epitome of cultural creations fire and the mirror,
Speaker 1: undoubtedly one of the manufactured objects whose creation is the
Speaker 1: most exciting. And now this is in comparison to the
Speaker 1: animal elements of his rival, quetzal Kotal, who we discussed
Speaker 1: and at least I think we did a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes on the on the plume de serpent. Did we not? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But I don't think I really understood this distinction before.
Speaker 1: So one way of thinking about them is that Ketzel
Speaker 1: Caudal embodies certain aspects of nature, whereas test Cat Polca
Speaker 1: embodies something about technology or human artifice. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe that's the That's the point here is that quetzal Kotal,
Speaker 1: you know, has these natural animal elements that are his makeup,
Speaker 1: whereas Testcatlipoca is essentially a lord of artifact and invention.
Speaker 1: So yes, you know that smoke is part of fire,
Speaker 1: and fire does not require humans. Obsidian um occurs on
Speaker 1: its own, but of course both of these are brought
Speaker 1: to new heights by by human invention, you know, the
Speaker 1: polishing of the obsidian to make a mirror, the utilization
Speaker 1: of of smoke and fire in in other human activities.
Speaker 1: So you could you could look at him as a
Speaker 1: god of technology. I know this is not intended by
Speaker 1: the people who created these ancient artworks, but some depictions
Speaker 1: of test Catlipoca do look like a robot. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes that art does have that that kind of appearance
Speaker 1: to it. Now, according to Michael E. Smith in Um
Speaker 1: in that author's chapter in this book, uh the Archaeology
Speaker 1: of Testcatlipoca, various items are associated with with the cult
Speaker 1: of this deity. The most important are altars, ceramic flutes,
Speaker 1: and of course obsidian mirrors, and the mirror is likely
Speaker 1: the most important because on one hand, again it's part
Speaker 1: of the god's name and identity. It's the substance of
Speaker 1: his prosthesis, and numerous colt items and costume elements associated
Speaker 1: with him were obsidian mirrors. Um Now. Mirrors were sometimes
Speaker 1: associated with other Aztec gods, but apparently circular obsidian mirrors
Speaker 1: were just central to the worship and identity of Testcatlet PoCA. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges to archaeological study of this mirrors, though,
Speaker 1: is that, as as Smith points out, virtually none of
Speaker 1: them were found under modern archaeological standards um and and
Speaker 1: this becomes obvious when you consider dr ds as tech
Speaker 1: obsidian mirror, which is often brought up as like the
Speaker 1: most one of the most famous examples of this, which
Speaker 1: has resided in England since at least the late sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: and during this time it's traveled to other museums a bit,
Speaker 1: and I think has come as far as the United
Speaker 1: States on maybe two different occasions, but it's certainly never
Speaker 1: returned to Mexico. So a lot of these mirrors have
Speaker 1: been in circulation for a anisle and we're uncovered centuries ago.
Speaker 1: Now are you aware of is anything actually known about
Speaker 1: the exact provenance of of John D's mirror, like like
Speaker 1: how by what route it came to him? Um? There
Speaker 1: is I have looked at the scholarship on that before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess a couple of things to keep in
Speaker 1: mind about the mirrors. So, first of all, uh, the
Speaker 1: are you also find rectangular obsidian mirrors in some collections
Speaker 1: that are tied to um To Aztec traditions. But some
Speaker 1: experts argue that these may not be pre Hispanic they
Speaker 1: may be postconquest artifacts. Um. The mirrors that you see
Speaker 1: in the various codices are are all circular, so that
Speaker 1: seems to be a distinction some of the experts are making.
Speaker 1: Now that the As for the magical speculum as it's
Speaker 1: called of Dr d Um that does appear, I think
Speaker 1: all the experts agree, like that isn't that isn't an
Speaker 1: actual az Tech artifact. Um. I think the previous owner
Speaker 1: prior to D is known. I can't remember how far back,
Speaker 1: like the lineage of ownership is known. Um. But one
Speaker 1: of the things about a lot of these obsidian artifacts
Speaker 1: is you can you can trace them back to where
Speaker 1: they came from. So so it's it's with a high
Speaker 1: degree of certainty that this particular artifact is traced back
Speaker 1: to Mexico. Is that tracing by geological means, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's my understanding that you can geologically trace the
Speaker 1: obsidian to it to at least a certain degree. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Smith points out about the
Speaker 1: magical speculum of dr D which is where it's worth
Speaker 1: looking up a picture of this. I think I've described
Speaker 1: it before on the show. If you didn't know what
Speaker 1: you're looking at, you might think it was a component
Speaker 1: for like an ikea coffee table. It's not. It's not
Speaker 1: something that instantly looks ancient. It's um. It's it's very
Speaker 1: plain and um and functional in many respects. It is
Speaker 1: a circular mirror with kind of a notch at the top,
Speaker 1: with a hole in it. And apparently Smith points out
Speaker 1: that the whole at the top of that artifact is
Speaker 1: likely there so it could be worn as an ammu
Speaker 1: let across the chest, which is something that we see
Speaker 1: in the codiceas. So, there seemed to have largely been
Speaker 1: two standardized types or sizes of these mirrors, there was
Speaker 1: one size that was intended to adorn a sculpture, and
Speaker 1: then others like this, like the one that came into
Speaker 1: Dr De's possession, that was worn as an ornament by priests.
Speaker 1: But it's also possible that size norms changed over time.
Speaker 1: Now Nicholas J. Saunders and Elizabeth Bacuadano right quote these
Speaker 1: reflective devices were powerfully ambiguous, not least because they shone
Speaker 1: with a quote unquote dark light. They partook of what
Speaker 1: has been called a pen Amerindian quote aesthetic of brilliance,
Speaker 1: which accorded sacredness and power to a multimediasemblage of shiny objects.
Speaker 1: The material metaphors of access to and control of the
Speaker 1: glowing spirit realm from wind, status and political power flowed.
Speaker 1: And they also write that quote a presence of absence
Speaker 1: to finds the ambivalent nature of test catolet PoCA, the
Speaker 1: supreme deity of the late post classic Aztec pantheon, in
Speaker 1: the dark ephemeral reflection of his obsidian mirror, in the
Speaker 1: transient sound of his ceramic flower pipes, lies the sensuous
Speaker 1: nature of a god who mediates materiality and invisibility with
Speaker 1: omniscience and omnipresence. So a couple of years ago I
Speaker 1: actually was lucky enough to see uh John D's mirror, uh,
Speaker 1: the Aztec of Citian mirror from his collection in the
Speaker 1: British Museum. It's on display there among the collection of
Speaker 1: Dr D's treasures, and I recall, yeah, looking into it,
Speaker 1: you can get a rather unsettling feeling where you you
Speaker 1: could imagine how a person could could feel the power
Speaker 1: from the other realm flowing out from this, this sort
Speaker 1: of conduit or gateway. Yeah. Yeah, this mirror is I
Speaker 1: think I've mentioned before. I may have seen it when
Speaker 1: I visited the British Museum, but I did not know
Speaker 1: about its existence, so I have no specific memory of
Speaker 1: of seeing it. And again, if you don't know what
Speaker 1: you're looking for, or you're happy to sort of breathe
Speaker 1: past it, you might not pay that much attention to it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's part of the British Museum collection. Again,
Speaker 1: has traveled a little bit, but but not I don't
Speaker 1: think extensively. Uh So if you visit the British Museum today,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you'll be able to find it.
Speaker 1: They also have it on their website. Now I want
Speaker 1: to mention one more thing from that book. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a chapter in there by Susan mill Breath titled the
Speaker 1: Maya Lord of the Smoking Mirror. And this, this dude
Speaker 1: paper deals primarily with cal Will, the Maya form of
Speaker 1: this same deity, but in it the author writes that
Speaker 1: the mirrors were indeed used in acts of divination. Priests
Speaker 1: and magicians would use the mirrors to gaze into the future.
Speaker 1: Quote his obsidian mirror appears in an Aztec account describing
Speaker 1: a mirror or test cattle that showed the quote stars
Speaker 1: and fire drill a constellation even though it was daytime,
Speaker 1: and then revealed an omen forecasting the Spanish invasion. And
Speaker 1: so they point out that that the mirrors ruling divination
Speaker 1: may be linked with astrology, because test catlet Polca had
Speaker 1: numerous astronomical avatars. So it's interesting we see this idea
Speaker 1: of of reflections in the mirror. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's clearly associated with reflections of us, but also reflections
Speaker 1: of of the cosmos. I think that's that's fascinating. And
Speaker 1: then you get into the idea of the darkness of obsidy,
Speaker 1: and I guess being like the darkness betwixt the stars.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, thank thank, thank Now, as we talked about
Speaker 1: in the last episode, there were also obsidian mirrors on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Atlantic. In the ancient world.
Speaker 1: The earliest mirror artifacts known of are probably these obsidian
Speaker 1: discs from prehistoric Anatolia. But I was wondering, okay, where
Speaker 1: did mirror technology go after that? So I was turning
Speaker 1: back to a sort of catalog of of different early
Speaker 1: mirror finds that are listed in a paper by J. M.
Speaker 1: Enoch in the Journal of Optometry and Vision Science in
Speaker 1: two thousand six called History of Mirrors dating back eight
Speaker 1: thousand years and Enoch notes a few types of artifacts
Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt that have been interpreted as possible mirrors,
Speaker 1: but but are not quite certain. For example, the English
Speaker 1: egyptologist Flinders Petrie suggested that stone palettes in pre dynastic
Speaker 1: Egypt could have been turned into mirrors by wedding them.
Speaker 1: So you might have an artifact that just looks like
Speaker 1: kind of a flat stone disc, and that by wedding
Speaker 1: this disc you could turn it into a rough mirror. Also,
Speaker 1: egyptologist Christine lily Quist argued that ancient Egyptians may have
Speaker 1: used ceramic bowls that could be filled with water to
Speaker 1: function as mirrors inside the home and lily Quist sites
Speaker 1: findings at Elbadari, which is a site along the Nile
Speaker 1: and Upper Egypt with a number of artifacts from pre
Speaker 1: dynastic times. I think this is one of the earliest
Speaker 1: sites that shows evidence of agriculture in in predynastic egypt Um.
Speaker 1: But that around Elbadari there is possible evidence of early mirrors,
Speaker 1: including quote a slab of selenite with traces of wood
Speaker 1: as a possible frame um and a slate disc also
Speaker 1: a piece of reflective mica pierced with the whole a
Speaker 1: possible wall attachment. But moving on from here you start
Speaker 1: to get signs of metal mirrors, which are obviously you
Speaker 1: can just imagine, are going to have a very different
Speaker 1: quality than say a wet stone would. So by the
Speaker 1: time period of roughly the fourth millennium BC, so four
Speaker 1: thousand to three thousand b C, there is some evidence
Speaker 1: of metal mirrors in the ancient Near East, and this
Speaker 1: includes small copper discs possibly used as mirrors that are
Speaker 1: found in southern Mesopotamia in what is today Iraq, for example,
Speaker 1: around the ancient city state of Or. And when I
Speaker 1: was looking around at these examples, it seems perhaps most
Speaker 1: or maybe even all of the mirrors recovered from around
Speaker 1: three thousand BC e in Mesopotamia were copper mirrors. But
Speaker 1: by the third millennium BC, in moving forward, there are
Speaker 1: a number of examples of metal mirrors found in Egypt,
Speaker 1: usually copper early on, and then as as the years
Speaker 1: go on, there are more copper alloys, and these would
Speaker 1: fall into the classification of bronze mirrors. But also by
Speaker 1: the third millennium BC, there are not only these scant artifacts,
Speaker 1: but actually records of mirrors. So this means mirrors evoked
Speaker 1: as a concept in texts and in artistic imagery. So
Speaker 1: Enoch includes some examples of ancient Egyptian artwork from tombs
Speaker 1: that appears to show mirrors. Uh. For example, Rob, I've
Speaker 1: got one you can look at here. This is figure
Speaker 1: three in front of you, but I'll try to describe
Speaker 1: it is detail from the tomb of mirror Ruca at Sakara.
Speaker 1: And so this would have been the sixth dynasty of
Speaker 1: Egypt roughly b C. And what you see is sort
Speaker 1: of a line of figures depicted in that profile style. Um,
Speaker 1: and they're they're doing they're they're holding up objects at
Speaker 1: each other. And I think this may be showing a
Speaker 1: sequence of the same figures interacting across time. But one
Speaker 1: of the objects they're holding up it looks like, well,
Speaker 1: what is that? Is that a ping pong paddle? No,
Speaker 1: it's probably a mirror. Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see it.
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're holding it up to their faces
Speaker 1: as if looking at their own reflection. And way way
Speaker 1: back into history. Uh, it's clear that mirrors contain not
Speaker 1: just their practical functions they're used in cosmetics and stuff,
Speaker 1: but also their religious significance. Uh. Enoch notes that is
Speaker 1: extremely common across all of these cultures for mirrors to
Speaker 1: be associated with some kind of supernatural power, to be
Speaker 1: associated with the gods, or to have some kind of
Speaker 1: use in divination or or association with the soul. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: they served as symbols of the sun or moon, and
Speaker 1: may have been carried on tops of standards, a one sided,
Speaker 1: flattened disc symbolized as setting or rising on. Mirrors were
Speaker 1: sometimes used to symbolize the inner self. They also provided
Speaker 1: a way to look back. Yeah, this is all especially
Speaker 1: interesting considering the ancient Egyptians, who of course were very
Speaker 1: solar oriented culture. Uh So anything that reflects sunlight is
Speaker 1: going to potentially have some real value. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think we've discussed in the show before about the you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that the the Great Pyramids were once um
Speaker 1: uh covered in a more reflective surface, so that they
Speaker 1: would have they would have you know, wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: like a mirror, but they would have definitely reflected the
Speaker 1: brilliance of the sun during the day. Yeah. It would
Speaker 1: have been amazing to be alive at a time when
Speaker 1: you could have seen that. Yeah. Um. But hey, so
Speaker 1: there's another thing I came across while while reading up
Speaker 1: for this episode that I really wanted to do a
Speaker 1: digression on that has less to do with the technology
Speaker 1: of a mirror, but I think actually does tie into
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of these, uh these religious uses of
Speaker 1: mirrors that we see throughout the ages. And this is
Speaker 1: an effective mirrors that has come to be known as
Speaker 1: the strange face in the mirror effect. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is this is great because it's it's one that we
Speaker 1: can certainly take all of this and apply it to
Speaker 1: the mirrors that surround us today. But then if we're
Speaker 1: talking about these various older variations of the mirror that
Speaker 1: are maybe smoky or darker um, smaller um, it allows
Speaker 1: even more room for ambiguity. Yeah. So a while back,
Speaker 1: I did an episode of the artifact that I called
Speaker 1: the Psychedelic Blindfold. I don't know if you ever got
Speaker 1: a chance to listen to this one, Rob, but it
Speaker 1: was one that I've been thinking about a lot ever since.
Speaker 1: And in fact, though it's called the psychedelic blindfold, there's
Speaker 1: actually nothing special about the blindfold that was used in
Speaker 1: the study except that it basically blocks out all light.
Speaker 1: What was really special about this research was the amount
Speaker 1: of time that the blindfold was worn. The basic finding
Speaker 1: in this study again, this was published in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand four in the Journal of neuro Optomology. The
Speaker 1: base finding was that subjects who were blindfolded for days
Speaker 1: at a time started to have elaborate visual hallucinations. And
Speaker 1: the most interesting part to me was not just that
Speaker 1: they were hallucinating, but that sometimes they started to visually
Speaker 1: hallucinate roughly accurate percepts based on other senses. So that
Speaker 1: might include perceptions of their own limbs or objects that
Speaker 1: they were manipulating, like a picture of water on a
Speaker 1: table or other people in the room with them, that
Speaker 1: they would get pictures of things that were actually there.
Speaker 1: And this to me raises interesting questions about what site
Speaker 1: really is. What if you are seeing things in your
Speaker 1: brain and those things are not whole cloth fabrications but
Speaker 1: roughly accurate perceptions of real objects around you, except they're
Speaker 1: not based on light received through the eyes, but based
Speaker 1: on other senses cognition. So maybe your appropriate reception, you know,
Speaker 1: your internal sense of where the rest of your body
Speaker 1: is causes you to hallucinate visual imagery of your body
Speaker 1: parts in the right places, or your ability to feel
Speaker 1: objects around you, like a picture of water in your hand,
Speaker 1: causes you to hallucinate that picture, except it's basically an
Speaker 1: accurate visual stimulus you're getting is just not based on light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating area of contemplation. It gets back
Speaker 1: to something we've we've we've we've touched on before, the
Speaker 1: idea that we think of ourselves. We we often use
Speaker 1: technological metaphors. We often think about our visual perception as
Speaker 1: being that of a like a security camera. It is
Speaker 1: it is filming the world and preserving that that site
Speaker 1: data as it is. But of course the more we
Speaker 1: look at it, the more we realize that this is
Speaker 1: not the case. We have we certainly have have visual
Speaker 1: data coming in, but then we have the we have
Speaker 1: other senses involved, we have memory employed, and there's a
Speaker 1: great deal of a filling in the blanks and the
Speaker 1: sort of cultivation of an internal model of reality. I
Speaker 1: think that's very well put, and that's really going to
Speaker 1: be relevant to what I'm about to bring up. So
Speaker 1: all that was preamble to a really interesting series of
Speaker 1: studies that I was just getting into about the potential
Speaker 1: psychedelic power of mirrors, much like the potential psychedelic power
Speaker 1: of a blindfold um And and another thing about this
Speaker 1: that's interesting is that there are a number of urban
Speaker 1: legends and folk beliefs about supernatural apparitions that will manifest
Speaker 1: in a mirror under the right conditions. One example I
Speaker 1: came across I was reading an article in Scientific American.
Speaker 1: One of the authors of this article was named Susannah
Speaker 1: Martinez Conde, and she talks about how thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: when she was a child growing up in Spain, she
Speaker 1: said that there was a there was like a superstition
Speaker 1: that anyone could see the devil's face. And what you
Speaker 1: had to do to see the devil's face was stare
Speaker 1: at your her own face in the mirror at the
Speaker 1: stroke of midnight, and then you would say the devil's
Speaker 1: name when when midnight tolls, and then you would see
Speaker 1: the devil in the mirror. Yeah, this is kind of
Speaker 1: the with the Bloody Mary effect. You could go right.
Speaker 1: And I gotta admit, I actually remember when I was
Speaker 1: a child, I for a I don't know how long
Speaker 1: this will on, for some period of time, I got
Speaker 1: absolutely terrified about Bloody Mary. After a kid that I was,
Speaker 1: I was at some summer camp and some guy was
Speaker 1: telling me about Bloody Mary and uh, and after hearing that,
Speaker 1: I remember I was just like petrified of being alone
Speaker 1: in a room with a mirror. I remember this too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this recently because after we recorded
Speaker 1: the first episode, I was telling my son, who just
Speaker 1: who just entered fourth grade. I was telling him about
Speaker 1: the fish and U and the Borhey's short story about
Speaker 1: the creatures in the mirror, and um, he wasn't terrified
Speaker 1: or anything of it, but he would started asking questions
Speaker 1: and then I started thinking back to Bloody Mary, and
Speaker 1: so for they're like, oh wow, I need to careful here.
Speaker 1: He's just the right age where I need to I
Speaker 1: need to make sure I cultivate his imagination just so
Speaker 1: so that he's not afraid of mirrors. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny, like I've heard a million ghost stories by
Speaker 1: that point. Why was that the one that that got
Speaker 1: the hooks in me? And and other ones weren't. It's
Speaker 1: a great question. I mean, on one hand, I think
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that the mirror is
Speaker 1: at the center of it, and the mirror is poorly
Speaker 1: understood by all of us. It is this weirdness that
Speaker 1: we just kind of stop asking questions about. And then
Speaker 1: if you you add something to the scenario, uh, you
Speaker 1: can easily bring that spookiness back into the forefront, you know.
Speaker 1: But then also with with a lot of like the
Speaker 1: Bloody Marry type stuff we tend to and it involves
Speaker 1: not just a mirror, but also a low light or
Speaker 1: a flickering candle light, which is just going to augment
Speaker 1: the various effects that we're talking about here. Um, you
Speaker 1: can already be weird enough to dear at your own
Speaker 1: face in the mirror for you know, a minute at
Speaker 1: a time. But add in flickering and alterating candle light
Speaker 1: throw in low light, and as well as this the
Speaker 1: script of the supernatural layered on top of everything, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I can start feeling a little freaky. It's funny how
Speaker 1: much what you say is is conforming to the study
Speaker 1: I'm about to bring up, though, I should report, by
Speaker 1: the way that Um, Susanna Martinez Conde. She says in
Speaker 1: the article that when she tried to see the devil's
Speaker 1: face in the mirror as a child, nothing happened. So
Speaker 1: you know, you win some, you lose some. You gotta
Speaker 1: play a little less more in the background too, I think, right. Um,
Speaker 1: But but given certain recent psychological research, I think there
Speaker 1: could be some plausible reasons to assume that some legends
Speaker 1: like this of seeing faces in the mirror, seeing the devil,
Speaker 1: or seeing bloody Mary are based on real experiences that
Speaker 1: some people had, because you can get yourself into a
Speaker 1: very vulnerable state when you're steering into a mirror, especially
Speaker 1: with in low light conditions. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: there are apparently special effects of staring at a face
Speaker 1: in a mirror that manifest as a very common predisposition
Speaker 1: to hallucinate. As far as I can tell. This effect
Speaker 1: was first observed by a psychologist named Giovanni Caputo of
Speaker 1: the University of Urbino, Italy and published in a report
Speaker 1: in the journal Perception in two thousand and ten. The
Speaker 1: paper was called Strange Face in the Mirror Illusion. So,
Speaker 1: in this study, Caputo recruited fifty subjects who were all
Speaker 1: in their twenties, a range of one to twenty nine
Speaker 1: years of age, and they didn't know what was being tested.
Speaker 1: What happened is Caputo would place them in a dimly
Speaker 1: lit room, so it was illuminated only by a twenty
Speaker 1: five what incandescent light that was placed on the floor
Speaker 1: behind the subject. And then they were asked to stare
Speaker 1: into a mirror that was about zero point four meters
Speaker 1: which is about one point three ft in front of them,
Speaker 1: and then just to keep looking at their own reflection,
Speaker 1: staring into their own face for ten minutes. That it
Speaker 1: no drugs, no other alterations of consciousness, just a dimly
Speaker 1: lit room, staring in your at your own face in
Speaker 1: a mirror for ten minutes. And then afterwards they were
Speaker 1: asked to write about the experience and report anything that
Speaker 1: they remembered about it, and the results reported by Caputo
Speaker 1: are extremely striking. The majority of subjects reported at least
Speaker 1: one of a number of different kinds of broad uh
Speaker 1: perceptually strange or even hallucinatory experiences. So to read from
Speaker 1: the study quote, descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included
Speaker 1: a huge deformations of one's own face reported by sixty
Speaker 1: six percent of the fifty participants. Be a parents face
Speaker 1: with traits changed eighteen percent, of whom eight percent were
Speaker 1: still alive and ten percent were deceased. See an unknown
Speaker 1: person twenty eight percent, d an archetypal face such as
Speaker 1: that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait
Speaker 1: of an ancestor e an animal face such as that
Speaker 1: of a cat, pig, or lion eighteen percent, or f
Speaker 1: fantastical and monstrous beings percent. So like a lot of
Speaker 1: people get monsters in there. Yeah, yeah, it's It's impressive
Speaker 1: and and really not surprising at all. I think if
Speaker 1: anyone has has spent any amount of time, I mean,
Speaker 1: we've all spent time looking at ourselves in the mirror,
Speaker 1: I think enough to realize. Yeah, the more that you
Speaker 1: look at yourself, the weirder you look um, and most
Speaker 1: of us will leave that situation before you get to
Speaker 1: the monster scenario. You know, you're more likely to check
Speaker 1: out when you start seeing uh, when you start noticing
Speaker 1: resemblance to parents and so forth, and you're like, I
Speaker 1: think I've looked at my mirror enough. I think I
Speaker 1: checked on what I came here to check on. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do something else. But ten minutes
Speaker 1: that's sas some serious time. And Caputo also reported that
Speaker 1: there were effects beyond the purely visual distortions and hallucinations.
Speaker 1: There were also sort of conceptual disruptions and and strong
Speaker 1: emotional reactions and feelings that people experienced staring into the
Speaker 1: mirror like this again to read from his results quote,
Speaker 1: The participants reported that apparition of new faces in the
Speaker 1: mirror caused sensations of otherness when the new face appeared
Speaker 1: to be that of another unknown person or strange other
Speaker 1: looking at him or her from within or beyond the mirror.
Speaker 1: All fifty participants experienced some form of this dissociative identity
Speaker 1: effect at least for some apparition of strange faces, and
Speaker 1: often reported strong emotional responses in these instances, and I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. So it's saying that, like, even
Speaker 1: for people who didn't note any visual distortions or visual hallucinations,
Speaker 1: they did report at least some kind of feeling of
Speaker 1: dissociation with the face that was looking back at them.
Speaker 1: But coming back to the results quote, for example, some
Speaker 1: observers felt that the other watched them with an enigmatic
Speaker 1: expression and a situation that they found astonishing. Some participants
Speaker 1: saw a malign expression on the other face and became anxious.
Speaker 1: Other participants felt that the other was smiling or cheerful
Speaker 1: and experienced positive emotions in response. The apparition of deceased
Speaker 1: parents or of archetypal portraits produced feelings of silent query.
Speaker 1: Apparition of monstrous beings produced fear or disturbance. Dynamic deformations
Speaker 1: of the new faces, like pulsations or shrinking, smiling, or grinding,
Speaker 1: produced an overall sense of inquietude for things out of control.
Speaker 1: So these kinds of emotional reactions I think makes sense,
Speaker 1: especially given that that so many people were seeing some
Speaker 1: kind of visual disturbance or hallucination. But to come back
Speaker 1: to the visual perceptions themselves, what could possibly explain this
Speaker 1: bizarre effect. You look at your own face over time
Speaker 1: and it starts to kind of transform into other things.
Speaker 1: You see other people's faces. Maybe you see a cat
Speaker 1: face or a monster face. Maybe you become a minotaur,
Speaker 1: maybe you become your grandfather. Uh. You know this is
Speaker 1: this is strange. So like, what could be leading to this?
Speaker 1: So Caputo offers a few ideas. First of all, the
Speaker 1: the disappearance or attenuation of face traits could very well
Speaker 1: be caused by what's known as truck slur fading. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a name for a very well documented optical
Speaker 1: illusion that goes like this. Okay, if you if you
Speaker 1: fixate your gaze on a particular point without moving it,
Speaker 1: unchanging visual stimuli in the periphery will tend to fade
Speaker 1: away the longer you stare at that one fixation point.
Speaker 1: This was observed by the eighteenth century English physician and
Speaker 1: Pauly math Erasmus Darwin. It was the grandfather of Charles Darwin.
Speaker 1: But it gets its name after being uh discussed by
Speaker 1: a Swiss physician named Ignace Paul Vital truck Sler in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, who did some experiments with patches
Speaker 1: of color against a screen or a wall. But if
Speaker 1: you want to try this out for yourself, there are
Speaker 1: tons of you know, they're the little like stimulus images
Speaker 1: that you can look up on the internet. Just google
Speaker 1: truk slur fading or truck slur illusion t R O
Speaker 1: x L e R and you should be able to
Speaker 1: find something you can try out. Rob But I quite
Speaker 1: easily experienced this illusion. Why I've got one. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at here that is a really menacing, grinning cheshire cat face,
Speaker 1: but it's got an X right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: And if I stare at the X, I think, really,
Speaker 1: it only takes about five seconds before the colors of
Speaker 1: the cat face fade to almost nothing. Alright, staring at
Speaker 1: the X on its nose intently, Yeah, yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: Like the pupils disappear for me pretty quickly, I'd say
Speaker 1: for me, after about five or six seconds of intense
Speaker 1: staring at the X, the face is gone, but the
Speaker 1: teeth remain. I only see the grin and after about
Speaker 1: like five to ten minutes, it's telling me to go
Speaker 1: out and remove traffic signs. So it's it's a haunting
Speaker 1: face to stare into too much. I feel great I've
Speaker 1: got a brand new religion. I'm about to go buy
Speaker 1: some meal mix in bulk. Well, the chesire cat. I
Speaker 1: think we discussed this a little bit in our MEDUSA episodes,
Speaker 1: like this is a this is a gorgon, this is
Speaker 1: a gorgon space that we're staring at here. It's a
Speaker 1: it's just a a repackaging of the same concept. I mean,
Speaker 1: not not that that has anything to do with the
Speaker 1: optical fact going on here, but at any rate, So,
Speaker 1: truck slur fading is a specific example of a broader
Speaker 1: phenomenon of neural adaptation, the desensitization of sensory neurons to
Speaker 1: unchanging stimuli. And you can think of other examples that
Speaker 1: are were there similar effects of this and maybe tactle feelings.
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you um put a finger on
Speaker 1: part of your arm, you will feel the touch of
Speaker 1: your own finger when it first lands there. But if
Speaker 1: you just leave it there, you kind of stop noticing it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Similar thing with smells, you know, all kinds of me life.
Speaker 1: You're just getting the same sense stimulus over and over
Speaker 1: again without changing. Often it will fade into nothing in
Speaker 1: your awareness. Right, It's like like with the smell for example,
Speaker 1: the idea is you're being alerted to this smell because
Speaker 1: something about it is important, like maybe it's potentially dangerous, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But if you're around it enough, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: the brain is decided, Okay, he gets the point. We've
Speaker 1: sent the memo, we've done all we can do. We
Speaker 1: just have to trust that he is he either knows
Speaker 1: that this, uh, this particular smell is is not poison
Speaker 1: or he's done something about it. Right, And so that
Speaker 1: does seem to be an explanation for what's going on
Speaker 1: generally with truck slur fading. You you stare at a
Speaker 1: single point and then other things in the visual field.
Speaker 1: If you're really staring intently, you're not moving your eyes around,
Speaker 1: you're not blinking. Those other colors, those other images, they
Speaker 1: just kind of like fade away over time you you're
Speaker 1: you get used to them, and then they're just going.
Speaker 1: But this is not the full answer to the question, right,
Speaker 1: Because so Caputo's interpretive section continues to say, the trucksler
Speaker 1: fading might be a good explanation for why, like outer
Speaker 1: features of the face might seem to fade or disappear
Speaker 1: or possibly distort while we're fixated on a central point,
Speaker 1: like if you're staring at your own nose or staring
Speaker 1: at your own eyes very intently. But a lot of
Speaker 1: the subjects reported not only fading or distortion of the
Speaker 1: outer parts of the face, but the sensation of totally
Speaker 1: new visual traits, such as you know, like different features
Speaker 1: or animal faces, monster faces, the faces of other people.
Speaker 1: And this part is more difficult to explain. Caputo and
Speaker 1: and other co authors have done subsequent research following up
Speaker 1: on the the strange face in the mirror effect, but
Speaker 1: the exact cause of these perceptions does remain somewhat obscure,
Speaker 1: at least as far as I can tell. A part
Speaker 1: of the explanation could have to do with the long
Speaker 1: gazing process causing a disruption of the mental faculty that
Speaker 1: normally combines individual face traits like nose, eyes, lips, and
Speaker 1: so forth into a unified experience of a face. You know,
Speaker 1: that's something you probably know from experience that like, when
Speaker 1: you see a face, you tend to see it as
Speaker 1: a face, not as the individual parts of a face. Right,
Speaker 1: And and this is something though I find when I
Speaker 1: am just staring at another person's face for too long
Speaker 1: I stopped seeing it as a unified face, and I
Speaker 1: start it's kind of like it's almost like you're seeing
Speaker 1: just parts of the face floating around, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're no longer seeing the face altogether. And it's a
Speaker 1: weird feeling. And I have to look away from the
Speaker 1: person's face at that point. Oh you ever, like you
Speaker 1: gaze at somebody's eyes too long, and you maybe somebody
Speaker 1: who you find beautiful and you love their beautiful eyes,
Speaker 1: and then you look too long and those eyes become eyeballs,
Speaker 1: and then you see them as organs, right, and this
Speaker 1: is you know, the sclera, and they've got some kind
Speaker 1: of jelly inside them. And then you're like, oh, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I did it. I did the I did the bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you see the skull beneath the flesh and
Speaker 1: it's all done. But to read from Caputo's interpretation of
Speaker 1: of what could possibly be causing again, it's it's not
Speaker 1: really fully understood. But in his original study in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, Caputo says, quote, this long term viewing of
Speaker 1: face stimuli of marginal strength. I remember that's especially because
Speaker 1: the low light conditions right may generate a haphazard assembly
Speaker 1: of face traits that generate deformed faces or scrambled faces.
Speaker 1: Frequent apparitions of strange faces of known or unknown people
Speaker 1: support the idea that the illusion involves a high level
Speaker 1: mechanism that is specific to global face processing. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, the frequent apparition of fantastical and monstrous beings
Speaker 1: and of animal faces cannot, in our opinion, be explained
Speaker 1: by any actual theory of face processing. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's still big questions about what exactly leads to
Speaker 1: this effect. It might have something to do with with
Speaker 1: transition points. Say like maybe you're staring at a central
Speaker 1: part of the reflection, you're looking at your own eyes
Speaker 1: or something, and then troksler fading kicks in and the
Speaker 1: outer parts of the face start to kind of fade away,
Speaker 1: and you lose some color definition and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And then and then the visual stimulus is suddenly restored
Speaker 1: when you blink or you move your eyes or something,
Speaker 1: and that that part that has faded away snaps back
Speaker 1: into focus. Maybe something in that transition causes you to
Speaker 1: see something weird. Perhaps their gaps there and the brain
Speaker 1: does some strange filling in process, but we don't really know.
Speaker 1: But what we do know for sure is that this
Speaker 1: phenomenon is actually not contained simply to mirror gazing. You
Speaker 1: can recreate similar effects by having people gaze directly into
Speaker 1: other people's faces for ten minutes in low light. This
Speaker 1: was explored in another paper that Caputo published in called
Speaker 1: Strange Face Illusions during intersubjective gazing, so people just looking
Speaker 1: at each other's faces. This was published in Consciousness and Cognition,
Speaker 1: so it definitely happened with pairs of other people. So
Speaker 1: it seems like the mirror is not really the special part.
Speaker 1: The real keys are faces as stimulus, either yours or
Speaker 1: somebody else's, long exposure times, just uninterrupted staring and low light.
Speaker 1: So what makes mirrors special in this regard is that
Speaker 1: they are a tool that anybody can use to try
Speaker 1: to experience these strange face effects, you know, without having
Speaker 1: to recruit somebody else who is game for a really
Speaker 1: awkward experiment. Yeah. Now, the the idea of two people's
Speaker 1: faces for ten minutes low light, I mean essentially this
Speaker 1: is this is any date night scenario, right, But I
Speaker 1: guess the beauty of date night is that you ideally
Speaker 1: you have maybe a beverage you have some sort of
Speaker 1: at least an appetizer. There there's people watching, or you know,
Speaker 1: ideally there's people watching. There's maybe art on the walls,
Speaker 1: there are other things to captivate your attention, and then
Speaker 1: you can keep coming back to the person across from you.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not some sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: just a like a blank cell that you find yourself
Speaker 1: engaging with this per sit in. Right. I don't want
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like to be judgmental, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, if you're doing date night this way, you're
Speaker 1: doing it wrong. You should not stare uninterrupted without moving
Speaker 1: your eyes or blinking at somebody's face for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like it's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: could be a dating fat right, Like if someone's like,
Speaker 1: look dating a normal dating scenario, you're just not able
Speaker 1: to bond with the person. You need just ten minutes
Speaker 1: of uninterrupted um facial viewing and uh, and then you'll
Speaker 1: know whether this is your soulmate or not, or that
Speaker 1: is a minotaur. You can't really love me until you've
Speaker 1: seen me as a minotaur. Right though, Interestingly enough, that's
Speaker 1: like a show now where they're there's some sort of
Speaker 1: a dating show where both people are are covered in
Speaker 1: like heavy monster effects makeup. So yeah, I'm serious. I
Speaker 1: am serious. It's a show on Netflix. I have not
Speaker 1: watched it, but I watched the trailer for it, and
Speaker 1: the trailer was amusing. Um it at least has some
Speaker 1: cool monster like makeup effects stuff, so it'll be like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, two individuals they're doing a blind date thing,
Speaker 1: except one is made up like a bird woman and
Speaker 1: the other is I don't know, like a like a
Speaker 1: baseball headed mutant, that sort of thing, a baseball headed mutant.
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, I can't wait till this like
Speaker 1: back reflects onto the pickup line process and stuff. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Darling, let me be your pumpkin head. There
Speaker 1: may be a pumpkin head in it. Yeah. Yeah, listeners
Speaker 1: will have to report back because again I'm not going
Speaker 1: to actually watch this show. Just one more thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention before wrapping up on the strange face
Speaker 1: in the Mirror research so I said that Caputo has
Speaker 1: done a number of studies following up on this and
Speaker 1: reproducing it in different contexts since then. One that I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting was published in the journal of trauma
Speaker 1: and dissociation in the year twenty nineteen called strange face
Speaker 1: illusions during eye to eye gazing and die adds specific
Speaker 1: effects on derealization, depersonalization, and dissociative identity. Again, the study
Speaker 1: reproduced the findings with some new areas of focus. But
Speaker 1: the main thing I wanted to mention from this one
Speaker 1: was that fifteen of the test subjects here were sketch
Speaker 1: artists who were later asked to reproduce their best approximation
Speaker 1: of some of the strange faces they saw, and Rob,
Speaker 1: here you go, you can you can tell me what
Speaker 1: you think of these. One I really like is a
Speaker 1: guy with a furry face with glasses and his eyes
Speaker 1: have mustaches. That one, yeah, that one looks pretty creepy
Speaker 1: and has kind of a you know, blank isn't real
Speaker 1: and can't hurt you kind of a vibe to it,
Speaker 1: as does the big vacant eyed lizard man looking face.
Speaker 1: And then one of them is just kind of a
Speaker 1: muppet and the other one, um, just kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a caricature, the monstrous monkey woman. That's what the
Speaker 1: big eyed one is called. Here, No, I think you're
Speaker 1: looking at the alien face. The monstrous monkey one is okay,
Speaker 1: I like the muppet one. Yeah, the monstrous monkey woman.
Speaker 1: Then it doesn't look very monstrous to me. Looks looks adorable,
Speaker 1: it looks great. Let this monkey woman teach children about
Speaker 1: the alphabet this. This should be on Sesame Street. Now
Speaker 1: it's uh, there's so many additional directions to go in
Speaker 1: from this. On one hand, we should point out that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's worth noting that there are other reasons
Speaker 1: that are facing a mirror may be extra unnerving. Um. There's,
Speaker 1: of course what is often referred to as mirrored self misidentification.
Speaker 1: And this is the delusion that wants reflection in a
Speaker 1: mirror is some manner of double or a relative or
Speaker 1: something of that nature, but not a reflection of yourself.
Speaker 1: And this is actually a right hemisphere cranial dysfunction, uh
Speaker 1: that I think is often tied to like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: major brain disease or some sort of traumatic injury to
Speaker 1: the head. I mean. Another way of of re contextualizing
Speaker 1: what we've just been talking about is that, um, faces
Speaker 1: are powerful. Faces are powerful and profound stimuli that can
Speaker 1: cause powerful and profound reactions in the brain, and mirrors
Speaker 1: are a way of getting lots of access to face
Speaker 1: stimuli without you know, in the in the privacy of
Speaker 1: your own bathroom, you know, without anybody judging you or
Speaker 1: judging you for staring at them. Say, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I would love to hear from anyone out there
Speaker 1: whose profession requires them to make um, eye contact or
Speaker 1: just to stare people's faces for this kind of an
Speaker 1: extended amount of time. Because on one hand, and granted
Speaker 1: we we do all of our recordings through zoom now,
Speaker 1: but you know, used to It's like part of our
Speaker 1: whole thing is we have these long conversations about topics, um,
Speaker 1: you know, used to in the same room, but we're
Speaker 1: also looking at other things. You know, maybe we're looking
Speaker 1: over to seth to make sure the recording is going okay.
Speaker 1: We're certainly looking at our notes to see where we
Speaker 1: are in the outline, uh, you know, or even looking
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the room. But I realized, like some people
Speaker 1: were in a profession where like maybe they're a therapist
Speaker 1: or or something, and they maybe have to make prolonged
Speaker 1: eye contact, prolonged you know, face to face communication. What
Speaker 1: is that like? Do you find yourself susceptible to some
Speaker 1: of these effects. Yeah, what is the appropriate amount of
Speaker 1: faith staring? I mean, too little can seem like maybe
Speaker 1: you're not making an effort to connect with somebody, and
Speaker 1: too much is creepy and invasive, like you know, balancing
Speaker 1: that I think is one of those uh, those ongoing
Speaker 1: social ballets we always have to manage. Yeah, Like you
Speaker 1: don't want to talk to somebody who refuses to make
Speaker 1: eye contact with you. But if the eye contact is
Speaker 1: just too like unflinching, it can feel a bit too intense.
Speaker 1: You know. It feels like you're playing a game of
Speaker 1: of of eyeballs Chicken with them, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: no fun. No eyeball Chicken, no eyeball road rage. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta manage right of way. This reminds
Speaker 1: me of something we talked about in a previous episode
Speaker 1: about sunglasses, about how you have UM if an individual
Speaker 1: is wearing sunglasses, uh, the other people are more inclined
Speaker 1: to believe that that person is staring at them, versus
Speaker 1: if they were not wearing sunglasses at all. Um, So
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. Again, We're we're creatures that
Speaker 1: are hyper aware of staring. Um, that know the power
Speaker 1: of staring and theertain amount of eye contact is required.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's this careful balance that has to be
Speaker 1: um in effect. And then you throw mirrors into this
Speaker 1: whole scenario and it just it makes everything a little stranger.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the big the big take
Speaker 1: homes that we keep coming back to with mirrors is
Speaker 1: mirrors make reality a little bit stranger, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: reveal strength strange things about our reality. Like one of
Speaker 1: those things is that you don't really have a face.
Speaker 1: You have you are, to a certain extent just this
Speaker 1: a symbolage of of of organs on the front of
Speaker 1: a head. And we don't think about it, but if
Speaker 1: you stare in a mirror long enough, you might come
Speaker 1: to realize that. Likewise, uh, you know, realizations about um,
Speaker 1: you know, how much you look like like a parent
Speaker 1: or a family member, or like some you know, random
Speaker 1: celebrity face or some face in a painting, or even
Speaker 1: the face of a beast or a monster. Very true.
Speaker 1: The concept of a face is a kind of blessed
Speaker 1: hallucination that we're always able to you know, we're usually
Speaker 1: able to maintain in just a allowing the the the
Speaker 1: face hallucination to decompose into various contours of meat and bone.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's one of the you know, we came back.
Speaker 1: We've discussed this, I think in both episodes. Why why
Speaker 1: the mirror is so often in the toolkit of the
Speaker 1: magician and the priest and the soothsayer and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is, you could see,
Speaker 1: the mirror is a very basic tool for breaking reality,
Speaker 1: or at least bending reality. You know, it is a
Speaker 1: it is a means of of not only you know,
Speaker 1: creating effects and creating illusions, but also taking the potency
Speaker 1: out of the the ever present illusion of the way
Speaker 1: we perceive the world. Yeah, I think we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to keep thinking about this, and we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: come back in part three because there's more mirrors to come.
Speaker 1: We have so much more, there's so much, so much
Speaker 1: to talk about with this one. I mean, i'd be
Speaker 1: I'd be perfectly happy to to do this one for
Speaker 1: you know, four or five episodes. So we'll just we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see how how much gas is in the tank.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, we'll definitely be back with the part three.
Speaker 1: Maybe the oculus will make you forget all of your
Speaker 1: past and you'll have to do six seven eight just
Speaker 1: on fraternity. Well, I don't know if I could watch
Speaker 1: Oculus again. I found it to be a very enjoyable
Speaker 1: horror movie, but but a troubling one. So I wish
Speaker 1: there were more haunted mirror movies. I don't know that
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of them. I was looking around
Speaker 1: the other day and I think I found one from
Speaker 1: the maybe it's God. I can't rememberich decade, sixty seventies
Speaker 1: or eighties, somewhere in that thirty year period, but there
Speaker 1: aren't as many as you might think. I think there were.
Speaker 1: There may be some various anthology episodes concerning mirrors. I
Speaker 1: just googled Haunted Mirror movie got a selection of movie
Speaker 1: posters and covers. They all look really terrible, which is strange.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's also totally understandable because on
Speaker 1: one hand, it seems easy, like, oh, you just need
Speaker 1: a creepy mirror. Just go by a mirror, make a mirror, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just as this prop that doesn't actually move.
Speaker 1: But you get into how you shoot mirrors and how
Speaker 1: you use the mirror to make things, you know, creepier,
Speaker 1: and it gets a little more complicated. I guess that's
Speaker 1: why maybe weird scenes with mirrors are largely more memorable,
Speaker 1: you know, like I think of I think of like
Speaker 1: the old that, like the nineteen nineteen seventies Macbeth adaptation
Speaker 1: has a great sequence with a mirror in it. So
Speaker 1: stuff of that nature comes to mind. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go and close it now. We're gonna put the
Speaker 1: uh you know, I'm gonna put the cloth back over
Speaker 1: the haunted mirror. But we'll be back to discuss our
Speaker 1: reflections some more in the next episode. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like more stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: you can find it wherever you get your podcast. Just
Speaker 1: look for the Stuff to Blow your Mind feed We
Speaker 1: have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have Artifacts
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, Stuff to blow your Mind on Monday, and
Speaker 1: on Friday's we do a little weird how Cinema. That's
Speaker 1: their time to talk about some strange and interesting film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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