Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: in our series on the theme of being upside down.
Speaker 3: In the last episode, we started off talking about a
Speaker 3: very strange and interesting scene in the Divine Comedy of Dante,
Speaker 3: in which Dante the pilgrim and Virgil his guide are
Speaker 3: in Hell and they are at the very bottom of Hell.
Speaker 3: They are crawling down the wooly haunch of Satan, so
Speaker 3: they're on Satan's body and the world suddenly appears to
Speaker 3: turn upside down. We talked about what that scene meant
Speaker 3: within Dante's medieval worldview and how subsequent changes in our
Speaker 3: understanding of physics and cosmology affect how that scene reads.
Speaker 3: After that, we started looking at the principle of upside
Speaker 3: downness in mammal biology, focusing first on bats, very very
Speaker 3: upside down creatures in multiple ways, and then on tree sloths,
Speaker 3: and we got into all kinds of questions like why
Speaker 3: these animals are adapted to hang upside down, how their
Speaker 3: bodies managed this, especially since it's something that becomes incredibly
Speaker 3: uncomfortable for us after a few minutes or less. And
Speaker 3: we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2: That's right. And in the last episode about where we
Speaker 2: had ended things, we had been talking about upside down
Speaker 2: sloths or sloths, and we were talking about bats, and
Speaker 2: we teased out the idea of talking a little bit
Speaker 2: about vampires, and you know, especially talking about vampire bats,
Speaker 2: like moving this underside of a branch in order to
Speaker 2: get at some birds. You know, I couldn't help but
Speaker 2: think about vampires and think about Dracula, and it actually
Speaker 2: called to mind an excellent passage from the novel Dracula
Speaker 2: by Bromstoker. I'm going to read it from it here.
Speaker 2: What I saw was the count's head coming out from
Speaker 2: the window. I did not see the face, but I
Speaker 2: knew the man by the neck and the movement of
Speaker 2: his back and arms. In any case, I could not
Speaker 2: mistake the hands, which I had had so many opportunities
Speaker 2: of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused,
Speaker 2: for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest
Speaker 2: and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But
Speaker 2: my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I
Speaker 2: saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and
Speaker 2: began to crawl down the castle wall, over that dreadful abyss,
Speaker 2: face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like
Speaker 2: great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes.
Speaker 2: I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some
Speaker 2: weird effect of shadow. But I kept looking, and it
Speaker 2: could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes
Speaker 2: grasp the corners of the stone, worn clear of the
Speaker 2: moor or by the stress of years, and by thus
Speaker 2: using every projection and inequality, moved downwards with considerable speed,
Speaker 2: just as a lizard moves along a wall.
Speaker 3: It's funny because this scene from the book is pretty
Speaker 3: faithfully reproduced. I think in the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula movie,
Speaker 3: there's a scene where they show Gary Oldman in his
Speaker 3: he's still in the Old Man Dracula form with the
Speaker 3: butt hair, so he's got the butt hair, but he's
Speaker 3: crawling down, face down, down the wall of the castle,
Speaker 3: and I think they use some sped up film to
Speaker 3: like show him scuttling really quick like a lizard, and
Speaker 3: it's almost funny looking, But that is what the what
Speaker 3: the novel, says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that scene in the in the movie.
Speaker 2: And and so we see this reference visually a lot
Speaker 2: in various vamphire films and other sci fi and horror films.
Speaker 2: And I was trying to think of a few examples.
Speaker 2: Really one of the first ones that this didn't quite
Speaker 2: come to mind, but it came up when I was
Speaker 2: looking around. There is a scene in John Carpenter's Vampires.
Speaker 2: You know, as we discussed, not the top tier Carpenter,
Speaker 2: but still, as it is the case with any John
Speaker 2: Carpenter film, some interesting moments, And there is a moment
Speaker 2: where we have the big bad vampire of that picture
Speaker 2: kind of positioned in a cruciform pose on the ceiling
Speaker 2: behind one of the characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, almost looks like laying down drunken on the floor,
Speaker 3: but on the ceiling right now.
Speaker 2: In films that we've watched for Weird House Cinema, our
Speaker 2: Friday episodes of the show when we just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie, we did recently watch The Boxer's Omen
Speaker 2: in which we have a warlock character who is who
Speaker 2: has a close affiliation with bats and other creatures, and
Speaker 2: he climbs on the ceiling and crawls across the ceiling
Speaker 2: in order to what drop a spider down onto a
Speaker 2: rival Buddhist sorcerer.
Speaker 3: I believe, yes, he has a there's a there's a
Speaker 3: good sorcerer and an evil sorcerer, and the evil one
Speaker 3: attacks the good one by i think, dropping spiders on
Speaker 3: his face that stab his eyes with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, and blind him. But yeah. Various movies love
Speaker 2: to throw their monsters up onto the ceiling. There is,
Speaker 2: of course, a pretty amazing and famous sequence in John
Speaker 2: Carpenter is the thing in which one of the you know,
Speaker 2: the entity, the entity is pretending to be one of
Speaker 2: the humans, and it ends up like flying up onto
Speaker 2: the ceiling and begins to you know, bubble and transmute
Speaker 2: into a different form.
Speaker 3: I wonder by what mechanism is the thing sticking to
Speaker 3: the ceiling, because it's supposed to be human anatomy at.
Speaker 2: That point, Yeah, I'm not sure I really need to
Speaker 2: sit down and rewatch it. But I there's a lot
Speaker 2: of crazy stuff happening in that sequence, so it almost
Speaker 2: feels feels sensible that the impossible is happening. So vampires
Speaker 2: are of course closely associated with dats in many traditions,
Speaker 2: especially modern tradition. But I have another bat related creature
Speaker 2: to bring up here, and it is the Alan of
Speaker 2: the Philippines. This is spelled just like Alan, but it
Speaker 2: is the name of a particular creature in Filipino tradition.
Speaker 2: And I first read about this creature in the work
Speaker 2: of folk lore's Carol Rose, who I frequently saw it.
Speaker 2: She has a couple of tremendous volumes that have a
Speaker 2: lot of creatures chronicled from around the world, and Rose
Speaker 2: describes them as a is, this being a group of
Speaker 2: creatures in the folklore of the Tengean people, also I
Speaker 2: think referred to as the Itnig of the Philippines, and
Speaker 2: she describes them as bird like people with fingers and
Speaker 2: toes that point backwards, which enable them to hang upside
Speaker 2: down from the topmost branches of trees. So we get
Speaker 2: inverted and backwards with this creature, and clearly, despite being
Speaker 2: described in Avian terms, their basic description brings to mind
Speaker 2: the various fruit bats of the world, and a number
Speaker 2: of them are found in the Philippines, including the giant
Speaker 2: golden crowned flying fox. They roost in the trees, but
Speaker 2: the al roosts in the trees, but also have houses
Speaker 2: of pure gold on the ground. Were told and different
Speaker 2: tales position them as you know, everything from tricksters to
Speaker 2: benevolent helpers. So I was looking for more information about
Speaker 2: these creatures, and I found I ran across the excellent website,
Speaker 2: the Aswang Project, which I believe I've encountered before. It's
Speaker 2: maintained by one Jordan Clark, and he points He points
Speaker 2: to several other things about these creatures, points out that
Speaker 2: they're said to adopt lost children, and also that they
Speaker 2: make new elons out of the sort of pilfer biomaterials
Speaker 2: associated with female human procreation or the female side of
Speaker 2: human procreation. So I don't know, they're kind of crafty
Speaker 2: genetic tinkerers, I imagine in that regard. Clark's breakdown also
Speaker 2: points at the possibility in some Western retellings that the
Speaker 2: Alan is confused and combined with other creatures, and points
Speaker 2: out that there are a finite number of creature types
Speaker 2: in the Philippines, but with lots of regional variations, which
Speaker 2: is something I think we find in a lot of
Speaker 2: folkloric traditions. So reminder that the Philippines consist of more
Speaker 2: than seven thousand islands and more than one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty five ethnic groups. So you might have a certain
Speaker 2: type of creature that's common in different groups, but you know,
Speaker 2: individual communities even are going to have a different spin
Speaker 2: on that creature. Now, turning to the world of Japanese
Speaker 2: yo kai, who I found not one, but two very
Speaker 2: interesting ceiling related creatures. So the first is the Tinjo kudari,
Speaker 2: and this is a yokai whose name translates, I believe
Speaker 2: roughly to the ceiling hangar. I've also seen it described
Speaker 2: as the ceiling dropper. So this entity was first reported
Speaker 2: by noted scholar and yokai chronicler Tori Seki in his
Speaker 2: illustrated Yokai books of the eighteenth century, and according to
Speaker 2: Matthew Meyers Yokai dot Com, there's an argument to be
Speaker 2: made here that Sekian largely created this creature. So it
Speaker 2: kind of depends on his yokai some of them. Some
Speaker 2: of them are definitely more folk traditions that he is reporting,
Speaker 2: some he's maybe putting his own spin on, and some
Speaker 2: he may be sort of creating whole cloth. So Matthew
Speaker 2: Meyer writes, quote in Old Japan, the space above the
Speaker 2: ceiling was connected with lots of superstitions about dead bodies
Speaker 2: rolling about or women being confined like prisoners. Tinjo Kudari
Speaker 2: seems to have been something Toriyama invented based on those myths. Fittingly,
Speaker 2: during this time, the phrase to show someone in the
Speaker 2: ceiling was a colloquial expression for causing trouble, which Tinjo
Speaker 2: Kudari certainly does, and he adds the possible connection to
Speaker 2: another tale, a story of a yokai that was something
Speaker 2: of an attic monster in an inn, descended down at
Speaker 2: night to drag travelers up to consume them. And of
Speaker 2: course that one is more overtly threatening than a lot
Speaker 2: of yokai. A lot of yokai, as we've discussed in
Speaker 2: the show before, they're just they're doing their own creepy thing,
Speaker 2: and just witnessing them is maybe the limit of human interaction.
Speaker 3: I see, Yeah, they're living parallel lives in a parallel
Speaker 3: world almost. But yeah, but some are more more predatory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like some are going to be more aggressive
Speaker 2: and might hurt you or harm you in some way,
Speaker 2: and some they're just like, well, you've got to peek
Speaker 2: into the unseen world there, and I hope you're okay
Speaker 2: with it. Okay, Now, I did find this whole treatment
Speaker 2: of the ceiling interesting, and I was reading also about
Speaker 2: some other tradition, like their ghost stories about for instance,
Speaker 2: acts of violence that have taken place that have like
Speaker 2: left blood stains that never go away in ceilings and
Speaker 2: so forth. You know, there are a lot of ghostly tales
Speaker 2: like that. And there is another yo kai known as
Speaker 2: the Tinjonami or the ceiling liquor, and this one is
Speaker 2: also really fun. So according to Zach Davison at the
Speaker 2: Hakku Monogatari kaiden Kai website, it visits during cold nights
Speaker 2: to lick the ceiling, leaving these dark streaks behind on
Speaker 2: the ceiling, the kind of streaks that say, a child
Speaker 2: sleeping in a room might they can't go to sleep.
Speaker 2: They're staring up at the ceiling. Maybe there's light from
Speaker 2: outside playing on the ceiling and they're noticing these dark
Speaker 2: streaks for the first time, and then they can reflect
Speaker 2: on where these came from, allegedly the tongue of the
Speaker 2: ceiling liquor. So don't stare at the ceiling because you
Speaker 2: might see the ceiling liquor and if you see the
Speaker 2: ceiling liquor licking the ceiling, you might die. Otherwise, no
Speaker 2: real risks involve here. It's not actively trying to hurt you,
Speaker 2: but it's not something you actually want to see occurring.
Speaker 3: So the licks on the ceiling are an indicator. They're
Speaker 3: not gonna mechanistically get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's it's one of those interesting things. It's like,
Speaker 2: this may be evidence of a ghost, but you don't
Speaker 2: want to ever actually see the ghosts. The evidence is
Speaker 2: all you really need. And so it's kind of a reminder,
Speaker 2: do not look too closely here lest you see something
Speaker 2: you can never unsee.
Speaker 3: Ceiling liquor almost sounds like one of the Mule Lads,
Speaker 3: doesn't that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Davison also points out that
Speaker 2: Sekian might be referring to a line of poetry here
Speaker 2: that reads essentially, in the cold winter, tall ceilings swallow
Speaker 2: the lantern light. And yeah. So this one was really
Speaker 2: weird though, to try and figure out, like what are
Speaker 2: we supposed to make of it? Like what is the
Speaker 2: intended reader supposed to make of the idea of the
Speaker 2: ceiling like liquor, And on one level, you potentially just
Speaker 2: have a scary story that also explains mysterious stains. And
Speaker 2: we're all familiar from seeing stains like this, you know,
Speaker 2: often caused by like water dripping and so leaks in
Speaker 2: the roof and so forth, no matter what the structure
Speaker 2: of your house might be. But as Michael Dylan Foster
Speaker 2: points out in twenty fifteen's Licking the Ceiling, semantic staining
Speaker 2: and Monstrous Diversity, Yochai scholars have also brought up the
Speaker 2: idea that second is referencing Edo period firefighters or the
Speaker 2: especially their sort of signature of clothing, some of the
Speaker 2: frills and the way that the clothing and thrills and
Speaker 2: fingers of this creature are depicted, and it would be
Speaker 2: a visual pun that might have been better understood on
Speaker 2: some level by the intended reader. Okay, So Matthew Meyer
Speaker 2: mentions this as well, describing the ceiling liquor as essentially
Speaker 2: a transform matoid. These are like paper flags that were
Speaker 2: carried by Edo period firemen. You can look up pictures
Speaker 2: of these. They look like something you would have in
Speaker 2: a parade, you know, lots of tassels and all. And
Speaker 2: so the idea is maybe this creature is supposed to
Speaker 2: be a transformed version of this thing that the firemen
Speaker 2: would carry. But beyond that, I can't find much about
Speaker 2: the definite connection here. Is it something concerning fire risks
Speaker 2: and ceilings? To me at least uncertain because the prime
Speaker 2: firefighting tool of these firemen would have been the destruction
Speaker 2: or partial destruction of structures that were either on fire
Speaker 2: or about to become on fire to keep that fire
Speaker 2: from spreading. So water pumps were not really used till later,
Speaker 2: because I was initially thinking, oh, well, maybe firefighters water
Speaker 2: water damage stains. But I don't think that's the connection
Speaker 2: here at all. But fascinating the way these things seem
Speaker 2: to stitch together.
Speaker 3: It's interesting regarding ghostly implications of perceived stains on the ceiling.
Speaker 3: This may be a totally idiosyncratic connection that has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with history. But I do know from at
Speaker 3: least one example of somebody who has a fairly persistent
Speaker 3: edge of sleek hallucinations tends to wake up thinking that
Speaker 3: they see things in the room with a kind of
Speaker 3: dream intrusion on the physical environment. A very very common
Speaker 3: manifestation of this is illusory stains on the ceiling and walls.
Speaker 2: Oh that is fascinating. Yeah, because the other way I
Speaker 2: was thinking about it is like, even in my own house,
Speaker 2: there's like one place in the living room where there's
Speaker 2: a scuff on the ceiling, and I have no idea
Speaker 2: how it got there, Like how did that happen? And
Speaker 2: so on one level in our mind we might think,
Speaker 2: you know, we might be dwelling on this floor ceiling dichotomy.
Speaker 2: So like, if there's a stain on the floor while
Speaker 2: it dripped there, it's spilt there, But how does the
Speaker 2: stain get on the ceiling? What can drip onto the ceiling?
Speaker 2: What can scuff the ceiling? Nothing's walking around up there.
Speaker 2: It must be something uncanny, It must be something from
Speaker 2: some kind of inverted world.
Speaker 3: I personally know the story behind every scuff on my ceiling.
Speaker 3: There it's because I tried to move of the acoustic
Speaker 3: partition wall, and there because I tried to move the
Speaker 3: wall again.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, there are the known scuffs, for sure, and
Speaker 2: the more embarrassing the story behind them, the better we
Speaker 2: remember them.
Speaker 3: Most of mine are connected to trying to turn a
Speaker 3: basement room with a low ceiling into a recording space.
Speaker 2: Now, as far as supernatural creatures of folklore, and legend.
Speaker 2: There may be some other good ones out there, So listeners,
Speaker 2: if you know of other upside down creatures from folklore
Speaker 2: and mythology, and we haven't covered them here on the
Speaker 2: show right in because we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: There are, of course various upside down creatures in comic books.
Speaker 2: For example, in fact, I wasn't familiar with this one,
Speaker 2: but I ran across something called upside Down Man in
Speaker 2: DC's Justice League series, and you can look up pictures
Speaker 2: of this creature. Basically a monstrous enemy from another dimension,
Speaker 2: but in the visual medium of comics, he's very often
Speaker 2: depicted in an inverted position.
Speaker 3: Shaped and walking on his hands, or.
Speaker 2: Or often kind of in the frames I was looking at,
Speaker 2: like kind of gigantic and partially outside of the frame,
Speaker 2: but inverted. So it's like you're not necessarily in like
Speaker 2: a physical space, but some sort of either an extra
Speaker 2: dimensional space or sort of like the visual extra dimensional
Speaker 2: space that you find in certain comic book scenes. Well,
Speaker 2: we're not supposed to take it as an actual like
Speaker 2: physical space. It's just representing interaction between two characters, and
Speaker 2: he is often presented upside down.
Speaker 3: This is interesting. I didn't fully get into this for
Speaker 3: this episode, But I was thinking about how often in
Speaker 3: poetry and literature upside downness is a visual and spatial
Speaker 3: metaphor just for wrongness or the thing that should not
Speaker 3: be and is a violation of the order, is something
Speaker 3: that indicates chaos and disorder or moral decay, you know,
Speaker 3: thinking about There's a passage in ts Eliot's The Waste Land,
Speaker 3: which is very The last section of that poem is
Speaker 3: describing like a journey through the desert, the parched landscape
Speaker 3: that has a world gone wrong and destroyed, and he
Speaker 3: talks about coming upon a I think, coming upon a
Speaker 3: city in the desert where bats with baby faces crawl
Speaker 3: upside down, and he sees inverted towers in the air
Speaker 3: hanging upside down. So it seems to be part of
Speaker 3: the metaphor created there is something I mean, it might
Speaker 3: also be an indication of the actual scene imagine, because
Speaker 3: I guess if it's supposed to be in the desert,
Speaker 3: seeing the upside down towers might be like a mirage
Speaker 3: or a fata morgana kind of illusion. But I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's what it's supposed to mean. But I
Speaker 3: think also all the upside downness, especially the bats with
Speaker 3: baby faces. Upside down is clearly supposed to indicate something
Speaker 3: is wrong here. And it's funny because there's nothing especially
Speaker 3: bad about being upside down, but we take it as
Speaker 3: a metaphor for wrongness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I feel like baby's upside down. Baby's on
Speaker 2: the ceiling. I've seen that before somewhere, like definitely. I
Speaker 2: guess to a certain extent. In Labyrinth, Toby is towards
Speaker 2: the end when we have big Esher Room. I guess
Speaker 2: Toby's on the ceiling at some point if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2: But I feel like there's another film out there where
Speaker 2: some sort of magic baby or superpowered baby is on
Speaker 2: the ceiling. Maybe it's maybe it's Jack Jack from the
Speaker 2: Pixelaro Inredibles, Yeah, Incredibles. Or maybe it's something poltergeisty. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, but he's ringing a bell.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll come back to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 3: Are you ready to talk about space, Let's do it?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, So, last time we talked about that scene in
Speaker 3: the Inferno where Dante is only bewildered because again they're
Speaker 3: crawling down the body of Satan and it seems like
Speaker 3: out of nowhere. The world has flipped upside down around him,
Speaker 3: and initially he is without explanation until Virgil gives the explanation,
Speaker 3: which is that because they have passed through the very
Speaker 3: center of the Earth, now the directions of up and
Speaker 3: down have reversed, and so up has become down and
Speaker 3: vice versa. So Dante is describing this moment of overwhelming
Speaker 3: confusion at the sudden subjective inversion of up down continuity,
Speaker 3: and that moment actually brings to mind a similar situation
Speaker 3: that occurs in reality, and that is a common experience
Speaker 3: that astronauts report in microgravity. So I want to talk
Speaker 3: about astronauts something called visual reorientation illusions and something called
Speaker 3: the spider Man illusion. To introduce this idea, I was
Speaker 3: reading a June twenty twenty article in the newspaper of
Speaker 3: the LSU School of Medicine by Leslie Coppo featuring an
Speaker 3: interview with a NASA astronaut, and I think at the
Speaker 3: time an LSU professor of medicine. I believe she might
Speaker 3: be with a different institution now, but a medical doctor
Speaker 3: and professor of medicine named Serena Onen Chancellor, and she's
Speaker 3: talking in this interview about her experience as a flight
Speaker 3: engineer in expeditions fifty six and fifty seven to the
Speaker 3: International Space Station. These were both in twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 3: on a Chancellor talks about how one of the biggest
Speaker 3: challenges of spaceflight and of the especially the early time
Speaker 3: spent at the space station, is the body's adjustment to microgravity.
Speaker 3: This is something we've talked about before, but never with
Speaker 3: this particular angle that I recall. So you know, literally,
Speaker 3: the space station and its occupants are in free fall.
Speaker 3: They're in orbit around the Earth. And since the station
Speaker 3: inhabitants and the station are all falling at the same rate,
Speaker 3: there is no ground inside the station, and there's no
Speaker 3: gravitational queue to tell the astronauts which way is up
Speaker 3: or down. So inside the space station there is no
Speaker 3: up or down except that which you try to sort
Speaker 3: of culturally impose. There's not a physically sensed up or
Speaker 3: down and so on. In Chancellor describes the experience going
Speaker 3: from launch, through the initial burn and into orbit, saying, quote,
Speaker 3: after that eight minutes and forty seconds, when the third
Speaker 3: stage finally cuts off, your brain does not perceive your
Speaker 3: environment the same as it did back on Earth. I
Speaker 3: almost felt like everything was that a forty five degree
Speaker 3: tilt to the left in front of me, and even
Speaker 3: the control panels and the console console in the soused
Speaker 3: vehicle itself appear different. That took a couple of hours
Speaker 3: to resolve. So that's interesting. We can imagine weird sensations
Speaker 3: of being in microgravity, like you can imagine even if
Speaker 3: you haven't felt it yourself. You can sort of imagine
Speaker 3: the feeling of floating, of you know, having this sensation
Speaker 3: of weightlessness. But there are these other things she's describing,
Speaker 3: like suddenly it feels like the world is tilted forty
Speaker 3: five degrees. That's strange and specific, and I thought it's
Speaker 3: interesting how we don't always appreciate that the weirdness of
Speaker 3: being in microgravity is not just a body sensations. It's
Speaker 3: like a new perceptual and even cognitive regime that causes
Speaker 3: perceptual and cognitive distortions. In other words, when you lose
Speaker 3: the ground and the normal gravitational cues for up and down,
Speaker 3: it leads to illusions of the senses and of the mind.
Speaker 3: One of the illusions she describes is very Dante crawling
Speaker 3: on Satan. So she says that a lot of assauts
Speaker 3: report what is called an inversion illusion, so that your
Speaker 3: sense of up and down does not disappear when you
Speaker 3: are in microgravity. It persists, or maybe sometimes suddenly comes
Speaker 3: back very strongly, but inverted, so that no matter what
Speaker 3: position you're in, you feel suddenly like you are hanging
Speaker 3: upside down. And apparently the astronauts sometimes called this the
Speaker 3: Spider Man illusion, I guess especially. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it predates this, but it makes me think of that
Speaker 3: scene in the Toby maguire movie where he's hanging upside
Speaker 3: down with the kiss that's on the poster reserve.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the weird upside down kiss.
Speaker 3: But I guess the Spider Man hangs upside down a lot. Yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 3: yeah called They sometimes call it informally the Spider Man illusion.
Speaker 3: I think equally you could have called it the vampire
Speaker 3: bat illusion or the sloth illusion. It's that there isn't
Speaker 3: necessarily a gravitationally enforced up or down around you, but
Speaker 3: your brain's still trying to make up and down happen,
Speaker 3: and suddenly it just decides I'm hanging upside down. I'm
Speaker 3: hanging upside down, and I don't.
Speaker 2: Know why interesting. I wonder if this is related. I've
Speaker 2: heard of similar things with pilots fine planes, and this
Speaker 2: may be something that's maybe more likely in like high
Speaker 2: performance flight. But you can have your horizon sort of
Speaker 2: messed up and you can think up as down and
Speaker 2: down is up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, Well maybe we can try to make
Speaker 3: more sense of that as we go on, because I
Speaker 3: want to get to a study in a minute. It's
Speaker 3: very much about how visual information interacts with these feelings
Speaker 3: in the body. But on a Chancellor goes on to
Speaker 3: describe more common symptoms of space adaptation. So you have
Speaker 3: things like nausea, lack of appetite you can imagine, and
Speaker 3: then of course the physiological effects of microgravity that we've
Speaker 3: talked about before. I think we've been mentioned in the
Speaker 3: last episode, like stuffiness in the head and upper body.
Speaker 3: And then on Chancellor goes on to say more about
Speaker 3: these confusion and illusions related to the lack of a
Speaker 3: gravitational up and down. In one sense, you can think
Speaker 3: of this unhitching from gravity as a kind of freedom.
Speaker 3: She says, quote, I can do science on any side,
Speaker 3: talking about any side of the module. I can do
Speaker 3: science on the ceiling I can do science on the walls.
Speaker 3: I can be flipped upside down, I can eat upside down.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really matter. But that freedom doesn't necessarily feel
Speaker 3: like freedom. It can also be very difficult, disorienting and uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: especially at first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also becomes less of a freedom when you
Speaker 2: have to figure out how to use the restroom and
Speaker 2: things of that nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might need some vacuum assistance there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because without gravity it can be a little bit
Speaker 2: more difficult.
Speaker 3: Can't do right. So she says that some of the
Speaker 3: astronauts call this early period of adjustment the first reprogramming phase.
Speaker 3: But over time the brain is able to adapt. She says,
Speaker 3: in her experience, the first one to two weeks there
Speaker 3: tends to be a lot of disorder related to the
Speaker 3: brain trying to insist that the head is up and
Speaker 3: the feed are down, but then getting this conflicting sensory data.
Speaker 3: And then usually after three to four weeks, she says,
Speaker 3: the brain adjusts and becomes somewhat more comfortable with this
Speaker 3: upless and downless world. And she says, at that point
Speaker 3: you can kind of move around with less concern for
Speaker 3: up and down where your feed are pointed where your
Speaker 3: head is that sort of thing, and the brain, she says,
Speaker 3: adapts beautifully. So it's interesting to consider both things here
Speaker 3: that in one sense, our brains are kind of stubborn
Speaker 3: and they're trying, and the brain is trying to insist
Speaker 3: on like vertical orientation. I'll talk more about that in
Speaker 3: a paper. I want to mention in just a minute,
Speaker 3: trying to insist on vertical orientation even in a context
Speaker 3: where it doesn't make sense. On the other hand, give
Speaker 3: it time. And the brain is highly adaptable in a way.
Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of our whole lives, isn't it.
Speaker 3: You know, the constant tension between the rigidity and the
Speaker 3: adaptability of our brains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it really is. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: we'll get into it in this episode or in the next,
Speaker 2: but yeah, there are other examples of how our brain
Speaker 2: just sort of makes makes the best it can out
Speaker 2: of the sensory data that it is provided with. In
Speaker 2: the sensory data may concern what's up and what's down,
Speaker 2: and the brain is like, all right, we're gonna work
Speaker 2: with it. We're gonna make it work for us.
Speaker 3: So I was reading more about inversion illusions and related
Speaker 3: phenomena among astronauts. In a two thousand and three paper
Speaker 3: that was based on research carried out on the NASA
Speaker 3: Neurolab space lab mission. The paper was called the Role
Speaker 3: of Visual Cues in Microgravity Spatial Orientation. Neurolab was a
Speaker 3: sixteen day space shuttle mission carried out in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: eight specifically to study the neuroscience of spaceflight, particularly how
Speaker 3: like various brain functions are affected by microgravity. The authors
Speaker 3: of this paper are Charles Ohmann, Ian Howard Theodore Smith,
Speaker 3: Andrew Beal, Alan Natopoff, James Zacker, and Heather Jenkin. And
Speaker 3: so the authors of this paper start off by talking
Speaker 3: about the physiology of how we normally sense up and down.
Speaker 3: Of course, some cues are visual, some are tactle, but
Speaker 3: under normal circumstances, a big part of how your body
Speaker 3: senses constructs a sense of up and down. Really, because
Speaker 3: again there is no in the universe objective thing, no
Speaker 3: such objective thing as up and down. But you know
Speaker 3: it is a subjective feeling created by our relationship to
Speaker 3: the nearest largest gravitational attractor that our brains construct this
Speaker 3: idea of up and down with the help of dedicated
Speaker 3: acceleration sensing organs in the inner ears called odoliths. These
Speaker 3: are little tiny crystals stones made of calcium carbonate, which
Speaker 3: is the same material that makes limestone, cave formations and
Speaker 3: clam shells. So you've got little kind of you know,
Speaker 3: stalactites or stalagmites or clamshell type crystals.
Speaker 2: It's like a little biopunk level, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think actually it might be a slightly
Speaker 3: different crystal arrangement, but it's calcium carbonate of one form
Speaker 3: or another. These the odorliths are made of and they're
Speaker 3: suspended in the inner ear in a kind of gel
Speaker 3: or a kind of fluid gel, and they interact with
Speaker 3: these tiny hairs in the inner ear so that they
Speaker 3: are able to sense changes in the speed and orientation
Speaker 3: of the body. So we use these organs to feel
Speaker 3: the sensations of movement, of linear acceleration, of gravity, of
Speaker 3: orientation and balance. And there's an interesting fact about physics
Speaker 3: that is actually indirectly discoverable through studying our inner ear function.
Speaker 3: That fact is that gravity is locally indistinguishable from acceleration.
Speaker 3: This is not exactly true on a large enough scale
Speaker 3: because on a large scale you get interesting things like
Speaker 3: gravity exerting tidal forces on the scale of a human body.
Speaker 3: With a gravitational attractor the size of planet Earth, you're
Speaker 3: not really going to have something like that. So gravity
Speaker 3: is indistinguishable from acceleration. A person standing on the ground
Speaker 3: feeling Earth's gravity of nine point eight meters per second
Speaker 3: squared feels almost exactly the same force as somebody standing
Speaker 3: head up in a rocket ship that is accelerating at
Speaker 3: nine point eight meters per second squared. To that person,
Speaker 3: the forces are basically the same, and that's why the
Speaker 3: organs that we use to feel the pull of gravity
Speaker 3: and orient our bodies with respect to up and down
Speaker 3: are the same organs we use to feel the sensation
Speaker 3: of linear acceleration because locally they are the same thing.
Speaker 3: So on Earth at regular altitude, gravity is experienced as
Speaker 3: this constant acceleration toward the ground.
Speaker 2: And as we've discussed on the show before, that's why
Speaker 2: some of these artificial gravity proposals would seem to be functional,
Speaker 2: like artificial gravity via propulsion in a space ship, where
Speaker 2: you have a spaceship that's like a skyscraper and you
Speaker 2: feel as if you have gravitational force on each of
Speaker 2: those floors, or of course the big double tourist situation
Speaker 2: like we have in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, spinning surface if it's big enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we discussed in those episodes, you'll find them
Speaker 2: in the archive. Yeah, there are a lot of additional
Speaker 2: factors to concern yourself with.
Speaker 3: That's right. So acceleration can function as a pretty much
Speaker 3: perfect substitute for gravity if you get the you know,
Speaker 3: if you get all the details right. This is where
Speaker 3: things get wild in space. About the space if you
Speaker 3: don't have artificial gravity, if you are in freefall like
Speaker 3: the astronauts and the ISS are, or if you're in
Speaker 3: orbit in a space Shuttle mission. So when astronauts are
Speaker 3: in freefall in orbit around the Earth, the authors say
Speaker 3: that the odoliths quote float into unusual positions and tilting
Speaker 3: the head produces no sustained otolith displacement the way it
Speaker 3: does on Earth. The unusual signals from the otolith organs
Speaker 3: and zero G are apparently not sufficient to produce major
Speaker 3: changes in the inner ear to eye reflexes that allow
Speaker 3: the eyes to stay fixed on an object while the
Speaker 3: body is moving. Also, although astronauts typically don't report sensations
Speaker 3: of falling. They are susceptible to illusions about body orientation.
Speaker 3: So what are these other illusions about body movement and orientation.
Speaker 3: The authors talk about one that is the same thing
Speaker 3: that On and Chancell are called the spider Man illusion.
Speaker 3: The authors here refer to these as inversion illusions, and
Speaker 3: they say that a lot of astronauts report these immediately
Speaker 3: after reaching orbit from the initial launch. So they'll be
Speaker 3: seated in their launch position in the cabin and then
Speaker 3: suddenly get the overwhelming sensation that they are actually hanging
Speaker 3: upside down from the ceiling. Inversion illusions can happen with
Speaker 3: the eyes open or closed, and the illusion most often
Speaker 3: lasts for only a day or two before it starts
Speaker 3: to subside. But you can imagine that it could have
Speaker 3: major potential to interfere with crew members' ability to stay
Speaker 3: focused on the task. So this is a this is
Speaker 3: not without consequence. It's not just like a weird little thing.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, you don't want you don't want
Speaker 3: to be experiencing this if you don't have to.
Speaker 2: Right, Generally, there is a lot to do on a
Speaker 2: mission like this, and it's you know, it's an extreme environment,
Speaker 2: you need to be on your toes and ready to
Speaker 2: jump in and work on things. And so the idea
Speaker 2: of being disoriented for an extended period of time right
Speaker 2: at the top, that doesn't sound like a positive prospect.
Speaker 3: There's another type of illusion the authors talk about called
Speaker 3: visual reorientation illusions or VRIS. These are illusions that can
Speaker 3: happen when someone is in a microgravity environment and they
Speaker 3: get visual cues that conflict with their established working sense
Speaker 3: of where up and down are. So that established working
Speaker 3: sense of up and down is what the authors of
Speaker 3: the paper called the astronauts subjective vertical or SV. Now,
Speaker 3: we don't usually need to think about our subjective vertical
Speaker 3: because it's going to be pretty you know, for most
Speaker 3: people who unless you have some kind of disorder of
Speaker 3: the inner ear or something like, you know, something going
Speaker 3: on most of the time. For most people, your subjective
Speaker 3: vertical is also going to be the same as everybody
Speaker 3: else's subjective vertical around you. You know, down is where
Speaker 3: your feet are pointed, up is where your head is pointed.
Speaker 3: Is pretty straightforward. But the brain maintains a sense of
Speaker 3: a subjective vertical even in a microgravity environment. So even
Speaker 3: though you no longer feel up and down with your odoliths.
Speaker 3: Your brain still insists we got to find up and down,
Speaker 3: which way's up, which ways down? And the brain might
Speaker 3: decide that this wall of the module is the floor
Speaker 3: and the opposite wall is the ceiling. But then imagine,
Speaker 3: so you're working on that assumption. You figured out, okay,
Speaker 3: here's the floor, here's the ceiling. But then you suddenly
Speaker 3: see visual information that conflicts with your brain subjective vertical,
Speaker 3: like you see another astronaut floating upside down from your perspective,
Speaker 3: or you see a dropped object failing to fall towards
Speaker 3: your floor, you know, because gravity isn't there, so it's
Speaker 3: not going to fall. And then suddenly the brain says, oh, no,
Speaker 3: something is wrong, and you get a visual reorientation illusion
Speaker 3: where your subjective vertical instantly flips and the floor becomes
Speaker 3: the ceiling and now you are upside down. This is
Speaker 3: described as an unpleasant experience that can trigger attacks of
Speaker 3: nausea and motion sickness, especially in the first week or
Speaker 3: so of orbital conditions, but the sense of direction problems
Speaker 3: can persist for months. The authors say that vris were
Speaker 3: first reported by a Russian cosmonaut named German Titov in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty one, and by the nineteen nineties they were
Speaker 3: well known to Skylab and Space Lab crews. They were
Speaker 3: often known as the downs. So you get them the
Speaker 3: downs suddenly, oh my down is up? Now, Uh, don't
Speaker 3: feel good. So the authors point out that are usually
Speaker 3: spontaneous and unwelcome when they happen, but that astronauts have
Speaker 3: reported that they can be either triggered or sometimes reversed
Speaker 3: by intentional cognitive effort. So you're in microgravity and you
Speaker 3: force yourself to think about the floor and the ceiling,
Speaker 3: you can sometimes cause your subjective vertical to flip on purpose,
Speaker 3: which I wonder exactly. I don't know exactly how that feels,
Speaker 3: but I'm imagining it kind of like the magic eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, you look at just the right stimuli,
Speaker 2: or if you bring a Tsliot bat baby with you
Speaker 2: on the flight there, you you just stick that sucker
Speaker 2: up to what may seem like the ceiling and damn
Speaker 2: you're triggered.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But interesting question here, like since gravity no longer
Speaker 3: rains in the orbital environment, so objects you drop an
Speaker 3: object and it doesn't fall, you might just expect the
Speaker 3: brain to not care about which direction is down, but
Speaker 3: reports from astronauts indicate that the usually the brain, especially
Speaker 3: at first, still tries to maintain the sense of the vertical.
Speaker 3: It's just part of our programming and it's hard to shake.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, it is the it is where we evolved as being.
Speaker 2: So it makes sense that it's kind of you know,
Speaker 2: stitched in, hardwired to our understanding to or even are
Speaker 2: like an understanding of what our body is and where
Speaker 2: our body is in space.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, the authors point out that experiments on Earth
Speaker 3: have demonstrated that people substantially use visual information and not
Speaker 3: just their inner ear organs, to determine which way is down,
Speaker 3: and they cite a bunch of examples of this. One
Speaker 3: thing they talk about is experiments where scientists build a
Speaker 3: slightly tilted room or build a tumbling room where they
Speaker 3: can adjust the direction. So you can, you know, imagine
Speaker 3: being in a room where the floor and all of
Speaker 3: the objects in the room are not quite flat. They
Speaker 3: maybe it's tilted a little bit to the side. And
Speaker 3: so they put people in environments like this and have
Speaker 3: them try to find and point to up and down.
Speaker 3: Often the visual information can take over. When asked to
Speaker 3: point down, people in a tilted room will point not
Speaker 3: toward the gravitational down, but toward the floor of the
Speaker 3: tilted room. So in this case, visual information is somewhat
Speaker 3: overriding the felt information from the odoliths.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think if anyone out there, if
Speaker 2: you've got to any like high end haunted attraction or
Speaker 2: some of the various like Museum of Illusions out there,
Speaker 2: you'll encounter rooms like this designed to throw off your
Speaker 2: perception of up and down, tilted floors, spinning rooms, and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, In fact, I've got something about that in
Speaker 3: just a minute. But from this, the author's posit that
Speaker 3: the subjective vertical is actually established by a combination of cues.
Speaker 3: The brain is is consulting an interaction between sensory information,
Speaker 3: not just the inner ear, but also visual information and
Speaker 3: maybe other things too, And usually this information is in harmony,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't cause a problem, but in microgravity it
Speaker 3: can be wildly out of wax, so it does cause
Speaker 3: a problem. Another interesting fact, this is just a little
Speaker 3: side note, not really relevant to us, but the authors
Speaker 3: point out that there are minor gravity sensing capabilities outside
Speaker 3: the organs of the inner ear. They cite that the
Speaker 3: kidneys and the cardiovascular system have some ability to sense
Speaker 3: gravitational orientation, and they don't go into detail about why
Speaker 3: that is. But I wonder if I has to do
Speaker 3: with fluid flows the fluid is it's going to be
Speaker 3: gravitationally attracted to the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that seems like the most likely explanation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if the brain uses visual information to determine
Speaker 3: up and down, what are the main visual cues, Because
Speaker 3: there aren't necessarily objective up and down that we can
Speaker 3: see with our eyes, you know, it depends actually on
Speaker 3: knowing the context of the environment around you. So we
Speaker 3: might consult familiar objects, like we expect to see ceiling
Speaker 3: type objects like light fixtures up, and we expect to
Speaker 3: see floor type objects like furniture down. We expect to
Speaker 3: see writing right side up, We expect to see a
Speaker 3: drinking glass with the open end pointed up. That sort
Speaker 3: of thing. The other thing is our own bodies. We
Speaker 3: have a strong tendency to feel that our feet are
Speaker 3: pointed down unless other information overwhelms that. And there's an
Speaker 3: interesting section in the intro here about differences in how
Speaker 3: the brain handles disagreement between the senses establishing the subjective vertical.
Speaker 3: Depending on how big the disagreement is. Quote, if there
Speaker 3: are minor directional differences between the gravity receptor and visual
Speaker 3: cues to the vertical, the brain apparently compromises, and the
Speaker 3: SV the subjective vertical points to an intermediate direction. So
Speaker 3: quote the remaining component of gravity is then perceived as
Speaker 3: a mysterious force pulling the body to one side. They
Speaker 3: say this illusion can be readily experienced in houses tilted
Speaker 3: by an earthquake. And this brings us back to what
Speaker 3: you were saying rob about, like the haunted house or
Speaker 3: the Museum of Illusions type room, the room that's tilted.
Speaker 3: I know exactly what they're talking about, this mysterious force.
Speaker 3: Something feels wrong. There's some kind of uncanny physics that
Speaker 3: feels like it's pulling you to the side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I have felt this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the quote goes on to say, if
Speaker 3: the disparity in direction of the gravity receptor and the
Speaker 3: visual verticals is large, one sensory modality or the other
Speaker 3: typically captures the subjective vertical. So one just takes over
Speaker 3: and says, vertical is mine. Now, they say, quote Tilting
Speaker 3: the head away from the gravitationally erect position enhances the
Speaker 3: effect of visual cues. There seem to be consistent differences
Speaker 3: between individuals in the relative weighing assigned to visual versus
Speaker 3: gravity receptor cues. Older individuals appear more susceptible to visually
Speaker 3: induced tilt. Scene motion enhances visually induced tilt for most subjects.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was really interesting too, about like
Speaker 3: these individual differences. I am now very curious about myself,
Speaker 3: and I feel like I don't have an easy way
Speaker 3: to know. Is my personal subjective vertical more doggedly tied
Speaker 3: to the gravity receptors and the inner ear, or is
Speaker 3: it more susceptible to visual information? I would like to
Speaker 3: know what kind of up and down man?
Speaker 2: I am, well, you know, maybe you got to wait
Speaker 2: till October on this one and find a good uh
Speaker 2: hanta detraction of it.
Speaker 3: It maybe, But again they do say that visual information
Speaker 3: tends to be stronger if you are older. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that means visual information is stronger or if
Speaker 3: that means the inner ear is weaker. And it also,
Speaker 3: visual information tends to be more powerful if you are moving,
Speaker 3: or if the scene around you appears to be moving.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the authors of the study, they talk about
Speaker 3: some more interesting things in their introduction, but I guess
Speaker 3: we should get to their finding. So the mission is
Speaker 3: not like a huge sample size. There was sort of
Speaker 3: a pilot study of this sort of thing, and this
Speaker 3: has been followed up on with larger studies of astronauts
Speaker 3: over time. But this initial test used the four adult
Speaker 3: male astronauts of this mission in orbit with a variety
Speaker 3: of experiments, many including virtual reality goggles as a stimulus,
Speaker 3: and their major findings were as follows. Again, there were
Speaker 3: fairly strong individual differences in how people created their subjective
Speaker 3: vertical and these tended to continue during spaceflight, though one
Speaker 3: astronaut became more dependent on visual cues to determine up
Speaker 3: and down while in microgravity. They say that they found
Speaker 3: astronauts in microgravity became a lot more vulnerable to what
Speaker 3: they call circular self motion illusions, the illusion that you
Speaker 3: are spinning or rolling triggered by visual cues of rolling.
Speaker 3: And then they also looked at visual cues associated with
Speaker 3: linear movement through a scene. So this was studying quote
Speaker 3: whether a virtual scene moving past the subject produces a
Speaker 3: stronger linear self motion illusion. So imagine your stationary in microgravity,
Speaker 3: you put on virtual reality goggles that suggest you are
Speaker 3: moving forward linear motion through a scene. Do you feel
Speaker 3: in your body like you're actually moving through a scene?
Speaker 3: The research found yes, absolutely, in microgravity they experienced this
Speaker 3: feeling of gliding like a ghost or like the camera
Speaker 3: in Dario Argento's Deep Red gliding through the scene forward.
Speaker 3: This feeling of illusory linear motion came on faster, and
Speaker 3: it was stronger when triggered by the virtual reality in
Speaker 3: these in the microgravity conditions. The study also found that
Speaker 3: these self motion illusions could be somewhat counteracted by having
Speaker 3: the astronauts where force springs that press on the body
Speaker 3: to simulate gravity. I thought this was interesting. So even
Speaker 3: rather crude approximate approximations of gravitational force that I hope
Speaker 3: I'm right about this from what I could tell, would
Speaker 3: not really be acting on the inner ear organs. It
Speaker 3: would be like pressing on maybe the shoulders or the hips,
Speaker 3: pressing on the body with springing. That even that kind
Speaker 3: of crude approximation, if I'm understanding correctly, could help reduce
Speaker 3: self motion illusions.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: And finally, the study also found that changing the subjective
Speaker 3: vertical This was really interesting to me. Changing which direction
Speaker 3: you feel is up or down could cause changes in
Speaker 3: how astronauts perceived objects. So not changing how the object looks,
Speaker 3: but just changing which way the astronaut feels the ceiling
Speaker 3: or the floor is. That could cause astronauts to make
Speaker 3: different judgments about whether a curved surface is convex or concave.
Speaker 3: This apparently depends on where you subjectively believe the floor is,
Speaker 3: but even more interestingly, on object recognition. So sometimes it
Speaker 3: could become harder to recognize a familiar object that you're
Speaker 3: used to seeing if you have inverted your sense of
Speaker 3: where the floor is. You can imagine again in space
Speaker 3: that being able to recognize familiar objects is actually quite important,
Speaker 3: especially if you are manning controls or trying to do
Speaker 3: any kind of mechanical task or you know, scientific pass Yeah,
Speaker 3: so like suddenly recognizing things in your environment. Again, nothing
Speaker 3: that you are physically looking at has changed, but your
Speaker 3: brain flips and now the floor is the ceiling, and
Speaker 3: now what the way you recognize things is different the
Speaker 3: author's right quote. Overall results show that most astronauts become
Speaker 3: more dependent on dynamic visual motion cues, and some become
Speaker 3: responsive to stationary orientation cues. The direction of the subjective
Speaker 3: vertical is labile in the absence of gravity. So interesting
Speaker 3: that so much depends on up and down. Even in
Speaker 3: an environment where up and down cease to have any
Speaker 3: gravitational relevance. You're not stuck to the floor, objects don't
Speaker 3: fall when you drop them, and yet your brain can't
Speaker 3: let up and down go. It still relies on the
Speaker 3: sense of up and down to recognize things in its environment,
Speaker 3: to interpret visual cues like object shading, to interpret which
Speaker 3: way a surface is curved. That depends on where you
Speaker 3: think the floor is. To interpret do I recognize this
Speaker 3: or not? Do I know what this tool is? Depends
Speaker 3: on where you think the floor is. And to understand
Speaker 3: how the body itself is moving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating, and you know, it comes back to
Speaker 2: something that I thought about before, Like, you know, we
Speaker 2: have all of these we've gone over all these different
Speaker 2: ways that the body is thrown for a loop when
Speaker 2: it's taken out of a lot of Earth gravity and
Speaker 2: placed in a microgravity environment. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: it's also kind of alarming in its own way, Like
Speaker 2: we can totally live up there. Granted, we have to
Speaker 2: do things like bring our own portion of the atmosphere
Speaker 2: with us, you know, because up there, our appropriate portion
Speaker 2: of the atmosphere is not you know, it's not gravitationally bound.
Speaker 2: You know, we have to bring it with us obviously.
Speaker 2: But but we can actually go up there if we
Speaker 2: take care of the the some of the environmental conditions.
Speaker 2: It's it's not like if we were like a Japanese
Speaker 2: Kappa yo kai with the little pool of water in
Speaker 2: the top of its skull, like if it goes into space,
Speaker 2: the water is going to float away and it's vital
Speaker 2: escence is gone. Like like all of our systems they
Speaker 2: still work. It's not like they won't work without gravity.
Speaker 2: And like that in and of itself is kind of interesting, right,
Speaker 2: It's like because again we we evolved in this, in
Speaker 2: this gravitationally bound existence, and you know, our systems function
Speaker 2: in ways that that depend on or play upon those conditions.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then of course the other interesting thing is
Speaker 3: talking about the different way is that these probably can
Speaker 3: be overcome. Like one of them, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: is that astronauts have found that sometimes with intentional cognitive
Speaker 3: force they can undo a visual reorientation illusion, like they
Speaker 3: can flip the floor and ceiling back despite concentrating on it,
Speaker 3: not always but sometimes. And then the other thing is
Speaker 3: so that's like the short term ability to overcome this weirdness,
Speaker 3: and then in the long term you also have just
Speaker 3: the adaptability and plasticity of the brain. It was what
Speaker 3: on and Chancellor was talking about that at first it
Speaker 3: can be pretty bad, but over time your brain does adapt.
Speaker 3: The brain sort of reprograms itself to feel more comfortable
Speaker 3: and natural in this environment. And eventually, I don't I
Speaker 3: actually don't know the answer to whether these types of
Speaker 3: illusions and problems ever completely stop, but there certainly become
Speaker 3: less problematic and persistent over time, and maybe at some
Speaker 3: point stop completely. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our brains just have this amazing ability, this neuroplastic
Speaker 2: ability to take whatever is available and make the best
Speaker 2: out of it, to stitch together an understanding of body
Speaker 2: and time and space and place out of whatever is available.
Speaker 2: You know, mcguiver's in existence for you, or it's like
Speaker 2: one of those shows where it's like, okay, chef, these
Speaker 2: are the ingredients you have to cook dinner with and
Speaker 2: the brain's like, Okay, yeah, I can work with that.
Speaker 2: It would be great if I had garlic. I don't
Speaker 2: have garlic, I'll find a way you can live without it.
Speaker 3: That's one of the worst things to be without.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully you have you know, some shallots around or
Speaker 2: some green onions. But yeah, but if the recipe calls
Speaker 2: for garlic, what are you gonna do? Maybe garlic is
Speaker 2: like gravity in that respect, I don't know. All Right, Well,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, but we have a lot
Speaker 2: more to discuss about the upside Down. We're going to
Speaker 2: get into some more areas of this that are tied
Speaker 2: in their own way to gravitation. We're going to get
Speaker 2: into optics a bit more, and who knows what else
Speaker 2: we will summon out of the upside down. So we
Speaker 2: hope that you'll join us for that one. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: we'll just remind everyone out there. The Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird house cinema, So you know that
Speaker 2: helps you make sense of whatever you happen to see
Speaker 2: in the stuff to blow your mind. Feed be it
Speaker 2: the audio feed wherever you get your audio podcasts, and
Speaker 2: we have archives going about years there, or if you're
Speaker 2: catching us on Netflix in an audio video format, which
Speaker 2: is relatively new for us, wherever you happen to get
Speaker 2: the show wherever you're listening and or viewing right now,
Speaker 2: we just asked that, hey, pull whatever triggers are available
Speaker 2: to you in terms of subscribing or liking, adding stars
Speaker 2: or thumbs, just make sure that you know which way
Speaker 2: is the thumbs need to go up. Yeah, so if
Speaker 2: your sense of up and down is momentarily distressed by microgravity,
Speaker 2: let a level out a bit before you rate the show.
Speaker 3: You just mentioned that we were venturing into the audio
Speaker 3: visual format. You know, so we've done audio for so long.
Speaker 3: Now we've got audio visual as well. I think the
Speaker 3: next step has got to be our podcast a silent film.
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, yeah.
Speaker 3: Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
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