Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey wasn't the stuff to blow your mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: today we're talking about your brain on art. We were
Speaker 1: discussing the way that art Guard Funcle's music transforms the
Speaker 1: mind um scans of of the brain while listening to
Speaker 1: some of his classics while listening to say Bright Eyes
Speaker 1: or even some of his work with Paul Simon. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna mention Paul Simon. He told us that
Speaker 1: it's it's in his the agreement that we signed with him.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to talk about all Simon or ps
Speaker 1: as he refers to him, excellent, excellent. So I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of limiting. Do you think maybe we should
Speaker 1: just talk about art? Yeah? Yeah, I think your art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's open it up a little and let's just talk
Speaker 1: about art as a whole, as in, uh more specifically
Speaker 1: visual arts, paintings to certain degree, sculptures. Yeah, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's some I we're standing in front of a piece
Speaker 1: of art. I mean, this is what we're trying to
Speaker 1: get to and why we're completely arrested. What is happening
Speaker 1: in our brains? Why why are we so attracted to
Speaker 1: some will be arrested if you were trying to touch
Speaker 1: the art. Yeah, by the way, Yeah, don't try to, like, uh,
Speaker 1: make a big scene with a friend and then don't
Speaker 1: expose yourself to it. Yeah, don't don't, Okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no overcoats nakedness underneath, and don't make a big scene
Speaker 1: with a friend and then try to get them painting
Speaker 1: off of the wall and run away with it. Doesn't work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, I mean seriously, haven't you ever had a
Speaker 1: moment where you're standing in front of something and you
Speaker 1: were just completely floored, You're just smacked. Yeah, specifically, like
Speaker 1: really the last couple of years, I have two examples
Speaker 1: of like recent experiences. I love going to art museums,
Speaker 1: especially like modern art museums. But in the last year
Speaker 1: or two I got to see that a young museum
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and there is a piece there by
Speaker 1: an artist by the name of Irving Norman, who I've
Speaker 1: mentioned before on this podcast. And the is this enormous
Speaker 1: wall sized piece from nineteen sixty six called War and Peace.
Speaker 1: And I when I there were other pieces in the room.
Speaker 1: But when I saw that one, it was just one
Speaker 1: of these where I just stared at it because it's
Speaker 1: it's enormous, divide into three pieces, uh and uh. Like
Speaker 1: on either end there these just this dark um sort
Speaker 1: of metropolis esque visions of of like this nightmare capitalist
Speaker 1: future that that the artist was was perceiving and fearing
Speaker 1: back in the day. He was also influenced by VS
Speaker 1: by the Spanish Civil War, so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like the horrors of war and the whole central piece
Speaker 1: or these two titans, these two enormous pale figures, and
Speaker 1: they're about to strike these weapons together, like these giant clubs,
Speaker 1: and the clubs are like hollowed out and filled with
Speaker 1: all these tiny people, and it's just this amazing, just
Speaker 1: nightmarck image with all this stuff going on in it,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, neon and and cities and bones
Speaker 1: and and war and strife and and all these symbols
Speaker 1: hidden in it, and it just it just you in.
Speaker 1: I just remember just standing there and just just standing there,
Speaker 1: just wanting to continue standing there in front of it.
Speaker 1: Another another artist that really impressed me in the last year,
Speaker 1: so it was Richard Sarah h when well, actually, when
Speaker 1: both of us were in New York for the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival, UM, I snuck over to along with my wife,
Speaker 1: snuck over to the New York Museum of Art and UH,
Speaker 1: and we mainly went over to catch this Alexander McQueen
Speaker 1: piece they did with the fashion guy Savage Beauty, and
Speaker 1: that was really cool. But then we we wandered into
Speaker 1: this section about Richard Sarah and Uh in this amazing retrospective.
Speaker 1: He does a lot of sculpture, and a lot of
Speaker 1: his work is just black and white, especially is more
Speaker 1: painting type work, and it's it'll be just like a circle,
Speaker 1: like a black circle, enormous on a large white plane.
Speaker 1: But then the closer you get, you see all this texture,
Speaker 1: like the circle is is it like comes out at you.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's it's a three D it looks
Speaker 1: like it's made out of charcoal or earth or or
Speaker 1: or it's just sort of worn there and it just
Speaker 1: I had a really nice experiences staring at these various
Speaker 1: pieces and just being sucked into the into the contrast
Speaker 1: of it. So how about you, what what have you
Speaker 1: been into? Art wise? I love modern art, but one
Speaker 1: of the things that's just stayed with me throughout the years.
Speaker 1: Is a painting by John Singer Sergeant. And I'm not
Speaker 1: a huge fan of him. By the way that his
Speaker 1: his whole body of work I think is really beautiful,
Speaker 1: but I'm not like, oh man, this guy's the best.
Speaker 1: But there's a huge painting at the Isabella Stewart Gardner
Speaker 1: Museum in Boston that I used to just go and
Speaker 1: stand in front of all the time, and it's called
Speaker 1: L Hello. It's E L J A L EO, and
Speaker 1: it's just incredible. It's just it's there's like slightly erotic,
Speaker 1: and then you know it's by the way it's painted
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, and um, you know this is
Speaker 1: an American painter, so it's not you know, it's not
Speaker 1: that racy. But there's a woman who is dancing and
Speaker 1: she's swaying to the side, and there are men playing
Speaker 1: the guitars in the background, and it's just very moody
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of space in the painting, and
Speaker 1: for some reason, I always feel like I'm going to
Speaker 1: be sucked in, and so it's very much a mood
Speaker 1: for me. Um, And every time I look at it again,
Speaker 1: same thing. I have a different understanding of that painting.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's so fascinating about art is
Speaker 1: each time you go back to a particular piece, you
Speaker 1: tend to get more from it. And how amazing that
Speaker 1: someone can create something from their brain like that and
Speaker 1: give you a new, fresh experience every time you look
Speaker 1: at it. And that is actually what VS. Ramachandra, neuroscientists
Speaker 1: who we've talked about quite a bit, says the purpose
Speaker 1: of art is. He says it's to enhance, transcend, or
Speaker 1: indeed even distort reality. And he's really big on this
Speaker 1: because he says that the reason why we're so engaged
Speaker 1: with something is we're looking at it and it's not reality.
Speaker 1: It is somehow a caricature of it, but it has
Speaker 1: distilled the essence of some sort of truth in it.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that today and and try to even see if we
Speaker 1: can get some science behind the art going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's you even hear stories that I've never
Speaker 1: had this reaction, but you hear stories about people who
Speaker 1: have had just severe reactions encountering amazing art, like people
Speaker 1: who have fainted, people who come to tears staring at
Speaker 1: a piece, and uh, I mean that and that just
Speaker 1: speaks you know, maybe not everyone has the capacity to
Speaker 1: be touched like that or that or the right wiring
Speaker 1: um as we'll discuss. You know, there may be some
Speaker 1: elements of synesthesia at work there. But you had just
Speaker 1: the idea that a painting on a wall created by
Speaker 1: um an artist that has been dead for centuries, can
Speaker 1: still just evoke this visceral response in the viewer that
Speaker 1: it can, and also that it can. It can anger us,
Speaker 1: they can frighten us, they can disturb us. It can
Speaker 1: it can bring us to tears. It can captivate our minds.
Speaker 1: Like you know, you go and you see a really
Speaker 1: awesome piece at a museum, it continues to play a
Speaker 1: part in your thought patterns for weeks, months, years to come.
Speaker 1: And it's so subjective, right, And this is why Ramachandran
Speaker 1: and also Professor samr. Zeki, also a neurs scientists have
Speaker 1: looked into this to see if there's some sort of
Speaker 1: unified theory of art that they can scratch at. And
Speaker 1: of everybody wants to do this, righted theory of humor
Speaker 1: or the brain or I mean, everybody just wants a
Speaker 1: tidy explanation. And uh so we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that quite a bit today, particularly Romantron Dron and some
Speaker 1: of the thoughts that he has on this. Um doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it's exactly correct and we can just tie
Speaker 1: this up and call it a day. No, not at all, because,
Speaker 1: as we all know, the art is subjective and it's
Speaker 1: very hard to pin down. But what has happened is
Speaker 1: that there's a newish field called neuroesthetics that has bubbled up. Um.
Speaker 1: This is basically a field that's trying to try to
Speaker 1: use the tools of modern neuroscience, like brain imaging to
Speaker 1: get at the crux of art. Um and this, uh,
Speaker 1: the artist is in a sense a neuroscientist. In fact,
Speaker 1: some mere Zeki that the neurobiologists that I spoke of,
Speaker 1: has said that the artist is in a sense a
Speaker 1: neuroscientist exploring the potentials and capacities of the brain. Uh,
Speaker 1: though with different tools, And I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: This kept coming up again and again in this research
Speaker 1: that artists are the original neuroscientists. Yeah, instead of using
Speaker 1: a scalpel or a or or some sort of scanning mechanism,
Speaker 1: they're using well, maybe a scalpel or um or a
Speaker 1: paintbrush or a jar, a giant robotic cloaca. It just
Speaker 1: it just varies determining on exactly what kind of archer
Speaker 1: you're really going for. But see, it's interesting you bring
Speaker 1: up the cloaca because they say that, you know that
Speaker 1: neuroscience thinks that we can take this end product of art,
Speaker 1: right and reverse engineer to figure out how the mind works.
Speaker 1: And in a sense when when it was was the
Speaker 1: artist of VIM I can't remember his last name, Milloy,
Speaker 1: I think when he created this cloaca out of this
Speaker 1: machine was really trying to get at the the process
Speaker 1: of digestion, the second brain right, right, So a lot
Speaker 1: of this is trying to work out our humanness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a and as we're talking about analyzing the brain again,
Speaker 1: it searched to to remind everyone that these the very
Speaker 1: scanning techniques that are used. A lot of it boils
Speaker 1: down to looking. We're able to look at the brain.
Speaker 1: We're able to see how blood moves in the brain
Speaker 1: when areas of the brain are engaged. Just as we're
Speaker 1: discussed with memory, the way that memory is a complex
Speaker 1: system that interacts at various points in the brain in
Speaker 1: different systems of memory. The brain itself is rather complicated,
Speaker 1: but but we can look at it, we can see
Speaker 1: what's lighting up and we can and it's it's through
Speaker 1: that technique we attempt to understand exactly how we're processing
Speaker 1: things such as stimuli such as art or music and
Speaker 1: other studies. Well, and that's what's so fascinating about this
Speaker 1: field of neurasthetics. That's exactly what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: They're saying, this is knowable. We can actually take the
Speaker 1: brain and we can start to map it so that
Speaker 1: we can see when people feel anguish or when they
Speaker 1: feel uh, you know, titilated or um, you know, all
Speaker 1: these different things that are going through someone's mind. They
Speaker 1: feel like eventually they can tag it in the human
Speaker 1: brain and start to say, okay, how how did that
Speaker 1: actual piece of art do this to us? You know,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on? Um? And this is from Jonah
Speaker 1: Laire's Psychology Today article about this UM and he's talking
Speaker 1: specifically about the Mona Lisa smile and saying that this
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa, which has captivated audiences for hundred spears, everyone's
Speaker 1: so familiar with this piece of the Mona Lisa, we
Speaker 1: really forget how captivating it is because it's it's so
Speaker 1: it's so overproduced in culture that and so I mean,
Speaker 1: we forget that it's amazing art and it's one of
Speaker 1: the great masterpieces of of of human artistry, right, and
Speaker 1: people are you know, there's always the question about whether
Speaker 1: or not she's smiling or smirking, or she's actually quite miffed, right,
Speaker 1: And how amazing that you can look at this painting
Speaker 1: and no one can agree on exactly what her perspective is.
Speaker 1: I would see it like she's about to smile, like
Speaker 1: I've like I've told a joke that she's a little shy,
Speaker 1: says she doesn't want to laugh or give me like
Speaker 1: a full smile, but I can tell that I've made
Speaker 1: her chuckle inside. See, I think that she just had
Speaker 1: a little bite of mutton and uh, you know, she's
Speaker 1: trying to hold still, but she's got a big water
Speaker 1: of food in her mouth. That's my interpretation. Actually. Margaret Livingston,
Speaker 1: she's a neuroscientist at Harvard, argues that da Vinci exploits
Speaker 1: the peculiar structures of the retina and this is really interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: This is again from the article from Jena Lair in
Speaker 1: Psychology Today. It says, the facial expression of the Mona
Speaker 1: Lisa fluctuates depending on which part of our retina we
Speaker 1: are using to look at her mouth. When we first
Speaker 1: look at the painting, our eyes are automatically drawn to
Speaker 1: her eyes, which means our peripheral vision perceives her smile.
Speaker 1: This part of the retina naturally focuses on the shadows
Speaker 1: cast by her cheekbones, which served to exaggerate the curvature
Speaker 1: of her lips. As a result, our peripheral vision concludes
Speaker 1: that the Mona Lisa is smiling. Livingston demonstrated this by
Speaker 1: blurring the entire painting with Adobe Photoshop to replicate what
Speaker 1: we would see if we were relying solely on peripheral vision.
Speaker 1: The end result is a much happier Mona Lisa that
Speaker 1: when we focus on her mouth, retina ignores the shadows.
Speaker 1: The brain blurniness disappears. Instead, we thick safe on the
Speaker 1: lips of the Mona Lisa, which are virtually expressionless. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, she's no longer happy. Excuse me happy.
Speaker 1: The painting has literally changed before our eyes. H It
Speaker 1: says this ambiguity is intriguing. Living Ston argues, as we
Speaker 1: keep staring at the painting to figure out what she's
Speaker 1: actually feeling, which I think that that she's nailed it.
Speaker 1: There's that ambiguity, uh, And I think that's what intrigues
Speaker 1: our minds. And somehow da Vinci had a really great
Speaker 1: understanding of perspective and how to manipulate this. And it's
Speaker 1: not just da Vinci. There are many artists who have
Speaker 1: messed with all sorts of perspective. And again, this is
Speaker 1: what neuroscientists are so intrigued by. How artists are seeing
Speaker 1: the lines and the color and distorting and manipulating reality
Speaker 1: for us. And maybe that there's some sort of insight
Speaker 1: and how they see and how have they've kind of
Speaker 1: gotten into the human brain and figured out how our
Speaker 1: eyes are actually working. So I mean that of course
Speaker 1: brings up this question about how do we see? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, vision and perception used to be that we
Speaker 1: thought that it was just our lens and our eyes
Speaker 1: taking in an image, flipping it, you know, an optical
Speaker 1: nerve transmits it to the visual cortex. Boom, We're done.
Speaker 1: But it turns out it's so much more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1: What we actually perceive. Yeah, we've we've talked in the
Speaker 1: past about site and perception and about the the the
Speaker 1: idea that there's like there's like a little area, like
Speaker 1: a little pinprick of high detail site and then there's
Speaker 1: a lot of low detail side. Even though we perceive,
Speaker 1: we look at something and we think we're seeing it
Speaker 1: all in high death, but our eyes really scanning it. Right,
Speaker 1: there's the grainy parts, right, And the grainy parts turn
Speaker 1: out to be really important in pattern recognition later on,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that a little bit. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the scientists David hu Will and Torsten Weesel demonstrated that um,
Speaker 1: instead of responding to pixels, cells in the visual cortex
Speaker 1: response to straight lines and angles of light, and that
Speaker 1: the neurons prefer contrast over brightness, straight edges over curves,
Speaker 1: and that contrast allows to more efficiently pick out object.
Speaker 1: Puble and Weasel became the first scientist to actually describe
Speaker 1: what really looks like uh, something before it has actually
Speaker 1: been perceived, when our mind is still creating our sense
Speaker 1: of sight, which I thought was really fascinating, Like, again,
Speaker 1: it's not this black and white, this is the process,
Speaker 1: this is what's happening, there are all these different things
Speaker 1: going on. One of my favorite exercises that I may
Speaker 1: have mentioned this before that underlines just what's going on
Speaker 1: with our eyes and how there's more going on with
Speaker 1: our site perception than what meets the eye, and that
Speaker 1: is that if you go to a mirror and you
Speaker 1: look at one pupil and then switch your vision to
Speaker 1: the other people, and you cannot see your eyes move right,
Speaker 1: you have blind spots. Yeah. Yeah, and again that's such
Speaker 1: a good example of how we can't necessarily always trust
Speaker 1: our reality and how so much which is fed to
Speaker 1: our eyes into our memory is is really just a
Speaker 1: matter of very selective pieces of things that sometimes have
Speaker 1: been manipulated for us if we haven't even manipulated for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Turns out that Dutch artists Pit mandreon and this I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of people are familiar with mandreon Um.
Speaker 1: This is sort of like a vertical and horizontal grid
Speaker 1: of paintings that he produced, usually with primary colors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna I'm gonna add when we do a
Speaker 1: blog post to go along with this, I will make
Speaker 1: sure that we have outgoing links to some examples of
Speaker 1: these different artists that we're mentioning. Yeah. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: you will have a handy reference of that these guys
Speaker 1: are and you're not having to try and spell weird names,
Speaker 1: just the right way in doing Google image searches. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, while driving that kind of thing. And he
Speaker 1: was trying to get at the heart of like a
Speaker 1: sort of truth about forms, and he was pretty obsessive
Speaker 1: about it. This plurality of straight lines in rectangular opposition
Speaker 1: UM and Professor Zeki has said that geometrical paintings like
Speaker 1: these are remarkably similar to the geometry of lines sensed
Speaker 1: by the visual cortex, as if the painter could look
Speaker 1: inside the process in the brain. Uh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about this visual cortex and talking about processing,
Speaker 1: there are really thirty areas of the brain with different
Speaker 1: aspects of UM processing your vision. So we're talking about depth, vision, movement, perception. Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that again drives home there's so much going
Speaker 1: on when we were just looking at something. We're looking
Speaker 1: at that painting on the wall. It's not just I
Speaker 1: am looking and then my brain is thinking about what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing, it's your your thirty different sections are working
Speaker 1: on this project. Of understanding what is before your eyes
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And then now think again about Leonardo da
Speaker 1: Vinci or any of the other great the great classical painters.
Speaker 1: Before psychologists and neuroscientists formulated theories of depth cues, these
Speaker 1: guys and and some women were actually working to create
Speaker 1: these palets on their on their canvases, to manipulate your eye, again,
Speaker 1: knowing on some level that if you draw your eye
Speaker 1: over here, then you start to to really engage the mind.
Speaker 1: You're giving the mind a bone to chew on to
Speaker 1: figure out what is the story that's going on here,
Speaker 1: and that this again is the crux of what uh
Speaker 1: rum Chendren is trying to get at. Why is some
Speaker 1: aren't so intriguing, why is this gravi us? Is there
Speaker 1: is there one unifying thing here and it possibly is
Speaker 1: that this the ability to manipulate something to the point
Speaker 1: that your brain is really intrigued by it. Kind of
Speaker 1: it reminds me of one of the more anequated ways
Speaker 1: to deal with a vampire in myth and legend, and
Speaker 1: that's to leave a knot out for it, or some
Speaker 1: sort of either or not or something that's woven really
Speaker 1: intricately because in the vampire will become obsessed with it
Speaker 1: and they'll just stand there trying to untie the knot
Speaker 1: or just feeling the uh, the weave in the fabric
Speaker 1: until the sun comes up and burns them a lot.
Speaker 1: I love that. So if you're about if you if
Speaker 1: your flesh was about to be pierced, you would just
Speaker 1: throw a knot like a good sailor tied knot and
Speaker 1: be like here and there you go, and they would
Speaker 1: sort of run off like a dog. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's silly, But but I really love it because it
Speaker 1: in illuminating something about It illuminates something about humans and
Speaker 1: trying to come up with some of you know, mythical
Speaker 1: um explanation of foul Vampuire's work. It really gives a
Speaker 1: little insight on how we work, because that's the way
Speaker 1: our brains are. Throw it up, throw it an not,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna set there fiddling with it. It's true.
Speaker 1: We love a good distraction. Um in a moment to hear.
Speaker 1: Right after we take the break, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about other distractions and what seagull chicks hatching have to
Speaker 1: do it with art. This podcast is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel
Speaker 1: at Intel. We believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Speaker 1: Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
Speaker 1: to life's questions. All right, we're back. Seagull chicks. What
Speaker 1: do they have to do with art? And what is
Speaker 1: this thing called peak shift? Peak shift? Okay again, Rama Chundra.
Speaker 1: He's thinking about art a lot these days. Right, he's
Speaker 1: a neuroscientists. He's not a big well he is at
Speaker 1: art lever now. But at the time when he was
Speaker 1: thinking about this, he had been in India a sabbatical
Speaker 1: seven or eight years and was realizing that he was
Speaker 1: responding to the art around him and the art that
Speaker 1: he had learned in his Western culture and and getting
Speaker 1: a fuller understanding of it. And he started to think
Speaker 1: about seagull chicks that hatch and they start to peck
Speaker 1: at the mother's beak for food. And the mother seagulls beak,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a long yellow beak with red spot.
Speaker 1: And it's what researchers found out is that the chicks
Speaker 1: were specifically pecking at the red spot on the beak
Speaker 1: that somehow they were hardwired to realize that red spot
Speaker 1: means food. So Ramchana refers to the research done in
Speaker 1: which the beak was simulated by a fake beak with
Speaker 1: red spot. Okay, some no, no mama chick was involved,
Speaker 1: and they still were pecking at this red spot. So
Speaker 1: then they thought, well, let's just get even more ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and let's put a stick with a red dot and
Speaker 1: and do this. Okay, same thing. They were like, we
Speaker 1: love this red stick. Just give us some food. And
Speaker 1: then they just to even abstract it even further. They
Speaker 1: took the stick and I put three red stripes on it,
Speaker 1: and the chicks went nuts. So because they're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: three moms, three meals at once. Perhaps perhaps there was
Speaker 1: some sort of representation on some level, this abstraction of
Speaker 1: this idea of food in this form and this symbol
Speaker 1: that made them go nuts for it. So so they're
Speaker 1: hardwired to appreciate certain not art, but something in the
Speaker 1: aesthetic world, some some contrast of colors and shapes, right, yes,
Speaker 1: colors and and so what what rom Charon is saying,
Speaker 1: and then this is this is sort of far reaching
Speaker 1: but interesting, okay, is that abstract artists are tapping into
Speaker 1: the figural primitives of our perceptual grammar and creating ultra
Speaker 1: normal stimuli that excites certain visual neurons in our brains
Speaker 1: as opposed to realistic looking images. And that's the important
Speaker 1: part here, Um that he's talking about is that this
Speaker 1: excitation that's happening, Um, that the seagulls are responding again
Speaker 1: to this abstract symbol, and that we are doing it
Speaker 1: on some level too. Any points out cubism as an example. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: before we get into cubism, it seems like a more
Speaker 1: and maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but could you say that
Speaker 1: a man um, a heterosexual sexual man looking at a
Speaker 1: painting of a naked woman, would, in addition to appreciating
Speaker 1: the the artistic merits of the piece, might be attracted
Speaker 1: to it just because it's a naked woman and he
Speaker 1: has programmed on a couple of different levels to either
Speaker 1: you know it. As an infant, he would want to
Speaker 1: feed from abreast. As an adult, he would want he
Speaker 1: has this drive to to mate and breed with naked
Speaker 1: women in paintings. Well again, I mean I think I'm
Speaker 1: trying would point to it and say that if you
Speaker 1: look at it carefully. If this is if this is
Speaker 1: a piece of art that's let's site vetted as like
Speaker 1: a great piece of art. Right, Yeah, I'm not just
Speaker 1: talking about something by Okay, he would say that there
Speaker 1: is disource distortion involved. And again, if you look at
Speaker 1: it carefully, probably the woman's waist is really really small, right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess that the breasts are really really full. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking classical art where the ladies tended to be
Speaker 1: a little bigger. But even then he and he points
Speaker 1: to some really good examples of cholla sculptures that are
Speaker 1: found in Hindu art. Uh, you'll see that there are
Speaker 1: are fat roles, and yet they're still essential in waste. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what he's saying that on some level, these fat
Speaker 1: roles are are communicating to the viewer, Hey, I'm able
Speaker 1: to take care of a baby. I I got tons
Speaker 1: of fat stores. Um, you know you could. You can
Speaker 1: hang out with me and genetically, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: your right. Right, I'm gonna give you some good offspring
Speaker 1: because I've got the fat to sustain another life for
Speaker 1: someone and so forth. And by the way, I've got
Speaker 1: these great childbearing hips and I'm just voluptuous um. So
Speaker 1: what he's saying is that all of that is being radiating,
Speaker 1: radiated to us on an unconscious level. Okay, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important to bring that up before you go
Speaker 1: into something like cubism, which is sort of like the
Speaker 1: polar opposite of of UM. I don't know, like the
Speaker 1: Pnus on a half shell. Right, you could have two
Speaker 1: pieces called venus on Well, of course you're referring to
Speaker 1: the Venus de Milo, but yeah, you could have two
Speaker 1: pieces titled like newte on a bicycle, and the cubist
Speaker 1: piece would be rather different than the than than the
Speaker 1: like the straight up realistic painting, so right, you would
Speaker 1: have different body parts on the bicycle. It could be
Speaker 1: it could be actually horrific. Okay, So cubism, Yes, if
Speaker 1: you think about Picasso, then then you're on the right
Speaker 1: track here with cubism. Um, this what is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a painting style that at first glance looks sort of
Speaker 1: highly fragmented, but isn't um and of course kind of
Speaker 1: a kaleidoscope kind of thing going on when you look
Speaker 1: at it. Yeah, many many different viewpoints if you if
Speaker 1: in you know, obviously you can find the cubed images
Speaker 1: um in the painting most of the time. And so
Speaker 1: he talks specifically about Picasso and then he explains that
Speaker 1: in the fusiform gyrus okay, that we're we're we're processing vision.
Speaker 1: There are cells that we respond to certain views of
Speaker 1: a face, and then there are so called master face cells. Okay,
Speaker 1: might respond to all views of a face, and normally
Speaker 1: only one view of the face would be presented at
Speaker 1: a time, But in a cube is painting, the presence
Speaker 1: of multiple views could cause multiple single views or multiple
Speaker 1: single view cells to fire at once, thus hyperactive, activating
Speaker 1: the master face cells and exciting the limbic system. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's like art as a drug. That's like cubist stimulant.
Speaker 1: That is, that's manipulating the way that we perceive the
Speaker 1: face of other individuals. Right exactly. It's just like if
Speaker 1: you have you know, we talked about this with sugar
Speaker 1: and you you know, have a nice burst of glucoast
Speaker 1: and the signal is really loud to the reward system,
Speaker 1: as opposed to if you just ate a piece of broccoli, Right,
Speaker 1: you're getting really loud signals in this instance, and you're
Speaker 1: hyper stimulating this part of your brain and your limbic system.
Speaker 1: And he says, this is the crux of it. We
Speaker 1: are the seagulls. And he says, in fact, if the
Speaker 1: seagulls have their own art gallery, no doubt, they would
Speaker 1: have like a million pictures of these sticks with you know,
Speaker 1: three red stripes on it, and they would sell for millions.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, they'd have all these Picasso seagull
Speaker 1: artists and in the floor would just be disgusting. Let's
Speaker 1: not forget that, because seagulls are kind of nasty. It's
Speaker 1: true that the art gallery you would want to wear
Speaker 1: galoshes into, uh if you weren't used to it. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a pretty intriguing idea. Again,
Speaker 1: is it overreaching? Maybe maybe a little bit. But it's
Speaker 1: like a simplified model of how um, a human art
Speaker 1: gallery works, and how human appreciation of art works. Obviously
Speaker 1: we're more we're a more complicated mental model. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's gonna but but it's a it's a neat simplification
Speaker 1: of the process. Yeah. He said that it's this way
Speaker 1: to escape the tyranny of viewpoint, which I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's such an excellent way to put it because you know,
Speaker 1: we're so used to sing things in an our visual
Speaker 1: world that when we're presented with an abstract or abstraction
Speaker 1: of that, then it is it is sort of getting
Speaker 1: outside of our heads and the way we view things,
Speaker 1: and it's making our minds work. And to that end,
Speaker 1: he talks about a couple of different principles that he
Speaker 1: relies on heavily to make this case. One is called
Speaker 1: grouping UM and he says that, you know, we have
Speaker 1: evolved in a camouflage environment and as a result, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about this too before, with pattern recognition, we
Speaker 1: can't help it but feel rewarded when we identifying object
Speaker 1: a pattern instantly. What comes to mind when when you
Speaker 1: mentioned this would be the various paintings and photographs that
Speaker 1: have been created over the years in which an optical
Speaker 1: illusion or a hidden image of a skull is inserted
Speaker 1: into a piece, and of course the skull being like
Speaker 1: this universal image of death. Uh. Probably the most famous
Speaker 1: would be uh Philip Halsman's Dolly portrait, and I believe
Speaker 1: it was titled in Voluptuous Moores Niece, you know, the
Speaker 1: one with it's like naked women um and their form
Speaker 1: they're kind of folded and formed into the shape of
Speaker 1: a skull. It was referenced on the think I know it,
Speaker 1: really it was reference on the poster art for Silence
Speaker 1: of the Lambs. And Okay, it's like the picture itself
Speaker 1: is Dolly in the foreground and then in the background
Speaker 1: these women that are forming the shape of the skull.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of other pieces where the
Speaker 1: effect is far more subtle, where it will be like
Speaker 1: two individuals and in the background you sort of see
Speaker 1: a skull forming um and uh, and I believe Dolly
Speaker 1: Dolly actually did this in a number of pieces. There
Speaker 1: are a number of pieces that you see the skull
Speaker 1: sort of emerging from the background the more you you
Speaker 1: look at it, and and again in various pieces. It's
Speaker 1: the degree to which it is hidden varies, but your
Speaker 1: your brain does sort of like there's this reward center
Speaker 1: that sort of pops up. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: more more rewarding version of Where's Waldo? You know. And
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about this too. I neglected to
Speaker 1: mention when we're talking about perceiving um objects, patterns, and
Speaker 1: even faces with the cubism. The reason why ram Chan
Speaker 1: is really bringing that up is that Picasso tends to
Speaker 1: focus so much on faces, and multiple viewpoints of face
Speaker 1: is converging like an amalgamation of one face but three
Speaker 1: different views of it. And again that's that's what your
Speaker 1: brain is playing with. That's why those single face cells
Speaker 1: start firing all at once to make one face. Uh
Speaker 1: sort of composition for you are getting so nuts because
Speaker 1: they're used to just seeing one viewpoint. Another example, UM,
Speaker 1: would if this would seem to be more abstract, abstract
Speaker 1: pieces where it first doesn't seem like anything, but then
Speaker 1: as your brain begins to assemble the pieces and begins
Speaker 1: to make sense of you, you say, we'll see the
Speaker 1: say the silhouette of an animal somewhere in the shape
Speaker 1: or something vaguely for me? Would you end up with
Speaker 1: this interpretation of of what he's hidden in the piece? Right?
Speaker 1: Or perceptual problem solving is what he also talks about,
Speaker 1: or the peaka boot principle, and he even says this
Speaker 1: in an erotic art that's um highly abstract is that
Speaker 1: it's that peaka boot principle of well, I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure what I'm seeing here, and then the reward sister
Speaker 1: system starts to kick him when those patterns are revealed. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this perceptual problem solving it comes back again to
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what is the message of the piece,
Speaker 1: What is going on? If there's a scene taking place
Speaker 1: in the piece, what does it mean. So when I
Speaker 1: look at the work of Irving Norman and I see
Speaker 1: this all this stuff going on, my brain is trying
Speaker 1: to process what's going on in the piece and what
Speaker 1: the what he's trying to say about about the state
Speaker 1: of civilization and culture. Yeah, so, I mean you're talking
Speaker 1: about highly metaphorical work. And Ramachanon also talks about metaphors
Speaker 1: being really important, and he brings up the painting Guernica,
Speaker 1: which is about the Spanish Civil War bombing of the
Speaker 1: city of Guernica, and and it's obviously it's it's not
Speaker 1: a literal representation of it. It's a bull goring a horse.
Speaker 1: There's a light bulb, and of course you see people
Speaker 1: are suffering in the painting. But it's a it's an
Speaker 1: enormous canvas. It's black and white and gray. And what
Speaker 1: it's doing, he says, it is taking unrelated objects and
Speaker 1: directly comparing it and giving birth to a new idea. So, yes,
Speaker 1: we have these these objects going on, but we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily think, okay, a bowl of horse, you know, being gored.
Speaker 1: This means war that he is successful linked these things
Speaker 1: to us, and this is what's creating I'm sure new
Speaker 1: neural pathways actually in our brain because we are processing
Speaker 1: this new information and making new connections. Uh. And before
Speaker 1: we go any farther, I just want to mention if
Speaker 1: you if you're interested and you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about public with Picasso, Salvador Dali, or or any of
Speaker 1: these these famous iconic artists, um, Leonardo da Vinci, Uh,
Speaker 1: go to the House Stuff Works website because we have
Speaker 1: a number of really cool articles on each of these uh,
Speaker 1: these artists, specifically Pablo Picasso. I remember Hanna Believe that
Speaker 1: was written by Jessica Toothman. Yeah, and we actually have
Speaker 1: an article two on music and art why we respond
Speaker 1: to it? That one's by Josh Clark's pretty interesting too.
Speaker 1: But all of the sort of points to again this question,
Speaker 1: are their artistic universals. It's a hard question to answer,
Speaker 1: so the easy answer would seem to be, um, there
Speaker 1: is no universal understanding of art that it's um that
Speaker 1: it varies, just as it varies from person to person, right,
Speaker 1: the modern art that's loved by one person may be
Speaker 1: hated by the by the other. I remember I was
Speaker 1: on this this boat tour on on the Thames and
Speaker 1: in London, and the guide with this like Cottoney, very
Speaker 1: like cottony to our guide and he was pointing out
Speaker 1: different things, and he pointed out the Tate Modern and
Speaker 1: he would who just completely dismissed it. He was like,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you can go over there if you
Speaker 1: want to. It's just a bunch of a bunch of
Speaker 1: rubbish shot through a pizza books in the garbage the
Speaker 1: other day, and you can put add up on the
Speaker 1: wall and and uh, yeah, well thank you. I don't
Speaker 1: get the bust out of the cockney that often, but
Speaker 1: it was hilarious because this guy was just like, it's rubbish,
Speaker 1: a whole building full of rubbish. The real arts over here,
Speaker 1: and uh And other people would be like, oh, all
Speaker 1: that dreadful old historic garbage. Yeah, don't impressionalist, don't give
Speaker 1: me any of that. Throw me it. Showing me the
Speaker 1: Chloeca machine, show me the show me the the the
Speaker 1: mind blowing job draw thing pieces that you walk into
Speaker 1: the room and you just stand there trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what they were thinking or like, when I was
Speaker 1: in the Tate Modern, why is that painting making a
Speaker 1: farting noise? There was this room full of pieces and
Speaker 1: they were I mean, in the Tate Modern is an
Speaker 1: amazing place and there's a lot to take in. But
Speaker 1: and so there's this one room and had several just
Speaker 1: really amazing pieces. But one of the machines, just one
Speaker 1: of the installations there was making this farting noise over
Speaker 1: and over again, and it was kind of distracting to
Speaker 1: your appreciation to the other pieces. But I guess the
Speaker 1: artist had something specific in mind. Well, and then okay,
Speaker 1: so it makes me think, Okay, we we think we're
Speaker 1: such clever creatures and we make farting paintings. What about
Speaker 1: what about in nature? Uh? Do we create art? Do
Speaker 1: do animals creatures create art? Well? The bower bird, the
Speaker 1: mail bower Bird, is a great example of this. And
Speaker 1: if you've if you spent any time watching some of
Speaker 1: the great BBC Discovery co productions which I'm always talking about,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure everyone's familiar with the very like Life
Speaker 1: Human Planet Um the various Attenborough pieces. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: the bower bird, the mail bower or builds this little
Speaker 1: kind of a love shock um. He uh, it's very intentional.
Speaker 1: It's not just us actually reading this is this is
Speaker 1: not the place he lives. This is a wonderful little artist.
Speaker 1: Like it looks like modern art made from foul materials,
Speaker 1: and I mean that's what it is. He makes this
Speaker 1: lovely little little hovel um with archways, weaves it together.
Speaker 1: He gathers colorful um just bits of everything, like if
Speaker 1: there is human garbage around, he will incorporate that, like
Speaker 1: if you can find some. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons when they're filming these documents, they have to got
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere to try and find them
Speaker 1: because they don't want bower birds that are gathering things
Speaker 1: like car keys or or or candy rappers that would
Speaker 1: be modern art, right, but instead, you know, they're ideally
Speaker 1: they're gathering um, little bits of flowers, even little bits
Speaker 1: of like rotting material, just very just various color schemes
Speaker 1: going on exactly. They're grouping and by light, so they'll
Speaker 1: have red berries all in one group and blueberries all
Speaker 1: in one group, and the whole idea, of course, is
Speaker 1: to impress a potential mate and be like, look at
Speaker 1: this bower bar. He's got it going on. He's got
Speaker 1: fantastic artistic ability, fantastic artistic taste. He was able to
Speaker 1: build this thing. He's going to be a great bird
Speaker 1: to mate with for like five seconds or however long.
Speaker 1: It's amazingly fast, all of that, but just five seconds,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. Um. But yeah, I mean so we
Speaker 1: see this in in nature, and certainly there are people
Speaker 1: who will say that the reason why humans do it
Speaker 1: is because on some level it is transmitting this uh,
Speaker 1: this idea to a potential meet that we're skillful and
Speaker 1: we're intelligent, and we're you know, we already know that
Speaker 1: we're tool users, but we're able to plan and to
Speaker 1: create these abstractions or abstractions of our lives. Um, so
Speaker 1: you know there's a there's a reason for the reason
Speaker 1: for why we do it. It's just a question of, um,
Speaker 1: why is it good and why does it provoke emotion?
Speaker 1: So we know it's not just this idea of okay, well,
Speaker 1: we're all just seagulls looking for some representation of our
Speaker 1: next meal. Um m r s have actually shown that
Speaker 1: when we look at are the same reasons of the
Speaker 1: brain that are involved in experience emotion are activated when
Speaker 1: shown really esthetically pleasing art. And also there's memory involved too.
Speaker 1: It's just not as clear cut as like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a representation of of what we desire. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have some pieces of art are going to
Speaker 1: speak to nostalgia, They're going to speak to uh to
Speaker 1: two memories, and very much to emotion. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't you can't look at a painting one on one level,
Speaker 1: there's painting of a beautiful woman. It's going to evoke
Speaker 1: some sort of emotional response in addition to viscal response
Speaker 1: in many viewers. Painting of a baby, same thing painting.
Speaker 1: I mean, just look at any given picture of a cat, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: then it's going to it's going to interact with this
Speaker 1: on some level. I mean, how can you not, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, put that cats. You know you're you're going
Speaker 1: to be like, oh that cat. Okay. Well. This is
Speaker 1: from an article by Professor Hanging from Stanford University, and
Speaker 1: he says, what if instead of viewing art as a
Speaker 1: dispensable luxury, we could see it as a key ingredient
Speaker 1: in Unlocking the Great Mysteries of Neuroscience. University of California,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, surgeon, art enthusiasts and author Leonard Slaine writes
Speaker 1: that just as combining information from our two eyes enhance
Speaker 1: us the third dimension of depth, by quote seeing the
Speaker 1: world through different lenses of art and science, and by
Speaker 1: integrating these perspectives, we arrive at a deeper understanding of reality. Well,
Speaker 1: this sounds pretty good. I'll go with that. I mean,
Speaker 1: and again, it's like if you want to study the
Speaker 1: digestive system, you want to feed it something and see
Speaker 1: how it moves through and and it keeps coming back
Speaker 1: around with the cloic about it. But but but likewise,
Speaker 1: with the brain, you want to give it something to chew,
Speaker 1: and you wanna give it that bone and then and
Speaker 1: then see how it isn't how it is chewing it,
Speaker 1: how it is interacting with the stimuli. And as if
Speaker 1: we as we've discussed their few stimuli as powerful as
Speaker 1: and as complex as as art, the question is whether
Speaker 1: or not Ziki and Ramachandra and the others will be
Speaker 1: able to actually pinpoint in the in the brain and
Speaker 1: uh and sort of reveal to us the magic show
Speaker 1: that's going on, and will that dissipate our interest in
Speaker 1: art if that happens? Do you think? I don't know.
Speaker 1: We keep coming back around to that, that sort of
Speaker 1: question when it comes to neuroscience. Do we end up
Speaker 1: explaining way the magic of something and then does it
Speaker 1: still have an effect on it? I guess my my
Speaker 1: opinion kind of tends to vary depending on where I
Speaker 1: am uh mentally and uh and the specific topic. I
Speaker 1: tend to find it hard to imagine a space where
Speaker 1: we would explain away the magic of art and we
Speaker 1: would not be able to at least suspend that knowledge
Speaker 1: and appreciate it. Okay, well, just just uh indulge me
Speaker 1: from one moment. What if they were able to do
Speaker 1: that to to map these processes in the brain, and
Speaker 1: the Blue Brain project also was finished and it was successful,
Speaker 1: and they were able to re engineer the human brain,
Speaker 1: and they were able to then download a version of
Speaker 1: your brain right onto a computer, okay, and then they
Speaker 1: could create a Picasso painting system or rather software that
Speaker 1: they could then download into that version and then upload
Speaker 1: to your current brain, and then you could paint like Picasso. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that would be cool. I mean that gets
Speaker 1: into that gets into the whole question two of robotic
Speaker 1: paintings there there there have been a number of projects.
Speaker 1: I wrote a little about this for Curiosity Project. People
Speaker 1: working on computers that can paint, that can create works
Speaker 1: of art. And at what point are we in danger
Speaker 1: of or or in a situation? I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's danger depends on your perspective, whether or not you're
Speaker 1: an artist. But do we reach a point where a
Speaker 1: computer can create a piece of art as compelling as
Speaker 1: human created art? And I don't know, I mean it
Speaker 1: it Some people would say yes, it will definitely, definitely
Speaker 1: get there. Other people say, well, the human uh, creative
Speaker 1: spirit is always going to bring something a little different
Speaker 1: there that you can't map, that you can't match that
Speaker 1: with a computer. I don't know. We'll see what do
Speaker 1: you guys think? Yeah, and what is your favorite piece
Speaker 1: of art? Would love to know and why? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: send us a link to it too so we can
Speaker 1: we can look at it. In the meantime, let's let's
Speaker 1: get some letters roll and let's get the art off
Speaker 1: the conveyor belt in the love letters on Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of two equipments here. Um we heard
Speaker 1: a little from a lot of people about imaginary friends.
Speaker 1: We discussed as is one of our sort of Halloween fenlands,
Speaker 1: about creepy awesome world of imaginary friends and about you
Speaker 1: know how it's a little weird and how but it's
Speaker 1: how it it ultimately is is very much a part
Speaker 1: of how our brain works. Um. So we asked everyone
Speaker 1: to share their imaginary friend experiences and we heard from
Speaker 1: a lot of people. We don't we can't read them all,
Speaker 1: but here are a couple. Uh Daniel writes and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your podcast about imaginary friends, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to share my imaginary friend I had when
Speaker 1: I was little. I can't remember his name, and it
Speaker 1: is kind of embarrassing, but I had an imaginary cheated
Speaker 1: with bat wings. He could fly super fast and on
Speaker 1: long car rides, I would imagine he would roll really
Speaker 1: fast like Sonic the Hedgehog. I created this imaginary friend
Speaker 1: when I was at my grandparents house in the summer
Speaker 1: in my room, and in my room I would sweep
Speaker 1: it would appear very dark and scary. He would protect
Speaker 1: me from the shadows of the night. Furthermore, I adore
Speaker 1: your podcast. Thank you for all the interesting information. Alright,
Speaker 1: I cheated with Flying Wing. I love that. That's That's
Speaker 1: that's one of the best ones me for suit. Um.
Speaker 1: We observed from Zach Zach Wright sin and says high
Speaker 1: stuff to blow the mind people. I just finished listening
Speaker 1: to your Imaginary Friends podcast and started to think about
Speaker 1: my own imaginary friends. According to my parents, I had
Speaker 1: an imaginary friend called Jeremy who was a mouse squirrel
Speaker 1: um the Pokemon, which is weird because I've never been
Speaker 1: into Pokemon uh and assorted barn animals. I was also
Speaker 1: surprised by Robert's comment about having Fantasy World's friends uh
Speaker 1: to in an inappropriate eight. Personally, I don't think there's
Speaker 1: an inappropriate age to have Fantasy World at. I'm in
Speaker 1: at grade eight, and I still play with spaceships and
Speaker 1: pretend to captain them too far reaches of the galaxy,
Speaker 1: and I'm not the only one of one of a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends who play role playing games and
Speaker 1: other such fantasy games. I think it's appropriate as long
Speaker 1: as it is fun. Zack and I totally agree. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was definitely one of those kids where
Speaker 1: like growing up I was I feel like I was
Speaker 1: into action figures a little. It felt like I was
Speaker 1: into them more than I longer than I should have been.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that is you know, when you're
Speaker 1: a kid, nothing seems more amazing than growing up and
Speaker 1: putting behind childish things, even though you're really into childish
Speaker 1: things and they're awesome. And then when you get older
Speaker 1: you realize that, you hopefully realize that this is completely stupid,
Speaker 1: and you spend the rest of your life, even at least,
Speaker 1: reminiscing about the childish things that you wish you had,
Speaker 1: or pursuing these old hobbies and interest uh and uh,
Speaker 1: like I remember, even when I wasn't I got away
Speaker 1: from the action figures, I still have these rich fantasy
Speaker 1: um ideas in these settings. And I would I would
Speaker 1: This is kind of weird and maybe embarrassing, but I
Speaker 1: would walk around sort of not really kind of pay
Speaker 1: I would kind of circle the house in the afternoons,
Speaker 1: and and uh, I would run these stories over in
Speaker 1: my head. And I would carry a little red rubber
Speaker 1: band or sometimes it was green, and I would move
Speaker 1: it around in my fingers um which it was kind
Speaker 1: of I guess, the tactile thing. But also maybe a
Speaker 1: color thing, and I would the the rubber band would
Speaker 1: represent explosions, and I would make explosion noises, uh to,
Speaker 1: and these would represent you know that, because my early
Speaker 1: the early stories that I formed in my head had
Speaker 1: a lot of explosions in them, because they were basically
Speaker 1: all actions yarns about spaceships and robots and and all
Speaker 1: this and and some of them where I think we're
Speaker 1: kind of intricate and uh and I'm rather proud of
Speaker 1: the early me having them. But I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time doing that to sort of walking around in
Speaker 1: the yard, and my parents probably were really concerned. I
Speaker 1: can just imagine your mom, Look, can't the wind to going?
Speaker 1: He's doing it again? Yeah, yeah, hearing you making a
Speaker 1: lot of bomb realises. But but definitely I I will
Speaker 1: be the first person to encourage everyone out there too,
Speaker 1: and not to you know, set aside your toys just
Speaker 1: because he's some some voice in the world around you
Speaker 1: seems to think that that you should, you know, put
Speaker 1: your fantasy world away. I mean, I always come back
Speaker 1: to the famous CS Lewis quote where he and I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing here, but he says, you know, when I when
Speaker 1: I became an adult, I put away childish things, including
Speaker 1: the fear of appearing childish and the desire to be
Speaker 1: very grown up. So you keep those fantasies with you
Speaker 1: by all means. Indeed, and if you want to share
Speaker 1: your fantasies with you specifically um, imaginary friends. UM. And
Speaker 1: of course we're always interested in your your your dreams
Speaker 1: and uh, and certainly any kind of art you're into.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm always gay to see some cool art,
Speaker 1: So feel free of it is uh, as long as
Speaker 1: it is not profane. Uh, feel free to share it
Speaker 1: on Yeah, yeah, as long as it's safe for work
Speaker 1: or at least, you know, very classy. Share it on
Speaker 1: the Facebook page for stuff to all your mind. We're
Speaker 1: blow the Mind on that and we're also blow the
Speaker 1: Mind on Twitter, and you can also send us an
Speaker 1: email at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.