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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three

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Speaker 3: in our series on the theme of being upside down.

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Speaker 3: In part one of this series, we talked about a

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Speaker 3: scene in Dante's Inferno in which the world suddenly seems

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Speaker 3: to be upside down while the poet is crawling down

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Speaker 3: the body of Satan, and we talked about how different

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Speaker 3: cosmological models apply to that scene. After that, we talked

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Speaker 3: about adaptations to upside down living in mammalian biology, particularly

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Speaker 3: in bats and tree slots. And then in part two,

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Speaker 3: we talked about inverted vampires and other beasts and monsters

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Speaker 3: of folklore, things that are said to hang from the

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Speaker 3: ceiling or dwell upon the ceiling. And then we talked

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Speaker 3: about the physiology and psychology of spaceflight and how in

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Speaker 3: microgravity astronauts sometimes they're subject to a number of cognitive

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Speaker 3: and perceptual illusions that can make them suddenly feel like

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Speaker 3: they're hanging upside down, or can cause the astronauts' subjective

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Speaker 3: sense of up and down to switch places, and so

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Speaker 3: we are back today to talk about more.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and one place I want to start out with

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Speaker 2: here is this kind of goes back to something we

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Speaker 2: were talking about. I think maybe in the first episode.

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Speaker 2: We're talking about how sometimes the idea of an upside

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Speaker 2: down world is not necessarily a bad thing. You know,

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Speaker 2: It's not necessarily the Stranger Things model where the upside

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Speaker 2: down is a nightmare, shadow realm, or you know, some

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Speaker 2: sort of illogical world that is ruled by chaos. Turning

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Speaker 2: things on their head can of course reveal truth. That's

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Speaker 2: how we use the phrase, and it's actually one of

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Speaker 2: the key ideas bound up in the Tarot card, the Hangedvan.

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Speaker 2: I think most of you have probably seen some version

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Speaker 2: of this, even if you're not familiar with taro He's

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Speaker 2: He is in general revealed as an individual who is

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Speaker 2: of course hanging upside down one leg by one leg,

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Speaker 2: with the other leg crossed behind him, like he's doing

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Speaker 2: an inverted yoga pose of some sort, but hanging from

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Speaker 2: like the branch of a tree or some sort of

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Speaker 2: a cross like structure, hands behind the back. But generally

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Speaker 2: he is not depicted as being in distress. Most depictions

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Speaker 2: of the hanged Man have kind of a voluntary feel

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Speaker 2: to them, and the idea I'm to understand within the

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Speaker 2: Tara tradition is that he is seeing the world from

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Speaker 2: a new angle.

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Speaker 3: That's not what I would have assumed based on the

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Speaker 3: name the hang demand sounds like a character being portrayed

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Speaker 3: in a kind of execution or crucifixion or something. But

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Speaker 3: the idea here is more that this is a figure

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Speaker 3: assuming a pose or assuming a new perspective.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, some more things going on with other tarot

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Speaker 2: cards as well, where what it might seem to be

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Speaker 2: about is not the full story, and then you have

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Speaker 2: interactions and so forth. But you know, there's also some

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Speaker 2: connection here to the idea of the inverted cross, which

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Speaker 2: is often today popularly employed as an unholy symbol particular bands. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: metal bands and the sort of the sort of horror

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Speaker 2: movies that you and I navigate to and sometimes discuss

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Speaker 2: in weird house cinema and thinking about like a lacarda

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Speaker 2: and so forth. So you know, that's what I think

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Speaker 2: of when we think about an inverted cross. But of course,

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Speaker 2: traditionally within Catholic tradition, this is also the cross of

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Speaker 2: Saint Peter, who, according to tradition asked to be crucified

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Speaker 2: upside down because he felt unworthy to die in the

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Speaker 2: normal position, the way that Christ died. So it's bound up.

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Speaker 2: The symbol is bound up with ideas of humility. Now

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Speaker 2: we can't be completely certain about the historic Peter here.

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Speaker 2: You know, this might just be a story with him

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Speaker 2: ordering off the menu when it comes to this crucifixion.

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Speaker 2: But we do have passing references to inverted crucifixions or

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Speaker 2: perhaps to inverted crucifixions by such first century historians as

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Speaker 2: Seneca the Younger and Flavious Josephus, to suggest that the

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Speaker 2: acts were sometimes committed in this fashion and in other fashions.

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Speaker 2: Now there's no real archaeological evidence, but then again, archaeological

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Speaker 2: evidence for crucifixion is extremely rare. You know, just think

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Speaker 2: about the elements involved here. And there were also, to understand,

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Speaker 2: no manuals on how to do it, So it's not

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Speaker 2: like there was a laminated card that crucifixion. Roman crucifixion

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Speaker 2: grunts referred to and decided how they were going to

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Speaker 2: torture people to death. There was, you know, it seems

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Speaker 2: to be kind of like a traditional way to do it.

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Speaker 2: And then sometimes they did other things out of their

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Speaker 2: you know, cruelty and horror.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that is an interesting thing. I've come across this

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Speaker 3: historical fact before that while there are tons of references

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Speaker 3: to crucifixion in ancient literature and stuff people were writing

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Speaker 3: during the Roman Empire, there's no like canonical source from

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Speaker 3: Roman authorities on how you did it or what it is. Instead,

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Speaker 3: it's just something that people are writing about, assuming everybody

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Speaker 3: else already knows exactly what they're talking about.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it can be easy to assume this

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Speaker 2: as well. If you again, if you grow up in

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Speaker 2: in certain you know, church environments where a lot of

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Speaker 2: emphasis is placed on the the you know, gritty specifics

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Speaker 2: of crucifixion, you might think, oh, we got it all

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Speaker 2: figured out, but there are you know, a number of uh,

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Speaker 2: there are a number of questions that still remain regarding

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Speaker 2: what was done and indeed, like exactly how people would

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Speaker 2: die under these circumstances. I will admit I did not

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Speaker 2: have a strong enough stomach to really go any further

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Speaker 2: in that direction for this episode, But there are plenty

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Speaker 2: of papers out there that discuss these various ideas. But

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Speaker 2: I just didn't have the stomach for it myself.

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to go into too much detail either,

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Speaker 3: but I'll just say generally, outside of Roman Crucifixion, the

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Speaker 3: possible instances of upside down Roman Crucifixion, there are some

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Speaker 3: other cases in world history of torture methods that involve

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Speaker 3: being put upside down.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I'm thinking about some Japanese examples that I know of.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and again I didn't have the stomach to

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Speaker 2: do and all that, but they exist. There's a whole

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Speaker 2: world of that if anyone is interested. The next thing

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Speaker 2: that I want to talk about concerns the antipodes, or

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Speaker 2: well antipode. The singular is antipode, the plural is antipothies. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So every position on our planet has an antipode. That's

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Speaker 2: a position on the exact other side of the globe.

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Speaker 2: So if you could tunnel from one point to another,

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Speaker 2: you could travel from say Madrid, Spain to Weber, New Zealand,

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Speaker 2: or from Formosa, Argentina to tan and Taiwan. A lot

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Speaker 2: of notable locations on our planet do not have an antipode.

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Speaker 2: On dry land, you know, it would just if you

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Speaker 2: were to tunnel straight through it would spit you out

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Speaker 2: in the middle of a body of water, you know,

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Speaker 2: probably in the ocean. But these are a few key

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Speaker 2: surface to surface examples.

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Speaker 3: I don't know, but i'd imagine our antipode is somewhere

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Speaker 3: in the Pacific Ocean.

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Speaker 2: I think, so. Yeah. I was looking around at a

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Speaker 2: few and I was like, oh, well, there's not one there. Well,

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Speaker 2: there's not one there. And then I was like, okay,

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Speaker 2: what are what are the main ones that people point to?

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Speaker 2: And generally it's you know, tunneling from you know, somewhere

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Speaker 2: in Europe to somewhere Australia and New Zealand. We actually

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Speaker 2: heard from a listener about this, reminding us that that

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Speaker 2: Total Recall remake that came out several years ago involves

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Speaker 2: a plot line about some sort of a crazy elevator

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Speaker 2: that go straight through the center of the planet. I

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Speaker 2: guess it lines up a little bit with the Dante

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Speaker 2: thing We're just got thing previously.

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Speaker 3: Several years ago on that Total Recall remake. I think

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Speaker 3: that was like twelve years ago, now, wasn't it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, probably that's the way it goes. I still feel

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Speaker 2: like it just came out, but it's you know, it's

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Speaker 2: a classic film.

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Speaker 3: Now Time, gotcha?

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Time treats everyone like fool. All right, well, okay,

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Speaker 2: what does all this mean? What means that you could

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Speaker 2: have a person in Madrid and that person in weber

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Speaker 2: Is on the other side of the globe is upside

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Speaker 2: down from the Spanish perspective and vice versa. Of course,

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Speaker 2: you know it's it's feet to feet And indeed, the

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Speaker 2: word antipode comes from the Greek antipotis, which means with

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Speaker 2: feet opposite.

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Speaker 3: Mmmm. Oh yeah, oposing feet. That that is interesting, and

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Speaker 3: you know that fact actually connects to one thing I

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Speaker 3: was reading about, which is the the upside downness of

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Speaker 3: astronomical references depending on which hemisphere of the Earth you're in.

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Speaker 3: So maybe people don't think about this very often, but

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Speaker 3: if if you're in the northern hemisphere, you know, the

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Speaker 3: moon looks a certain way to you, but if you

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Speaker 3: go to the southern hemisphere, the moon will now be

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Speaker 3: upside down from your familiar reference point because now you're

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Speaker 3: on the opposite side of the sphere looking up at it.

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Speaker 2: Oh wow, I wonder if it affects like wherewolf transformations

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Speaker 2: like in Australia, wherewolves transform from the feet up or

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Speaker 2: something I don't know instead of mouth first.

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Speaker 3: Interesting, but you can imagine that it is save for

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Speaker 3: ancient writers who did. By the way, you know, there's

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Speaker 3: a common misconception that, like, you know, everybody used to

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Speaker 3: think the Earth was flat. In history. There was some

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Speaker 3: flat Earth consciousness, but there was also a lot of

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Speaker 3: round Earth consciousness. So like ancient writers think understanding that

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Speaker 3: the geometry of the earth roughly understanding that it must

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Speaker 3: be round, and thinking about beings on the opposite sides

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Speaker 3: with their feet facing our feet and their heads going

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Speaker 3: in the opposite direct action. What kinds of beings must

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Speaker 3: those be?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting to look at this. This generally

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Speaker 2: boils up in discussion of like the monstrous races, the

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Speaker 2: monstrous people's the ideas that, yeah, they're humans all over

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Speaker 2: the world, but man, they take some weird forms. They

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Speaker 2: might have like a mouth in their stomach. They might

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Speaker 2: hop around on one foot and then laid back and

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Speaker 2: position that foot over their head to provide shade, that

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Speaker 2: sort of thing, you know. And a big part of

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Speaker 2: this is that you would have writers such as Roman

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Speaker 2: historian Plenty the Elder, who've talked about many times in

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Speaker 2: the show with someone like Plenty. You know, Plenty was

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Speaker 2: I'm to understand more of an empiricist concerning things closer

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Speaker 2: to Rome and things that he was able to witness

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Speaker 2: first hand in his own personal travels. But he is

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Speaker 2: in the Natural History attempting to write about the known world,

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Speaker 2: and so he has to depend on a lot of

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Speaker 2: far flung and sometimes fringe accounts from things much farther

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Speaker 2: out from secondhand and then third hand sources, you know,

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Speaker 2: from sailors and that traveled far or historians were reporting

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Speaker 2: as well on something that they receive second or third hand.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and so you get interesting things when you read

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Speaker 3: Pliny's Natural History. Again, this is a first century Roman

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Speaker 3: source that's trying to create a kind of encyclopedia of

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Speaker 3: all knowledge at the time, and you get this weird

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Speaker 3: mix of like, oh, wow, you know, they they understood this.

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Speaker 3: They actually it's kind of surprising that they would have

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Speaker 3: certain understandings and knowledge that are to some degree correct

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Speaker 3: much earlier than you might think people did. And then

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Speaker 3: on the other hand, you will get bizarre, fantastical accounts

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Speaker 3: that are obvious and like scientific explanations that are obviously wrong.

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Speaker 2: So here's an example of the outrageous. That is obviously

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Speaker 2: wrong concerning an antipode. And yeah, so there's essentially there's

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Speaker 2: a mythical race of people connected with the idea they

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Speaker 2: referred to, I believe as the Abaraman, which Plenty writes

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Speaker 2: of here He discusses this and other opposite peoples in

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Speaker 2: book seven of the Natural History. I'm going to read

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Speaker 2: a quote. But beyond the other Scythian Cannibals, in a

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Speaker 2: certain large valley of the Immavas Mountain, there is a

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Speaker 2: region called Aberaman, where are some people dwelling in forests

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Speaker 2: who have their feet turned backward behind their legs, who

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Speaker 2: run extremely fast and range abroad over the country with

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Speaker 2: the wild animals. It is stated by Baton, Alexander the

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Speaker 2: Great's route surveyor on his journeys, that these men are

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Speaker 2: unable to breathe in another climate, and that consequently none

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Speaker 2: of them could be brought to the neighboring kings, or

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Speaker 2: had ever been brought to Alexander. According to Isaginus of Nicea,

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Speaker 2: the former cannibal tribes whom we stated to exist to

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Speaker 2: the north ten days journey beyond the river bor Sithonians

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Speaker 2: sorry Bori Scynthienes drink out of human skulls and use

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Speaker 2: the scalps with the hair on as napkins hung around

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Speaker 2: their necks. The same authority states that certain people in

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Speaker 2: Albania are born with keen gray eyes and are bald

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Speaker 2: from childhood, and that they see better by night than

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Speaker 2: in the daytime.

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Speaker 3: Now, wait a minute, are any of these peoples said

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Speaker 3: by plenty to be Antipodean or these are just generally

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Speaker 3: like descriptions of peoples that are probably way off base.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, mostly this is just people far away, essentially on

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Speaker 2: the other side of the earth, are remarkably different, like

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Speaker 2: to the point where they might not be able to

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Speaker 2: breathe the same air. Or yeah, they see better at

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Speaker 2: night than in the day. You know, obviously we know

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Speaker 2: that this is not the case with human beings. There

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Speaker 2: are differences with you know, among different peoples in different

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Speaker 2: parts of the world, but they're not this pronounced, not

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Speaker 2: at all. And there are some other creatures and monstrous

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Speaker 2: races that pop up in other medieval bestiaries, such as

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Speaker 2: the Newly I think they're also sometimes described as being

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Speaker 2: an antipode race. But yeah, I think, you know, I

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Speaker 2: think that you know, despite all of this being, you know,

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Speaker 2: being quite incorrect. You can imagine that there's a pervasive

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Speaker 2: idea here from antiquity through medieval bestiaries, that humans that

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Speaker 2: lived on the other side of the planet or sufficiently

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Speaker 2: beyond our horizon might be fundamentally different in key biological ways,

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Speaker 2: almost like their aliens from an entirely different planetary ecosystem.

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Speaker 2: At the same time, it's worth noting again that Plenty

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Speaker 2: very much believed that the entirety of the round Earth

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Speaker 2: was populated with people, and so like that's the deeper

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Speaker 2: truth here, Like he's getting a lot of things wrong,

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Speaker 2: but he's also saying here and elsewhere that the world

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Speaker 2: is round and there are people all over it. And

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Speaker 2: he discusses this in the section chapter sixty five that

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Speaker 2: is titled whether there be antipodes or antipodies? On this

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Speaker 2: he writes, quote, on this point there is a great

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Speaker 2: contest between the learned and the vulgar. We may maintain

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Speaker 2: the learned that there are men dispersed over every part

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Speaker 2: of the Earth, and they stand with their feet turned

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Speaker 2: toward each other, that the vault of the heavens appears

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Speaker 2: alike to all of them, and that they all of

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Speaker 2: them appear to tread equally on the middle of the Earth.

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Speaker 2: If anyone should ask why those situated opposite to us

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Speaker 2: do not fall, we directly ask in return whether those

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Speaker 2: on the opposite side do not wonder that we do

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Speaker 2: not fall. But I may make a remark that will

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Speaker 2: appear plausible even to the most unlearned, that if the

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Speaker 2: Earth were of the figure of an unequal globe like this,

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Speaker 2: like the seed of a pine, still it may be

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Speaker 2: inhabited in every part. Hmm.

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Speaker 3: Okay, I don't want to overstep, because I don't know

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Speaker 3: for sure here, but I would guess then that Plenty

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Speaker 3: has basically is. Obviously this is going to be incorrect

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Speaker 3: in big ways that come into focus when you think about,

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Speaker 3: like the other planets in the stuffs. But that he

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Speaker 3: can have basically the right idea about Earth's gravity even

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Speaker 3: without having an idea of gravity, just the idea that

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Speaker 3: all around the surface of the Earth everything would be

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Speaker 3: attracted toward the center. And he could have that idea,

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Speaker 3: possibly based on the same kind of Aristotelian model of

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Speaker 3: heaviness and lightness that Dante was probably using a thousand

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Speaker 3: years later, more than you know, twelve hundred thirteen hundred

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Speaker 3: years later.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I think it's interesting to sort of

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Speaker 2: focus in on this because, yeah, we sometimes we give

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Speaker 2: Plenty up a bit of a hard time based on

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Speaker 2: some of the more outrageous things in the natural history.

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Speaker 2: Though we often highlight what Plenty has to say in

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Speaker 2: that it shows how much was known at the time.

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Speaker 2: And to be clear, he was one of the most

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Speaker 2: learned men of his day and a titan of knowledge,

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Speaker 2: and that's why we keep referring back to him. You know.

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Speaker 2: It's whatever Plenty had to say about something or didn't

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Speaker 2: have to say about something informs us about just what

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Speaker 2: was known during this time period, you know, during the

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Speaker 2: first century.

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Speaker 3: See, yeah, gives you a good snapshot of what generally

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Speaker 3: educated romans on a particular subject probably thought.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the the idea of of of of there

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Speaker 2: being an antipode for every point and for there being

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Speaker 2: people on the other side of the earth. Again, I

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Speaker 2: think on the whole, you know, this was considered settled

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Speaker 2: among most of the learned, but you at least, you know,

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Speaker 2: a couple of centuries after Plenty's time, you did have

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Speaker 2: some folks who were a little bit more grumpy about

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Speaker 2: the concept and uh and and disagreed with it, and

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Speaker 2: even found the idea of people on the other side

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Speaker 2: of the earth of as being a clear counter to

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Speaker 2: the notion of a spherical earth. So probably the most

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Speaker 2: outrageous example of this is like Tensious Uh. He was

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Speaker 2: a later early Christian author and advisor to Roman emperor

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Speaker 2: Constantine the First. He lived two fifty through three twenty

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Speaker 2: five CE. To put that in comparison to plenty live

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Speaker 2: like twenty three to seventy nine. See so anyway, this author,

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Speaker 2: this later Christian author, in his work Divine Institutes Rites,

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Speaker 2: Is there anyone so foolish as to believe that there

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Speaker 2: are people living on the other side of the earth

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Speaker 2: with their heels upward and their heads hanging down, Or

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Speaker 2: that things that lie flat with us hangs suspend it there,

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Speaker 2: that crops and trees grow downward, that rain and snow

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Speaker 2: and hail fall upwards upon the earth.

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Speaker 3: Wait a minute, I can't tell which way this is going.

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Speaker 3: Is this mocking people who don't understand that gravity would

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Speaker 3: be attracted the opposite way on the other side of

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Speaker 3: the earth, or mocking just the belief in people and

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Speaker 3: things on the opposite side of the Earth.

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Speaker 2: He's basically taking a shot at the understanding of the

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Speaker 2: world that Plenty really represents. So yeah, he was a

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Speaker 2: pretty famous attachs was a pretty famous critic of the

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Speaker 2: notion of around earth at the time, and though his

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Speaker 2: was not the predominant way of thinking, even certainly among intellectuals.

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Speaker 2: So the notion of around earth had again been settled

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Speaker 2: science essentially for centuries, as mentioned by Plenty, but the

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Speaker 2: secular world was sold on a spherical Earth, though the

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Speaker 2: issue remained a sort of nuisance discussion in the church.

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Speaker 2: Like at times there were people in the Christian Church

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Speaker 2: were like, can we maybe just shut up about this

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Speaker 2: because this really has nothing to do with salvation or anything.

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Speaker 2: It's just a senseless argument that probably makes people look stupid. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And by the way, if you're wondering, like, wait,

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Speaker 3: how did people in the ancient world know that the

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Speaker 3: Earth was round before they had, say, traveled all the

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Speaker 3: way around it, it circumnavigated the globe. There are all

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Speaker 3: kinds of experiments you can do and even just observations

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Speaker 3: you can make that inform you that the Earth is round.

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Speaker 3: You are being critical and you're scrutinizing the idea. You

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Speaker 3: can think about simple things like ships disappearing over the

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Speaker 3: horizon as they travel farther and farther away. That's one

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Speaker 3: pretty clear indication that, over long enough distances, the surface

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Speaker 3: of the Earth is curved. But then there are also

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Speaker 3: even going back into antiquity geometry experiments, you can do

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Speaker 3: with say the angle of a shadow cast by a

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Speaker 3: sun dial, and you can measure those angles at the

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Speaker 3: same time of day at different latitudes and notice that

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Speaker 3: there are differences, and that gives you indications that wait

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Speaker 3: a minute, the surface of the Earth is curved. And

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Speaker 3: then if you extrapolate from the degree of that curve,

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Speaker 3: you can see that actually we're living on a ball.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And so as bal dwellers that we are, there

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Speaker 2: are those who live right side up and those who

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Speaker 2: live upside down. And at the same time, nobody is

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Speaker 2: right side up and nobody is upside down.

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Speaker 3: It's true.

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Speaker 2: So I want to turn now to the realm of optics,

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Speaker 2: and I think this is pretty much where we're going

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Speaker 2: to stay for the duration of this episode. So here

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Speaker 2: here is something that we take for granted, Okay, a

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Speaker 2: basic statement that will probably feel true to most of

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Speaker 2: you at least until you begin to analyze it, and

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Speaker 2: that is we perceive the world right side up.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems right up, looks up down, looks down right.

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Speaker 2: But what if, to borrow a comparison from David Eagleman,

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Speaker 2: previous guest on the show and also fellow podcaster, what

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Speaker 2: if we were to flip our eyes upside down, you know,

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Speaker 2: like mister potato head style. What if we took them out,

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Speaker 2: flipped him upside down, stuck him back in? What would happen?

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Speaker 3: So here, we're not considering putting them in the slot

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Speaker 3: where the ears go or where the mouth goes. We're

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Speaker 3: just talking about flipping the eye, just.

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Speaker 2: Flipping the eyes. Okay, Now, for starters, we should point

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Speaker 2: out that this would be quite difficult to pull off

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Speaker 2: in reality because you can't just say, pull the eye out,

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Speaker 2: twisted around and put it back in without severely damaging

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Speaker 2: the bundled optic nerve, which would cause blindness Surgically. You'd

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Speaker 2: also have to contend with these six extra ocular muscles

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Speaker 2: surrounding the eye. There's a lot of stuff holding stuff

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Speaker 2: in place, so you know, beyond what you might have

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Speaker 2: seen in a mad magazine or something with somebody's eyeball

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Speaker 2: hanging out on, you know, on a single thread. There's

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Speaker 2: a lot of stuff in there, and it's very delicate

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Speaker 2: if you start messing with it.

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Speaker 3: Actually, in the very next weird House Cinema movie we're

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Speaker 3: going to be doing, there is a pretty pretty awesome

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Speaker 3: cyborg cyborg eyeball removal and maintenance scene.

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Speaker 2: Oh well, well, now cyborg's can do it. They're different. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: But as a side note, there is I was looking

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Speaker 2: into this. There is actually a procedure called macular translocation

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Speaker 2: by which retina is detached and shifted away from less

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Speaker 2: healthy eye tissue, and then the extra ocular muscles are

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Speaker 2: also adjusted to prevent a perceived tilt in vision. So

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Speaker 2: there is something to that. But of course we don't

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Speaker 2: have to dream up mad science surgeries to flip the

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Speaker 2: vision of a human being. We don't actually have to

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Speaker 2: take the mister Potato eyes out, flip them and reinsert them. Instead,

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Speaker 2: we can achieve this optically or visually. Ahead of the eye.

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Speaker 2: Don't flip the receptors, flip the input, Flip the incoming media.

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Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so you flip the image of the world

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Speaker 3: before it hits the eyes.

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Speaker 2: Right, and so In this we turn to a particular

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Speaker 2: American psychologist by the name of George M. Stratton and

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Speaker 2: his amazing upside down goggles.

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Speaker 3: This is a famous experiment in the history of vision studies,

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Speaker 3: and it's really interesting, I think.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. He lived eighteen sixty five through nineteen

421
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Speaker 2: fifty seven, and around eighteen ninety six he set out

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Speaker 2: to study the way that we perceive the right side

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Speaker 2: up world. Because here's the mind blowing thing that Stratton

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Speaker 2: knew very well and I think was probably popping into

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Speaker 2: a number of your minds as you were contemplating whether

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Speaker 2: we see a right side up world, and that is

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Speaker 2: that we don't exactly see the right side up world

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Speaker 2: at all. If you think back to our episode of

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Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind on the Camera Obscura, which

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Speaker 2: you can find in the archive wherever you get the

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Speaker 2: audio version of this podcast, or any or if you

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Speaker 2: think on any experience you have with these optical devices,

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Speaker 2: because you can find Camera Obscura is set up at

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Speaker 2: various museums and events, but light passes through a small

435
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 2: aperture of a dark chamber and projects a scene from

436
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 2: the outside world a projection, but the resulting image is

437
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 2: inverted upside down and reversed left to right. The term

438
00:24:57,680 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 2: camera obscura, by the way, was coined by Johannes ke

439
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,680
Speaker 2: Bler in sixteen oh four, and he made the connection

440
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,359
Speaker 2: that our eye works much the same way with an

441
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 2: image of the outside world inverted and reversed on the

442
00:25:08,359 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 2: retina of the eye. The camera obscura and the human

443
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 2: eye share the same fundamentals of optics here. But yeah,

444
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 2: the what enters our eye is then it placed on

445
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:22,400
Speaker 2: the retina upside down.

446
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 3: But the cool thing is that that's okay because it's

447
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:30,719
Speaker 3: not the retina that sees, it's the brain that sees.

448
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's the amazing thing here. Our eyes receive an

449
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,199
Speaker 2: upside down version of the right side up world, and

450
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:41,159
Speaker 2: then the brain flips it without our realizing it. And

451
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 2: I think this alone is pretty amazing.

452
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, especially the fact that you don't have to

453
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 3: think about doing it. You're not conscious of this flipping.

454
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 3: The world just looks right to you.

455
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:56,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like it's like our brain is a plumber,

456
00:25:56,880 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 2: and we have a toilet set up to flush with

457
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 2: hot water, and then the plumber sneaks in and re

458
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,840
Speaker 2: and does it, and it adds an additional twist around

459
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,359
Speaker 2: to make sure that our toilet flushes with cold water.

460
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 2: I don't know, this is a terrible comparison, but at

461
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 2: any rate, it's amazing what's happening here. So, coming back

462
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 2: to Georgia M. Stratton, he wanted to know how we'd react,

463
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 2: how our brains would deal with it if, via special goggles,

464
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:26,359
Speaker 2: we received a pre flipped vision of the world which

465
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 2: then gets flipped right side up in our retinas and

466
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:32,719
Speaker 2: then flipped upside down once more via the brain. His

467
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:35,919
Speaker 2: theory was that the brain didn't really need an upside

468
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 2: down retinal image and that it could make do with

469
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:39,880
Speaker 2: whatever it had.

470
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 3: Okay, so the idea is where these goggles that flip

471
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 3: the image of the world upside down before it reaches

472
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,119
Speaker 3: your eyes, and figure out how does how do the

473
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:52,880
Speaker 3: eyes and the brain react to this?

474
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 2: Right, So this is what happened. Stratton experimented on himself

475
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 2: wearing a special glass over his right eye, and he

476
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:04,640
Speaker 2: covered his left eye with an eye patch, and then

477
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 2: he wore like a blindfold or two eye patches when

478
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 2: he slept at night. So via this special goggle, he

479
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:17,960
Speaker 2: perceived an upside down world that was initially highly disorienting

480
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,919
Speaker 2: because the brain, to be clear, the brain didn't do

481
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,600
Speaker 2: anything with this information right away. Is just highly disorienting.

482
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 2: It's like seeing the world upside down through a crazy

483
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 2: goggle strapped to your eye. As you can imagine, it

484
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 2: was a lot. But by around day three things begin

485
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 2: to even out and to be clear. And this is

486
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:40,879
Speaker 2: something that has to be driven home regarding this and

487
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:44,719
Speaker 2: other experiments using this sort of thing. It's not that

488
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 2: the brain ends up flipping the image again, because it

489
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,119
Speaker 2: does not. It's not like, oh, by day three I

490
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 2: just saw everything right side up again. No, but he

491
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 2: was able to. He found himself adapting to this inverted

492
00:27:56,760 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 2: feed and was able to effectively move through environment again,

493
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 2: you know, interact with things I believe. In this or

494
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,359
Speaker 2: other experiments, the users have been able to read again

495
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. And then upon taking the goggles off,

496
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 2: there's another period of readjustment which is interesting to think about,

497
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 2: Like your brain has adapted to an upside to the

498
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 2: upside down feed, and then when it gets the right

499
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 2: side up feet again, you again have to sort of

500
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 2: recombobulate yourself. He wrote. Initially all the images were inverted.

501
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 2: Things were seen in one way and thought about it

502
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 2: in a different way because of memory and past experience. However,

503
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 2: with practice, the subject and he's preferring to himself here,

504
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 2: learned to adapt to the new visual field. On removal

505
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 2: of the glasses, normal vision was restored. Concluded that difficulty

506
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 2: in seeing things upright due to upright retinal images is

507
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:52,760
Speaker 2: due to previous experience. And so this brings me back

508
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 2: to the true example of the mister potato head that

509
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 2: David Eagleman brought up that he's discussed on his most

510
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,280
Speaker 2: recent appearance on our show a few years back, and

511
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 2: that is this idea that our brain will make use

512
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 2: of whatever sensory information is plugged into it, mister potato

513
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 2: head style. So it might be site, It might be smell,

514
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 2: It might be taste. It might be something entirely new,

515
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 2: such as like stock information or some you know, heightened

516
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 2: awareness of electromagnetism. It might be again to come back

517
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 2: to the specifics here, it might be vision, but that

518
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 2: is flipped. It might be say, smell that is different

519
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: like I don't know if you were somehow able to

520
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 2: you know, put the plug the nose of a dog

521
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 2: onto us and gift us with like the scent abilities

522
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 2: of a dog, that sort of thing. The brain would

523
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 2: just make use of it. It would stitch together an

524
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 2: understanding of the outside world that we can use. If

525
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 2: the world is flipped to the upside down, the brain adjusts.

526
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 3: This reminds me of what we talked about in the

527
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:54,880
Speaker 3: last episode actually with astronauts in microgravity. You know, when

528
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 3: you arrive in microgravity, a lot of astronauts are going

529
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 3: to have problems related to the brain continuing to try

530
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 3: to establish a subjective vertical where the kind of information

531
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 3: that it's normally getting from the vestibular system to supply

532
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 3: that is not present, or the vestibular system is just

533
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 3: being you know, stimulated to the point of haywireness, Like

534
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 3: it's getting confusing information and that's conflicting with visual information.

535
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 3: So it causes all these problems initial but it doesn't stay,

536
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 3: or at least for most astronauts, does not stay like

537
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 3: that forever. There is an adjustment period, and then eventually

538
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 3: the brain starts to get used to the new environment

539
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 3: and adapt essentially to the idea that I now live

540
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 3: in a place where there's no necessary up and down.

541
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So there have been some other studies involving

542
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 2: goggles like this or goggles that carry out some more functions.

543
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 2: There is the Ensbruk goggle experiment of the fifties and sixties,

544
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 2: carried out by Austrian psychologist Theodore Heersman who lived eighteen

545
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 2: eighty three through nineteen sixty one and Ivo Kohler who

546
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 2: lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen eighty five, involving prism equipped goggles,

547
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 2: colored goggles, and other designs that distorted perception in one

548
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 2: way or another, including flipping things upside down, but also

549
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 2: stuff like making the wear see only through the back

550
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 2: of their head via a retroscope, and so you know,

551
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 2: they were really sort of getting into the nitty gritty

552
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 2: of well, what if we did this, what if we

553
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 2: did this? And these experiments were again more focused on

554
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 2: particular effects, and they often lasted for extended periods of time,

555
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 2: like they would have subjects wearing these things for weeks,

556
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 2: and you know, ultimately these various studies were further revealed

557
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 2: the power of neuroplasticity in the brain when it comes

558
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 2: to visual sensory input and regarding the upside down world.

559
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 2: These experiments also found that people adapted after a period

560
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 2: of days psychologist Hubert Dolzel also conducted a rigorous long

561
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 2: term study published in the book Living in a World

562
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 2: Transformed in eighty two, and he found that while the

563
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 2: upside down visual sensations never fully disappeared again, the world

564
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:11,760
Speaker 2: still looks flipped and your brain does not flip things

565
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 2: back for you said that the appropriateceptive since the internal

566
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 2: map of where your limbs are it completely reorients. And

567
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 2: then it's worth noting that fMRI assisted studies have also

568
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 2: shed additional light on all of this, and the basic

569
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 2: experimental findings seem to have remained the same. Subjects adapt

570
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 2: to move and even read, but they don't experience a

571
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 2: true reversal. Things remain flipped. But i F MRI has

572
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 2: revealed increased activity in the parietal cortex responsible for spatial

573
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 2: processing and the motor And basically the idea here is

574
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 2: that motor response seems to essentially be corrected to work

575
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:52,720
Speaker 2: with the new data. So you know, to think in

576
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 2: terms of like you know, sci fi, if aliens strapped

577
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 2: weird goggles to our head or some sort of bizarre

578
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 2: you know, mutagen from another world suddenly flipped all of

579
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 2: our visions and made us see like this, it would

580
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 2: be greatly disorienting, but we would all adapt within a

581
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 2: matter of days and weeks to this new way of

582
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 2: seeing and moving through the world, and it would just become.

583
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 2: It would just become how it is.

584
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Now, we might not all adapt at the

585
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 3: same to the same degree or at the same rate, right,

586
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 3: I don't know this actually, but for some reason, I

587
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 3: would guess kids would probably adapt easier than older than

588
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 3: older adults, and that I.

589
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:35,800
Speaker 2: Don't recall it being specifically pointed out, but in general,

590
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 2: we know that neuroplasticity is higher in younger humans, so

591
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:40,840
Speaker 2: that would make sense.

592
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't know that, just speculating on my part,

593
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 3: but generally there would be a pattern of adaptation, even

594
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 3: to things that you just wouldn't imagine that we could

595
00:33:51,520 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 3: get used to. We can't. Okay, we've already been to

596
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 3: hell once in this series. You want to go to

597
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 3: hell again?

598
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 2: Sure? Why not? So?

599
00:34:08,680 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 3: I want to explore a different topic in upside down perception,

600
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:18,319
Speaker 3: specifically in how our brains process faces when they're upside down.

601
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 3: This is a subject that I think is both funny

602
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 3: and mysterious, fascinating and mysterious. It is known as the

603
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:32,359
Speaker 3: Thatcher effect or the Thatcher illusion, so named because it

604
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:35,839
Speaker 3: was first demonstrated with photos of the at the time

605
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 3: of this paper newly elected British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher,

606
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 3: so this was the year nineteen eighty. But the effect,

607
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:45,520
Speaker 3: to be clear, is in no way specially related to

608
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:48,319
Speaker 3: Margaret Thatcher or to the appearance of her face. It's

609
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 3: about how we perceive general human faces under strange circumstances.

610
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:58,240
Speaker 3: So this is one where it really benefits to see

611
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 3: this for yourself. If you were able to look up

612
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 3: imagery right now, you can understand the effect immediately by

613
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 3: doing a search for Thatcher illusion, or if you go

614
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 3: to one of the web pages that people have set

615
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 3: up to demonstrate it. I found one at Thatcher effect

616
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 3: dot com.

617
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:15,879
Speaker 2: But it is worth noting that it's gonna make more

618
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:17,839
Speaker 2: sense to you and be more effective. It is if

619
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 2: it's a face you're familiar with, then Margaret Thatcher obviously

620
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 2: a pretty famous international figure, but also one that people

621
00:35:26,040 --> 00:35:29,880
Speaker 2: don't see every day in today's media environment, so you

622
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 2: might be better off looking at some other celebrity or something.

623
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 3: People do this with other celebrities as well. In fact,

624
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 3: I've got some in the outline for you to look

625
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 3: at here rob In fact, for our video viewers on Netflix,

626
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 3: could we just briefly throw up an image of the

627
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 3: Thatcher effect to demonstrate Ah, so do explain what it

628
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,760
Speaker 3: is here. Imagine you take a photo of a face,

629
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:59,399
Speaker 3: any face, especially a smiling face. So I'm personally going

630
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 3: to be thinking about Christopher Lambert here, christof Lambert doing

631
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:06,320
Speaker 3: like a big you know, grinning Raiden and Mortal Kombat

632
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 3: the movie, that kind of thing. So you take a

633
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 3: pritted out photo of face and carefully you use a

634
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:17,160
Speaker 3: razor to cut out the mouth, like cut out a

635
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 3: little rectangle around the mouth, and cut out the eyes,

636
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 3: and then keeping the picture otherwise the same, you flip

637
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 3: just the mouth and the eyes upside down. You leave

638
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:30,960
Speaker 3: them where the mouth and the eyes go, but you

639
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 3: invert them. Okay, so now you've got regular face upside

640
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 3: down mouth, upside down eyes. The magnitude of the effect

641
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 3: can vary, but on average this tends to create a grotesque,

642
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 3: hilarious image that is immediately recognizable as absolutely cursed. And

643
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:57,800
Speaker 3: there are differences depending on like on a facial expression

644
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 3: is a big thing. Like I think a very flat

645
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 3: closed mouth makes the effect less noticeable, but especially when

646
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:08,280
Speaker 3: there's like a smile or something, this effect is not subtle.

647
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 3: It looks like something from the pit of hell that

648
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:14,759
Speaker 3: has come out to suck your soul. And based on

649
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:17,319
Speaker 3: looking at a lot of these, I think it is

650
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:22,960
Speaker 3: the big smile, especially that inevitably creates great terror and anguish.

651
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 3: So I've got some more examples for you to look

652
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 3: at in the outline. Here rob one that actually doesn't

653
00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 3: have a big toothy smile but does still look pretty cursed.

654
00:37:31,920 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 3: Is an image that was going around of Adele with

655
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:39,160
Speaker 3: thatcherized mouth and eyes. It looks something about that image

656
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:43,840
Speaker 3: looks a little bit cabinet of doctor Kaligari. There's just

657
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 3: I don't know.

658
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 2: It's evil. It is, but you wouldn't necessarily if you

659
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:53,319
Speaker 2: saw upside down face Adele. You know, if you saw

660
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 2: that your face Adele on the street, you wouldn't think, oh,

661
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:58,360
Speaker 2: there is a denizen of Hell. It's like there is

662
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 2: a lady. I don't know. It doesn't look bad crazy

663
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 2: at least at first glance.

664
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:05,760
Speaker 3: Really wow, Okay, I don't know, I'm seeing something different.

665
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 2: I don't know. Of course, with the Adele image, are

666
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:09,320
Speaker 2: the lips flipped.

667
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're not noticing. Wow, you're not noticing.

668
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 2: No, no, no, clip, I'm looking at like where is the

669
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 2: larger lip? And yeah, yeah, I mean I guess yeah.

670
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 2: As we'll discuss, like this is part of what's going

671
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 2: on in the mind. The way it's you know, stitching

672
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 2: things together but not seeing her teeth. I think is

673
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 2: very clear here because the toothy images are the ones

674
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,399
Speaker 2: that turn a toothy smile into a grimace of hell.

675
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 3: Yes, like I said, yeah, the big the big toothy

676
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 3: smile is like the most extreme, hell infernalizing of the images.

677
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 3: But still something typically looks wrong when you see the

678
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,319
Speaker 3: head right side up and the eyes and mouth upside down.

679
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 3: So you know, in a sense this might not be

680
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 3: surprising you screw around with human facial features. You flip

681
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 3: people's eyes and mouth upside down, keep the rest of

682
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 3: the face right side up, it is probably going to

683
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:07,799
Speaker 3: look to some extent wrong and grotesque. But here's the

684
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 3: psychologically interesting thing. If you take one of these hilarious

685
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 3: cursed faces and you simply turn the whole image upside down,

686
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 3: the effect becomes, to many observers almost completely invisible, or

687
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 3: at the very least significantly more difficult to detect. So

688
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 3: a thatcherized face turned upside down just looks like a

689
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:40,719
Speaker 3: normal face turned upside down. You don't see the grotesque

690
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:44,879
Speaker 3: inversions unless you're really taking your time and looking for them,

691
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 3: or unless you rotate the image right side up again,

692
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 3: and then you recognize the horror immediately. So isn't that

693
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:57,360
Speaker 3: interesting an upside down face? Just turning a head upside

694
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 3: down obscures otherwise comple completely obvious mutilations of the image.

695
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is going on here? Yeah?

696
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 3: So this effect was originally discovered by a British psychologist

697
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 3: named Peter Thompson working at the University of York in

698
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty. It was published in a very short paper

699
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 3: in the journal Perception with the title Margaret Thatcher a

700
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 3: New Illusion. So the paper is just a few paragraphs

701
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 3: and an accompanying image Thompson, And in fact there's no

702
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:31,919
Speaker 3: experiment in the paper at all, I think, because the

703
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 3: strength of the effect is immediately apparent to anybody who

704
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:39,360
Speaker 3: just looks at the image and flips the paper upside

705
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,359
Speaker 3: down and right side up, Like, you don't really need

706
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:45,479
Speaker 3: an experiment to see something interesting is going on here.

707
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 3: So in a very brief background section. It's like one

708
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 3: paragraph long. Thompson refers to previous researchers who had proposed

709
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:59,320
Speaker 3: that upside down faces are more difficult to recognize, perhaps

710
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 3: because within them it is harder to recognize facial expressions.

711
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,320
Speaker 3: That was kind of a strange claim to me. Maybe

712
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 3: I admit that maybe I don't understand something about what's

713
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:12,799
Speaker 3: being positive there, But I was thinking, why would it

714
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 3: be expressions that make that make it harder to recognize

715
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:19,759
Speaker 3: upside down face? And again, maybe I admit there's something

716
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 3: I don't understand. But Thompson says that it says that

717
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 3: since the eyes in the mouth tend to convey the

718
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 3: most information about emotional state through facial expression, quote, it

719
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 3: seems possible that an inverted face in which the eyes

720
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:38,359
Speaker 3: and mouth remain the normal way round might preserve the

721
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 3: facial expression better than a truly inverted face. So he

722
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:45,840
Speaker 3: decided to try it out, and in another source in

723
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 3: a minute, he's going to give a different kind of

724
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 3: explanation for his inspiration to create this image. So there

725
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,319
Speaker 3: might be multiple reasons this.

726
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 2: This I don't know.

727
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,680
Speaker 3: Early photoshopping experiment actually came together, but for whatever reason,

728
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 3: he did to try out the mouth and eyes in version.

729
00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 3: So he cut out the eyes and mouth of a

730
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 3: photo of Margaret Thatcher that he got from a poster

731
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:11,919
Speaker 3: from a student organization, and he flipped him upside down

732
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 3: relative to the rest of the head. And he observed that, strangely,

733
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 3: when you are looking at the whole image upside down,

734
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 3: it doesn't really seem to change her expression.

735
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:25,280
Speaker 2: Quote.

736
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 3: However, Figure two, which can be viewed by rotating the

737
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:32,360
Speaker 3: page one hundred and eighty degrees, reveals that we have

738
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 3: been cruelly deceived by the smiling mis Thatcher of figure one.

739
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 3: Her two faces are now dramatically different. Returning to figure one,

740
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 3: meaning flipping the page right side up again, it is

741
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:48,320
Speaker 3: still very difficult to perceive the eyes and mouth rotated

742
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:50,279
Speaker 3: version as we now know it to be.

743
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 2: And looking at an example of this, it is crazy.

744
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:58,880
Speaker 2: I know that I should, or I know that I

745
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:01,799
Speaker 2: should expect to see some different you know. Yeah, but

746
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,279
Speaker 2: the two images really like match up pretty well. The

747
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 2: only thing that really jumps out at me is just

748
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 2: the obvious place where you can tell that something had

749
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:13,319
Speaker 2: been cut and yeah, pasted, you know.

750
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would not looking at the thatcherized version of

751
00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 3: the of the face upside down, I would not notice

752
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:24,880
Speaker 3: anything was weird about it. It is not until you

753
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 3: rotate it that you start to see the way something's

754
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,760
Speaker 3: wrong and then oh, oh, okay, yeah that's totally wrong.

755
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 3: And I guess it's like a partially dawning awareness, like

756
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 3: as you turn it around. But so you've got the

757
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 3: core components here. You got the face editing, which is

758
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:44,560
Speaker 3: immediately overwhelmingly apparent when the face is right side up,

759
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 3: but then it mostly vanishes and looks normal when the

760
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 3: picture is upside down. There's also I think a bit

761
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 3: of dry political humor in this short paper. It's so

762
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 3: dry you can't even really explain it. But just one

763
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:01,280
Speaker 3: example is the acknowledgment section of the paper for where

764
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:05,960
Speaker 3: Thompson says, quote, I thank the your Conservative Association for

765
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,320
Speaker 3: supplying the stimulus material.

766
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 2: This being the post organization that provided the poster. Ok.

767
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, the conservative organization that gave the political poster. Yeah.

768
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe I'm reading into that, but that

769
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 3: was a funny sentence to me.

770
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:26,760
Speaker 2: So this was going up on like college students' walls,

771
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:28,360
Speaker 2: like conservative college students walls.

772
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 3: No, I don't think it was a poster like, oh,

773
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 3: I have a Batman poster in my room, or it

774
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 3: wasn't like the Einstein with the tongue out poster. I

775
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 3: think this is more like a campaign poster, political poster

776
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 3: for the you know, for the political organization for conservative students.

777
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 2: Okay.

778
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 3: So, in the years since Thompson first discovered this, there

779
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 3: have been many experiments demonstrating versions of the Thatcher effect

780
00:44:55,440 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 3: with human subjects. It has proven especially in interesting as

781
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 3: a way of exploring how humans recognize the faces of

782
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 3: other humans. So experiments will often take the form of

783
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 3: tasks where subjects have to look at pictures of faces

784
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:15,840
Speaker 3: upside down and right side up and judge as quickly

785
00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:19,800
Speaker 3: as they can whether faces have normal features or whether

786
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 3: the face has been thatcherized. And as you just imagine

787
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 3: trying to do one of these tasks, it would probably

788
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 3: be almost infuriating how difficult it is to figure out

789
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,839
Speaker 3: whether the upside down face is altered or not. I

790
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 3: was reading a bit more about the history of the

791
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:40,279
Speaker 3: Thatcher effect in an entry in the Oxford Compendium of

792
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 3: Visual Illusions edited by Shapiro and Todorovich, and this entry

793
00:45:45,200 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 3: on the Thatcher effect called about face is actually by

794
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 3: Peter Thompson, the same guy who discovered it, and he

795
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 3: tells a story here that's kind of interesting. He gives

796
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 3: a slightly different account of exactly how he first discovered this,

797
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,560
Speaker 3: how he ended up at the photo editing task. Here

798
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 3: he says what he was really trying to do was

799
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 3: demonstrate something for his students. The idea was that at

800
00:46:08,239 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 3: a distance, some fine details of an image, like a

801
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 3: human face, would be undetectable, but then as you came closer,

802
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 3: the details would become clear. And so he originally made

803
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:22,840
Speaker 3: the he says here he made the altered Thatcher face

804
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 3: with the eyes and mouth inverted to show this principle.

805
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:27,879
Speaker 3: I think the idea was you'd hold it far away

806
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 3: and students would be like, ah, yeah, that's just a

807
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 3: picture of Margaret Thatcher. But then you would come closer

808
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 3: and be like, oh, something is wrong. But he says,

809
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 3: it just so happened that in the process of doing

810
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 3: of making these materials, he happened to see the thatcherized

811
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 3: image upside down, and he realized that when they were

812
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:50,400
Speaker 3: upside down, these images looked the same. The thatcherized and

813
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 3: unthatcherized version looked the same, despite how obviously disgustingly different

814
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 3: they were when oriented normally. So I love when you

815
00:46:58,120 --> 00:46:59,839
Speaker 3: get these little accidents.

816
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 2: Just because he happened to post it down on the

817
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 2: on the desk upside down, and then then you got

818
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 2: the deeper revelation about what's going on here.

819
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thompson also points out some interesting historical forerunners, not

820
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:17,360
Speaker 3: to the Thatcher effect, but just to differences in face

821
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:21,840
Speaker 3: perception based on vertical orientation. So in this century, he

822
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:26,320
Speaker 3: cites the work of the sixteenth century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimbaldo,

823
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 3: who live fifteen twenty seven to fifteen ninety three. This

824
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,319
Speaker 3: guy was a court painter and a master of festivals

825
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,920
Speaker 3: for three Holy Roman emperors. You have probably seen his

826
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 3: paintings before. He likes to, or I guess liked long ago,

827
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:46,200
Speaker 3: liked to make images of people or humanoid figures out

828
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 3: of assemblages of smaller inanimate objects like food items or books.

829
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:55,919
Speaker 3: So some of these composite images, you have somebody who

830
00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 3: is one level of resolution, it's like a you know,

831
00:48:00,239 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 3: a jurist or a barrister or something. But then you

832
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 3: zoom in it's like the face is a roast chicken.

833
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 3: And then there's a you know, and the ear is

834
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 3: a clam or something. It's just a bunch of food.

835
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:15,719
Speaker 2: Yeah. I long loved these images. Yeah, yeah, they there's

836
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:18,280
Speaker 2: a surreal nature to them that you're just like, wow,

837
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 2: this is like this, this is such a singular vision.

838
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 3: But some of these playful images are clearly supposed to

839
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:29,280
Speaker 3: be up down reversible. So there's one called the vegetable gardener,

840
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,840
Speaker 3: and there's another one called reversible Head with a basket

841
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 3: of fruit, and they are only really recognizable as human

842
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 3: portraits when oriented one way. You flip them around vertically

843
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 3: and they don't look like humans anymore. They just look

844
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:46,400
Speaker 3: like bowls of produce. Rob I don't know if you

845
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 3: can tell that. I've got examples for you to look

846
00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:50,759
Speaker 3: at in the outline here. I would say, both of

847
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 3: these immediately look like people upside down. Flip them right

848
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 3: side up, and I don't see the face anymore. It's

849
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:58,799
Speaker 3: just a bowl of fruit and vegetables.

850
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:01,799
Speaker 2: They're The crazy thing is, if you're looking at the

851
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 2: both versions side by side, it's hard to not see

852
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 2: the face in the version in which the bowl is

853
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 2: right side up and the face is upside down. Because

854
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 2: of this effect.

855
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, so again that's not quite Thatcher effect, but that is, like,

856
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:21,400
Speaker 3: there's something weird going on when we're trying to process

857
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 3: faces upside down or things that look like faces upside down,

858
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 3: And Thompson goes on to note that before he discovered

859
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:31,759
Speaker 3: the Thatcher effect, it was well known in psychology that

860
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 3: the recognition of faces in particular paid an especially high

861
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:44,720
Speaker 3: penalty for up down inversion. Experiments show that basically every

862
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:49,240
Speaker 3: type of image with a regular updown orientation takes people

863
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:53,080
Speaker 3: longer to identify when it's upside down. So whether it's

864
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:56,800
Speaker 3: a dog breed or a vehicle like a car, or

865
00:49:56,840 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 3: an airplane or a building, any of these things that

866
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 3: are normally vertically oriented one way in the world, it's

867
00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:08,959
Speaker 3: harder and takes people longer to recognize them and say

868
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 3: what they are when they're upside down. But the point is,

869
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 3: so that's not abnormal. It's true for all up down

870
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 3: objects basically, But the point is that the gap between

871
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:24,399
Speaker 3: how easy faces are to identify normally versus how much

872
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 3: harder they are to identify when upside down is especially large.

873
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:35,840
Speaker 3: Faces in particular pay a special inversion penalty, and Thompson

874
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 3: argues that we still actually don't fully understand the cause

875
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 3: of the Thatcher effect, but I thought i'd run through

876
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:49,919
Speaker 3: a few common interpretations, partial explanations, and subsequent findings. One

877
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 3: thing is that a widely cited at least partial explanation

878
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 3: of the Thatcher effect goes something like this. It is

879
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 3: differences in human faces are actually quite small. In one sense,

880
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 3: all human faces look basically the same, but they look

881
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 3: very different to us because we are highly sensitive to

882
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:13,799
Speaker 3: tiny differences in human faces, because we need to be.

883
00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 2: We need to.

884
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:19,359
Speaker 3: Use that information to recognize identity, who is this and

885
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:24,480
Speaker 3: expression how are they feeling? This is extremely important information

886
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:28,160
Speaker 3: to us, often life and death information, literally, to know

887
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:30,080
Speaker 3: who you're looking at and know how they're feeling.

888
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:33,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean we've all been in that situation

889
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:37,400
Speaker 2: where you see someone out in a public setting and

890
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 2: you have that moment where you're like, is this person

891
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 2: the person? I think? It is? Like they look up

892
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:45,680
Speaker 2: just enough like someone you used to know, and then

893
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 2: you feel that kind of like social pressure whether you

894
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 2: should acknowledge this or not or keep it to yourself,

895
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 2: and you know, social pressure is no small thing for

896
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 2: the human animal.

897
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Oh, I mean I would say in our

898
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 3: ancestral environments, that social record ignition and recognition of feelings

899
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 3: probably literally was a difference between you know, it could

900
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:09,800
Speaker 3: be difference between meeting a friend and having a deadly encounter,

901
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 3: or navigating tense social situations if you were not accurately

902
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 3: recognizing other people's emotions, that can be very dangerous. Yeah,

903
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:25,080
Speaker 3: So in order to recognize faces quickly and accurately, our

904
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:30,800
Speaker 3: brains have special adaptations. We humans tend not to look

905
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 3: at faces feature by feature, but in a holistic way,

906
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 3: taking in the whole thing, the whole face at once,

907
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 3: and recognizing it based on a sort of at least

908
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 3: in part on the spatial relationship between all of the

909
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 3: features put together, kind of the total map. And this

910
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 3: is what experts call, I think, the configural information view

911
00:52:56,160 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 3: of the face. But the configural representations is only works

912
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 3: when the face is in its normal orientation, or it

913
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:06,800
Speaker 3: only works fully when the face is in the normal

914
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:10,400
Speaker 3: updown orientation. When you turn the face upside down, configural

915
00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:14,719
Speaker 3: recognition fails or is impaired, and then we have to

916
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 3: fall back on other systems to try to understand the

917
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,560
Speaker 3: face we're looking at. So we might have to fall

918
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:23,640
Speaker 3: back on looking at the face feature by feature to

919
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,800
Speaker 3: try to make sense of it. You look at the eyes,

920
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 3: and then you look at the mouth, you look at

921
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 3: the nose. You're trying to piece it together, one thing

922
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 3: at a time, and in this feature by feature system,

923
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 3: it is harder to notice that the mouth is turned

924
00:53:38,239 --> 00:53:42,840
Speaker 3: grotesquely upside down relative to the nose and the chin. Instead,

925
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 3: you're going feature by feature and you're like, yep, that's

926
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:47,080
Speaker 3: a mouth. Everything checks out.

927
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:49,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fascinating because this is exactly what you

928
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:52,759
Speaker 2: can kind of feel this happening when you have that

929
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 2: moment where you think you recognize someone. Your brain is like,

930
00:53:56,120 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 2: we have a holistic match, and then we're like, okay,

931
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 2: on to the next level of analysis here, what does

932
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:04,200
Speaker 2: the mouse look like? And so forth.

933
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, so regarding the Thatcher effect, you know, yeah, so

934
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:12,279
Speaker 3: you're maybe going more feature by feature when a head

935
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:14,400
Speaker 3: is upside down, But then you rotate the image and

936
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,759
Speaker 3: then it's like the configural processing comes back online again.

937
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:20,520
Speaker 3: It becomes easier at least, and then you see, oh, oh,

938
00:54:20,640 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 3: things are not fitting together.

939
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:22,720
Speaker 2: Something's wrong.

940
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 3: And Thompson seems to think this explanation is not completely correct.

941
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,879
Speaker 3: It may be partially correct, but Thompson thinks it still

942
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:36,320
Speaker 3: doesn't explain everything, and there are mysteries that remain about

943
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:40,319
Speaker 3: the Thatcher illusion, like some results don't fully match up

944
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:44,319
Speaker 3: with that broad story about what's going on there. But

945
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 3: there are other interesting things. One is that, strangely, the

946
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:53,919
Speaker 3: Thatcher effect seems to be not always, but often reduced

947
00:54:54,160 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 3: or atypical in people with the condition known as prosopagnosia

948
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 3: or face blindness. Yes, the term face blindness. We've talked

949
00:55:03,040 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 3: about this on the show before, though it's been a while.

950
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:08,719
Speaker 3: It can sometimes give people the wrong idea about what

951
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:13,280
Speaker 3: prosopagnosia is. So to understand face blindness, do not picture.

952
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:19,000
Speaker 3: Do not picture people with their faces blurred out or invisible.

953
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:24,320
Speaker 3: People with face blindness can actually see faces just fine.

954
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 3: They have normal visual processing and normal ability to see,

955
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 3: so faces probably look the same as they do to us.

956
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:35,759
Speaker 3: The problem is that people with face blindness do not

957
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 3: recognize familiar faces, sometimes even including their own face in

958
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:45,160
Speaker 3: the mirror as easily as people with typical face recognition.

959
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:50,120
Speaker 3: And for people with face blindness recognizing faces, it's just

960
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 3: not easy and automatic like it is for most people.

961
00:55:54,320 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 3: It often requires effortful attention and deliberate memorization of specific

962
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:03,919
Speaker 3: facial features, so people with face blindness have to make

963
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 3: a mental map like Jim is the guy who has

964
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:11,279
Speaker 3: brown hair and a mole beside his left eye, and

965
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 3: they can remember based on the individual feature processing. Face

966
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 3: blindness is most often associated with dysfunction in a region

967
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:23,120
Speaker 3: of the brain known as the fusiform gyros or the

968
00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:27,680
Speaker 3: fusiform face area. The FFA could be a dysfunction in

969
00:56:27,719 --> 00:56:31,640
Speaker 3: the FFA or within a broader network of brain regions

970
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 3: that work together to process faces. So a network of

971
00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 3: regions that include the FFA and this FFA based network

972
00:56:39,400 --> 00:56:43,080
Speaker 3: is what we use to engage the holistic or configural

973
00:56:43,160 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 3: processing a near instant recognition of faces. Dysfunction anywhere in

974
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 3: this system or in the fusiform face area can lead

975
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:56,280
Speaker 3: to prosopagnosia and can be caused by either congenital disorder

976
00:56:56,440 --> 00:57:00,160
Speaker 3: or by brain injury can be acquired later in life.

977
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:05,160
Speaker 3: But the interesting thing is people with face blindness, on average,

978
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 3: are less subject to the Thatcher effect than people with

979
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:15,279
Speaker 3: typical face perception, so the thatcherized faces are sometimes easier

980
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 3: for people with face blindness to see as grotesque even

981
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:24,040
Speaker 3: when upside down. And this fact, which is strange to imagine,

982
00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 3: but this is part of the evidence for the idea

983
00:57:27,240 --> 00:57:32,160
Speaker 3: of holistic or configural processing being key to the Thatcher effect,

984
00:57:32,200 --> 00:57:34,720
Speaker 3: because you know, people on face blindness have to fall

985
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 3: back on featural processing to identify faces anyway.

986
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:42,560
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So yes, yes, they don't have the pronounced

987
00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:47,080
Speaker 2: like first pass recognition ability. They're not cost they're not

988
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:50,160
Speaker 2: caught by like first pass recognition illusions.

989
00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:54,000
Speaker 3: Yes, interesting, but from what I've read, it's not like

990
00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 3: it's not as simple as it just just Thatcher effect

991
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:00,240
Speaker 3: turned on for typical face recognition and turned off for

992
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:04,240
Speaker 3: people with brosopagnotia. Instead, it's more on average it's reduced

993
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 3: for people with face blindness, so you know, some individual

994
00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:13,240
Speaker 3: results vary, so anyway, that's your effect. I think is

995
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 3: a great subject because of not only how hilarious and

996
00:58:17,360 --> 00:58:20,960
Speaker 3: cursed these images look, but it really does raise interesting

997
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:24,320
Speaker 3: questions about how our brains work the way they do.

998
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 3: And you know, mysterious process is like recognition, Like when

999
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,800
Speaker 3: you really start to think about what recognition is, the

1000
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 3: sense of familiarity we get when we identify an image,

1001
00:58:36,440 --> 00:58:39,760
Speaker 3: and like how that sense is generated in the brain.

1002
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:44,960
Speaker 3: It becomes a more and more fascinating and mysterious process.

1003
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:48,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, all right, well, at this point I think

1004
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:53,920
Speaker 2: we can acknowledge, let's see, everything is upside down, but

1005
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:57,000
Speaker 2: there's also no upside down. Things that you think are

1006
00:58:57,040 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 2: right side up are actually upside down, and things that

1007
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 2: you think are upside down or actually right side up.

1008
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 2: I think that about covers it.

1009
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 3: I think that's right. And when things are upside down,

1010
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:08,240
Speaker 3: you might not notice things about them. There might be

1011
00:59:08,360 --> 00:59:15,200
Speaker 3: a i don't know, hidden alterations slipping beneath the detection level,

1012
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 3: so you know, scrutinize those upside down images.

1013
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear back from anyone who

1014
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 2: who after listening to this, or just outside of the

1015
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:25,880
Speaker 2: experience of listening to this, I have tinkered around with

1016
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:30,280
Speaker 2: like these stature images, thatcherized images, or if you've ever

1017
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:35,280
Speaker 2: experimented with some sort of perception altering goggles, you know,

1018
00:59:35,320 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 2: some of this will also venture into the world of VR,

1019
00:59:37,680 --> 00:59:40,600
Speaker 2: I know, in which you were essentially putting on some

1020
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:43,400
Speaker 2: sort of goggles that are giving you an augmented or

1021
00:59:43,440 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 2: completely different visual feed of what the world is. Yeah,

1022
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:50,520
Speaker 2: all right, well we're going to go and call it there,

1023
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:52,640
Speaker 2: but yeah, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.

1024
00:59:52,680 --> 00:59:55,400
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1025
00:59:55,520 --> 00:59:58,000
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes in

1026
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:00,680
Speaker 2: two season Thursdays, a short form episode on WIN and

1027
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 2: on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just

1028
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:06,480
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on weird House Cinema. Wherever

1029
01:00:06,520 --> 01:00:08,600
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1030
01:00:08,640 --> 01:00:11,920
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1031
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1032
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1033
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:22,040
Speaker 2: so forth. That also helps us out belong.

1034
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1035
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:29,600
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1036
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:31,960
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1037
01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:33,959
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1038
01:00:34,080 --> 01:00:36,520
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow

1039
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:44,560
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1040
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:47,880
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1041
01:00:47,960 --> 01:00:50,720
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1042
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:53,600
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1043
01:01:04,680 --> 01:01:05,080
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