Speaker 1: My Rors. Welcome to Stove to Blow Your Mind, the
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Land, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of
Speaker 1: our talk about mirrors. If you haven't listened to the
Speaker 1: first two parts, you'd probably go back check those out first.
Speaker 1: But Rob to get us started today, I wanted to
Speaker 1: revisit one of your favorite topics are our failures of
Speaker 1: intuition and understanding how mirrors work. So we we talked
Speaker 1: in previous parts about uh, your point about the rogby Venus.
Speaker 1: You know how there's that painting of Venus looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror and we see her face and we assume
Speaker 1: she's looking at herself, but since we see her looking
Speaker 1: at us, she actually couldn't be looking at herself. She's
Speaker 1: looking at us, as you know, and as you love
Speaker 1: to point out, our misunderstandings about the physics of mirrors.
Speaker 1: Don't stop there. And so so I actually came across
Speaker 1: one recently that I really enjoyed. Rachel and I were
Speaker 1: doing this experiment earlier today, So so you at home
Speaker 1: can play along. Um, a couple of questions imagine yourself
Speaker 1: standing in front of a bathroom mirror and looking at
Speaker 1: your own reflection. You're looking at your head. You're regarding
Speaker 1: this glorious orb of bone and meat. Maybe he's got
Speaker 1: some hair on it. And the question is how big
Speaker 1: is your reflection of your head on the mirror if
Speaker 1: you were to measure it, is it smaller than your
Speaker 1: actual head, bigger than your actual head, or the same size? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is It's a great question because what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do. You're gonna moving closer and measure it. Well,
Speaker 1: you could measure if your normal bathroom mirror size. You
Speaker 1: could measure it without stepping forward. You can just reach
Speaker 1: out and mark the places, you know, touch the mirror,
Speaker 1: where your chin is and where the top of your
Speaker 1: head is. But before you do that, just just guess
Speaker 1: before you actually measure it. The second thing is after
Speaker 1: you do that, imagine walking backwards away from a mirror,
Speaker 1: so you take a few steps back. What is going
Speaker 1: to happen to the size of your head in your reflection?
Speaker 1: Is it going to get larger, is it going to
Speaker 1: stay the same size, or will it get smaller. Now,
Speaker 1: my intuitions about this were apparently exactly the same as
Speaker 1: most people's intuitions about these the answers to these questions,
Speaker 1: which are both wrong. My intuition was, well, I think
Speaker 1: my head in my reflection is going to be the
Speaker 1: same size as my real head, and I think as
Speaker 1: I walk backward, the size of that head in my
Speaker 1: reflection is going to be smaller. And in fact, both
Speaker 1: of these are wrong. As intuitive as they feel, if
Speaker 1: you actually reach out and measure it, your reflection of
Speaker 1: your head is half the size of your real head,
Speaker 1: and as you walk backwards away from the mirror from
Speaker 1: your perspective, your reflected head will stay exactly the same
Speaker 1: size no matter how far you get away. Very odd.
Speaker 1: It seems totally counterintuitive until you start thinking about what's
Speaker 1: actually happening with a mirror. If you imagine a mirror
Speaker 1: as a sort of window into the mirror world, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit easier to think about because if you're
Speaker 1: looking at your reflected self as a person in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in that other mirror world, your reflection is
Speaker 1: always at exactly the halfway point between yourself and that
Speaker 1: reflected version of yourself. So, in fact, given the vantage
Speaker 1: point of your eyes, your reflected head is always going
Speaker 1: to appear to be half the size of your real
Speaker 1: head from wherever you are, and as you move backwards
Speaker 1: in a mirror, if someone were standing in the same
Speaker 1: place and looking at your reflection as you moved backwards,
Speaker 1: it would appear to get smaller. But since your eyes
Speaker 1: are moving back with you as you retreat from a mirror,
Speaker 1: your reflection actually never gets smaller. It stays exactly the same. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's It's really mind blowing when you think about it.
Speaker 1: For sure. Um again, these just strange objects in our
Speaker 1: in our lives. But it's almost when you're talking about
Speaker 1: the reflected world, the specular world, it's not even that
Speaker 1: that itself is not the object that is this uh,
Speaker 1: this this unreality, this uh, this inverse kingdom that we
Speaker 1: seem to glimpse through the glass. You know, we've talked
Speaker 1: a bit in previous parts here about the possible effects
Speaker 1: on our our self image and self consciousness that could
Speaker 1: be created by different types of mirrors, Like if you
Speaker 1: have a culture where most mirrors are slightly convex, and
Speaker 1: you know, convex mirrors lead to particular kinds of distortions,
Speaker 1: widening of the field around the head, and sort of
Speaker 1: depending on where you hold it and how far away
Speaker 1: sort of pronouncement of certain features. Uh. You you wonder
Speaker 1: if slightly convex mirrors give way to a culture with
Speaker 1: slightly convex self image. And but but it also makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, like, what are the self image properties that
Speaker 1: cause us to believe that our face in the mirror
Speaker 1: is the same size as our real face when actually
Speaker 1: it's half the size. It's almost kind of comical to
Speaker 1: think of, you like, looking at this little tiny things
Speaker 1: like a few inches, uh, and thinking that it's exactly
Speaker 1: the same as your as your big old head and
Speaker 1: meat space. Yeah, I mean it. It falls in line
Speaker 1: with some of the other ideas we've discussed here, including,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that that is what I look like, uh,
Speaker 1: and that it is not a flipped version of my face. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that that effect that we we sometimes get
Speaker 1: when we see a photograph of ourselves and it does
Speaker 1: not look like our mirror reflection, and therefore we're a
Speaker 1: little turned off by it because you know, our right
Speaker 1: side of our faces on the left side, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah. And and of course it also goes
Speaker 1: without saying that the mirror is always staring back at us.
Speaker 1: You know that um that that that can't be avoided
Speaker 1: as well. So in the last episode we talked about
Speaker 1: the emergence of metal mirrors in the ancient world, with
Speaker 1: copper and copper alloy looking glasses in Egypt and Mesopotamia
Speaker 1: from around the third millennium BC on. So these would
Speaker 1: be highly polish pieces of metal people would use to
Speaker 1: uh would you use to look at their reflections for
Speaker 1: mundane and cosmetic purposes, but also for say religious symbolism.
Speaker 1: Maybe in Egypt you might put a polished piece of metal,
Speaker 1: a metal mirror, on the top of a staff, and
Speaker 1: it might symbolize something about the sun. You know that
Speaker 1: Egypt has a very solar oriented UH pantheon. But over
Speaker 1: time the mirror technology would expand to include all kinds
Speaker 1: of metals. First, so not just a later forms of
Speaker 1: copper alloys, meaning especially bronze, you know, higher qualities of bronze,
Speaker 1: but also things like gold and silver, and so in
Speaker 1: say ancient Rome, you can find various types of silver
Speaker 1: mirrors and things like that. So metal technology and different
Speaker 1: types of metals become more available and UH and and
Speaker 1: so mirrors based on those metals also proliferate. And one
Speaker 1: thing I was thinking about this is noted in that
Speaker 1: paper by j Enoch that I referenced in the past
Speaker 1: couple of episodes, UH, is that you know, sometimes when
Speaker 1: we talk about inventions, there are these techno cold developments
Speaker 1: that stay relatively isolated in one place for a long time.
Speaker 1: Maybe you get some little like curio exported to some
Speaker 1: of their culture and it gets written about. But then
Speaker 1: there are the other ones that really just proliferate throughout
Speaker 1: the globe, whether by trade and contact or just by
Speaker 1: parallel invention. And the mirror is definitely one of these
Speaker 1: technologies that proliferates. Eventually you find it everywhere. Enoch writes, quote,
Speaker 1: by approximately two thousand BC, there existed dispersed utilization of
Speaker 1: mirrors in virtually every major region of the world with
Speaker 1: settled societies. This includes Central and South America. After that time,
Speaker 1: mirror distribution and quality increased rapidly so but by a
Speaker 1: certain point deep into the ancient world, mirrors are everywhere,
Speaker 1: partially is a product of of parallel invention and partially
Speaker 1: through trade in contact. And one place where it seems
Speaker 1: to be that mirrors tend to take on a lot
Speaker 1: of religious and cultural significance is in China. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was reading about this, and it was it was
Speaker 1: really fascinating. Um, you know, like you were saying, mirror
Speaker 1: technology spreads, but then also, uh technology metaphors spread as well,
Speaker 1: and the use of of our ideas concerning mirrors. So
Speaker 1: that's that was one of the things I was really
Speaker 1: looking at when I was researching for this episode. And
Speaker 1: so it led me to a wonderful article about Chinese
Speaker 1: mirrors and um and um and particularly how different ancient
Speaker 1: philosophers looked at them and used mirror or reflection metaphors.
Speaker 1: And it was it was titled Mirrors, Minds and Metaphors,
Speaker 1: published in Philosophy East and West two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: by Aaron M. Klein. And Uh, this particular paper was
Speaker 1: largely looking at a couple of different Chinese philosophers from
Speaker 1: the fourth and third century b c. E and UM
Speaker 1: and and dealing with like how they dealt with the
Speaker 1: idea of mirrors and reflections. Um. But but I want
Speaker 1: to first drive home that, Yeah, you have middle metal
Speaker 1: mirrors that were popping up in China. Uh, certainly as
Speaker 1: as early as this second millennium b C. And if
Speaker 1: you look at some of the examples of of bronze
Speaker 1: mirrors from ancient China particularly. I was looking at some
Speaker 1: images of of some mirrors discovered in a two thousand
Speaker 1: year old treasure trove that was turned up in recent years.
Speaker 1: They're quite interesting. You'll typically see one side of them
Speaker 1: photographed because they had two different sides. One side, they're
Speaker 1: going to be more or less flat, generally circular, though
Speaker 1: I think I've seen some that had slightly different shape.
Speaker 1: Uh so flat circular um one side is going to
Speaker 1: be featureless and reflective, but the other side is going
Speaker 1: to be often just ornately decorated. So it can be
Speaker 1: a bit be a little off putting when you see
Speaker 1: a picture and and it's described as a mirror and
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out where you're supposed to look
Speaker 1: for the reflection. This is so funny. I was actually
Speaker 1: looking at a bunch of mirrors in the met Museum
Speaker 1: collection just on their website. Uh and I kept noticing this.
Speaker 1: I would look at it, I'd be like, what, that's
Speaker 1: not a mirror, But then I realized they're showing me
Speaker 1: the back of the mirror. I think because the back
Speaker 1: has all the interesting decorations and everything on it. And
Speaker 1: this was true of so some ancient Roman mirrors. I
Speaker 1: was looking at some Iranian mirrors, some and some ancient
Speaker 1: Chinese mirrors, where in all cases all of the beautiful
Speaker 1: decorations the inlays any writing or script or imagery on
Speaker 1: them that was all on the back side. And it
Speaker 1: always looks like, yeah, how does anybody see the reflection
Speaker 1: in this? Oh? Okay? Yeah? Looking at the other yeah,
Speaker 1: but but certainly this would be the side with the
Speaker 1: most most of the eye catching decoration. This would be
Speaker 1: the side that had birds or dragons or depictions of deities,
Speaker 1: and sometimes good luck wishes were also inscribed there. Now,
Speaker 1: the two different philosophers that that Klein was looking at
Speaker 1: here were Dallas philosophers Jean Gi and Confucian philosophy for China.
Speaker 1: They each had their own separate worldviews, but they seem
Speaker 1: to come together on the idea of of how we
Speaker 1: might view the shin which client translates his heart mind.
Speaker 1: But I think we can also translate it as his
Speaker 1: intention or center or core. But I think heart mind
Speaker 1: is seems to be a pretty strong translation, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of center of being and contemplation. But both
Speaker 1: of these philosophers tended to look at ways in which
Speaker 1: this heart mind might best resemble a mirror, that it
Speaker 1: might be like a reflecting pool. Oh yeah, this seems
Speaker 1: to be something that that turns up in a lot
Speaker 1: of thought about mirrors throughout the world is that the
Speaker 1: mirror is often seen as a a way to see
Speaker 1: one's true self, maybe to see the part of you
Speaker 1: that is integral. Yeah. So, so Jeong Gi wrote that
Speaker 1: that a sage's heart mind should quote in stillness is
Speaker 1: the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of the
Speaker 1: ten thousand things. And and I'll break down what all
Speaker 1: of this means in just a second. But but Shinja,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, wrote that the heart mind bus
Speaker 1: must be like a mirror in order to fully contemplate
Speaker 1: the way. So the use of the mirror metaphor here
Speaker 1: seems to largely revolve around, of course, the reflective qualities
Speaker 1: of water um and each each of these different philosophers
Speaker 1: kind of uses a different version of that. I think.
Speaker 1: With in the Dallas sense, you see more of this
Speaker 1: use of a natural body like the ocean or a
Speaker 1: lake or a pond or something, while the Confucian model
Speaker 1: that is employed here has more of a uh, more
Speaker 1: of a like a man made reflective pool, like a
Speaker 1: basin of water that you might have inside of a
Speaker 1: house or some sort of a domicile in order to
Speaker 1: view your reflection, something you might use for self care,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Sure, so the idea here is
Speaker 1: that the surface of the water must be still in
Speaker 1: worded to more perfectly reflective viewer's face or, in the
Speaker 1: case of something in a more natural model, the brilliance
Speaker 1: of the sky in the mountains. Now. Client goes on
Speaker 1: to discuss the history and understanding of mirrors and Chinese culture,
Speaker 1: and I found this was this really interesting. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that they point out is that while
Speaker 1: in modern times we tend to think of mirrors as
Speaker 1: passive uh, to the ancient Chinese mirrors, especially metal mirrors,
Speaker 1: especially like those bronze mirrors we were discussing, they were
Speaker 1: seen as quote active responsive objects. So there they are
Speaker 1: things that respond to our world. Um an understanding that
Speaker 1: is um you know. There was also linked to the
Speaker 1: observation that mirrors had the ability to gather and produce. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is very interesting because it reminds me of the
Speaker 1: the alternate and you could argue physically incorrect model of
Speaker 1: the eye, which you know, it was common to believe
Speaker 1: in the ancient world that the eye was not just
Speaker 1: a passive receptor of life, but actually sent something out
Speaker 1: to that retrieved the image and brought it back. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I guess you know, you could argue that the
Speaker 1: eye is not in fact totally passive because the eye moves,
Speaker 1: it focuses, it increases or decreases the aperture that allows
Speaker 1: light in um. But but it it is at least
Speaker 1: only receiving light. But it was natural for people to
Speaker 1: think throughout history that the eye was going out and
Speaker 1: getting images, it was sending something. It was like beaming
Speaker 1: out the power of sight. Yeah, and in the for
Speaker 1: the ancient Chinese, this apparently was also compounded by observations
Speaker 1: of what you could do with a mirror. So on
Speaker 1: one hand, you could take a mirror, you could focus sunlight,
Speaker 1: and you could produce fire. And it was also known
Speaker 1: that a mirror left in the moonlight would gather condensation. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because we're talking about the generation of
Speaker 1: fire or the collection of water and water and are
Speaker 1: are the elemental essence of yin and yang, the dual
Speaker 1: energies of the cosmos. Wow quote this is from Klein.
Speaker 1: The fact that mirrors appeared to draw these substances from
Speaker 1: the Sun and moon reinforced the cosmological power that was
Speaker 1: already associated with them. Well, you know, this makes me
Speaker 1: think of yet another way that that it could be
Speaker 1: natural to assume that a mirror has a gathering and
Speaker 1: production power, which is that by making a mirror, for example, concave,
Speaker 1: you can give it magnifying power. And in a way,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to see a lens or a mirror
Speaker 1: that has magnifying power as in some way going out
Speaker 1: and gathering, because what it is quite literally doing is
Speaker 1: taking something that is invisible to the naked eye and
Speaker 1: making it visible. You know. Um, not not to jump
Speaker 1: around too much here, but this reminds me of something
Speaker 1: I read in m. Geraldine Pinch's book on Egyptian mythology
Speaker 1: concerning the eye of Raw. She writes, the ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: word for i uh you sounded like a word for
Speaker 1: doing or acting. This may be why the eyes of
Speaker 1: deities are associated with divine power as its most uh
Speaker 1: interventional So I keep coming back to that as well.
Speaker 1: That's kind of been in the background as we've been
Speaker 1: discussing that, you know, the idea of like what is
Speaker 1: what is a mirror doing? And is it passive or
Speaker 1: is it active? Yeah, I mean I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on your definition of passive or active there, because obviously,
Speaker 1: again like a concave mirror that produces say a telescope image.
Speaker 1: You know, most of our most powerful telescopes today are
Speaker 1: not based on on transparent refractive lenses, but they're based
Speaker 1: on mirrors. The Hubble telescope has a gigantic mirror in it,
Speaker 1: and though I think it is meant with a slightly
Speaker 1: different connotation. What even astronomers talk about these mirrors quote
Speaker 1: gathering light, what they mean is, you know, they are
Speaker 1: taking an amount of information that is that is too
Speaker 1: diffuse for our eyes to make any sense of, but
Speaker 1: then turning it into an image that is record ignizable
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah. I guess one of the things that
Speaker 1: that that I find super interesting about all this is
Speaker 1: that if you do see the mirror as as more
Speaker 1: active as opposed to passive, I feel like perhaps you're
Speaker 1: more inclined to engage in metaphors for the self based
Speaker 1: on that device, you know, Like for instance, we've talked
Speaker 1: about the idea of thinking about your brain as a
Speaker 1: in your visual system as being like a security camera.
Speaker 1: Like a security camera is um you know, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, is acting passively, but it is acting, you know,
Speaker 1: it is it is, it is doing something. And if
Speaker 1: it is doing something in the world, then perhaps we're
Speaker 1: more more inclined to compare ourselves to it, or compare
Speaker 1: some aspect of our our our physiology to it um.
Speaker 1: And so likewise we see that reflected in the Chinese
Speaker 1: view here um geng Gi writes, perfect persons use their
Speaker 1: heart mind like mirrors, going after nothing, welcomeing nothing, responding
Speaker 1: but not storing. Therefore they can win out over things
Speaker 1: and not hurt themselves. So again, the idea is that
Speaker 1: a mirror is not passive. It's active, but it's responsive.
Speaker 1: It does not in sight uh anything, and it also
Speaker 1: does not store the images that it responds with. It
Speaker 1: lets them go. And this of course brings me back
Speaker 1: to this, you know, this loose metaphor that we often
Speaker 1: employ of the video camera or the camera itself as
Speaker 1: a technological metaphor for how we perceive the world and
Speaker 1: think about it and remember things. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: more I wonder if if ultimately that's like more of
Speaker 1: a harmful metaphor to engage in when we think about
Speaker 1: how we engage in the world, maybe we should think
Speaker 1: of ourselves more as a mirror. Well, I mean, we
Speaker 1: know that the reality is in fact somewhere in between. Like,
Speaker 1: I agree that it's totally a harmful metaphor to think of, say,
Speaker 1: your memory of your vision of events as like a
Speaker 1: video camera, because the video camera is, you know, with
Speaker 1: some constraints, you could think of it as objective in
Speaker 1: a way that your memory just is not. Though then again,
Speaker 1: your memory is real, like it is storing something that
Speaker 1: is based on events you actually witnessed. It's just not
Speaker 1: objective in the way that a video recording is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now another interesting bit here's that Jean. She also writes
Speaker 1: of mirrors illuminating, and Klein writes that mirrors in early
Speaker 1: China were thought to illuminate and reveal objects as well.
Speaker 1: So that's another spin on the Uh, you know that
Speaker 1: the active aspect of the mirror. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: quotes you read earlier from Jeng Gi had something in
Speaker 1: it that I didn't understand. It was the quote about
Speaker 1: in stillness is the mirror of heaven and earth the
Speaker 1: glass of the ten thousand things or the ten thousands things? Well,
Speaker 1: what are the ten thousand or ten thousands things? So
Speaker 1: it's possible I'm I'm missing some like more esoteric understand
Speaker 1: ending of this, But based on reading Client's article, my
Speaker 1: understanding is that it's the idea like, these are the
Speaker 1: things reflected in the mirror, all the things of the world.
Speaker 1: And and what's crucial here is that the more the
Speaker 1: heart mind is like a mirror, the more one sense
Speaker 1: of self fades away. The more I am a mirror,
Speaker 1: the more I am just a reflection of the ten
Speaker 1: thousand things in the world as opposed to myself, you know, um, which,
Speaker 1: which I find rather beautiful, really flows into this idea
Speaker 1: of you know, of of of losing oneself in the now,
Speaker 1: of losing oneself in the sort of you know, unlanguaged
Speaker 1: contemplation of one's immediate surroundings. Oh yeah, that sense of
Speaker 1: by becoming the mirror, you become the world. That's the
Speaker 1: sense of oneness sought after by so many different religious
Speaker 1: traditions and types of mysticism. Now, shin Jo was not
Speaker 1: a dallast. Again was it was a confusion different views
Speaker 1: of the world, But again they were mostly aligned in
Speaker 1: this idea of the mirror like aspect of the heart mind. Um.
Speaker 1: The idea that perfectly still waters allow one to see
Speaker 1: details of one's reflection in the water, but the slightest breeze, uh,
Speaker 1: he writes, can both disturb the surface and stir the
Speaker 1: silt that has sunk to the bottom. Uh. Tilting the
Speaker 1: pan likewise can make the water and reflection murky. Uh
Speaker 1: so Uh. Client points out that, yeah, that the pan
Speaker 1: of water metaphor here is more in line with self
Speaker 1: cultivation practices than you know, the natural world. Um. And
Speaker 1: I guess that I kind of took it to mean
Speaker 1: this is largely just sort of creative choices based uh,
Speaker 1: you know, based in the writings of the individual philosophers,
Speaker 1: and not necessarily something that is like Taoism versus U
Speaker 1: could confusism. But I could be wrong on that. And
Speaker 1: of course they're not alone in of course employing mirror
Speaker 1: metaphors as well. Discuss a little bit more mirror metaphors.
Speaker 1: It's like spread like wildfire through through our language and
Speaker 1: through our philosophies and our literature. Um And also points
Speaker 1: out that Western thinkers, including nineteenth century Danish philosopher sore
Speaker 1: In Kyrka Guard and century American philosopher Richard Rorty Uh,
Speaker 1: they all also employed similar metaphors to those of these
Speaker 1: ancient Chinese thinkers. And if you want to read more
Speaker 1: about how they compare to each other, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: looking up that client article. I believe I was able
Speaker 1: to pull it up on jay store um as you know,
Speaker 1: just free access if you're logged in. But it's it's
Speaker 1: funny that as much as people are trying to sort
Speaker 1: of come up with metaphors to live by and uh
Speaker 1: and imagery that allows them to shape their own behavior,
Speaker 1: on the basis of thinking about a mirror, it seems
Speaker 1: pretty clear there's some evidence that a literal physical mirror
Speaker 1: can also have effects on your behavior. Yeah, this idea
Speaker 1: of forced self awareness um, which it's just just the
Speaker 1: phrase forced self awareness, it does make me think of
Speaker 1: all the places you one might encounter mirrors where one
Speaker 1: does not want to encounter mirrors, you know, because clearly
Speaker 1: you want a mirror when you go to a restroom,
Speaker 1: you that that is the established place that you want
Speaker 1: to check in on your appearance. But there are other
Speaker 1: places where I find I personally would rather go mirror lists.
Speaker 1: One example, I guess would be like a waiting room.
Speaker 1: If I'm just waiting around, I don't want to encounter
Speaker 1: mirrors because mirrors not only can give you a self
Speaker 1: awareness you're not comfortable with, they can lead I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've encountered this show to this weird situation
Speaker 1: where you might find yourself staring at other people in
Speaker 1: ways that you might not normally stare at them because
Speaker 1: you're doing it through the mirror. You know this is funny.
Speaker 1: I almost brought this up in our Queuing episode because
Speaker 1: there is a famous anecdote from the history of Q
Speaker 1: design where I don't remember all the details now, but
Speaker 1: I think it was like people waiting for an elevator
Speaker 1: in a very busy building um that we're unhappy with
Speaker 1: their wait times, and the person who was designing the
Speaker 1: building said, hey, I think we can solve this problem
Speaker 1: them not by speeding up the wait times, but just
Speaker 1: by putting a big mirror in the room where everybody's waiting,
Speaker 1: and that will solve the problem. Of boredom because people
Speaker 1: would be very interested in looking at their own reflections
Speaker 1: while they wait for the elevator, and allegedly, according to
Speaker 1: this sort of this tale about about queuing, uh, this
Speaker 1: did solve the problem because people are you know, now,
Speaker 1: they're obsessed looking at themselves in the mirror. They're no
Speaker 1: longer board. The way just breezes by, and they're no
Speaker 1: longer complaining. I think I ended up not talking about
Speaker 1: that because I couldn't verify that the story was actually true.
Speaker 1: It's one of those possibly apocryphal tales. But but this
Speaker 1: is sort of the opposite of what you're saying here
Speaker 1: that you know, the people behind the story at least
Speaker 1: are like, hey, people are gonna love to look at
Speaker 1: themselves in a mirror in a waiting room. Well, I
Speaker 1: would say the other area where I tend to not
Speaker 1: want to encounter mirrors would be an exercise environment, particularly
Speaker 1: a yoga environment, because on one hand, you do encounter
Speaker 1: mirrors a lot of times, sometimes a whole wall of
Speaker 1: mirrors in a yoga studio, and of course that that
Speaker 1: sort of thing can be very helpful if you're wanting
Speaker 1: to see what you look like in a pose like
Speaker 1: how straight is my arm? Well, a mirror allows you
Speaker 1: to find out. But on the other hand, for me,
Speaker 1: and I think for a lot of people, like one
Speaker 1: of the reasons you do you engage in yoga is
Speaker 1: to sort of become the mirror. You know, you you
Speaker 1: don't want to. You know, you want to be in
Speaker 1: your body, you want to think about the poses that
Speaker 1: you're doing, but you don't want to necessarily engage with
Speaker 1: this kind of egoic self by looking at your appearance,
Speaker 1: because that kind of can bring you back around into
Speaker 1: the very sort of thinking you're trying to overcome. Yeah, ironically,
Speaker 1: looking in a mirror seems like one of the worst
Speaker 1: possible things to do if you're trying to become the
Speaker 1: mirror in the Taoist sense. Yeah, but again, with yoga,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a mixed You can see it both ways,
Speaker 1: because yes, it can be very helpful in a physical sense,
Speaker 1: but maybe not so much in a mental sense. I
Speaker 1: don't know. You could also make an argument that it's
Speaker 1: something it would help you, I guess overcome uh that
Speaker 1: kind of thinking as well, if you're forced to, uh,
Speaker 1: to be in the presence of your own reflection but
Speaker 1: not obsess about it, I guess. But coming back to
Speaker 1: that idea of forced self awareness in psychology, there are
Speaker 1: a ton of psychological studies, uh that have just tried
Speaker 1: to see if people's behavior changes when there's a big
Speaker 1: mirror in the room with them, if when they can
Speaker 1: see their own reflection. And you know, you can think
Speaker 1: for pretty understandable reasons that this might be the case.
Speaker 1: It's a reasonable thing to test out because, for example,
Speaker 1: people tend to behave differently when they're being watched as
Speaker 1: opposed to when they're not being watched, So you might
Speaker 1: assume people would behave differently when they can see themselves. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So one of these studies that I was looking at
Speaker 1: was in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology back
Speaker 1: in I believe, by McCrae, Bodenhausen, and Milne, and they
Speaker 1: found that people in a room with a mirror were
Speaker 1: comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes,
Speaker 1: stereotypes concerning for example, sex, race, or religion. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the idea there might be, you know, if this finding
Speaker 1: holds up, you might interpret it to mean that people
Speaker 1: who can see their own reflection or sort of more
Speaker 1: self conscious about the more the ethics of their own
Speaker 1: behavior and are less likely to do something that they
Speaker 1: might be ashamed about just because the you know, the
Speaker 1: mirror reflection creates a kind of self consciousness. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the idea would be the difference between like setting
Speaker 1: there having stereotypical thoughts and then setting there seeing yourself
Speaker 1: and on some level going, hey, there, I am having
Speaker 1: stereotypical thoughts. Right. It invites you to sort of judge
Speaker 1: yourself and correct yourself. So there's a funny wrinkle that
Speaker 1: I was reading about in a New York Times article
Speaker 1: from two thousand and eight by Natalie Angier that mentions
Speaker 1: the same study by McCrae at all. But so it's
Speaker 1: in the context of Engineer's writing about a number of
Speaker 1: studies along these lines that sort of forced self awareness
Speaker 1: by way of a mirror can cause people to behave differently,
Speaker 1: and often in positive ways. So so Angier points out
Speaker 1: research that has found subjects in a room with a
Speaker 1: mirror are more likely to quote, work harder, be more helpful,
Speaker 1: and to be less inclined to cheat compared with control
Speaker 1: groups performing the same exercises in non mirrored settings. But
Speaker 1: the funny detail about the McCrae at all finding was
Speaker 1: again yes, that that people in a room with a
Speaker 1: mirror in the presence of a mirror seemed to be
Speaker 1: less likely to rely on stereotypes. And they found this
Speaker 1: was true about negative stereotypes about things like sex, race,
Speaker 1: and religion, but not for all types of stereotypes. So,
Speaker 1: to quote from the article, when it comes to socially
Speaker 1: acceptable forms of stereotyping, said Dr Bowdenhausen, like branding all
Speaker 1: politicians liars or all lawyers crooks, the presence of a
Speaker 1: mirror may end up augmenting rather than curbing, the willingness
Speaker 1: to pigeonhole. And I thought that was funny because maybe
Speaker 1: the idea there is when people say something like, oh,
Speaker 1: all politicians are liars or all lawyers or crooks, that
Speaker 1: is something that people maybe are less likely to feel
Speaker 1: ashamed about doing and more likely to feel self righteous
Speaker 1: about doing. So it actually makes you more likely to
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing. Oh, it's been like, look
Speaker 1: at me setting there dropping truth bombs in my head
Speaker 1: about the nature of politics. So that's funny. Does a
Speaker 1: mirror make you more self righteous? Uh, this is just
Speaker 1: a little anecdote, but I wonder well. I mean that
Speaker 1: would fall the right in line with the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with with the with the idea of the ego being
Speaker 1: bound up in the reflection and uh, you know, reflective
Speaker 1: contemplation of self um and and even the myth, the
Speaker 1: myth of Narcissus becoming just entranced by his own reflection.
Speaker 1: There's another thing I want to talk about, another one
Speaker 1: of the ways that mirrors have played a major role
Speaker 1: in scientific research, and this is the so called mirror
Speaker 1: self recognition test. And this has come up on the
Speaker 1: show a couple of times before, h but I just
Speaker 1: thought it would be interesting to revisit briefly. So this
Speaker 1: is sometimes presented as a test to see if animals
Speaker 1: possess consciousness like we have, you know, self conscious awareness.
Speaker 1: And though I don't have any reason to doubt that
Speaker 1: at least some types of animals have something analogous to
Speaker 1: human consciousness, we don't know, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: reasonable assumption to me. I'm not convinced that consciousness is
Speaker 1: really what these studies demonstrate, but they do demonstrate something interesting.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's better to call the mirror self recognition test
Speaker 1: a test for self awareness or something like that. So
Speaker 1: the setup is pretty simple. You take an animal and
Speaker 1: you put a mark somewhere on its body so that
Speaker 1: it can't see the mark naturally, and it's not aware
Speaker 1: that you've put it there. So an example might be
Speaker 1: that you put a yellow dot on an animal's forehead
Speaker 1: or on its throat while it's under general anesthesia, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't know that you've put it there, and it
Speaker 1: can't see it unless it looks in a mirror. And
Speaker 1: then you give that animal access to a mirror. Now,
Speaker 1: most animals don't react in a particularly notable way to mirrors,
Speaker 1: except unless they're they're reacting to their image in a
Speaker 1: mirror as if it were another animal. But some animals,
Speaker 1: especially after they've been exposed to mirrors for extended periods,
Speaker 1: presumably to learn how they work, they start to respond
Speaker 1: with behaviors indicating that they may actually understand that the
Speaker 1: reflection in the mirror is an image of themselves, of
Speaker 1: their own body. So in the case of putting a
Speaker 1: yellow dot on their forehead or on their their throat,
Speaker 1: they will reach up and touch themselves in the spot
Speaker 1: where the yellow dot is, or try to groom themselves
Speaker 1: on that spot, which requires a different kind of consciousness.
Speaker 1: That's you know that that an animal you could presume,
Speaker 1: would not do that unless they had some kind of
Speaker 1: inkling that this image on the mirror was actually their
Speaker 1: own body. Yeah. And it's again, when we approach mirrors
Speaker 1: with this uh you know, less every day understanding and
Speaker 1: we try and we lean into what's actually going on,
Speaker 1: it is pretty remarkable because it means it would mean
Speaker 1: that that animal has on some level an understanding of
Speaker 1: the virtual world. It's funny that you say that because
Speaker 1: that same New York Times article by Angier, it quotes
Speaker 1: one researcher I can't remember the name, but somebody who
Speaker 1: says that in a way, mirrors were the first virtual reality,
Speaker 1: not like that metaphor, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because we often
Speaker 1: like what are we doing when we uh, we're looking
Speaker 1: at ourselves in the mirror, you know, just the normal
Speaker 1: stuff like you know, getting ready to leave the house
Speaker 1: or something. We're moving around, We're causing our reflected self
Speaker 1: to move around. We are we are uh, you know,
Speaker 1: controlling our avatar in the mirror world. It's just very responsive. Usually,
Speaker 1: lets you have one of those roles, um, you know
Speaker 1: those uh, those cheaply made mirrors, and then you can
Speaker 1: make it a little bit of active. And then how
Speaker 1: about when you go and get your hair cut and
Speaker 1: you get that that wonderful the two mirror trick when
Speaker 1: you have to look at the back of your head,
Speaker 1: that thing just I'm I'm stupid. That thing just breaks
Speaker 1: my brain. I can never figure out how to make
Speaker 1: two mirrors work to look at the back of my head.
Speaker 1: I keep moving them around and I just can't see it.
Speaker 1: How about when the barber the hairstylist holds it behind
Speaker 1: your head. I guess they've got experience. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Thank thank you. But anyway, so coming back to the
Speaker 1: mirror self recognition test as as used on animals as
Speaker 1: a test for whatever this this X factor is consciousness
Speaker 1: or self awareness or psycho somatic representational consciousness, whatever you
Speaker 1: would call it. One of the first big studies on
Speaker 1: this was by a researcher named Gordon G. Gallop and
Speaker 1: it was called Chimpanzees Self Recognition, published in the journal
Speaker 1: Science in the year nineteen seventy. And I'll just read
Speaker 1: the abstract. It's very short quote. After prolonged exposure to
Speaker 1: their reflected images and mirrors, chimpanzees marked with red dye
Speaker 1: showed evidence of being able to recognize their own reflections.
Speaker 1: Monkeys did not appear to have this capacity. So he
Speaker 1: was comparing different species here, right, different species of primates.
Speaker 1: On one hand, you've got a great ape, the chimpanzee,
Speaker 1: but then you've also got a number of different monkey species.
Speaker 1: The monkeys used in the study were reesus monkeys, stump
Speaker 1: tailed macaques, and something called cino mulgus monkeys which had
Speaker 1: never heard of before. But these are also known as
Speaker 1: crab eating macaques. Cino mulgus. Does that mean crab eating? Maybe? Um?
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, I believe I'm looking this up. I believe
Speaker 1: it actually means dog milk, having to do with some
Speaker 1: erroneous claim that that these monkeys were capable of milking
Speaker 1: female dogs. Oki doki. You know, you learn something new
Speaker 1: every day anyway. So coming back to the study by Gallup, So,
Speaker 1: the chimpanzees, who had experience with mirrors, uh, they were
Speaker 1: able to reach for the red dot on themselves when
Speaker 1: they saw it in the mirror, but the monkeys did
Speaker 1: not do the same, and this would again seem to
Speaker 1: indicate that the chimpanzees had the ability to learn over
Speaker 1: time that the animal they're seeing in the mirror is themselves,
Speaker 1: while the monkeys don't usually have this capacity. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so the red dye helps provide a clear point of
Speaker 1: comparison that you can test on command between different species.
Speaker 1: But in fact, Gallup reported that you you didn't actually
Speaker 1: need the die test to observe that chimpanzees could adapt
Speaker 1: to the presence of a mirror and understand what it was,
Speaker 1: because you could observe spontaneous behaviors that were pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: So um Gallup reported with his small group of chimpanzees
Speaker 1: that when he first introduced a mirror to their enclosure,
Speaker 1: for the first few days, the chimpanzees would react to
Speaker 1: the mirror as if another animal had been introduced to
Speaker 1: the area. So Gallop called this a social stimulus reaction,
Speaker 1: and it would produce behaviors like bobbing, threatening, vocalizing. It
Speaker 1: was like, there's there's another animal that's roughly like me
Speaker 1: in here, and I need to, you know, figure out
Speaker 1: what his steel is. One of the things that is
Speaker 1: that has always interested me about mirror tests is that
Speaker 1: among animals that that are known to have failed the
Speaker 1: mirror test, you do see that distinction. Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: with cats, sometimes they react with hostility towards the reflection,
Speaker 1: but other times it's just straight up indifference. And I
Speaker 1: witnessed this the other day. I was actually putting a
Speaker 1: rather large mirror on the wall of our house and
Speaker 1: I had it had it leaned up against the couch there.
Speaker 1: The cat came over and checked it out, and you know,
Speaker 1: she just kind of looked in. It didn't seem that interested.
Speaker 1: And then she found the instruction booklet for the mirror
Speaker 1: and sat on it, and that was her complete interaction
Speaker 1: with this new mirror. Uh. So, you know, it's it's like,
Speaker 1: oh I oh, They're like, it's it's it seems like
Speaker 1: there's such a there's such a gap between those two
Speaker 1: different possible reactions though that this is the thing that
Speaker 1: I must attack and put in its place, or that
Speaker 1: it's just nothing at all. Yeah. I have always noticed. Now,
Speaker 1: I know, sometimes dogs will react to a mirror and
Speaker 1: bark at it, but that's never been my experience. In
Speaker 1: real life. Dogs I've always known to be utterly it's
Speaker 1: like they can't even see the mirror, you know, no
Speaker 1: reaction at all to their reflection um. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if that has to do with just, you know, the
Speaker 1: different sense world the dog lives in that we've talked
Speaker 1: about many times. I mean, I don't I don't know this.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering maybe if another if the image of
Speaker 1: another dog is not accompanied by some kind of dogs smell,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even really register as a dog. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: I think that that makes a lot of sense, because yes,
Speaker 1: we discussed before, dogs live in just an entirely different
Speaker 1: a smell realm than human beings and and likewise, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, cats are are so based, you know, so
Speaker 1: much of the perception is based on their hearing. If
Speaker 1: it doesn't if it doesn't sound like cat, could it
Speaker 1: possibly be a cat? If it doesn't smell like another dog?
Speaker 1: Then what is it? Is it even real? Yeah? But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean maybe that's something that Hey,
Speaker 1: if you know about good research on the subjects and
Speaker 1: send it our way. I always want to know about
Speaker 1: dogs and their level of self awareness, I mean, because
Speaker 1: they revered because what is what are you doing when
Speaker 1: you show a mirror to an animal like this? You're
Speaker 1: giving them a oftentimes near perfect visual version of another animal. Uh,
Speaker 1: and yeah, the dog might not care about that. The
Speaker 1: cat might not care about that. But what if you
Speaker 1: bring something and it smells like another dog? What if
Speaker 1: you lay the sound effect of a mewing kitten on
Speaker 1: a on a good speaker in your house. I think
Speaker 1: you'll find that you'll get totally different reactions from these animals.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so my dog, who does not care about
Speaker 1: reflections and mirrors at all, will go absolutely nuts if
Speaker 1: we say, bring in an object from another house that
Speaker 1: a dog lives in. This unleashes a storm of sniffing
Speaker 1: and interest and in this item. But sorry, anyway, coming
Speaker 1: back to to the Gallop study, So I mentioned that
Speaker 1: when a mirror is first put into the enclosure, at
Speaker 1: least as Gallop reported in in the chimpanzees that he
Speaker 1: was working with, when the mirror first went into the enclosure,
Speaker 1: they would at first react as if it was another animal,
Speaker 1: you know. They would try to threaten it. They might
Speaker 1: um do displays at it or make vocalizations at it.
Speaker 1: But these social type reactions decreased rapidly over the course
Speaker 1: of two or three days, and by like day four
Speaker 1: or five, they were just not doing this anymore. And
Speaker 1: the social reactions over the course of a few days
Speaker 1: tended to be replaced with behaviors that um that were
Speaker 1: directed toward the self, and which Gallop took as evidence
Speaker 1: of understanding that the chimpanzees were interacting with representations of
Speaker 1: their own bodies. So to read from gallops report quote,
Speaker 1: such self directed responding took the form of grooming parts
Speaker 1: of the body which would otherwise be virtually inaccessible without
Speaker 1: the mirror, picking bits of food from between the teeth
Speaker 1: while watching the mirror image, visually guided manipulation of the
Speaker 1: anal genital areas by means of the mirror, picking extraneous
Speaker 1: material from the nose by inspecting the reflected image, making
Speaker 1: faces at the mirror, blowing bubbles, and manipulating food wads
Speaker 1: with the lips by watching the reflection. In all instances
Speaker 1: of self directed behavior, the self is the referent through
Speaker 1: the reflection, whereas in cases of social behavior the reflection
Speaker 1: is the referend. So once they've been exposed to a
Speaker 1: mirror for a few days, the chimpanzees would start performing
Speaker 1: all kinds of exploratory and grooming behaviors with respect to
Speaker 1: their own bodies, which is fascinating. Yeah, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to try and put ourselves in the
Speaker 1: mind of a chimpanzee. Um, but but on a human
Speaker 1: lat like imagine if you had had no access to
Speaker 1: mirrors and then you were given one, like it would
Speaker 1: it would really just you know, open open a gateway
Speaker 1: into new realm of self awareness and self grooming. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as Gallup reported, in this study, at least the chimpanzees
Speaker 1: passed the mirror self self recognition test and the monkeys
Speaker 1: did not. The recess monkeys and the macaques did not.
Speaker 1: But since then a number of studies have found other
Speaker 1: animals to quote pass versions of the mirror self recognition test. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though again I want to emphasize there is debate about
Speaker 1: some of these findings, and again debate about the best
Speaker 1: ways to interpret them. So I do find these studies
Speaker 1: really interesting, but I would say interpret them with caution. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think a lot of times just the idea
Speaker 1: of the mirror test is is sort of engaged with,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of simplistically at least by you know,
Speaker 1: non scientists and general public sort of thing. Uh. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you do see plenty of articles that question the the
Speaker 1: usefulness of say, trying to get an octopus to look
Speaker 1: in the mirror. Right, But with all those caveats, some
Speaker 1: of the examples of animals that have in some way
Speaker 1: or another been interpreted to have passed the mirror self
Speaker 1: recognition test. These would include other great apes, so animalst
Speaker 1: like guerrillas and orangutans, and I think binobo's to some extent, elephants,
Speaker 1: some corvids, but not others. Definitely, magpies have in some studies,
Speaker 1: or at least one study, have been found to try
Speaker 1: to groom a spot on their body where a dot
Speaker 1: of die has been placed. And also perhaps some dolphins
Speaker 1: I think of his bottlenose dolphins, though their behaviors are
Speaker 1: harder to interpret than the behaviors of animals that can
Speaker 1: groom themselves with beaks or hands or trunk. You know,
Speaker 1: I haven't read anything recently about dolphin cognition. I'd love
Speaker 1: to come back to dolphins and and really go in
Speaker 1: at great depth. But I guess one question that comes
Speaker 1: to mind is in an underwater environment, to what extent
Speaker 1: was is a dolphin going to encounter a reflection of itself?
Speaker 1: Would you would it be able to encounter a reflection
Speaker 1: of itself at the surface of the water. Uh, from
Speaker 1: the submerged side. I don't know. I don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: because some of these other animals, it seems like you could,
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps simplistically ask the question, Well, wouldn't they
Speaker 1: occasionally encounter reflections of themselves in the water? You know,
Speaker 1: wouldn't there have wouldn't they encounter that stimuli in the
Speaker 1: natural world under the right conditions? Yeah, maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: Or maybe I don't know. Maybe when you go to
Speaker 1: a still pool of water and you're an orangutan or something,
Speaker 1: you're you're just thirsty and you're just getting the water
Speaker 1: real fast. You don't stop and look. Who knows? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it is. It's particularly weird when you think
Speaker 1: about humans in their mirrors, about how we inflict them
Speaker 1: on the world. Uh. You know, we don't think about
Speaker 1: this a lot. We don't think. Well, I don't really
Speaker 1: put a lot of mirrors outside, but of course you
Speaker 1: have traffic mirrors, and every vehicle that we put out
Speaker 1: there on the street, they have at least two mirrors
Speaker 1: on the outside of the vehicle. So just the other
Speaker 1: day I was watching a bird. I'm almost positive it
Speaker 1: was not a corvett it was, But it kept coming
Speaker 1: land right next to the automobile mirror, looking at itself,
Speaker 1: and then flying up and then flying back down, and
Speaker 1: then flying up, then flying back down to the mirror.
Speaker 1: And it did this on a loop for like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like two or three dozen times. I wonder
Speaker 1: if it was interpreting the reflection as a as a
Speaker 1: strange bird, as another animal. Yeah, perhaps just one last note. So,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, it seems that dogs
Speaker 1: do not generally pass the mirror self recognition test. But
Speaker 1: I was reading an article on NPR from years ago,
Speaker 1: is from like two thousand eleven, I think, Um, that
Speaker 1: was talking about one researcher who was proposing an alternate uh,
Speaker 1: an alternate version of the mirror self recognition test for
Speaker 1: a dog that would involve smells rather than reflection, which
Speaker 1: is a little bit different because the smell would have
Speaker 1: to be like, you know, the smell of something produced
Speaker 1: by the body, like the smell of its own urine
Speaker 1: or something like that. Uh. And this raises interesting questions about, like,
Speaker 1: what is the boundary of the self for something like
Speaker 1: a dog, is the smell of its own urine In
Speaker 1: a way, itself for distinguishable as something that is produced
Speaker 1: by the body but not co extensive with the body. Interesting, Rob, Rob,
Speaker 1: what's that magic? I feel? What's that strange sensation in
Speaker 1: the air? Is that the fairy king of a four
Speaker 1: part series coming down to bless this episode with with
Speaker 1: with the extended life of going on into yet one
Speaker 1: more part. I think it is, yes, Um, and I
Speaker 1: realized at this point we're we're definitely in the Hall
Speaker 1: of mirrors. Uh, it's it's you know, we're so far
Speaker 1: into the topic we may not be able to determine
Speaker 1: how much further we have to go and how far
Speaker 1: we have in fact come, but we will be back
Speaker 1: for at least one more mirror episode. I know we
Speaker 1: have some more stuff to talk about concerning who metal
Speaker 1: mirrors for starters, we haven't really uh discussed them at
Speaker 1: length yet. And we also have some more about mirrors
Speaker 1: in as they're as they are used in or invoked
Speaker 1: in technological metaphors in in some other cultures around the world.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a lot more to discuss, and perhaps
Speaker 1: uh if there, if you get to us in time,
Speaker 1: you might be able to ask, hey, how about this,
Speaker 1: and maybe we can even include it into the next episode.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if the time will work perfectly on that,
Speaker 1: but certainly if you're listening to these episodes and you
Speaker 1: have thoughts about your own interactions with mirrors, your pets
Speaker 1: and their interactions with mirrors, cultural ideas concerning mirrors, all
Speaker 1: of it is on the table. Ryan, let us know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. And in the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed. That is where you will find our episodes.
Speaker 1: Our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a listener mail which we do
Speaker 1: on Mondays. On Wednesdays we do the Artifact unless it
Speaker 1: has been uh preempted by an advertisement of some sort,
Speaker 1: and then on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's
Speaker 1: our time to talk about a strange movie, and on
Speaker 1: the weekends we do a rerun. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, You can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot cost.
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