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 one originally aired on August. It is part four
Speaker 1: of our series on the Mirror. But hey, you know
Speaker 1: what it is today. Actually we were at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the month of October. So while you got mirrors
Speaker 1: on the brain, why not do one of those creepy
Speaker 1: games where you say something in a mirror makes some
Speaker 1: kind of monster ghost pop out. Yeah. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is it's fitting that we're finishing up the Vault
Speaker 1: episodes about the Mirror as we venture into October, because
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of stuff with mirrors, as we've
Speaker 1: discussed in these episodes that's a little uncanny, and of
Speaker 1: course we have all these additional supernatural ideas about the
Speaker 1: mirror that's still resonate with us. You know, I think
Speaker 1: they should have more mundane versions of those games. It's
Speaker 1: always like you say somebody's name in the mirror and
Speaker 1: they appear, or and they at least scare you, maybe
Speaker 1: they kill you or whatever. It instead should just be you,
Speaker 1: you say the ghost's name. And then you notice a
Speaker 1: pimple on your face you never saw before. You notice
Speaker 1: spinach in your teeth. It should be mirror related. So
Speaker 1: it is the ghost putting spinach in your teeth in
Speaker 1: the scenario I get, Yeah, maybe I didn't think this
Speaker 1: through the mirror is haunted, and the mirror will always
Speaker 1: make sure that there's spinach in your teeth. It seems
Speaker 1: like a good idea until I said it. Yes, no, okay,
Speaker 1: let's embrace it. The ghost is literally going into your mouth, invisibly,
Speaker 1: reaching in there and putting a bit of spinach in
Speaker 1: between the front two choppers. There you go, So is
Speaker 1: this This is digestible spinach. So if you were trapped
Speaker 1: in a room with this mirror, you could sustain yourself
Speaker 1: on ghost given spinach bits. There you go, infinite nutrition, yes, alright,
Speaker 1: and broccoli florets and the incisors yep, alright, it rights itself. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four
Speaker 1: of our series about mirrors. I didn't think we would
Speaker 1: get this far, but this is one of those where
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of different alleys to run down
Speaker 1: as we make our way along the the historical track.
Speaker 1: But today I guess we're gonna be talking about glass
Speaker 1: mirrors more than we did in some of the previous episodes.
Speaker 1: But to do a brief recap of some of the
Speaker 1: the technological milestones along the history of mirrors, we we have,
Speaker 1: of course obsidian mirrors that have been made since prehistory.
Speaker 1: Examples found of these go as far back as like
Speaker 1: six thousand BC and Anatolia associated with the prehistoric Proto
Speaker 1: city of Chattahoyak, and then beginning around the fourth and
Speaker 1: third millennium b CE, find evidence of metal mirrors mostly
Speaker 1: based on copper and copper alloys like bronze in Egypt
Speaker 1: and Mesopotamia, and of course later mirrors will be made
Speaker 1: out of other metals like silver. Silver's a common choice
Speaker 1: in the Roman Empire um and by the second millennium
Speaker 1: b C, it seems like metal mirrors proliferate and are
Speaker 1: found in many settled societies all around the world. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get in more into a discussion of glass mirror.
Speaker 1: I want to discuss some things that I read in
Speaker 1: in the book Mirror Mirror by Mark Pendergrass, which is
Speaker 1: a wonderful text on the history of the mirror, very readable, UH.
Speaker 1: In it, he discusses Chinese mirrors at length, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to share a few things that we didn't discuss
Speaker 1: previously for starters. According to Pendagrass, some of the earliest
Speaker 1: Chinese mirrors, in addition to being made out of some
Speaker 1: of these other materials we already mentioned, were also made
Speaker 1: out of polished jade, which is very fascinating to uh
Speaker 1: to imagine. I wasn't able to find an image of
Speaker 1: what this would have looked like, but I guess if
Speaker 1: if anyone was capable of of polishing jade to the
Speaker 1: level that it could be used as a reflective surface,
Speaker 1: it would be the ancient Chinese, who were, you know,
Speaker 1: very advanced with the use of jade. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I imagine that would have um some some similarities
Speaker 1: with with obsidian as a mirror, because it would provide
Speaker 1: a sort of reflection of outlines, but it would probably
Speaker 1: offer a kind of inverted or distorted color scheme behind things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now in uh. Also, Pendergrass mentions that mirrors were often
Speaker 1: entombed with the dead, and in one Chinese tumb I
Speaker 1: think from the third century BC, the corpse's head was
Speaker 1: quote equipped with a wooden box covered with metal mirrors
Speaker 1: on the inside. Just fascinating. You'll also find heart protecting
Speaker 1: mirrors that were sometimes placed on a dead person's chest
Speaker 1: and uh. And then he goes on to mention a
Speaker 1: couple of other mirrors, one that's definitely magical and a
Speaker 1: and a item of mythology, and the other one, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one can ask questions about. So he describes
Speaker 1: something called the the chow kou paw, which is the
Speaker 1: quote precious mirror that would illuminate the bones of the body,
Speaker 1: which was said to allow people to see not only
Speaker 1: the reflection, but to see their interior organs and to
Speaker 1: cleanse their innerds uh through some means that they he
Speaker 1: didn't have details on. And one of these was said
Speaker 1: to be kept in a in a grotto in a
Speaker 1: cliff face, and it was said to be tin square
Speaker 1: feet in size, so, you know, pretty enormous for a
Speaker 1: mirror and could reflect the five viscera of a human being.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting, and it parallels some other things we've
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, uh, a mystical traditions about mirrors,
Speaker 1: that they could somehow reflect the true self or reflect
Speaker 1: something about an image that could not be seen under
Speaker 1: normal conditions. And I wonder, like, why is this a
Speaker 1: common thing to believe about mirrors, because it's literally not
Speaker 1: true about them. You know that they're like that. They
Speaker 1: literally just pretty objectively reflect light in the same way
Speaker 1: that you would see it with your eyes when looking
Speaker 1: at something, except of course reversed if they're flat, or
Speaker 1: you know, with some kind of distortions, if their convex
Speaker 1: or concave. Yeah. Uh. And now another mirror that he
Speaker 1: mentions was the the toe Quang chain, which was said
Speaker 1: to cast a reflection. That quote showed the image on
Speaker 1: the back as in the back of the mirror, as
Speaker 1: if the light had penetrated the metal, and he writes
Speaker 1: that this might have been due to a polishing technique
Speaker 1: that quote caused imperceptible irregularities on the mirror surface that
Speaker 1: corresponded to the raised pictures on the back. So again,
Speaker 1: this would have been a metal mirror, but there would
Speaker 1: be a back to it in the same way that
Speaker 1: we discussed the Chinese mirrors previously. We have some sort
Speaker 1: of illustration a deity, uh uh, some sort of representation
Speaker 1: of an animal or a mythological creature. And so the
Speaker 1: idea here is that there would be some sort of
Speaker 1: imperfections in the metal that would that would match up
Speaker 1: with that illustration on the back of the mirror, and
Speaker 1: that this would be you know, at least a unique effect.
Speaker 1: Oh I see. So maybe like the distortions in the
Speaker 1: reflective surface caused by the decoration on the back could
Speaker 1: also in some way bring the suggestion of the image
Speaker 1: on the back into your own reflection when you looked
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah. Um, that's interesting because it sort of
Speaker 1: pairs with something I was reading about. So I was
Speaker 1: reading a Cabinet magazine article from the year two thousand
Speaker 1: four written by a guy named Josiah mcelhaney, who is
Speaker 1: a glassblower actually like a glass artist, and I was
Speaker 1: just writing some about how the the history of mirrors
Speaker 1: has sort of developed alongside people's changing perceptions of the self.
Speaker 1: And this is something we've talked about a little bit
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. And one of the things he mentions
Speaker 1: is the development of mirrors, especially saying like eighteenth century
Speaker 1: Europe that had a lot of decorative flourishes on the
Speaker 1: reflecting side. You know, we we've talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of mirrors that had decorations or carvings, engravings of deities
Speaker 1: or wishes of good luck or something on the back side,
Speaker 1: and then just the plain reflective surface on on the
Speaker 1: side that would be used. But here this is combining
Speaker 1: the two. It's putting you know, maybe a floral arrangement
Speaker 1: or or like etchings of something, you know, like cherubs
Speaker 1: or something on the part that's reflecting you. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of like placing your own image within a context,
Speaker 1: maybe a context of beauty or a context of holiness.
Speaker 1: So we've already covered the metal mirror quite a bit,
Speaker 1: but that at this point you're probably wondering what about
Speaker 1: the glass variant that most of us are used to.
Speaker 1: And I think some listeners were actually had actually written
Speaker 1: in about this and said, hey, you guys started these
Speaker 1: series about the invention of the mirror, When are you
Speaker 1: gonna get to the invention of the mirror that we
Speaker 1: that we all encounter on a daily basis. Um Well,
Speaker 1: the first glass mirrors seem to have emerged during the
Speaker 1: third century C. They were quite small, concave or convex
Speaker 1: metal surfaces with glass coatings. Glass mirrors have been uncovered
Speaker 1: in digs dating back to this century. Yeah. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if you want to be really
Speaker 1: pedantic about it, you could say that the very first
Speaker 1: mirrors were glass mirrors, because obsidian is a natural form
Speaker 1: of volcanic glass. But clearly what people mean when they
Speaker 1: say glass mirrors is the kind where used to today
Speaker 1: that has a it has a thin pain of clear,
Speaker 1: very clear, very flat glass, and then behind it a
Speaker 1: very thin sheet of some kind of highly reflective metal.
Speaker 1: And that's what you're talking about here when you might
Speaker 1: start to see examples of this around the third century CE. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to uh, mirrors in this period, especially
Speaker 1: mirrors in ancient Rome, already mentioned the idea of silver mirrors,
Speaker 1: but I've read several sources saying that silver was especially
Speaker 1: common as a material for looking glasses in ancient Rome.
Speaker 1: Even plenty of the Elder actually writes about mirrors in
Speaker 1: his Natural History, which was written in the first century CE,
Speaker 1: and in a section about ten which he actually calls
Speaker 1: stand um, which is how it gets its chemical symbol
Speaker 1: s n uh. He writes that the finest mirrors used
Speaker 1: to be prepared at a place called Brundisium, which I
Speaker 1: think corresponds to a city of is today called like
Speaker 1: Brindisi or something. It's in southern Italy. Um. But he
Speaker 1: says that was the case until quote, until everybody, our
Speaker 1: maid servants even began to use silver ones. So by
Speaker 1: the time of plenty, he says, silver mirrors are so
Speaker 1: common that even the poor have them, even the serving
Speaker 1: staff have their own silver mirrors. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: I've read some other accounts of of Roman writings that
Speaker 1: they would even comment about just sort of the mirror craze,
Speaker 1: just like how how, oh my goodness, everybody has these,
Speaker 1: They're everywhere. Uh and uh, and you know, sort of
Speaker 1: using it as a way to discuss the vanity of
Speaker 1: the age. Yeah. Now, I think that there is some evidence,
Speaker 1: like you're saying that during the Roman Empire, there were
Speaker 1: some mirrors that involved a layer of glass, But but
Speaker 1: I think most mirrors of this time would not have
Speaker 1: had glass. They would have been just like a highly
Speaker 1: polished silver surface or bronze surface. But we do see
Speaker 1: the glass mirror began to show up and according to
Speaker 1: Plenty of the elder, who's actually one of the we
Speaker 1: we often referred to Plenty here, but he's one of
Speaker 1: the major sources of the day that that is often
Speaker 1: referred back to and trying to pinpoint where mirrors are
Speaker 1: coming from. The glass mirrors are coming from around this time.
Speaker 1: But according to Plenty, they were the product of the
Speaker 1: Lebanese city of Sidon, and the Romans copied these techniques
Speaker 1: for their own mirrors, which became again quite the craze.
Speaker 1: And there's another author, I believe it's Alexander of Afro
Speaker 1: DCS who also wrote about them. So, uh, those are
Speaker 1: those are two of those sources you see mentioned. I
Speaker 1: think these are the two that Pendergrass mentions. So do
Speaker 1: we know anything about the techniques of production in this period? Okay, So,
Speaker 1: according to Mark Pendergrast in in that book Syrian Crafts,
Speaker 1: people near Sidon developed glass blowing techniques around a hundred
Speaker 1: BC that allowed them to dip a long hollow metal
Speaker 1: tube into molten glass, retrieve a glob, and and use
Speaker 1: that glob and that tube to blow glass shapes. And
Speaker 1: such was their skill that eventually they were, they were
Speaker 1: able to do a kind of mass production. Um. And
Speaker 1: it makes sense of course that these masters of glass
Speaker 1: would then develop eventually develop a key mirror making techniques
Speaker 1: as well. And of course it makes sense that the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire would then take and then spread this technology.
Speaker 1: So the result of all this would have been small
Speaker 1: pocket mirrors produced by blowing a thin glass sphere and
Speaker 1: then pouring hot lead into it, down into the sphere,
Speaker 1: coating the inside of it. Okay, and then when this
Speaker 1: is broken and cut, you had mirror glass. So if
Speaker 1: you can, you can imagine that like forming this this glob,
Speaker 1: coating the inside of the globe with the lead, and
Speaker 1: then breaking that into two walla, you have the makings
Speaker 1: of a mirror. Nice And it sounds like the Roman
Speaker 1: copies of this technique might have been on the whole
Speaker 1: less perfect, with more flaws in the glass, but they
Speaker 1: were still quite a sensation. Uh. And I'm assuming you know,
Speaker 1: quite an improvement in terms of availability over the metal mirror,
Speaker 1: and it just spread throughout the Roman world. Now I
Speaker 1: imagine these probably based on the technique you're describing, would
Speaker 1: not have been super flat that you would probably be
Speaker 1: ending up with somewhat convex or concave mirrors. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would at least be you know, convex to to some degree,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Now, one of the interesting things is
Speaker 1: that even though this was widespread, even though the Romans
Speaker 1: copied it, and you were seemingly producing them in more
Speaker 1: than one location, with the fall of the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: the art of convex mirror making was nearly lost. It
Speaker 1: was kept barely alive apparently in the Near East UM.
Speaker 1: But until the twelfth century revival of mirror technology in Europe,
Speaker 1: it would largely be a return to silver and bronze
Speaker 1: mirrors that were beyond the budgets of most Europeans. UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had the secret of the glass mirror survived in
Speaker 1: the East and continue you to be said, you know,
Speaker 1: a matter of study in um in the Islamic world,
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of study of mirrors and optics. However,
Speaker 1: eventually you start having these, uh, these these megaprojects coming
Speaker 1: together in Europe, the Gothic cathedral, and of course you
Speaker 1: need glass, you need glass artisans. And so during this
Speaker 1: time the production of mirrors too began to flourish again,
Speaker 1: and by the fifteenth century, you have glassmakers in Germany,
Speaker 1: France and Italy that at all improved quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Apparently the glassmakers of Florence were pretty well known, but
Speaker 1: the Venetians really took the cake, particularly on the Aisle
Speaker 1: of Morano. So from the eleventh century onward, UH, the
Speaker 1: Venetians held a virtual monopoly on European trade with the East,
Speaker 1: and so the importers here they learned glassmaking. Perhaps I
Speaker 1: think there are a couple of different theories, as Pentagraps
Speaker 1: describes it. You know, they might have learned some key
Speaker 1: stuff from the Germans. They also might have learned key
Speaker 1: things from UH the Islamic world, from Islamic exporters again
Speaker 1: where of those some of the secrets of mirror making
Speaker 1: and optics UH were were kept alive. And so either way,
Speaker 1: maybe from both influences they began making their own excellent
Speaker 1: glasses and mirrors, and the Venetian glassmakers formed their own
Speaker 1: guild in the early twelve hundreds. But of course one
Speaker 1: of the things about making glass, blowing glass and making
Speaker 1: mirrors as you need furnaces, and of course that's dangerous
Speaker 1: to a city like Venice. So they were made, they
Speaker 1: were they were forced to move their production out to
Speaker 1: an island, the island of Murano, and this became the
Speaker 1: Island of Mirrors. And this is where the art of
Speaker 1: mirror making was closely and violently guarded, so you could
Speaker 1: be sentenced to death for sharing the secrets of glassmaking. Uh.
Speaker 1: And families of glassmakers apparently who left uh the island
Speaker 1: in the region would sometimes have their families held hostage
Speaker 1: to ensure they returned and they didn't share these these
Speaker 1: vital secrets elsewhere. It's like it's like the KFC Herbs
Speaker 1: and spices recipes, Like, yeah, I mean, it's a big
Speaker 1: these were because not only did they have the secrets
Speaker 1: of making mirrors again and and and doing all this
Speaker 1: fine glass work. Uh, glassmaking also evolved further here. It
Speaker 1: developed further, so clearer glass work was suddenly possible, even
Speaker 1: clearer mirrors, and they were just a huge craze, especially
Speaker 1: in the high society of Europe. So they had a
Speaker 1: vital economic commodity here, so they tightly guarded it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a beautifully clear glass that was known as
Speaker 1: christal O. Yes. So, developing out of these trends after
Speaker 1: the Renaissance, glass mirrors with metal backing became more and
Speaker 1: more common, and these had a couple of necessary technical
Speaker 1: features in order to be a very high quality. So
Speaker 1: you would need to be able to produce a pain
Speaker 1: of extremely clear, extremely flat glass and then a flat
Speaker 1: backing of highly reflective metal on one side of it.
Speaker 1: So when you look at a mirror today, typically what
Speaker 1: you're looking at is there's a pane of glass and
Speaker 1: it has been coated on the back side with highly
Speaker 1: reflective metal. And then so you're looking into the glass
Speaker 1: and your reflection is bouncing off of that reflective metal,
Speaker 1: and then back through this very clear, very flat glass
Speaker 1: undistorted towards you. And this could create very nice mirrors,
Speaker 1: but there were a few wrinkles here. One thing is
Speaker 1: that up until the nineteenth century, the dominant method for
Speaker 1: producing glass mirrors was creating a problem. So let's say
Speaker 1: it's the early eighteen hundreds and you are a you
Speaker 1: are a factory, a mirror factory owner, You own a
Speaker 1: shop floor that makes mirrors, and you look out at
Speaker 1: your workers and you think something is wrong with these people.
Speaker 1: My workers, they keep getting irritable and depressed, and they
Speaker 1: don't have any energy, and they can't pay attention to
Speaker 1: things I'm telling them, and they get tremmors and delirium
Speaker 1: in the middle of a shift. Why can't I get
Speaker 1: better workers? Well, like many other stories around this time
Speaker 1: in history, it turned out it is not the fault
Speaker 1: of the workers but of the materials they were being
Speaker 1: subjected to on the shop floor, because the mirrors of
Speaker 1: this time were made with metal backing that contained large
Speaker 1: amounts of mercury. And here we're back to a pretty
Speaker 1: familiar historical subject for our show, which is overexposure to
Speaker 1: mercury and the health effects thereof. In this case, we're
Speaker 1: talking about mercury raism or mad Hatter's disease colloquially, which
Speaker 1: is a neurological disorder resulting from overexposure to mercury. I
Speaker 1: think it's especially common with mercury fumes inhaled Yeah, we
Speaker 1: discussed this on the show before, in particular professions of
Speaker 1: the day. Of course, you are more likely to be
Speaker 1: exposed to these mercury fumes, and so the workers in
Speaker 1: these in these looking glass shops are are just continually
Speaker 1: being exposed to the horrors of breathing mercury fumes and
Speaker 1: just generally being exposed to mercury all the time until
Speaker 1: we get the intervention of a pretty cool figure in
Speaker 1: the history of chemistry named Eustace von Liebig, who was
Speaker 1: a German scientist who lived from eighteen oh three to
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, and von Liebig was responsible for a
Speaker 1: number of important advancements in organic chemistry and agricultural science
Speaker 1: that made farming more reliable and famine less common. One
Speaker 1: of his big contributions is to the modern science of fertilizers,
Speaker 1: nitrogen fertilizers, and to a better understanding of the relationship
Speaker 1: between crops success and trace mineral contents in the soil.
Speaker 1: Like I think one of the things that's often remembered
Speaker 1: about him is that he established that you know, basically,
Speaker 1: you're the success of your crops is going to be
Speaker 1: limited by whatever the soil is poorest in, like whatever
Speaker 1: the most limited essential nutrient that the plants need, whatever
Speaker 1: is the most limited in the soil is going to
Speaker 1: be the factory that limits the growth of the plants.
Speaker 1: And so you could and so you could fix that
Speaker 1: by say, bringing in animal manure, which contained many minerals
Speaker 1: and nutrients that plants would need and would help even
Speaker 1: out the nutrient profile of the soil. Von Liebig was
Speaker 1: also a pioneer in the perhaps gross but also important
Speaker 1: science of meat chemistry. Uh. He was really big on
Speaker 1: not letting nutrition go to waste. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: kind of nutrients that would be wasted if you were
Speaker 1: to boil a hunk of beef and then discard the
Speaker 1: cooking liquid. You know, in that case, a lot of
Speaker 1: good nutrition is being extracted by the cooking process and
Speaker 1: then left in the water. So if only Big developed
Speaker 1: was you know, use this information to try to develop
Speaker 1: special cooking methods and in the creation of what was
Speaker 1: called a meat extract, which could be made into a
Speaker 1: broth or a meat tea. This reminds me of our
Speaker 1: past discussions on both gravy but also ultimately the various
Speaker 1: sauces that he inspired. Catch up the idea that after
Speaker 1: you're you're done rendering or cooking that meat or the
Speaker 1: fish or whatever it happens to be, you're you're often
Speaker 1: left with these dregs that are that can be super flavorful, um,
Speaker 1: that can certainly have still have a fair amount of
Speaker 1: nutritional value. And then what do you do with them? Right?
Speaker 1: Obviously meat tea? Right? Yeah, you make meat tea, which
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's funny, Like I don't find the
Speaker 1: idea of a of a beef broth gross, but when
Speaker 1: you phrase it as meat tea, it sounds disgusting. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's because I'm imagining adding cream and sugar to it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean so much with smell. I think we've discussed
Speaker 1: in the science of smell or it's about it's about
Speaker 1: how you're framing it. Um Like at the point the
Speaker 1: cheese versus smelly shoe example is a is a big one.
Speaker 1: You know, depending on how people are all or are primed,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll interpret the smell in a different way. Um.
Speaker 1: My wife and I had had a similar situation very recently.
Speaker 1: We're out walking through the neighborhood and it was garbage
Speaker 1: day and we walked by this one garbage can and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh my goodness, that's absolutely foul. Then we
Speaker 1: realized it wasn't the garbage can. It was somebody grilling
Speaker 1: seafood just to block up. Of course, it was actually
Speaker 1: not a foul smell at all. That it was. You know,
Speaker 1: would rather blur they're pleasing smell, So you know, somebody's
Speaker 1: grilling some delicious seafood. But if you walk by a
Speaker 1: garbage can and you smell it, if you associated with
Speaker 1: the garbage can, then you might be more inclined to
Speaker 1: to interpret it as a foul odor. You ever, Um,
Speaker 1: You're walking around somewhere, say by a bunch of restaurants
Speaker 1: or buildings or something, and you smell that that that
Speaker 1: delicious fried food carnival smell. You know, it's the smell
Speaker 1: of of funnel cake and corn dogs and all that.
Speaker 1: It's like so so good. And then you realize what
Speaker 1: you're smelling is the old grease disposal dumpster behind the place. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: I've had that situation as well. Yeah, but for a second,
Speaker 1: the rat brain is the one calling the shots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so how does it funly Big connect back
Speaker 1: to mirrors. Well, remember that the problem is with the
Speaker 1: mercury exposure that the workers are facing on these factory floors.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty five, Eustace fon lie Big also discovered
Speaker 1: a process for making metal backed glass mirrors in a
Speaker 1: way that wouldn't be nearly as hazardous to the health
Speaker 1: of the workers. So, instead of using mercury, fon Liebig's
Speaker 1: method began by applying silver nitrate in a solution of
Speaker 1: ammonia to the back of the glass and then exposing
Speaker 1: that to fumes of formaldehyde, and this would trigger a
Speaker 1: chemical reaction, reducing the silver nitrate solution to a thin
Speaker 1: layer of silver stuck to the back of the pain.
Speaker 1: And apparently in eighteen fifty six he came up with
Speaker 1: with another improved method of doing this, and manufacturers eventually
Speaker 1: found that the layer of silver could be protected by
Speaker 1: covering it with layers of paint and varnish, and the
Speaker 1: fon lie Big silvering method became the new standard for
Speaker 1: several reasons. First of all, silver reflected more light than
Speaker 1: the older recipes involving things like mercury and tin. It
Speaker 1: was less prone to tarnishing, at least within this application
Speaker 1: when it's protected by these these layers of paint and varnish.
Speaker 1: And of course I think we would say ethically, most importantly,
Speaker 1: it didn't poison the workers, or at least not as much.
Speaker 1: Um so. So the fondly Big method, I think really
Speaker 1: is the precursor to how most modern glass mirrors are
Speaker 1: made today. One thing that's kind of cool. You can
Speaker 1: probably find this if you if you just look up
Speaker 1: like a you know, one of those how it's made
Speaker 1: type videos on a mirror factory. But I don't think
Speaker 1: I had quite ever thought about this. But most mirrors today,
Speaker 1: I think are made as huge sheets. So you will
Speaker 1: you will start with a large sheet of glass that
Speaker 1: is you know, highly polished to the correct specifications, and
Speaker 1: then it is coated with some highly reflective metal backing
Speaker 1: and then coated with some paint to to protect the
Speaker 1: metal backing, and then that huge sheet of or material
Speaker 1: is cut into the shapes that you will need for
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever the individual mirror framers or manufacturers
Speaker 1: or turning it into after that. But you kind of
Speaker 1: just start with like these big old sheets of mirror
Speaker 1: stuff kind of the creation of almost like a mirror
Speaker 1: or material that is then rented down into these smaller forms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I wonder what happens with the leftover parts. So,
Speaker 1: like you cut the like circles and ovals and squares
Speaker 1: out of it that you're selling to people, and then
Speaker 1: what do you have Do you have borders of mirror
Speaker 1: stuff left over? Wonder whatever smaller and smaller mirrors, So,
Speaker 1: for instance, is the dentist mirror made from that same process,
Speaker 1: or do you need a different mirror making technique in
Speaker 1: order to get that particular mirror. Are there certain requirements
Speaker 1: for a for a dental for dental instruments that requires
Speaker 1: a different mirror making process. I don't know. That's a
Speaker 1: good question. I don't know if dental mirrors do involve
Speaker 1: glass or not. I don't know. They might just get
Speaker 1: metal metal. Yeah, it's weird. I've had for something that
Speaker 1: has been inside my body so many times, I don't
Speaker 1: think I've had a good look at it. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: never had a good look at that caveatron either. I
Speaker 1: just close my eyes. Well, respect your work, dentists. You'll
Speaker 1: you'll do great things, but you know it's not fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you can't ever ask about these things either. I
Speaker 1: mean sometimes you I can get a question out here
Speaker 1: and there, but it's it's hard, you know, because they're
Speaker 1: in You're right. So at this point, I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about more about the mirror and
Speaker 1: metaphor in the mirror, and literature and the arts in general.
Speaker 1: So we've spoken before. I think we've already touched on
Speaker 1: in these episodes, even about the importance of technology are
Speaker 1: in our metaphors, and of course mirrors due factor pretty
Speaker 1: heavily into our just everyday language mirrors and reflection. If you,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're researching some podcast episodes on mirrors
Speaker 1: and reflections, you'll you'll often find this. You know, you'll
Speaker 1: think you have a good source, and you'll start looking
Speaker 1: around in the source for mentions of mirror is in reflection.
Speaker 1: Then you realize, oh, some of these are not actual
Speaker 1: discussions of mirrors or reflections. They're just using them to
Speaker 1: discuss other things. Uh, they're using them as technological metaphors
Speaker 1: to discuss something else that might actually be in a
Speaker 1: within the same topic or an adjacent topic, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: of course, one of the things about technological metaphors is
Speaker 1: we've discussed is that you can use a metaphor of
Speaker 1: a technology that you don't fully understand to describe another
Speaker 1: thing that you don't fully understand. And uh, but in
Speaker 1: a in a weird way, it can be this heuristic
Speaker 1: that allows you to um, uh, I don't know, to
Speaker 1: go through your day feeling like you understand what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Like the example we've often referred to as
Speaker 1: like the idea of okay, security, video camera and memory.
Speaker 1: I'll use this technological metaphor to understand my memory, even
Speaker 1: though I really don't understand how the video camera works
Speaker 1: and I don't understand how memory works, and it's giving
Speaker 1: me an actual, you know, particular but possibly harmful but
Speaker 1: at least incorrect idea of what my memory is and
Speaker 1: what my visual perception consists of. Right, And so the
Speaker 1: mirror seems like a perfect example of this kind of
Speaker 1: object of metaphor. Yeah, because of course the mirror is
Speaker 1: for the most part, it is a technology. We're talking
Speaker 1: about something that is um yes, yes, it can occur naturally,
Speaker 1: but then we have this history of of using technology
Speaker 1: to augment it and increase it until we get into
Speaker 1: this mirror age that we live in. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's difficult to get through your day without using mirror terminology.
Speaker 1: I challenge anyone to try it or imagine any work
Speaker 1: of art without references to mirrors. So I was looking
Speaker 1: around for any writings on this, and I found a book,
Speaker 1: a really interesting book from three by Herbert Grabes titled uh,
Speaker 1: the Mutable Glass, and particularly it's about the the use
Speaker 1: of the mirror as a as a metaphor, as a symbol,
Speaker 1: etcetera in medieval European literature. And I was rather taken
Speaker 1: with with parts of this book. I want to read
Speaker 1: a quick quote from it before I continue. Quote. The
Speaker 1: employment of the mirror in metaphorical context is so frequent
Speaker 1: and deliberate a strategy in the English literature of the
Speaker 1: thirteen to seventeen centuries that the mirror can be said
Speaker 1: to constitute the central image for a particular worldview. So
Speaker 1: much of the book that follows is concerned with fleshing
Speaker 1: this out. You know, this is the central thesis of
Speaker 1: the book. But but in brief like the mirror becomes
Speaker 1: this kind of metaphorical center, a frequent focus of art
Speaker 1: and literature, and the subject and tool of scientific study
Speaker 1: as well. So it's it's really this kind of mirror mania. Now,
Speaker 1: Graves is upfront that his chief focus is on medieval
Speaker 1: Europe thirteen through seventeen centuries, but also points out that
Speaker 1: you do see it. You do see the use of
Speaker 1: mirror show up in earlier literatures as well, but during
Speaker 1: the time period of focus here, he writes that you
Speaker 1: could you could almost call it a fad. It was
Speaker 1: just so frequently employed. It was this kind of mirror mania.
Speaker 1: And the reasoning for this, he writes, is, first of all,
Speaker 1: twelfth century Europe had relearned the ancient art of making
Speaker 1: glass mirrors, and the following century saw uh, medieval polished
Speaker 1: metal mirrors overtake those of antiquity, because again, remember, the
Speaker 1: secret was lost and and it was just the rich
Speaker 1: who could still hang on to these antique mirrors made
Speaker 1: of metal or or the or even some of these
Speaker 1: antique glass ones that no one knew how to make anymore.
Speaker 1: But again, by the fifteenth century of Venetian glassmakers had
Speaker 1: pushed the technology to the point that the general public
Speaker 1: could get their hands on these small, mass produced and
Speaker 1: ultimately inexpensive mirrors. Also during this time, like we've been discussing,
Speaker 1: tin and mercury backings overtook lead and silver, and mirrors
Speaker 1: became larger. And he ultimately compares this to um. He
Speaker 1: compares this a little bit to how popular the photograph
Speaker 1: became in the nineteenth century, the craze of photography and UH,
Speaker 1: and we would of course refer back to our invention
Speaker 1: episodes on on this where we we talked about just
Speaker 1: what a game changer this was and how it it
Speaker 1: just it amazed people, It captured the public imagination, and
Speaker 1: and it also changed the way we thought about ourselves
Speaker 1: and how we interact with the world. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: think um had some effects on how we thought about
Speaker 1: the ideas of like the objectivity of reality, like for
Speaker 1: the first time that an an image of reality could
Speaker 1: be fixed in time in a somewhat objective way. Right.
Speaker 1: So Graves writes that the mirror becomes just indispensable when
Speaker 1: it comes to fashion. It becomes a central focus of art. Um.
Speaker 1: The mirrors, uh, you know, had been of interest to
Speaker 1: great thinkers of antiquity. Uh, and the great thinkers of
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages likewise picked it up, and we're fascinated
Speaker 1: with it as well. So it's you just imagine, just everybody,
Speaker 1: every corner of life, no matter what your focus, you're
Speaker 1: turning to the mirror. Are you engaging in theology or
Speaker 1: engaging in philosophy, Are you a scientist? Are you just
Speaker 1: someone who's really into your appearance? Like the mirror is
Speaker 1: going to play a role in pretty much all of
Speaker 1: these contemplations. Um. And of course his book is is
Speaker 1: just full of examples of this. So I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: roll through them. But for one literary example, you can
Speaker 1: of course turn to Dante. Uh. Dante makes extensive use
Speaker 1: of mirrors in the Divine Comedy. Um and I was
Speaker 1: I was reading another article that points out some of
Speaker 1: the examples. Here a titled light reflection, mirror, Metaphors and
Speaker 1: Optical Framing and Dante's Comedy by Simon Gilson. In this
Speaker 1: points that the Dante drew on his knowledge of the
Speaker 1: law of light reflection, weakening by reflection, and the multiplication
Speaker 1: of mirrord light, as well as the lead backing required
Speaker 1: to make surfaces reflective uh than the mirror, the mirroring
Speaker 1: properties of water, and the kind of image that is
Speaker 1: visible in a mirror. Apparently you see all these different
Speaker 1: ideas reflected in the Divine Comedy, and in this we
Speaker 1: have I think we've touched on this before in the show.
Speaker 1: We have to remember that Dante was a man that
Speaker 1: was in rested in a vast number of topics, and
Speaker 1: he managed to work just about all of them into
Speaker 1: his into his writings, you know, from theology and mythology
Speaker 1: to politics and personal grudges. Yes, but I mean this
Speaker 1: does remind me how many parts of the divine comedy.
Speaker 1: There are where he's just explaining in minute detail, um,
Speaker 1: things about how the light is striking something or how
Speaker 1: an image is created. Uh, some of which I think
Speaker 1: is actually it can come off as kind of pedantic
Speaker 1: to modern readers, but some of it is very correct.
Speaker 1: I think other stuff he has about the physics of
Speaker 1: light is kind of off base, yeah, but but certainly,
Speaker 1: like he is, his eyes are open to to to
Speaker 1: to an understanding of how light is working and our
Speaker 1: reflections are working, and then we see that in the work.
Speaker 1: I think some of the key examples are from Purgatorio
Speaker 1: and Paradiso Um. There's one in particular that that Gilson highlights, uh.
Speaker 1: And this is not one I This is from Paradise,
Speaker 1: of which I haven't spent as much time with. Uh.
Speaker 1: But there's apparently a scene that, again I don't remember,
Speaker 1: where Thomas the Quinas appears and describes how divine light
Speaker 1: passes from the triune God through angels and so forth.
Speaker 1: So it's one of these where he's like he's getting
Speaker 1: he's trying to explain this other worldly, almost you know,
Speaker 1: psychedelic effect of beholding the celestial realms and using his
Speaker 1: understanding of of optics to do, so yeah, totally. Uh,
Speaker 1: there there is a lot of light in the parody.
Speaker 1: So I was going to pull a quote from it,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I was looking over and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is kind of I don't know that
Speaker 1: the listeners want this. Um. One of the things about
Speaker 1: about the Divine Comedy, I mean it's it is in
Speaker 1: its entirety a master work of of Western literature and
Speaker 1: medieval literature for sure, but um, it is uh, it's
Speaker 1: more it's ultimately I think, more fun. When you're in Hell,
Speaker 1: it's more fun. And Inferno, like there's just a lot
Speaker 1: more humor, uh, and there's more, you know, the grotesque.
Speaker 1: And of course, as you work up to Paradiso with Dante,
Speaker 1: you leave, you increasingly leave a lot of that behind you,
Speaker 1: and so by the time you get to uh Paradiso,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of a different beast. The Paradiso
Speaker 1: still has plenty of politics in it that can be funny.
Speaker 1: It is it's it's still good. Yeah. I think also
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a little biased because the when I studied
Speaker 1: in college, I was in a Dante class and we
Speaker 1: were kind of running out of time by the time
Speaker 1: we got to Paradise, so we kind of had to
Speaker 1: rush through it. We we spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in hell and purgatory. Yeah, I agree that those tend
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more, They grab you more. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to mirrors in visual art, there's there's
Speaker 1: so much we might talk about here. We already mentioned
Speaker 1: the venus effect in part one of this series, but
Speaker 1: I thought we might touch on on the art of
Speaker 1: fifteenth century early uh Netherlandish artist John van Eyck, who's um,
Speaker 1: who in particular is known for some of his paintings
Speaker 1: that feature mirrors. In fact, there's one, uh, there's one
Speaker 1: in particular that I think a lot of you have
Speaker 1: probably seen, and it is um the uh the Arnolfini
Speaker 1: wedding portrait from fourteen thirty four. And Joe, would you
Speaker 1: would you mind describing this painting for our listeners. Well,
Speaker 1: let's see, in the foreground you have two aliens from
Speaker 1: Zeta Reticuli. Uh. Now you have two humans who are
Speaker 1: are I guess they are getting married maybe they're There
Speaker 1: are two very pale people, a man and a woman.
Speaker 1: The man is wearing an extremely comically large black hat
Speaker 1: and the woman is wearing a large green dress, and
Speaker 1: they're holding hands and there is a very cute small
Speaker 1: dog at their feet. Um. This obser ration is not
Speaker 1: original to me. I can't remember where. I read this
Speaker 1: on some joke thread on the internet long ago that
Speaker 1: was very funny. But uh. The author of this thread
Speaker 1: pointed out that a distinctive feature of the paintings of
Speaker 1: Jan Vanik is that everybody looks like Vladimir Putin, and
Speaker 1: in this case, I think that is true. Yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: looks like Putin, especially the guy in the big hat. Yeah, yeah, Putinsk.
Speaker 1: But then in the in the deep background behind this
Speaker 1: sweating couple and their little dog is a wall mounted
Speaker 1: convex mirror. Uh. And you can tell it's convex because
Speaker 1: of the way the image is distorted, so it's around
Speaker 1: mirror in a sort of wheel like frame, and then
Speaker 1: within the looking glass part of it, the image is
Speaker 1: sort of bent in the way you would recognize from
Speaker 1: from a convex mirror. Uh. And of course it provides
Speaker 1: I think, what is a fairly accurate rendering of what
Speaker 1: their reflection would have been. So you're not seeing the
Speaker 1: front of them, you were accurately seeing the backs of
Speaker 1: the people that you're looking at in the foreground. Yes,
Speaker 1: you see their backs, you see the rest of the room,
Speaker 1: and then you see something else though. This is and
Speaker 1: this is this is one of the fascinating things about
Speaker 1: this picture. I think we've already talked about. Oh, you
Speaker 1: know times in movies where you you accidentally see a
Speaker 1: reflection of the camera crew. Well, in this painting, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what is happening, or in some interpretations, that's
Speaker 1: what's happening because there are two individuals in a doorway
Speaker 1: in the reflection in that that that strange round uh
Speaker 1: crenulated mirror, and one of these individuals maybe the artist himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell because at this point the detail
Speaker 1: is very small, but you see like a framed doorway,
Speaker 1: and um, it looks like somebody dressed in red and
Speaker 1: somebody dressed in blue or standing there. So it could
Speaker 1: be like the blue guy is standing there painting the
Speaker 1: couple and that is van Ike. Yeah, yeah, there are
Speaker 1: some different interpretations of it. And then there are words
Speaker 1: above the mirror that read Johannes van Eck rules no,
Speaker 1: I mean no, it says he was here. Um, so
Speaker 1: a lot has been written about this work, and certainly
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend checking it
Speaker 1: out because this is just a beautiful, fascinating painting. UM.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the ideas and interpretations come down
Speaker 1: to the eye to vision and van I's understanding of
Speaker 1: optics to relay spiritual ideas concerning the nature of God.
Speaker 1: So sometimes you see the mirror in this described as
Speaker 1: the eye of God. I was reading of a little
Speaker 1: bit more about this mirror in an Optical Revolution in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, The Hidden Talents of Jen Vanik. And
Speaker 1: this was by Leavin the Vandenable, translated by Kate Connolly.
Speaker 1: And this is from the Low Countries dot Com that's
Speaker 1: with hyphens the hyphen Low hyphen Countries dot COM's an
Speaker 1: English language website to promote the culture of Flanders and
Speaker 1: the Netherlands. And in this article they point out that
Speaker 1: van Ike had first of all an incredible actually game
Speaker 1: changing talent for painting light in addition to just having
Speaker 1: masterful old painting oil painting tech nieks in general. And
Speaker 1: he also had a knack for observing the interplay of
Speaker 1: light and shadow and then of course reproducing that in
Speaker 1: his work. UM. And and this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: leads to the question, well, okay, it's just like a
Speaker 1: natural ability to you set this natural insight. You just
Speaker 1: have this I for how light is interplaying with the
Speaker 1: natural world. Um, well, that I think some kind of
Speaker 1: lean towards that that interpretation. But then there's a there's
Speaker 1: this other hypothesis that he was actually quite well read
Speaker 1: on the topic of optics for the day. So the
Speaker 1: author here writes that, then then I might might have
Speaker 1: learned about optics from the work of Arabic mathematician astronomer
Speaker 1: al Hasan, who I believe we've talked about before, who
Speaker 1: lived through tim forty. In particular al Hasan's book The
Speaker 1: Book of Optics, which was translated into Latin uh and
Speaker 1: was also well known in Europe by the fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: So it presented new theories concerning how we see, how
Speaker 1: mirrors and lenses function, and how in the es are formed. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: al Hasan is sometimes known as the father of optics,
Speaker 1: and he worked extensively with mirrors and lenses. Um, there's
Speaker 1: something called al Hasan's problem that is named for him.
Speaker 1: It's a this is a mathematical problem in geometrical optics,
Speaker 1: which was actually first posed by Ptolemy in one but
Speaker 1: to which al Hasn't provides an answer in his work Optics.
Speaker 1: So you can look up you really should look up
Speaker 1: images of the problem if you want a better understanding
Speaker 1: of it. But basically, the basic problem is often described
Speaker 1: as follows. Given a light source and a spherical mirror,
Speaker 1: find the point on the mirror where the light will
Speaker 1: be reflected to the eye of an observer. So al
Speaker 1: Hasan solved it with geometry, but it remained unsolved using
Speaker 1: algebraic methods until the twentieth century. So anyway, the idea
Speaker 1: here is that perhaps when we're looking at the works
Speaker 1: of an Ike, we're looking at someone who had at
Speaker 1: least some degree of familiarity with these ideas, with these
Speaker 1: uh with these learned concepts about optics and the inner
Speaker 1: workings of mirrors, that that traveled out of the Arab
Speaker 1: world into Europe, either in that translation of of his
Speaker 1: book on Optics or perhaps through another text that referred
Speaker 1: back to it. One that the authors mentioned here was
Speaker 1: John Peckham's um Perspective of Communists. And this was an
Speaker 1: author who lived twelve thirty through twelve ninety two, and
Speaker 1: this would have been a text available to fan Ix
Speaker 1: as well. I would imagine that the problem of drawing,
Speaker 1: even if you're currently looking at it, the problem of
Speaker 1: drawing an image as reflected in a convex mirror has
Speaker 1: got to be really difficult. I said drawing, But I
Speaker 1: guess in any way visually rendering for an artist painting
Speaker 1: or drawing or whatever. Um because and I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe we could hear from painters if I'm wrong about this,
Speaker 1: but my understanding of the way painting works is that
Speaker 1: it is difficult to just purely reproduce an image you're
Speaker 1: looking at as the I sees it. But you have
Speaker 1: to kind of rely on some stereotypical forms to reproduce
Speaker 1: the image on the on the painting. So, like you,
Speaker 1: you have in your mind sort of standard forms of
Speaker 1: things like what you know, how a hand works, how
Speaker 1: an arm is, how a face is, and then you
Speaker 1: are taking those standard forms and reproducing them with the
Speaker 1: information of the image that you're looking at right now
Speaker 1: to just sort of fill in the detail. But I
Speaker 1: would think those standard forms wouldn't really work for an
Speaker 1: image that's being distorted by a curved mirror. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more about how mirrors impacted
Speaker 1: the world of of painting. Our episode on the camera
Speaker 1: obscurea goes into that a little bit in the different
Speaker 1: ideas and hypotheses concerning the use of the camera obscura
Speaker 1: as a means of of augmenting the creative process of painting.
Speaker 1: But but even without getting into this idea of using
Speaker 1: a camera obscura to project something onto a canvas and
Speaker 1: then use that as sort of a scaffolding on which
Speaker 1: you create your art, I think the one of the
Speaker 1: ideas here that's that's really Tantalizing's just the the the
Speaker 1: more that these artists were able to understand what they
Speaker 1: were seeing, how they were seeing, and how light was working,
Speaker 1: how shadow worked, enabled them to better capture it on
Speaker 1: the canvas um, which, on one on one hand, like
Speaker 1: this this totally makes sense. But on the other I
Speaker 1: do feel like this has to make a special kind
Speaker 1: of sense too individuals who, um, who are well versed
Speaker 1: in painting and the visual arts, you know, uh, because
Speaker 1: because yeah, because yeah, what's the difference between painting light
Speaker 1: and shadow if you don't know what light and shadow
Speaker 1: really are and painting light and shadow when you you
Speaker 1: have a better understanding of of the the optical reality
Speaker 1: of of what you're seeing. Yeah, just off, Mike and
Speaker 1: I were discussing whether this is the end of the
Speaker 1: Mirror series or whether we're coming back for more. And
Speaker 1: here here's the mind blower. We haven't made up our
Speaker 1: minds yet, so you'll just have to be out there dangling,
Speaker 1: not knowing whether the next episode is going to be
Speaker 1: something new or whether the mirror journey continues. But there's
Speaker 1: a million more interesting things we could talk about, so
Speaker 1: maybe more mirrors or maybe onto something else. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: even if the next episode we do is not about mirrors,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean we can't come back and do mirrors.
Speaker 1: So certainly, if there's anything that you feel that we
Speaker 1: we missed or we skipped over, or something you you
Speaker 1: want to know about that we didn't cover in this
Speaker 1: Mirror saga, then let us know. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. In the meantime, if you would like
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: if you want to catch up on all these Mirror episodes,
Speaker 1: or look up those photography, Camera Obscura, etcetera. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can find all of our episodes in uh, this Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, and you'll find that
Speaker 1: feed wherever you get your podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursday's Artifact on Wednesday, listener mail on Mondays. On Friday,
Speaker 1: we do a little a little weird house cinema. That's
Speaker 1: when we set aside most of the science and we
Speaker 1: just talked about a weird film for a little bit.
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
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.