WEBVTT - The Halo, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.080 My Heart Radio. Hey are welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.160 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.200 In today. I wanted to start off with a kind 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.439 of thought experiment that I think we've actually used on 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.000 the show before, but we'll use it again because I 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:28.800 think it is useful. It's it's the Martian archaeologist thought experiment. Uh, 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:33.919 and so h imagine an exo archaeologist from another planet 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:38.480 is coming to study the physical remains of human civilizations 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.559 long after humanity has gone. Who knows what we did. 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:43.640 We we screwed up somehow, and there are none of 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.320 us around here anymore, but the physical remains of our 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.400 cities and institutions are still hanging about the Earth. I've 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:52.839 seen enough episodes of Out Our Limits to to make 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.160 a few guesses as to how it could have happened. Right, Yeah, 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.320 the neutron bombs of the Facebook wars, they did the job. 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.360 Or hey, maybe maybe there's a better option. Though, maybe 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.959 we we warped ourselves into the seventeenth dimension and escaped 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:09.960 this world. You know, not a bad end. So this 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:14.160 alien archaeologist is trying to understand lost cultures of humankind 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:17.720 through the works of art that they created and preserved. 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.319 And at some point she ends up browsing museums. Maybe 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.160 she's walking through the louver and looking at the paintings 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.000 that we're you know, we're once housed and revered here. 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:29.840 And if she were to look over many of the 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.720 famous paintings of of medieval and Renaissance Europe, she might 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:35.960 arrive at a question that would be weird to us, 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.080 but I think perfectly reasonable to her, And that would 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:42.560 be why did so many of the people considered wholly 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:47.800 by these artists where wide brimmed gold hats or gold 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:52.960 wires around their heads. Now, of course, with enough cultural context, 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:55.720 we ourselves know that these are not hats in the 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.440 paintings there, you know, they're not even supposed to represent 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.760 real physical objects. This, of course, is the artistic convention 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.600 known today as the halo. But I think it's interesting 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.480 that in a lot of these paintings there might not 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.480 be anything in the painting that would tell you that 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:16.400 in isolation, it just looks like people have something that's 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.880 yellow or gold, often circular, sometimes square shaped, or just 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.360 like a cloud or a kind of glow or radiance 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.400 around their head. Yeah, it is well discuss it. It 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.560 ranges from something that is very subtle to to sometimes 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.000 things that are very unavoidable, even where it goes beyond 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:38.480 the halo and becomes this all encompassing nimbus. But that 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.160 you know, you mentioned earlier how the alien might look 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.919 and say why why are these people considered holy? Why 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:45.400 do they have the halo? But I think it would 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:49.000 go even beyond that, like why did these other organisms 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.519 that are represented in these works of art, why do 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.079 they have like they wouldn't know they're they're they're holy. 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.200 Not necessarily you know, they're true, they're the subject of 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:00.720 a painting. But otherwise, you know, what might even be 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.720 able to piece together what this signifies, what it means? 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.080 Why is it there? You know, why was it that 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:10.040 some of these humans but not others appear to have bioluminescence? 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.760 Like why does their hair emit light? You know, did 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.320 they have a do they have like chemo luminescence in 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:18.400 the keratin of their hair cells or something? And then 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.040 I think the exo archaeologists might notice something that a 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:23.200 lot of us don't tend to notice when we grow 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.080 up looking at images of like Jesus and saints and 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:30.400 stuff with halos, and that would be the similarity of 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.560 the iconography here the glow or the or the gold 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:37.760 circle or disk around the heads of saints and and 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:40.800 God's in a Christian context, the similarity of that to 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.000 depictions of God's from other religions, religions that still exist 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.680 in the world today or the religions of ages past. Absolutely, 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.320 you can easily start looking at these halos and things 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:53.840 like halos, and you could just go crazy with a 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:58.640 conspiracy theory connection board, right, um, I mean, it's it's 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.080 easy to do. Even if you're not owned to conspiracy thinking. 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:04.040 You could think like, oh, well, well, clearly they're all 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.800 describing the same thing, either the same mysterious light source 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:10.800 that it is forbidden to represent an art that is 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:14.920 always positioned directly behind a person, or this the same 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.839 like alien disks that we're interacting with ancient people's or 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:21.680 you know, you could also go and and use it 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:23.839 to prop up various theories such as say that, you know, 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.280 the bicameral mind hypothesis, things like that, you know, which 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:31.680 I think actually will probably uh come to people's minds 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.000 a lot as we roll through this episode in particular, 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:37.040 Oh yeah, there will be some very specific and interesting 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:39.760 connections there. But anyway, so to come back to the 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:41.760 idea of you know, what we do know about the Halo, 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.000 the fact that it's an artistic convention. This is one 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.280 of these subjects that I really love because it's something 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.440 that I've seen and just taken for granted my entire 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.000 life without ever stopping to wonder where it comes from, 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.840 what it means, and how it connects to history and 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:01.240 religion and science. So for the next couple of episodes, 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:03.840 we wanted to take a look at the Halo from 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.159 a bunch of different angles and see what kind of 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.680 sense we can make of it. Now that opening question 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.440 I asked of imagining an alien archaeologist looking at these 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:15.960 depictions in art that weren't supposed to be physical golden 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.840 hats but could have been mistaken for such. Uh. This 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.560 actually connects to an episode of the Artifacts that I 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:26.800 did back in January about ancient Egyptian head cones. If 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:28.240 you want to get the full story, you can go 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.159 and listen to that episode, But the short and simplified 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.040 version goes like this, A lot of ancient Egyptian art 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:39.200 shows people with these weird white cones on top of 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:41.039 their heads. You know, maybe about the size of a 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:45.080 soft ball, but cone shaped, And there has long been 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.520 a debate about what these cones were supposed to represent. 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:51.800 One popular theory is that this is a depiction of 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.280 a real thing from ancient Egypt, which would have been 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:59.919 lumps of unguent or perfumed animal fat which would melt 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:02.799 into the scalp and then perform a kind of ritual 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.280 purification as as the oils came down over your head. 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.960 It would be somewhat analogous to the to the kind 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.800 of anointing with oil rituals that we see in other 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:14.160 ancient Near Eastern traditions that you can even find in 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:19.080 the Bible. But because until recently these cones had only 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:24.040 been seen in art and never explicitly given physical grounding, 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.520 there was always some reason to wonder, well, were these 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:32.120 cones maybe not physical objects at all, but symbolic artistic 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:37.040 conventions like halos. Well, a few years back, some physical 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.440 examples of head cones were actually found in some graves 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.000 in Egypt, so we now know that at least some 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.960 of them were physical objects, though a lot of questions 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.320 still remain about about these head cones, But the analogy 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.160 to Halo's really got the gears turning in my brain 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.720 and got me wondering about halos themselves. Yeah, it's it's 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.120 ultimately a fascinating subject. Again, I'm in the same boat, 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:00.839 like I grew up seeing all these dages of Halos, 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.040 to the point where Halo's didn't even feel suitably weird 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.160 or even majestic. And I think part of that is 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:12.080 the part of that comes from uh angel costumes and 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.120 cartoon depictions of angel costumes, where even someone like Tom 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.040 and Jerry will have some sort of a halo above 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.920 their head made out of maybe like foiled cardboard, and 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.240 it is visibly held in place by some sort of 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.160 wire that goes down to the back of their neck. 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:29.480 You know what I'm talking about, Oh, exactly. Yeah, the 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:32.960 domestication of this imagery really kind of takes the all 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.920 inspiring element out of it. Yeah, it ends up making 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:39.560 it look kind of stupid, you know, um and um 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.000 and And I think you also see some of that 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:44.040 in the actual tradition of the Halo, with a sort 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.320 of eventually falling out of favor, except in places where 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:50.679 it was really firmly established. Um. But but of course, 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.200 like we said already, you'll see so many different versions 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.280 of the halo, even in um, you know, Western art 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:01.160 depicting Christian saints an important holy individual rules. Uh. The 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:03.040 one that I ran across that I really liked was 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.560 Caravaggio's The Madonna di Loretto, or more at least a 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.720 detail from that. Um. And it's such a faint halo 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:13.600 you could easily you could easily miss it, perhaps, but 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:15.640 it but it also really stands out at you because 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.120 it that the lines in it run counter to the 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.320 vertical lines behind her. Yeah. And I like that in 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:25.480 Carvaccio's art because the it suggests that in a way, 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.760 holiness is something that is subtle to the human imagination. 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.960 Maybe it would be obvious to the heavens, but you know, 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:36.079 here on earth, it's just the faintest glimmer of a circle. Yeah, 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.960 you have to look for it. Yeah. Um. You know 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:42.160 our Scott Baker and some of his fantasy books that 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:46.720 they're particularly magical individuals who occasionally developed halos around the 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.720 palms of their hands. And it's not visible all the time, 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.199 but just at certain moments by certain people and I 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:54.280 feel like that kind of captured some of the energy 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.520 that you see in an illustrations such as this. Um. 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.440 But but other times you see realizations of the halo 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.400 and art that are just they look very much like 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:05.760 some sort of a physical ring or a physical disc, 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.520 like they have one of the Golden records that we 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.360 sent into space situated either right above their head or 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.720 directly behind it. Yeah. I've read that this, I think 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.520 was especially common among like Florentine artists of the Renaissance, 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.960 who would start depicting the halo almost as if it 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.720 was a disc in three dimensional space that was balanced 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.560 on the back of the head. Yeah. One of my 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:33.040 favorite saints from art was the subject of some paintings 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.559 that I saw at the Louve. It's this guy named 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.080 Peter of Verona, who is usually shown with the machete 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.440 sticking out of his head. He here is with blood 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.680 and everything. Yeah, blood, And I feel like these paintings 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.280 of Peter of Verona should be the new this is 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:52.960 Fine meme because he really looks like, you know, we're 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:57.959 making it work. Um. Peter was a thirteenth century inquisitor. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:00.240 I think he was some kind of heresy hunter. Think 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.480 he preached against the Cathars, and the story goes that 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.720 the Cathars hired an assassin to kill him, and then 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:08.720 he got hit in the head with a blade of 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.080 some kind, like this guy brained him with an axe, 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:14.040 and then the I think, according to the story, he 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.160 wrote out the Apostles creed or part of the Apostles 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.280 creed in his own blood as he was dying. He also, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:22.680 in both of these has the images that you shared 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.040 with me. He also has a blade piercing his heart. Uh, 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:27.840 it looks like he was front stabbed in one of 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.080 them and backstabbed in the other depiction. Yeah, so he 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.160 I mean, ultimately, the jump between this and full blown 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:37.680 Clive Barker Cinobyte is not that far, you know. And yes, 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.079 he's very close to a Cinobyte, the machete head, cinobyte, 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.000 serene face and all. I mean the sign between, I mean, 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.200 there's there's probably a direct line to be made between 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.920 his vision of the Cinobytes and the depictions of saints 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:55.880 suffering but not not suffering on holy tortures. What's medieval 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:58.800 Latin for savior tears. It's a waste of good suffering. 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.040 I don't know. I don't have that one an easy 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.760 recall for it from me. But the funny thing is 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:06.760 about with Peter and so in both of these he's 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.160 got like a machete or a butcher knife stuck in 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:11.800 just in his head, like you know, like the lightning 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:16.440 bolt or the arrow party gag headset, just sticking out 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.679 at the top of his head. And you're you're so 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.440 fixated on the weapon you don't even notice that he's 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:25.440 got a faint circle around his head or behind it. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:28.680 there it is the halo the and and you know 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:31.320 it's you think it's helpful too to think about, to 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.839 ask yourself, like what could it be? What is this 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:36.800 thing behind the head? You know, the physical plate a 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:41.080 glow an aura, but also you see various interpretations where 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.440 you can think of it as the sun itself or 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:46.559 the moon, some sort of cosmic entity or perhaps a 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.800 window a portal, uh to another realm like all of 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:52.440 all of these things. Uh, you see a rise at 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.360 different times and interpretations of the halo and things that 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.560 inspired the halo or seemed to have inspired it, or 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:02.840 just have some just basic connection to it based similar symbology. Yeah, 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:06.040 since there's so many variations on the halo and the 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:09.320 related concept of the aureole. I think that it's best 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.560 to think about the halo not as something that has 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.440 like strict criteria for what counts as a halo, but 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:17.880 more a a collection of family resemblance. Is kind of 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.800 like the definition of a game in the Wittgensteinian sense. Um. 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:23.200 You know, it's just like there are a lot of 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.760 things that you can tell they're all related in some way, 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:28.600 but there's no set of criteria that all of them meet. 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:31.360 But I think we can at least generally say that 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:35.520 a halo is something like an area of light or 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:40.760 golden color, or some kind of radiant cloud, usually circular 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.520 but not always surrounding the head of a holy or 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.959 revered figure. It's also sometimes called a nimbus. I think 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.040 we've mentioned that already, But it is related to, and 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.760 with significant overlap on, the concept of an aureole, which 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:58.960 is a glow or area of brightness that surrounds a 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:02.400 person a specially their head. So I think there's some 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:05.120 looseness with the language here, but as best I can tell, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.320 halo usually refers to the disc or ring or light 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:14.240 around the heads specifically, and the oriole would include halos, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.760 but would would also include something like the full body 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.360 being surrounded by a glow or a golden shine or 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.120 or fire. Yeah, and that's a U R e O 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:29.559 l e ario, not oreo, though in an artistic depiction, 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.680 you could have an oreo ario. Uh, it's entirely possible. 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.000 It's the right shape. Oh, you certainly could. Oh have 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.400 you ever noticed that sometimes products in uh, in TV 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.680 commercials and in advertisements are given a kind of aureole, 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.480 Like a box of cereal will be lit as if 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:47.840 there's a light bulb right behind it, so there's a 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.160 glow emanating from all the sides. Yeah, yeah, I mean that. 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.320 That's one of the reasons I started thinking about, you 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.240 know what some of these these these paintings we see 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:57.679 in these images where it looks like there is a 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.480 light behind the head. You know, you can easily imagine 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.040 panning to one side and there is a tripod back 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.320 there and there's the photographer's light, you know, And then 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:09.240 ultimately that's what we we do to baccole it things today. Um, 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:11.760 but yeah, you do see you see things that are 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.800 like halos, and sometimes things that are very much like 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:17.760 halos in modern photography, and a lot of it is 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.120 just by virtue of that sort of positioning. We're talking 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.320 about either a light position behind the individual just by 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:26.160 happenstance because the light's got to go somewhere, or it's 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:30.400 some sort of pre existing symbol or decoration. And I 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.880 want to draw a specific example here that I've I've 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.080 been kind of obsessed with the last couple of months. 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:42.239 UM in BacT, since the since the most recent presidential election. UM, 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.120 you will see photographs of the U S President or 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:50.440 presidential Canada is president elect, etcetera, in which the presidential 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:54.960 seal is positioned directly behind the individual's head, sometimes in 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.000 sharper focus, but other times blurred a bit just by 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.120 virtue of being behind them in a way that looks 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:04.800 a lot like halo iconography. Oh yeah, so I I 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:07.120 did not know about this before you brought it up, 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.600 But now that you have mentioned it, or or since 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:11.280 I read that you were writing about this, I I 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:13.600 was seeing it all over the place. Yeah. So you 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:16.440 can see George W. Bush with a halo, Barack Obama 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.960 with a halo. It just seems like there's often enough 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.960 a big circular seal behind their head when they're getting photographed, 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.360 that these things just naturally happen. Yeah, yeah, I mean 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.640 it's because you generally have a backdrop back there and 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:31.880 then that's where the presidential seal is, and the presidential 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.680 seal is circular um, and yeah, it ends up looking 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.240 like halo. And I was thinking about this, I'm like, well, 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.400 this is interesting, but I'm sure some people do not 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.400 like it. Sure enough, sure enough, I found a wonderful 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.480 Associated Press blog post about it from and this was 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:52.040 from Paul Coo Ford. The APIs former vice president of 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.920 Media Relations, and he points out that the so called 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.480 halo issue has been around for a while and that 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.280 no matter who happens to be president at a given time, 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:05.520 people complain about it. You know it because they can 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:07.320 make the charge like, what are you doing. You're taking 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.040 pictures of this president who I don't like, and you're 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.680 making them look like they are anointed by God, Like, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.800 clearly you have an agenda here in the way that 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:18.720 the presidential seal is position behind their skull. Well, I 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.440 would say, whether I like the president or not, if somebody, 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.000 if I thought the photographer was doing that on purpose, 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.640 I wouldn't like it. I mean, you know, right right, Yes, 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.040 But knowing a bit about photography and perspective, I can 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:34.360 actually see why this might be something that's difficult to avoid. Yeah, 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.960 Go for drives home that it's never the intention of 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.920 a photographer to give the president a holy glow. But 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:43.720 in according to J. David A. K A P. Washington's 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.960 then assistant chief of the Bureau for Photography quote, the 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:50.000 out of focus presidential seal is simply a tool to celebrate, 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.080 to separate the subject from the background, so he is 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.640 not speaking in a sea of black. And then he 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.120 adds that they try to make it clear that it's 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:00.520 the seal and it's not some sort of owing blur. 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.720 And they've tried different things. They've tried shooting a lot closer, 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.720 you know, getting like cropping in tighter to the individual's 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.760 face so nothing is seen around the head. But then 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:11.399 if you do that, well, first of all, you just 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:15.280 have like a real close tight shot of somebody's face 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:18.440 and you can give me the president. But then also 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.080 more to the point, you lose any sense of context 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.000 or sense of location. And that's one of the things 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:25.840 you're supposed to do as a photographer too, is to 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.719 provide that context and sense of location. And then if 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.240 you do the reverse, like you pan out more, uh 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:33.040 and you know, try and move that seal around in 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:35.960 the background, well, then you risk creating a photo that's 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.679 not suitable for many uses such as mobile use. You know, 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:40.520 you don't want to be you know, pull up your 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:42.520 news app and you're you're flipping through it and then 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.000 you're like, who's that. I don't I don't know. There's 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.480 some some white haired dude there in the background. Oh, 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.840 it's the president. I had to zoom in to see it. 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:52.520 I think the real solution is that presidents just should 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:55.280 not have the presidential seal behind them and instead should 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:58.760 have like a big, like psychedelic tableau, you know, like 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:02.080 that like the cover of the of the Jimmy Hendrix 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:06.960 Axis Boldest Love album. Yeah, yeah, maybe so. I mean basically, 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:08.760 one of the things that comes down to is this 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:10.840 is a shot. This is a photograph that gets taken 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:14.440 a lot every time the president gives an address or 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.000 what have you, and the typical background just doesn't really 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.040 give photographers much to work with, and photographers are constantly 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:23.119 trying to figure out how to frame things up in 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:27.000 a way that is visually appealing. So at least for now, 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:29.120 until they shake things up and get that new mural 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.119 background you're talking about, the presidential halo is largely unavoidable. 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:35.320 Like you can play around with it yourself, and Matt, 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.360 put yourself in the photographer's shoes and try to imagine 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.760 what your options are there. Like, ultimately, the halo kind 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.200 of the best way to go. Well, maybe we can 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.400 help you out with that today, just by helping you, 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.359 as the viewer reframe you're thinking about the halo so 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:53.119 that it is not only the projection of a Christian saint, 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.040 but in fact is an older and more widespread tradition 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.680 of showing the radiance around the head or body of 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.960 an interesting or important figure throughout world mythology. Yeah yeah, 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.359 but but I will I will say that once you 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:07.800 start looking for the halo and identifying the halo, you 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.520 will see it more and more places. So certainly, listeners, 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:14.520 as you encounter photographs of people with unintended halos or 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.320 even intended halos just by virtue of their environment, send 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.280 those to us. Share those with us. Go go to 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:23.000 the discussion module the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.760 module that's the Facebook group. Share them there. I think 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:27.719 it'll be a lot of fun. Yeah, bring them on, 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:36.119 Thank thank, thank Now. One thing we've already touched on 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:40.800 is that not all halos or aureoles are circular in nature, 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:43.760 but an awful lot of them are. There's a reason 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:46.720 that you couldn't mistake a lot of halos in paintings 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.760 for being you know, disc shaped gold hats. So so 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.840 maybe we should probe the circular element here for a minute. Yeah. Yeah, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.240 The halo, and it's it's most traditional form, is of 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:00.679 course going to be either a pair of concentra circles. 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:02.679 It's gonna be or it's gonna be a disc, or 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:04.280 it's just going to be a circle or a hoop 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.320 of some sort um. And you know, part of this 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.800 is we've always been fascinated by circles because the circle 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.080 is the shape of the sun, it's the shape of 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.720 the moon, it's the shape of the pupil and our eyeballs. 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:18.680 You know, it's just an irresistible It's it's a line 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:20.520 that goes on forever. I mean, you can, you can 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:22.639 go on and on, like the circle is fascinating in 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.399 the same way that the triangle in the square are fascinating. 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:30.600 Will never stop. Um, you know, finding wonder in these shapes. Yeah, 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.800 and the fact that there are no perfect circles in nature, 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.720 but so much of the physical and biological world ends 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:41.879 up imperfectly approximating circles and spheres. Um. And then and 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.080 then it gets even more mysterious and gets into like 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:48.840 mathematical mysticism once once you have consciousness of geometry, because 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.680 there you get all kinds of ideas. You know, I think, uh, 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.080 the circle has special mystical allure because of its special 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.040 status among two dimensional shapes like uh, you know, it 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:02.480 has this relation and ship to the strange mathematical constant 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.360 pie and uh. And the fact that if you try 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.600 to think about it as a polygon, I guess maybe 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:09.919 it's technically not a polygon, but if you were to 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:11.440 try to frame it as one, it would have to 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.000