WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Halo, Part 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.320 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:11.440 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:13.680 Time to go into the vault for an older episode 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.320 of the show. This one was the first in our 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:21.040 series on the Halo, the Halo Iconography, which I remember 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:23.360 that one was was one of my favorite series we 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.160 did in the past couple of years. This one originally 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:31.040 published on February. I'm excited to be revisiting it so 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:36.800 we we hope you enjoy as well. Welcome to Stuff 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:46.000 to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:47.720 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:50.600 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, I 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.080 wanted to start off with a kind of thought experiment 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:55.200 that I think we've actually used on the show before, 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:57.960 but we'll use it again because I think it is useful. 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:02.440 It's it's the Martian Archaeologists thought experiment. Uh and so 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:08.000 uh imagine an exo archaeologist from another planet is coming 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:12.240 to study the physical remains of human civilizations long after 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.880 humanity has gone. Who knows what we did. We we 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.199 screwed up somehow, and there are none of us around 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.399 here anymore, but the physical remains of our cities and 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.880 institutions are still hanging about the earth. I've seen enough 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:26.160 episodes of out our Limits to to make a few 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:29.120 guesses as to how it could have happened. Right, Yeah, 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.319 the neutron bombs of the Facebook wars, they did the job. 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.320 Or hey, maybe maybe there's a better option, and maybe 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:38.959 we we warped ourselves into the seventeenth dimension and escaped 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.960 this world, you know, not a bad end. So this 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:47.160 alien archaeologist is trying to understand lost cultures of humankind 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.640 through the works of art that they created and preserved, 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.320 and at some point she ends up browsing museums. Maybe 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.160 she's walking through the louver and looking at the paintings 0:01:57.200 --> 0:01:59.960 that we're you know, we're once housed and revered here. 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:02.840 And if she were to look over many of the 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.680 famous paintings of of medieval and Renaissance Europe, she might 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:08.919 arrive at a question that would be weird to us, 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.080 but I think perfectly reasonable to her, And that would 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.520 be why did so many of the people considered wholly 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:20.800 by these artists where wide brimmed gold hats or gold 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:25.920 wires around their heads? Now, of course, with enough cultural context, 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:28.680 we ourselves know that these are not hats in the 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.440 paintings there. You know, they're not even supposed to represent 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:35.760 real physical objects. This, of course is the artistic convention 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.600 known today as the halo. But I think it's interesting 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.440 that in a lot of these paintings there might not 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.480 be anything in the painting that would tell you that 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.400 in isolation, it just looks like people have something that's 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.880 yellow or gold, often circular, sometimes square shaped, or just 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.360 like a cloud or a kind of glow or radiance 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.239 around their head. Yeah, it is well discuss it. It 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.560 ranges from something that is very subtle to to sometimes 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:07.000 things that are very unavoidable, even where it goes beyond 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:11.440 the halo and becomes this all encompassing nimbus. But but 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.160 you know, you mentioned earlier how the alien might look 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.919 and say, why why are these people considered holy? Why 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:18.400 do they have the halo? But I think it would 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.200 go even beyond that, like why did these other organisms 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:24.519 that are represented in these works of art, why do 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:27.079 they have like they wouldn't know they're they're they're holy, 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.200 not necessarily you know, they're true, they're the subject of 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.240 a painting. But otherwise, you know what, they might not 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:36.040 even be able to piece together what this signifies, what 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:38.760 it means. Why is it there? You know, why was 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.640 it that some of these humans but not others appear 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:45.080 to have bioluminescence? Like why does their hair emit light? 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:46.960 You know, did they have a do they have like 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.600 chemo luminescence in the keratin of their hair cells or something? 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:53.760 And then I think the exo archaeologists might notice something 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:55.840 that a lot of us don't tend to notice when 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.440 we grow up looking at images of like Jesus and 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.440 saints and stuff with halo uh, And that would be 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:05.840 the similarity of the iconography here the glow or the 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.360 or the gold circle or disk around the heads of 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.000 saints and and God's in a Christian context, the similarity 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:17.240 of that to depictions of God's from other religions, religions 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.720 that still exist in the world today or the religions 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:23.200 of ages past. Absolutely, you can easily start looking at 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:26.000 these halos and things like halos, and you could just 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:30.360 go crazy with a conspiracy theory connection board, right um. 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:32.600 I mean, it's it's easy to do. Even if you're 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:36.200 not prone to conspiracy thinking. You could think like, oh, well, look, 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.400 clearly they're all describing the same thing, either the same 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:43.360 mysterious light source that it is forbidden to represent an 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.560 art that is always positioned directly behind a person, or 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:50.599 this the same like alien disks that we're interacting with 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:53.360 ancient people's or you know, you could also go h 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:56.159 and and use it to prop up various theories such 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.040 as say that, you know, the bicameral mind hypothesis, things 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.760 like that, you know, which I think actually will probably 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:05.560 uh come to people's minds a lot as we roll 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:07.920 through this episode in particular, Oh yeah, there will be 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:12.080 some very specific and interesting connections there. But anyway, so 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:13.640 to come back to the idea of you know, what 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.440 we do know about the Halo, the fact that it's 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:18.840 an artistic convention. This is one of these subjects that 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:22.560 I really love because it's something that I've seen and 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.920 just taken for granted my entire life without ever stopping 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:29.280 to wonder where it comes from, what it means, and 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.839 how it connects to history and religion and science. So 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:35.040 for the next couple of episodes, we wanted to take 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:37.680 a look at the Halo from a bunch of different 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:39.880 angles and see what kind of sense we can make 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:42.920 of it now? That opening question I asked of imagining 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:46.880 an alien archaeologist looking at these depictions in art that 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.920 weren't supposed to be physical golden hats, but could have 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.880 been mistaken for such. Uh. This actually connects to an 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.320 episode of the Artifacts that I did back in January 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.359 about ancient Egyptian head cones. If you to get the 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:02.440 full story, you can go and listen to that episode. 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:05.880 But the short and simplified version goes like this. A 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:10.080 lot of ancient Egyptian art shows people with these weird 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.320 white cones on top of their heads. You know, maybe 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.160 about the size of a soft ball, but cone shaped. 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:19.799 And there has long been a debate about what these 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.720 cones were supposed to represent. One popular theory is that 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.599 this is a depiction of a real thing from ancient Egypt, 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:31.440 which would have been lumps of unguent or perfumed animal fat, 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.960 which would melt into the scalp and then perform a 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.600 kind of ritual purification as as the oils came down 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:41.320 over your head. It would be somewhat analogous to the 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.240 to the kind of anointing with oil rituals that we 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:46.600 see in other ancient Near Eastern traditions that you can 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.920 even find in the Bible. But because until recently these 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:55.320 cones had only been seen in art and never explicitly 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.880 given physical grounding, there was always some reason to wonder, well, 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.359 were these cones maybe not physical objects at all, but 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:09.000 symbolic artistic conventions like halos. Well, a few years back, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.800 some physical examples of head cones were actually found in 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.440 some graves in Egypt, so we now know that at 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.360 least some of them were physical objects. Though a lot 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.200 of questions still remain about about these head cones. But 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.720 the analogy to Halo's really got the gears turning in 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:28.320 my brain and got me wondering about halo's themselves. Yeah, 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.680 it's it's ultimately a fascinating subject. Again, I'm in the 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.280 same boat, like I grew up seeing all these images 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.160 of halos, to the point where halos didn't even feel 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.680 suitably weird or even majestic. And I think part of 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.880 that is the part of that comes from uh angel 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:48.520 costumes and cartoon depictions of angel costumes, where even someone 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.240 like Tom and Jerry will have some sort of a 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:54.480 halo above their head made out of maybe like foiled cardboard, 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.080 and it is visibly held in place by some sort 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:00.160 of wire that goes down to the back of their net. 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.480 You know what I'm talking about, Oh, exactly. Yeah, the 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:06.040 domestication of this imagery really kind of takes the awe 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:08.920 inspiring element out of it. Yeah, it ends up making 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.560 it look kind of stupid, you know. Um and um 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:15.000 and and I think you also see some of that 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:17.040 in the actual tradition of the halo, with a sort 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.320 of eventually falling out of favor except in places where 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:23.679 it was really firmly established. Um. But but of course, 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.200 like we said already, you'll see so many different versions 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.280 of the halo, even in um, you know, Western art 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.319 depicting Christian saints and important holy individuals. Uh. The one 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.360 that I ran across it I really liked was Carravaggio's 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:39.920 The Madonna di Loretto, or more at least a detail 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.840 from that. Um and it's such a faint halo you 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.680 could easily you could easily miss it, perhaps, but it 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:48.679 but it also really stands out at you because it 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:51.600 that the lines in it run counter to the vertical 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:55.120 lines behind her. Yeah, and I like that in Carvaccio's 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:59.160 art because the it suggests that in a way, holiness 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:02.199 is something that is subtle to the human imagination. Maybe 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:04.960 it would be obvious to the heavens, but you know, 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:09.040 here on Earth, it's just the faintest glimmer of a circle. Yeah, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.920 you have to look for it. Yeah. Um. You know 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.160 our Scott Baker and some of his fantasy books that 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.720 they're particularly magical individuals who occasionally developed halos around the 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.679 palms of their hands, and it's not visible all the time, 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.200 but just at certain moments by certain people. And I 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:27.280 feel like that kind of captured some of the energy 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.800 that you see in illustrations such as this um. But 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.559 but other times you see realizations of the halo and 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.520 art that are just they look very much like some 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:38.920 sort of a physical ring or a physical disc, like 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.679 they have one of the Golden records that we sent 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.840 into space situated either right above their head or directly 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.840 behind it. Yeah. I've read that this I think was 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.679 especially common among like Florentine artists of the Renaissance, who 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.120 would start depicting the halo almost as if it was 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.800 a disc in three dimensional space that was balanced on 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.040 the back of the head. Yeah. One of my favorite 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:06.120 saints from Art was the subject of some paintings that 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.920 I saw at the Louver. It's this guy named Peter 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.440 of Verona, who is usually shown with a machete sticking 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:16.720 out of his head. Here is with blood and everything. Yeah, blood, 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:19.679 and I feel like these paintings of Peter of Verona 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:23.840 should be the new this is fine meme because he 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:27.480 really looks like, you know, we're making it work. Um. 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:31.679 Peter was a thirteenth century inquisitor. I think he was 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.040 some kind of heresy hunter. I think he preached against 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.480 the Cathars, and the story goes that the Cathars hired 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.240 an assassin to kill him and then he got hit 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:42.400 in the head with a blade of some kind, like 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.480 this guy brained him with an axe, and then the 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.800 I think, according to the story, he wrote out the 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:50.760 Apostles Creed or part of the Apostles Creed in his 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.800 own blood as he was dying. He also, in both 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:55.880 of these has the images that you shared with me. 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:59.480 He also has a blade piercing his heart. It looks 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.719 like he was stabbed in one of them and backstabbed 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.000 in the other depiction. Yeah, so he I mean, ultimately, 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:08.559 the jump between this and full blown Clive Barker cinobyte 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.680 is not that far, you know. And yes, he's very 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:15.480 close to a cinobyte, the machete head, cinobyte, serene face 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:18.240 and all. I mean the sign between, I mean, there's 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:20.720 there's probably a direct line to be made between his 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.400 vision of the cinobytes and the depictions of saints suffering 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:29.240 but not not suffering on holy tortures. What's medieval Latin 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.319 for savior tears? It's a waste of good suffering. I 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.400 don't know. I don't have that one an easy recall 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:38.040 for it from me. But the funny thing is about 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:39.959 with Peter and so in both of these he's got 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.680 like a machete or a butcher knife stuck in just 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:45.120 in his head, like you know, like the lightning bolt 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:49.520 or the arrow party gag headset just sticking out at 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.400 the top of his head. And you're you're so fixated 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:54.680 on the weapon you don't even notice that he's got 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.440 a faint circle around his head or behind it. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.680 there it is the halo the and and you know 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.320 it's you think it's helpful too to think about, to 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:06.839 ask yourself, like, what could it be? What is this 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.760 thing behind the head you know, the physical plate, a 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:14.080 glow an aura, but also you see various interpretations where 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.440 you can think of it as the Sun itself or 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:20.040 the moon, some sort of cosmic entity, or perhaps a window, 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.040 a portal uh to another realm. Like all of all 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.120 of these things uh you see arise at different times 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:29.000 and interpretations of the halo, and things that inspired the 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:30.840 halo or seemed to have inspired it, or just have 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:35.960 some just basic connection to it based on similar symbology. Yeah, 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.000 since there's so many variations on the halo and the 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:42.320 related concept of the aureole, I think that it's best 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:44.560 to think about the halo not as something that has 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.440 like strict criteria for what counts as a halo, but 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.839 more a a collection of family resemblance. It's kind of 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.800 like the definition of a game in the Wittgensteinian sense. Um. 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:56.200 You know, It's just like there are a lot of 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:58.720 things that you can tell they're all related in some way, 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:01.040 but there's no set of criteria area that all of 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.959 them meet. But I think we can at least generally 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.640 say that a halo is something like an area of 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.040 light or golden color, or some kind of radiant cloud, 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:16.800 usually circular but not always surrounding the head of a 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:21.640 holy or revered figure. It's also sometimes called a nimbus. 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.640 I think we've mentioned that already, but it is related 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:28.240 to and with significant overlap on, the concept of an aureole, 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.840 which is a glow or area of brightness that surrounds 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.400 a person, especially their head. So I think there's some 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.120 looseness with the language here, but as best I can tell, 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.320 halo usually refers to the disc or ring or light 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:47.239 around the head specifically, and the aureole would include halos, 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.760 but would would also include something like the full body 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:54.360 being surrounded by a glow or a golden shine or 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:58.120 or fire. Yeah, and that's a U r e O 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:02.559 l e ario, not oreo, though in an artistic depiction 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.679 you could have an oreo areole. Uh, it's entirely possible. 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.000 It's the right shape. Oh, you certainly could. Oh. Have 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.400 you ever noticed that sometimes products in uh, in TV 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.680 commercials and in advertisements are given a kind of aureole, 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.480 Like a box of cereal will be lit as if 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:20.840 there's a light bulb right behind it, so there's a 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.120 glow emanating from all the sides. Yeah, yeah, I mean 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.120 that that's one of the reasons I started thinking about, 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.920 you know what some of these uh, these these paintings 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:30.520 we see in these images where it looks like there 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:32.560 is a light behind the head. You know, you can 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.280 easily imagine panning to one side and there is a 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.080 tripod back there and there's the photographer's light, you know, 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:40.520 and then ultimately that's what we we do to backolet 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.280 things today. UM. But yeah, you do see you see 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.000 things that are like halos, and sometimes things that are 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.480 very much like halos in modern photography, and a lot 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:52.680 of it is just by virtue of that sort of positioning. 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.000 We're talking about either a light position behind the individual 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.240 just by happenstance because the light's got to go somewhere, 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:02.040 or it's some sort of the existing symbol or decoration. 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.720 And I want to draw a specific example here that 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.640 I've I've been kind of obsessed with the last couple 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:13.240 of months, um, back since the since the most recent 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:17.960 presidential election. UM. You will see photographs of the US 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:22.280 president or presidential Canada is president elect, etcetera in which 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:26.800 the presidential seal is positioned directly behind the individual's head, 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.720 sometimes in sharper focus, but other times blurred a bit 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.560 just by virtue of being behind them in a way 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:37.560 that looks a lot like halo iconography. Oh yeah, so 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.120 I did not know about this before you brought it up, 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.600 but now that you have mentioned it, or or since 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.800 I read that you were writing about this, I was 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:46.720 seeing it all over the place. Yeah. So you can 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.560 see George W. Bush with a halo, Barack Obama with 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:53.440 a halo. Just seems like there's often enough a big 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.240 circular seal behind their head when they're getting photographed that 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.600 these things just naturally happen. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:02.640 because you generally have a back drop back there, and 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.160 then that's where the presidential seal is. The presidential seal 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:09.680 is circular um, and yeah, it ends up looking like halo. 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.360 And I was thinking about this. I'm like, well, this 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.840 is interesting, but I'm sure some people do not like it. 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:19.280 I'm sure sure enough. I found a wonderful Associated Press 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.200 blog post about it from and this was from Paul 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.960 co Ford. The APIs former vice president of media Relations, 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:28.720 and he points out that the so called halo issue 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.120 has been around for a while and that no matter 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.920 who happens to be president at a given time, people 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:38.680 complain about it, you know it because they can make 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:40.680 the charge like, what are you doing. You're taking pictures 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:43.320 of this president who I don't like, and you're making 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:47.200 them look like they are anointed by God? Like, clearly 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:48.960 you have an agenda here in the way that the 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.720 presidential seal is positioned behind their skull. Well, I would 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.440 say whether I like the president or not if somebody 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:57.960 if I thought the photographer was doing that on purpose, 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.640 I wouldn't like it. I mean, you know, right, yes, 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.000 But knowing a bit about photography and perspective, I can 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:07.320 actually see why this might be something that's difficult to avoid. Yeah, 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:10.960 Go for drives home that it's never the intention of 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.919 a photographer to give the president a holy glow. But 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:16.719 in according to J. David A. Key, a P. Washington's 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:19.960 then assistant chief of the Bureau for Photography, quote, the 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.000 out of focus presidential seal is simply a tool to celebrate, 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.080 to separate the subject from the background so he is 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.600 not speaking in a sea of black. And then he 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.120 adds that they try to make it clear that it's 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.520 the seal and it's not some sort of glowing blur, 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:36.720 And they've tried different things they've tried shooting a lot closer, 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.720 you know, getting like cropping in tighter to the individual's 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.760 face so nothing is seen around the head. But then 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:44.359 if you do that, well, first of all, you just 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:48.240 have like a real close tight shot of somebody's face 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.440 and you can give me the president. But then also 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:54.080 more to the point, you lose any sense of context 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.000 or sense of location. And that's one of the things 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:58.840 you're supposed to do as a photographer too, is to 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.679 provide that contact in sense of location. And then if 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.240 you do the reverse, like you pan out more, uh 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:06.000 and you know, try and move that seal around in 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:08.960 the background, well, then you risk creating a photo that's 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.679 not suitable for many uses such as mobile use. You know, 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:13.520 you don't want to be you know, pull up your 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:15.520 news app and you're you're flipping through it and then 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:17.000 you're like, who's that. I don't I don't know. There's 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:19.480 some some white haired dude there in the background. Oh, 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:22.840 it's the president. I had to zoom in to see it. 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.480 I think the real solution is that presidents just should 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.280 not have the presidential seal behind them and instead should 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.760 have like a big, like psychedelic tableau you know, like 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:35.080 the like the cover of the of the Jimmy Hendrix 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:39.119 Axis Bold as Love album. Yeah, yeah, maybe so. I 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:41.080 mean basically, one of the things that comes down to 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:43.280 is this is a shot. This is a photograph that 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.840 gets taken a lot every time the president gives an 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.480 address or what have you, and the typical background just 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.360 doesn't really give photographers much to work with, and photographers 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.640 are constantly trying to figure out how to frame things 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:59.439 up in a way that is visually appealing. So, at 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:01.520 least for now, until they shake things up and get 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.399 that new mural background you're talking about, the presidential halo 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:08.000 is largely unavoidable. Like you can play around with it yourself, 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.800 and Matt put yourself in the photographer's shoes and try 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.560 to imagine what your options are there. Like, ultimately, the 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.360 halo is kind of the best way to go. Well, 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.600 maybe we can help you out with that today, just 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.600 by helping you, as the viewer, reframe you're thinking about 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.719 the halo so that it is not only the projection 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.439 of a Christian saint, but in fact is an older 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.919 and more widespread tradition of showing the radiance around the 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.719 head or body of an interesting or important figure throughout 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.480 world mythology. Yeah. Yeah, but but I will I will 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:39.600 say that once you start looking for the halo and 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:42.160 identifying the halo, you will see it more and more places. 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.960 So certainly, listeners, as you encounter photographs of people with 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.919 unintended halos or even intended halos just by virtue of 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.680 their environment, send those to us. Share those with us, 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:55.360 Go go to the discussion module, the Stuff to Blow 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:57.880 your Mind discussion module, that's the Facebook group. Share them there. 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:00.679 I think it'll be a lot of fun. Bring them on. 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:09.280 Thank thank Now. One thing we've already touched on is 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:13.800 that not all halos or aureoles are circular in nature, 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.760 but an awful lot of them are. There's a reason 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:19.720 that you couldn't mistake a lot of halos in paintings 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:23.760 for being you know, disc shaped gold hats. So so 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.840 maybe we should probe the circular element here for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.240 The halo, and it's it's most traditional form, is of 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:33.639 course going to be either a pair of concentric circles. 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:35.679 It's gonna be or it's gonna be a disc, or 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:37.439 it's just gonna be a circle or a hoop of 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:40.439 some sort. Um and you know, part of this is 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.040 we've always been fascinated by circles because the circle is 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:45.440 the shape of the sun, it's the shape of the moon, 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.040 it's the shape of the pupil and our eyeballs. You know, 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.000 it's just an irresistible It's it's a line that goes 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:53.800 on forever. I mean, you can, you can go on 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:55.960 and on, like the circle is fascinating in the same 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:58.640 way that the triangle in the square are fascinating, will 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:03.640 never stop, you know, finding wonder in these shapes. Yeah. 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.760 And the fact that there are no perfect circles in nature, 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:09.680 but so much of the physical and biological world ends 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:14.840 up imperfectly approximating circles and spheres. Um. And then and 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.080 then it gets even more mysterious and gets into like 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:21.879