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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and hey, Happy Halloween.

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Speaker 1: That's right, we have a special treat for you. We

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Speaker 1: normally have a Vault episode for you on Saturday, but

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Speaker 1: since this Saturday is also Halloween itself, we thought we

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Speaker 1: would feature a two parter from last year. Right, So

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Speaker 1: this was parts one and two of our episode on

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Speaker 1: psychic photography. This belief some people have that you could

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Speaker 1: project images from the brain onto photographs. And so that

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Speaker 1: we get into the ring. We talked about some real

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Speaker 1: strange para psychology research. We talked about vision and I

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Speaker 1: remember this being a lot of fun. All right, let's

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Speaker 1: dive right in. Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind, a

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Work. Hey you,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Alow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's October. So

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Speaker 1: we're continuing with our Halloween spooky, ghostly kind of theme,

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Speaker 1: and today we wanted to explore a somewhat ghostly topic

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Speaker 1: that ties into neuroscience to stuff we've talked about recently

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Speaker 1: on the Invention Podcast with the history of photography. But

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Speaker 1: before we get into that, I wanted to start with

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Speaker 1: a question to kind of orient us here, And that

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Speaker 1: question is, what is it that makes somebody skilled at

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Speaker 1: an art like realistic drawing or realistic sculpture. I should say,

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Speaker 1: by the way, I am not skilled at this at all.

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Speaker 1: I cannot draw realistically for the life of me. In fact,

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Speaker 1: when I try to draw pictures of people, it's the

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Speaker 1: it's a source of great amusement to Rachel. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm the same way. I can. I can draw a

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Speaker 1: pretty mean goblin, but um, I can't really draw a human.

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Speaker 1: My my son whose seven, is already a better better

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Speaker 1: artist when it comes to depicting actual human beings than I.

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Speaker 1: But obviously so a huge part of what's going on

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Speaker 1: here is is practice, right, you gotta learn techniques. But

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Speaker 1: another part of this I think could just be thought

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Speaker 1: of as some kind of motor power of translation, Like

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Speaker 1: how do you take an image represented in your brain

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Speaker 1: and it's in your brain either way, whether you're currently

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Speaker 1: looking at it or calling up out of a memory

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Speaker 1: or an imagination. Either way, the images coming from your brain,

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Speaker 1: and then it's being translated somehow through a series of

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Speaker 1: hand motions into a physical object in the world, whether

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Speaker 1: that's a sculpture, painting, or drawing. Like, there's some kind

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Speaker 1: of skill there that I think remains ineffable to us.

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Speaker 1: It's mysterious. Sometimes it's even kind of spooky because we

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Speaker 1: don't understand what's happening with that translation process. But what

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Speaker 1: if there were no translation process? What if there were

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Speaker 1: no way for clumsy arms and hands and failures of

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Speaker 1: technique to impede the physical manifestation and of what you've

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Speaker 1: got in your mind's I what if we could just

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Speaker 1: project the objects of the mind's eye directly onto the

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Speaker 1: physical world. Would such a thing be possible? And if so,

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Speaker 1: would such a power be in a way terrifying, sort

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Speaker 1: of godlike in the worst and most ancient sense. Ah,

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Speaker 1: And here you're getting into the uh, the Halloween aspects

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Speaker 1: of this topic. This is the reason that we have

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Speaker 1: decided to approach this during the month of October, exactly

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Speaker 1: because this power does show up in horror fiction. One

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Speaker 1: place that you might have encountered it is in the

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Speaker 1: books or the movies. Uh. There have been several different

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Speaker 1: series at this point, but The Ring, the story of

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Speaker 1: The Ring, the the scary ghost girl who can print

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Speaker 1: media with her brain. She can psychically print images onto

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Speaker 1: photographs or onto o the wall of a barn, or

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Speaker 1: onto a videotape. She can just make a videotape without

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Speaker 1: filming it, just straight out of her mind's eye. Of course,

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Speaker 1: this played up for horror in the film, and I

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Speaker 1: I sort of stand by taking it in that direction.

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Speaker 1: I think if anybody actually had this power, it would

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Speaker 1: be horrifying, and it would be it would be a

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Speaker 1: little irritating to everyone who's has put a lot of

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Speaker 1: time and effort into honing their craft. Right, Um, so

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Speaker 1: it's possible you're you're familiar with The Ring via Gore

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Speaker 1: Rabinski's two thousand and two remake The Ring. This is

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Speaker 1: where I saw it for the first time. But you

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Speaker 1: also may have seen it by watching the original Japanese

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Speaker 1: horror film directed by Hideo Nakata. This came out in

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Speaker 1: and I severely hope that if you, if you did

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Speaker 1: see the original Japanese version back in the late nineties,

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Speaker 1: you watched it on a crumb a dubbed VHS, because

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Speaker 1: that would be most appropriate, right, because either way, if

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Speaker 1: you haven't seen the movies or read the see. The

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Speaker 1: original Japanese movie was also based on a book by

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Speaker 1: by Koji Suzuki, but in any case, the story is

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Speaker 1: about a cursed videotape that is made by this ghost girl.

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Speaker 1: She uses the psychic power of projecting her thoughts directly

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Speaker 1: onto media to make a videotape that kills the people

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Speaker 1: who watch it. Yeah, a curse videotape containing disturbing it's

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Speaker 1: basically a disturbing surrealistic art video kills you in seven days.

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Speaker 1: So there's kind of a uh what do you call

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Speaker 1: in the medicinal terms, uh, delayed react effects effects. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It takes that alone to work through your system, you know,

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Speaker 1: time to release. Sometimes artists like that it's time released.

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Speaker 1: You know, you go, you want to see it at

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Speaker 1: the museum, and you're like, I don't really know what

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Speaker 1: what I how I feel about this or or you know,

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Speaker 1: how I think about this piece and how it relates

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Speaker 1: to me, and then seven days later it kicks in

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Speaker 1: and you die. Uh weird, look at it, fist. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is basically an update of a very old notion,

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Speaker 1: right of a haunted object, or of haunted media, only

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Speaker 1: instead of a dark and magical book instead of something

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Speaker 1: like you know, the Necronomicon or you know the Book

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Speaker 1: of Sand or any of these other treatments. We have

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Speaker 1: a dark and magical video recording and it unleashes a

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Speaker 1: world of terror and death. It's an inherently compelling idea

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Speaker 1: in horror. I think actually some piece of media, whether

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Speaker 1: it's a book or now a movie, I think there

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Speaker 1: there's some There's Stephen King's story with like a painting

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Speaker 1: that kills you or something. There's the representage Herror, and

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Speaker 1: it's one of one of King's best short stories. I

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Speaker 1: highly recommend. I agree. Maybe that is what I was

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Speaker 1: thinking of. That is a fantastic story. Um, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean obviously the idea of like a a work

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Speaker 1: of art or something that cannot be experienced without cursing

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Speaker 1: or killing you. Yeah, that's scary. It's also fertile ground

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Speaker 1: for any kind of metaphor that the artist wants to

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Speaker 1: sew about, you know, about art itself, and art does

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Speaker 1: have an effect on us. I mean, there's an old

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Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind where Julie and

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Speaker 1: I discussed Stendahl syndrome and some of its related alleged syndromes.

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Speaker 1: You know, it deals with the reality that, yes, sometimes

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Speaker 1: times great works of art, Uh. You know, with great

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Speaker 1: works of art with appropriate priming, UH can overwhelm us,

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Speaker 1: can have a physical reaction on us. So uh you

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Speaker 1: know it's it's not unrealistic. Um. Yeah, you know. I

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Speaker 1: want to say about the gor Verbinsky remake of The Ring, well,

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Speaker 1: I don't inherently love the idea of just like American

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Speaker 1: remakes of foreign films just to sort of americanize it,

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Speaker 1: because it had only been like a few years since

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Speaker 1: the original film had been made at that point, and

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Speaker 1: they americanized the heck out of it exactly. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time, one thing I will defend about it

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Speaker 1: is it is a very um visually imaginative film. Like

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Speaker 1: it's got great creepy abstract imagery in it. Oh yeah, great,

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Speaker 1: great visuals, great performances, uh, and wonderful special effects. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That remake I remember really had an effect on it.

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Speaker 1: Was so the last time a horror film like made

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Speaker 1: me sleep with the lights on. Uh. So I look

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Speaker 1: back fondly on it for that reason. However, I have

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Speaker 1: to say certain aspects of the film stuck with me

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Speaker 1: and others. I kind of forgot about. Like some of

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Speaker 1: you might be like, oh, yeah, I guess that girl

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Speaker 1: did write video tapes with her mind like that I

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Speaker 1: kind of forgot about. I also kind of forgot that

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Speaker 1: it had this that it's essentially adoption sploitation horror, not

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Speaker 1: the only yeah, basically, yeah, basically, because the whole idea

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Speaker 1: is that this this couple that adopts this child, and

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Speaker 1: the child is troubled, and I forgot that she was adopted. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So you know, I have a very queasy attitude towards

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Speaker 1: that kind of horror at this point in my life.

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Speaker 1: For sure, totally. But but still those are the things

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Speaker 1: I tend to forget about it. I remember, you know,

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Speaker 1: those scenes with Samara Um climbing out of the television

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Speaker 1: with the creepy walk where they think they filmed her

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Speaker 1: backwards and then made it go forwards. I remember, I

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Speaker 1: think Hans Zimmer did the music, and it's very effective

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Speaker 1: horror music. Um. And then on and then on the

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Speaker 1: on top of that, you have some performances. Uh, did

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Speaker 1: you ever see the sequel? I did spoil it all

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Speaker 1: as I saw it in the theater even um and

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Speaker 1: I don't recommend it, but but no, it's a it

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Speaker 1: is a film that is still both films are considered

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Speaker 1: classics in their own way, and I think they earned

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Speaker 1: that that reputation just if nothing else, by just scaring

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Speaker 1: us so terribly and really connecting with our relationship with media.

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Speaker 1: And at that time it was it was dealing with

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Speaker 1: the VHS and UH and and and how we were

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Speaker 1: connecting with with this kind of you know, physical media.

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Speaker 1: And I should say also, you know, getting into that

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Speaker 1: idea of finding weird things, finding weird footage. And at

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Speaker 1: that point it was most of us through like tape

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Speaker 1: trading or I guess as to a certain extent, downloads,

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Speaker 1: but I definitely remember ordering up like weird dubs of

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Speaker 1: the Japanese laser disc of say um El Topo or

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Speaker 1: Holy Mountain, and there was this weird you know, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, you have you're not really sure exactly how

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Speaker 1: this got to you. You know, what are the hands

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Speaker 1: that dubbed it from this format to this format and

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Speaker 1: then re dubbed it here and then finally it's in

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Speaker 1: my hands. I think that is actually one of my

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Speaker 1: favorite types of story forms for horror is the the

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Speaker 1: creepy found piece of media. I can remember One of

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Speaker 1: my favorite horror short stories I've read in a long

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Speaker 1: time was won by Laird Baron. I think it's called

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Speaker 1: Mysterium Tremendum, where the narrator of the story you just

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Speaker 1: finds this travel guide and I think some weird use

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Speaker 1: bookstore or something, but it turns out to be a

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Speaker 1: nefarious sort of magic travel guide that leads to very

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Speaker 1: dark places. So yeah, I love that nowadays though, and

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Speaker 1: maybe they do this, and I think maybe they did

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Speaker 1: this one of the recent Ring movies. It's like, essentially,

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Speaker 1: it's gotta be on YouTube, which takes the punch out

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Speaker 1: of it because it's like, you have the dark media,

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Speaker 1: but then the dark media is on an even more

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Speaker 1: deplorable social media you know, bum or format. But it

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Speaker 1: also takes away the ironic distance that makes the horror

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Speaker 1: fun because YouTube just will melt your brain and kill you.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't need any like horror upgrades. The

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Speaker 1: real actual YouTube is just waiting to destroy you at

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Speaker 1: the moment. Yeah, though it is. I it is kind

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Speaker 1: of comforting to think that that all the commentators at

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the Ring video then YouTube died seven

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Speaker 1: days later. So like the guy says that WTF is disreal? Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: as long as we're just talking about the Ring, though

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Speaker 1: the American remake, we should point out again that that

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Speaker 1: cast is tremendous. Um talking about Samara. Her mom is

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Speaker 1: played by Shannon cochrane who plays who played Pam's mother

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Speaker 1: on the Office, and then her father is played by

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Speaker 1: Brian Cox, the legendary Brian Cox. Brian Cox one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite actors of all time. He he kind of

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Speaker 1: makes the movie and in the the the the young

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Speaker 1: actor playing Samara herself. I don't know if we said

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Speaker 1: Samara is the ghost Girl and the Ghost Girl, she's

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Speaker 1: Samara and the American version, and she's a Sedaco in

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Speaker 1: the Japanese version, so that the name changes. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: in the in the even the remake, Devey case Chase,

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Speaker 1: I hope I'm saying her name right. Uh. This actor

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Speaker 1: played Samara, and she also voiced Lilo in Lilo in

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Speaker 1: and Stitching Disney film about the you know, the the

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Speaker 1: alien visiting Hawaii. Going to her IMDb page is hilarious

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Speaker 1: because I found out she also is the girl in

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Speaker 1: the Sparkle Dance Troupe in Donnie Dark and she's the

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Speaker 1: voice of the main character in the in the English

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Speaker 1: dub of Spirited Away. Ah, yeah, the Manzaki film great. Okay, So,

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Speaker 1: first of all, the idea that Samara can create a

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Speaker 1: surrealistic film that she can pour like all the the

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Speaker 1: nihilistic misanthropic visions in her head into a videotape and

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Speaker 1: make it so potent that it can kill people, either

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Speaker 1: just through the sheer power of the art or you know,

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Speaker 1: probably through some sort of supernatural um you know whatever. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That's a really cool trick and one that I would

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Speaker 1: think could have been put to much more profitable use, right, Um, Like,

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Speaker 1: why isn't there a sequel where like the U. S

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Speaker 1: Military ends up acquiring Samara Like it, that would be

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Speaker 1: great because since she ends up killing all the like

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Speaker 1: the evil mk Ultra gate dudes, it basically rights itself, right,

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Speaker 1: but sort of a crossover with The Ring and Stranger

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Speaker 1: Things would have been. Yeah. Now to to go a

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Speaker 1: little deeper though, I think in a way this concept

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Speaker 1: really really works though, Like you can think of any

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Speaker 1: creative endeavor, especially filmmaking, as an attempt to bring that

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Speaker 1: ideal image that mentally imagine your head into the world,

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Speaker 1: and of course for a number of reasons we generally

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Speaker 1: don't succeed in pulling that off. And part of the reason,

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Speaker 1: of course, is that is that the idea in our

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Speaker 1: mind is rarely as fully formed as we think it is.

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Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right. I mean an experience I

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Speaker 1: definitely have when writing, and I think you've said you

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Speaker 1: have this before, is I don't necessarily know what I'm

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Speaker 1: going to write until I start writing, Like if I'm

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Speaker 1: writing a scene in fiction, you know like that it's

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Speaker 1: the process of writing that helps bring out the content. Yeah, exactly. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know in other issues coming to play as well,

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Speaker 1: in the final version perhaps feels a bit lacking. So

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Speaker 1: you know, you can forgive a lot of us we

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Speaker 1: we wonder, you know, imagine how perfect it would it

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Speaker 1: would have been if you've been able to simply beam

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Speaker 1: your vision directly onto a video tape. You don't have

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Speaker 1: to worry about casting it where you're gonna film all

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Speaker 1: your weird art, film your artifacts. How are you going

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Speaker 1: to get that that chair to go upside down? No,

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Speaker 1: you can just beam it directly onto the onto the

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Speaker 1: tape um. And so maybe the power then of your

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Speaker 1: vision would be so pure and uncut that it would

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Speaker 1: just literally slay table. Well, I like that, But on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, I mean, I think it's sort of

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Speaker 1: trying to imagine. This highlights the unreality of what it

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Speaker 1: is you're trying to imagine. I mean, I feel like

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Speaker 1: our image of the thing we want to create is

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Speaker 1: never really fully formed, even when it seems like it is.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if even people who have extremely vivid mental

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Speaker 1: imagery can actually see a full completed painting that they

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Speaker 1: haven't finished painting yet. Uh and and and not just

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Speaker 1: sort of like see glimpses of little bits of color

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Speaker 1: and shape that that ultimately add up to something concrete

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Speaker 1: and finalized once you've you know, translated through your hand

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Speaker 1: movements into that painting. I kind of doubt that people

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Speaker 1: can actually see a full painting that they haven't painted yet, right.

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Speaker 1: And maybe we may be part of his linguistic you know,

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Speaker 1: like we we tend to say. A sculptor might say,

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Speaker 1: I see the horse trapped in this block, and I

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Speaker 1: wish to free it. I'm just going to remove all

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Speaker 1: the pieces around the finished piece that I envisioned within

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Speaker 1: it with In reality, it's more like I see the

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Speaker 1: inspiration for the thing that I am going to create, yeah,

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Speaker 1: a kind of fuzzy, low resolution suggestion of the thing

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Speaker 1: that you will create maybe, Yeah, And then comes the

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Speaker 1: hard work. Then comes the talent, uh, and the skill.

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Speaker 1: One more one more thing about the Ring, and then

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Speaker 1: I'll I'll mostly let it go. But ultimately, what is

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Speaker 1: the message of this film? It's seen because basically the

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Speaker 1: whole plot is, oh, this these tanks are killing people?

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Speaker 1: Why is it killing people? Always? Because of this little

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Speaker 1: girl that died? And then they go on this question like, oh,

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Speaker 1: we can set her spirit free, should be happy, and

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Speaker 1: everyone will be saved, and then you realize, oh, no,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't work because she can't be saved. She's just

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Speaker 1: evil to the core, and everybody's gonna keep on dying. Right. Well,

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Speaker 1: but they do figure out a way to get around

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Speaker 1: the curse, which is just keep passing it, keep spreading it.

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Speaker 1: So right, if you spread the curse to more people,

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Speaker 1: she won't kill you. Yeah, basically the plot of of

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Speaker 1: it follows as well, right, but yeah, but ultimately in

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Speaker 1: the Ring, well, you only get temporarily spared, and it follows, right,

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Speaker 1: But then I think in the Ring they acknowledge what

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Speaker 1: happens when like you know that didn't mind come back

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Speaker 1: to them as well. But maybe that's in the sequels. No, No,

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Speaker 1: I think that was it was kind of at least

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Speaker 1: hinted at in the first Yeah. I don't really trying

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Speaker 1: to think about the sequels. But but ultimately, like the messages,

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Speaker 1: don't try to help people, don't try and fix the world,

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Speaker 1: like everybody's gonna that's so just so bleak and nihilistic. Uh,

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Speaker 1: maybe it's just too bleak and nihilistic for me now.

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Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing I would have loved when

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Speaker 1: I was younger. But but yeah, that's such a harsh

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Speaker 1: way to land it, isn't it. Yeah, Um, it's not

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Speaker 1: an inspiring story on close examination. But but I do

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Speaker 1: still stand by a lot of the visual imagery in

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Speaker 1: the film, which I think holds up really well. And

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Speaker 1: Brian Cox is just an absolute treat absolutely. All Right,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break when we come back.

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Speaker 1: We're going to move on from just discussing the Ring

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Speaker 1: in general, and we're going to discuss this this thing

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Speaker 1: that she is supposed to do, this idea that a

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Speaker 1: mind could somehow imprint an image on something or in

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Speaker 1: something or in like on Cape on Film. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be one of these topics that I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, draws in from a number of past episodes

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Speaker 1: of both stuff to blow your mind and invention. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So we're exploring the topic of kick photography,

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Speaker 1: or just generally being able to print the mind's eye

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Speaker 1: into some manifestation in the physical world without going through

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Speaker 1: any kind of normal motor translation process like drawing with

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Speaker 1: your hand or explaining a mental image with your mouth,

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Speaker 1: just printing the mind's eye directly onto film or onto

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper. Yes, and this is a topic

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Speaker 1: that if you're if you're already thinking, well that just

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Speaker 1: sounds silly. Um, well, hang with us, because you know, ultimately,

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Speaker 1: I I think it's pretty safe to say this is

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Speaker 1: not actually occurring. This is not a power that human

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Speaker 1: beings actually have. But but by looking at it and considering,

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Speaker 1: like how we get to this point of thinking that

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Speaker 1: it's possible in some cases, Uh, you know what it

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Speaker 1: reveals about our relationship with our own mind and considerations

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Speaker 1: of our own mind and mental states, as well as

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Speaker 1: our understanding of photography itself. Yeah, this episode made me

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Speaker 1: keep thinking back to the series on photography that we

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Speaker 1: did on our other podcast, Invention, which if you're not

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Speaker 1: subscribed yet, go subscribe to Invention. That's right, it's a

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Speaker 1: journey through human techno history. And yeah, we did a

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Speaker 1: whole series on photography, also stuff before photography, like the

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Speaker 1: camera obscura, and then also on motion picture technology afterwards.

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Speaker 1: And really, you know, we can't, uh you know, overstate

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Speaker 1: the degree to which photography changed the world. It changed

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Speaker 1: the way we thought about the world, how we thought

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Speaker 1: about ourselves. It gave us new metaphors for uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: thinking about our own minds and how we're perceiving the world.

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Speaker 1: And uh also arguably made the modern celebrity possible. Uh

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Speaker 1: so we can lay that crime at its feet as well,

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Speaker 1: but it also lent itself well to a number of

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Speaker 1: pseudo scientific ideas and ultimately downright occult notions about what

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Speaker 1: photography was and what it might capture. Well. Sure, because

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Speaker 1: if you are, say, somebody who is adamant that there

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Speaker 1: is a type of reality that we can't normally see,

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Speaker 1: a very commonplace to go to try to find bits

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Speaker 1: of evidence of that reality that we can't normally see

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Speaker 1: is some kind of objective recorded media. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think about the people who do e VP ghost recordings

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Speaker 1: electronic voice phenomena. Again, this is not something that I

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Speaker 1: think is real evidence of ghosts, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: people think, Okay, you know, I take my tape recorder

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Speaker 1: to a haunted graveyard and I just leave it going,

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Speaker 1: and then I play it back and in through the

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Speaker 1: static and the rustling in the wind, I hear voices

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Speaker 1: saying things. If I can be psychological for a minute,

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Speaker 1: I think what's mostly going on is that drawing from

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Speaker 1: objective recording media like that allows people to generate the

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Speaker 1: noise into which they can read a signal yes. And

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Speaker 1: of course photography when it was new, provided a whole

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Speaker 1: new way of doing something like this, right, And then

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Speaker 1: other technologies that were coming out around, you know, in

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Speaker 1: the same era we all said the X ray, which

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Speaker 1: we also have an episode of Invention about which deals

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Speaker 1: with invisible um, you know, processes, you know, invisible rays,

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Speaker 1: an invisible world, and and also was a big game

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Speaker 1: changer and how we we thought about reality. Sure, So

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Speaker 1: I was reading a little more about this, and I

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Speaker 1: ran across a two thousand five book titled The Perfect

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Speaker 1: Medium by Shiro at All, and it it gets into

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Speaker 1: the intersections between the occult and photography, which are numerous, numerous,

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Speaker 1: but the author's point out that they generally generally fall

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Speaker 1: into three categories. First of all, photographs of spirits, in

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Speaker 1: which a spirit entity shows up in the photograph. I

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Speaker 1: think we're mover with examples of this, uh uh. And

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Speaker 1: then another is photographs of mediums in which the spirit medium,

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Speaker 1: which is a you know, human like us who is

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Speaker 1: leading a seance or something, is doing something supernatural. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it might be like a photograph that shows that

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Speaker 1: during a seance this medium was levitating, or that this medium,

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Speaker 1: during some kind of session was generating ectoplasm, right, And

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Speaker 1: that's the next one. Photographs of fluids and and this

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Speaker 1: one is interesting because the obvious subject matter here is exoplasm,

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Speaker 1: some weird substance emerging from the individual, and in reality

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Speaker 1: it's generally wet sheep's cloth or or something like that. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's easy to just think of this as ghost

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Speaker 1: slime and a ghostbuster's fashion. Maybe we should explain ectoplasm

408
00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:23,440
Speaker 1: just a little bit more so. It was this phenomenon

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Speaker 1: where a medium would claim that they can generate some

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Speaker 1: kind of physical manifestation of the spirit world that shows

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Speaker 1: up when you take a picture of them in the dark.

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Speaker 1: Maybe uh, and it would yeah, so it would look

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Speaker 1: like some kind of weird cloth or slime beside their

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Speaker 1: head or on their body, like like a big like

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Speaker 1: mucus something like. No, it doesn't even generally it just

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Speaker 1: looks like some sort of weird mucasy cloth they got

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Speaker 1: slimed or slimber exactly. I mean, that's where that comes from.

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Speaker 1: But it's also a bit more more complex in this

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Speaker 1: society and the fluids in these photographs, as Sharrow and

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Speaker 1: I'll point out, you know, it's dealing with this the

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Speaker 1: idea that you're capturing a sense of the vital force,

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Speaker 1: the soul, the thoughts, feelings, dreams, etcetera. All this directly

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Speaker 1: captured on a photographic plate without the use of a

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Speaker 1: camera in some cases. So it has a strong connection

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Speaker 1: to what was going on at the time and observation

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Speaker 1: of X rays and radioactivity. They point out that in France,

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Speaker 1: so Luis darg and others quote sought to photograph their

428
00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:23,800
Speaker 1: own vital energy or thoughts simply by placing their fingers

429
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:29,480
Speaker 1: or foreheads on the census eze plate. Despite numerous refutations

430
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,600
Speaker 1: by scientists who demonstrated that the traces thus obtained were

431
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:35,879
Speaker 1: no more than photographic artifacts arising out of the experimental

432
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:40,119
Speaker 1: conditions themselves. Attempts to record human fluids continued throughout the

433
00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:43,399
Speaker 1: twentieth century. And so this these fluids would not just

434
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:46,400
Speaker 1: be like blood or something, that would be these these

435
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:48,880
Speaker 1: spiritual fluids. Yeah, and it gets beyond just like mere

436
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 1: fluids and into also things like horrors. Um so in

437
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: other words, and then people still do photographing as absolutely

438
00:23:56,680 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 1: that's like big business. Yeah, so, you know, in other words,

439
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:02,040
Speaker 1: in the midst of all this what was essentially future shock,

440
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: you know, uh, at this emerging technology and the hidden

441
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:09,200
Speaker 1: world's exposed through X rays. This idea of capturing thoughts

442
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 1: through photography carried a fair amount of weight, no matter

443
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 1: what the science said and is still saying about it.

444
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 1: So the author's point to to uh to a couple

445
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: of examples, one of which is the work of Simon

446
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 1: Kurlean in the nineteen forties. Uh. Kurlan, of course, is

447
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: where we get Kurlean photography. He lived ninety eight, and

448
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 1: it's the process in which an image is obtained by

449
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 1: the application of a high frequency electric field to an

450
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:40,360
Speaker 1: object so that it radiates a characteristic pattern of luminescence

451
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 1: that is recorded on photographic film. And it ultimately has

452
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: to do with moisture and other factors. But but claims

453
00:24:46,800 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: were made that it captured some aspect of an individual's health,

454
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 1: their essence, or their vital bodily energy. So there's some

455
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: kind of like invisible quality they have this showing up

456
00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:59,480
Speaker 1: when you run this electric current and take a picture, right,

457
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 1: And I think it's still factors into some sort of

458
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:05,879
Speaker 1: as to some like alternative like new age of systems.

459
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I mean,

460
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: it's ultimately you're you're dealing with something that is perhaps

461
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: a a what you know, supernatural interpretation of some visual

462
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,399
Speaker 1: data that you've created, which you know, as long as

463
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:26,960
Speaker 1: you're not not you know, claiming that it's scientific, I guess,

464
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 1: you know, go for it. Um. It just falls under

465
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: the domain of of of of of spiritualism and religion.

466
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:36,959
Speaker 1: They also point to a man by the name of

467
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 1: ted Sirius, who we will come back to in a bit. Yes,

468
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 1: because we before we get to Sirius, we have to

469
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: explore the origins of this very act that Samara in

470
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 1: the Ring is is engaging in. Uh, this idea that

471
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 1: human beings are capable not only of photography, which photography

472
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: in and of itself is an amazing accomplishment. This, this,

473
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: this much have seemed magic when it was new, Oh, absolutely,

474
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: because at least we discussed an invention. You know. It's

475
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:10,200
Speaker 1: it's this perfect convergence of of optical expertise and chemical

476
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: expertise and artistic expertise, all of it coming together in

477
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 1: this new way of of of of dealing with the

478
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: visual world. Um. But then we have this added idea

479
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: that people can also engage in thought ptography, right, thoughtography. Uh,

480
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 1: it goes by several names, now, psychic photography maybe thoughtography,

481
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 1: and it's modern origins are I think you could you

482
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: could argue that they are in Japan. So I want

483
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: to talk about a researcher named Fukuai Tomochichi, who is

484
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: a Japanese psychologist who lived from eighteen sixty nine to

485
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two. He was educated at Tokyo Imperial University

486
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:53,360
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties. He studied in their philosophy department.

487
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:55,719
Speaker 1: Because this would have been when psychology was brand new

488
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: there weren't like psychology departments, you know that there there

489
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:00,880
Speaker 1: would have been many of the were any at the time,

490
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 1: and he received his PhD after doing a dissertation on hypnotism.

491
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: And according to the History of Japanese Psychology by Brian J. McVeigh,

492
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 1: which is my source on most of this about Fukurai,

493
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: Fukarai played an important role in introducing the work of

494
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:20,639
Speaker 1: the pioneering American psychologist William James to Japanese scholars. Of course,

495
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:24,359
Speaker 1: William James would have been a contemporary of Fuguais. James

496
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: Is The Principles of Psychology came out in eighteen ninety

497
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: and his lectures which became the Varieties of Religious Experience,

498
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 1: which we've talked about a number of times on the show.

499
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:35,640
Speaker 1: That those happened around nineteen o one and nineteen o two,

500
00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 1: I think, But so this would have been around the

501
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 1: same time that Fukurai was working and uh and doing

502
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:45,120
Speaker 1: his dissertation and doing his early research. Now, according to McVeigh,

503
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 1: Fukarai also published work on the subject of education, and

504
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:52,439
Speaker 1: he became a lecturer and an associate professor in the

505
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,479
Speaker 1: field of abnormal psychology, which today we would just call

506
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 1: the study of mental illnesses and he so he was

507
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 1: a lecturer at Tokyo and Real University on these subjects.

508
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,640
Speaker 1: But from here his interests apparently took a turn for

509
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:11,640
Speaker 1: the paranormal. So, beginning sometime around nineteen ten, Farai became

510
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:17,640
Speaker 1: extremely interested in spiritualism, especially in the subject of clair voyance. Now,

511
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 1: of course, we should note that he would not have

512
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: been alone in this at the time. Interest in spiritualism, mediums,

513
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: and the paranormal enjoyed extreme popularity and elite circles all

514
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:32,200
Speaker 1: around the world at this time. Now today, clair voyance

515
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 1: is usually understood to be a special kind of psychic power.

516
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: Common definition of it is quote the supposed faculty of

517
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: perceiving things or events in the future or beyond normal

518
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: sensory contact. Now, like a lot of psychic concepts, I

519
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:51,720
Speaker 1: see claire voyance invoked to refer to a sort of

520
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: a broad range of things. H So I think it

521
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 1: can include all manner of cases of remote viewing. So

522
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 1: like seeing things that are hind physical barriers. You know,

523
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:04,040
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be able to see through the closed door

524
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: into the next room, but you can seeing things that

525
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: are far away, you know, maybe seeing things that are

526
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: happening in another country, seeing things that are separated in

527
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: time in the future or the past. Uh, And sometimes

528
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: but less often, seeing things that can't normally be seen

529
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: at all, such as spiritual essences or the contents of

530
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: other people's thoughts, or otherwise having knowledge that you just

531
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: couldn't acquire by normal means. Now, of course, it's worth

532
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: noting that all of these things as psychic phenomenon, they

533
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: are basically exaggerations of things that the human mind does

534
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: through um, you know, through mental time travel, for instance,

535
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: imagining what the future will be like, or remembering what

536
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,480
Speaker 1: the past was. The idea of not being able to

537
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 1: see through a wall into the next room and see

538
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: what's going on there, but perform but you know, conceiving

539
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: a mental picture of what it might be like. Like

540
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:00,719
Speaker 1: for instance, there's another recording studio here or in the office.

541
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: I cannot see in there with my mind, but with

542
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: my mind I can imagine that the guys from stuff

543
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know are in there right

544
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 1: now recording something. But you cannot imagine what they are doing.

545
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: But I can form a pretty basic idea that of

546
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 1: setting around a table talking it will not fit in

547
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: your brain. When they're doing it's it's it looks just

548
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: like what we're doing. This the subject matter is slightly different.

549
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: But but at any rate, what I'm saying is I

550
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: can form a pretty good idea, but I know that

551
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 1: that is just my brain creating a simulation of my environment, right.

552
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think a lot of this clairvoyant

553
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: stuff hinges on the concept of generating accurate knowledge. It's

554
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 1: like all the stuff we can do with our imagination,

555
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: except they can do it to see reality. Um And

556
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: the kind of clear voyants that Fukurai was most interested

557
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: in I think would be covered by the first two

558
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: categories of things I said, so mostly like seeing things

559
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: that are far away and seeing across physical barriers. According

560
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 1: to McVeigh, he was focused on something called toshi, which

561
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 1: meant something like seeing through, as in seeing through barriers,

562
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: and on syndrigan, which meant the far seeing eye. And

563
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: in this parapsychology phase of his life, Fukurai was aided

564
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: by another Japanese researcher named Imamura Shinkichi. Now Fukuai studied

565
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:24,000
Speaker 1: a reputed Japanese clairvoyant named Mfuni Chizuko and another named

566
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: Nagao Ikuko, and McVeigh writes that in nineteen ten, Fukurai

567
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: performed a series of experiments in front of a panel

568
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: of scholars and experts that he believed would demonstrate Mfuna

569
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: Chizuko's power to read out written messages even after they

570
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: had been sealed inside envelopes and then placed inside lead containers,

571
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: and apparently an attempt to replicate these experiments the following

572
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: year in nineteen eleven was not as successful as Fukurai

573
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:54,040
Speaker 1: and Mfuni had hoped, and a lot of people considered

574
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 1: that Fugarais research was clearly misguided After some failed demonstrations

575
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: and he in his supposed clairvoyant subjects like Nigau and

576
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: mfune were criticized in the press, and at least I

577
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: think it's implied that partially as a result of these

578
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: failures in subsequent criticism, McVeigh writes that both mufuney and

579
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: Nigau Ikuko committed suicide in the year nineteen eleven, but

580
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: before I've also seen another cause of death attributed to Nagaikuko,

581
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure about that, But McVeigh says that

582
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 1: that she also died by suicide. But before she died

583
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven, Nagaikuko appeared to demonstrate a novel form

584
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: of psychic power that fascinated Fukurai, and this was apart

585
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: from traditional clairvoyance. This was the power that Fukurai called ninsha,

586
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: which would have roughly translated as thoughtography. The Japanese term

587
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: ninha comes from the combination of nin meaning like sense

588
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: or feeling, and shah meaning picture, and in concrete terms,

589
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,280
Speaker 1: this just means that Fukua I believe that Nigau had

590
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 1: the power to use her mind's eye to expose a

591
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: draw I played a photographic film, essentially burning her thoughts

592
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: directly onto the physical substrate, the same way that light

593
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:11,040
Speaker 1: prints and image onto a piece of film. After Mifunei

594
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 1: and Nagau died, Fukurai continued his research and he published

595
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: a book about clairvoyance and photography in nineteen thirteen, which

596
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: was widely criticized as credulous and unscientific, and fugura I

597
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: eventually lost his university position moved on to other things

598
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 1: that he apparently continued to be interested in paranormal research

599
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: well into his retirement in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. Um.

600
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: One weird thing is Before he was publicly ridiculed and

601
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: ousted from his position at Tokyo University, Fugaray was considered

602
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: an elite scholar at the head of Japanese psychology. He

603
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: was not, you know, just some crank writing pamphlets in

604
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: his basement. He was. He was a top scholar, and

605
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: his his academic exile had consequences. I was reading in

606
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: the Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology Global Perspectives

607
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 1: by David B. Baker that, in action to the Fukarai affair,

608
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 1: a new head of the psychology department at Tokyo Imperial

609
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: University decided that the department could rehabilitate its reputation by

610
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:15,839
Speaker 1: only focusing on quote normal psychology, ignoring both of fucharais

611
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: areas of study meaning parapsychology like the study of psychics

612
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: and quote abnormal psychology, which again would amount to the

613
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:26,439
Speaker 1: study of mental illness. Uh. Now, of course, saying we're

614
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: not going to study mental illnesses is a huge limitation

615
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,839
Speaker 1: on academic psychology, which the authors right in this book

616
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 1: a quote stunted the rise of clinical psychology and pre

617
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:40,320
Speaker 1: war Japan. Yeah, absolutely though, because, yeah, studying an mental

618
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:43,360
Speaker 1: illness is a way not only of understanding how to

619
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 1: trade mental illness, but also to understand, like what, you know,

620
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: how the mind is functioning in individuals who are are

621
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:55,280
Speaker 1: not experiencing mental illness, right, I mean it. It provides

622
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: a frame of reference. Yeah, A lot of the For example,

623
00:34:59,120 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: a lot of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of

624
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: psychology have come from studying patients who have brain injuries

625
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,759
Speaker 1: or legions some kind that like they show you how

626
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: the brain changes when certain or how the mind changes

627
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 1: and how behavior changes when certain physical changes are made

628
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 1: to the brain. And of course, I I've seen it

629
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,279
Speaker 1: alleged by a number of writers that the stories of

630
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:25,400
Speaker 1: people like me Funi Chizuko and Nagai Kuko inspired the

631
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 1: fictional ghost in the original Ring by Suzuki Koji. I

632
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: don't know if that's uh correct, but it's at least

633
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:34,319
Speaker 1: been alleged that there's some threat of inspiration there um.

634
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 1: And you know, I want to be a little bit

635
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: sympathetic to Fukurai and consider the historical context, Like in

636
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: the year nineteen ten, it was only fifteen years previous

637
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:47,320
Speaker 1: that X rays and X ray photography had been discovered.

638
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: We sort of alluded to this earlier right. The German

639
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 1: physicist Wilhelm Runkin. He discovered X rays by accident in

640
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:58,480
Speaker 1: the year eighteen when he was performing experiments with a

641
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:01,280
Speaker 1: type of early cathode ray tube, which was an electrical

642
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: device that shoots a beam of electrons across space inside

643
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: an evacuated tube from one electrode to another. And Runkin

644
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:11,760
Speaker 1: noticed when he was running these experiments he'd put current

645
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: through the cathode ray tube in the darkened room, it

646
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:17,800
Speaker 1: would make this particular screen in the room. It was

647
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: a screen of barium platinum cyanide, which is like a

648
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 1: type of photographic plate. It would make that glow. And

649
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: this puzzled him, of course, so he tried to run

650
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,359
Speaker 1: some more experiments, and he discovered that he could use

651
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 1: the cathode ray tube to expose photographic plates inside a

652
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:38,360
Speaker 1: completely dark room, except the photos were nothing like anybody

653
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:41,360
Speaker 1: on Earth had ever seen. A human hand placed in

654
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: front of the tube between the tube and the plate

655
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: would create an exposure almost completely ignoring the fleshy parts

656
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: of the hand, but showing the bones hidden underneath the flesh.

657
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: And when Runkin created an X ray exposure of his

658
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 1: wife's hand. She reportedly looked at the images of her

659
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:02,439
Speaker 1: bones and said, I have seen my death. Uh yeah.

660
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:04,239
Speaker 1: And if you want more about this, we talked about

661
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: this in our X ray episode of Invention. But the

662
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 1: X ray photo was a radically completely new way of

663
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: imaging the hidden reality inside the body. It had been

664
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,879
Speaker 1: discovered almost completely by accident, and it had been only

665
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: like fifteen years before this. Of course, photography itself was

666
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 1: maybe like eighty to ninety years old at the time,

667
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:23,839
Speaker 1: And so you add to that the fact that people

668
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: were proposing all kinds of other hypothetical classes of raise

669
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 1: at the time. You remember we talked about in rays.

670
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 1: Those didn't exist, but people were just thinking that they

671
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 1: were all kinds of rays we didn't detect or understand

672
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 1: yet invisible forces beaming out from one object to another.

673
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: Um Fukurai was wrong. I think he. I think he

674
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: was misguided, But I don't think it was crazy at

675
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: the time, or certainly not as crazy as it seems

676
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: now to think that the hidden anatomy that governed the

677
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: mind's eye and the brain might leave some kind of

678
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 1: print on a piece of film Via raise projected out

679
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:01,319
Speaker 1: of the head. I don't know, does that make sense

680
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 1: to you? Yeah? Yeah, I mean we have to put

681
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: ourselves in the framework of the time and uh and

682
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 1: and and really again in the sense of future shock

683
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,279
Speaker 1: that would have would have still been resonating and to

684
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: a certain extence still resonates. Because I think one of

685
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 1: the one of the things that we're going to keep

686
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 1: seeing in these episodes is that and I think this

687
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 1: was revealed again in our our photography series on Invention,

688
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:28,240
Speaker 1: is that photography is a complicated process that brings in uh,

689
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:31,239
Speaker 1: you know, at least two different fields the third if

690
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 1: you count the artistic world as well, but certainly optics

691
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: and chemistry and not everyone really has a firm grasp

692
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: on that like it too. For a lot of us,

693
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: it's still kind of feels like magic. A polaroid camera, uh,

694
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 1: you know where you know, instantly gives you the images

695
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: sort of magic. Uh. And when we when we don't

696
00:38:54,640 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: understand something completely, it it allows us to engage in uh,

697
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:04,439
Speaker 1: unrealistic modes of thought about what is going on with

698
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 1: the camera, What is going on with photography? All Right,

699
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep talking about all this, but we're gonna

700
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 1: take one quick break first. Alright, we're back. So I

701
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 1: want to talk just a little bit about this idea

702
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: of remote viewing, which which Fukarai was definitely involved in. Yeah,

703
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:26,879
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, you could just you could

704
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:29,759
Speaker 1: see what's going on in another place, either in another room,

705
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:33,800
Speaker 1: another part of the world, sealed envelope, sealed envelope, or

706
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 1: another planet. And you know, another example of an accomplished

707
00:39:37,480 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: individual in their field who is also a prominent UH

708
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 1: proponent of remote viewing is Atlanta's own Courtney Brown, an

709
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: associate professor in the Political Science department at Emory University.

710
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 1: It also works in non linear mathematics. So we see

711
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 1: in Fukarai an interest in hypnosis uh. And then Brown

712
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 1: is versed in meditation shan UH. Meditation induced light experiences

713
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: can occur and have been linked to similar experiences in

714
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: sensory deprivation uh. And and I've seen things like that

715
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,319
Speaker 1: in yoga meditation as well, where you will be you know,

716
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 1: you're you're you're seeing lights or shapes or or some

717
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: sort of imagery that feels as if it is it

718
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: is arising and it is not called forth. You know

719
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: what I'm saying like, it doesn't feel like it's something

720
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 1: that you are consciously imagining. It doesn't feel like something

721
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 1: that is dictated by the default mode network, you know,

722
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:35,840
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like the sort of images um or

723
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: thoughts that are normally bombarding our brain. Well, I think

724
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:42,960
Speaker 1: about how often in psychedelic experiences people talk about believing

725
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:46,160
Speaker 1: they have encountered an other where if you just I mean,

726
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:48,279
Speaker 1: you know, it's impossible to know for sure, but it

727
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: seems like probably what's going on is they're having an

728
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 1: internal experience with their own brain. But there are some

729
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:58,280
Speaker 1: types of experiences that we've just for whatever reason, feel

730
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 1: our exogenous. It feels like it's coming from outside you, right,

731
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: and so with with the right amount of of priming, expectation,

732
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:11,239
Speaker 1: and ultimately consolidation, Like any one of these experiences, be

733
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:14,240
Speaker 1: it something that is due to the use of psychedelics

734
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:18,760
Speaker 1: or something that is acquired through meditation, hypnosis, etcetera um,

735
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: because as we've discussed before, like even normal, our normal

736
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: sensory view of the world is inherently hallucinatory, you know,

737
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: it is in its in its own way and illusion.

738
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: It's not the way things are. It's just like a

739
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 1: useful sort of movie that we can interact with the

740
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 1: world through. Right. So if you're having an experience like

741
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 1: that and it feels real, right, and then you can

742
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: see how even like certainly very intelligent people, uh can

743
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: can can come to believe that that they are actually

744
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 1: perceiving the reality of a distant location and become very

745
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 1: convinced of it. And then certainly if you have a

746
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: name for this as well, you know, becomes kind of

747
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 1: established in parapsychology. Than than that also helps that gives

748
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:08,440
Speaker 1: you even more like priming and conditioning, uh too, in

749
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 1: which to frame this experience. And and also I mean

750
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: just to go back to psychedelics too, and certainly our

751
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: episode on psychedelics, like we see that trend uh in

752
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, right, this this counterculture emerge, this idea

753
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 1: taking shape that secular individuals can have a essentially a

754
00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: mystical experience that is not due to the imachinations of

755
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: gods or angels, you know, um And and so you know,

756
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:38,600
Speaker 1: it's it's not surprising that we see all, you know,

757
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: cases like this arising. So I also say on top

758
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 1: of that, there's just I think there's a very respectable

759
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: humility impulse that says like, Okay, you know, we should

760
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 1: always accept that there may be forces at work in

761
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,120
Speaker 1: our day to day surroundings that we don't fully understand.

762
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:57,280
Speaker 1: You know, we don't have a scientific theory that accounts

763
00:42:57,320 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: for them yet. And I think that's a good thing

764
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 1: to start from. But I think a lot of like

765
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 1: parapsychology and paranormal type people jump from there too, because

766
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:09,439
Speaker 1: we we should acknowledge that there are lots of things

767
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 1: about the world we don't understand yet. Therefore remote viewing

768
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 1: is real, you know, or like therefore, you know, you

769
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:20,319
Speaker 1: can't discount thoughtography and finding the right balance there, I

770
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: think is part of the difficulty of living the skeptical life.

771
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to live a life of

772
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 1: denialism where you just like, anytime something is strange, you're unexplained,

773
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:31,840
Speaker 1: you just say like, oh, that's nonsense. But at the

774
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: same time, you want to maintain a high standard of evidence,

775
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 1: and that's that's the tightrope walk I guess you've got

776
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:39,200
Speaker 1: to do if you want to be a scientific investigator,

777
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: if you want to try to have the most accurate

778
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: view you can of the world. And they're always going

779
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: to be these edge cases where somebody's presenting you know,

780
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:52,279
Speaker 1: evidence that maybe maybe seems compelling for some kind of

781
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:55,800
Speaker 1: phenomenon that doesn't really seem like it like it fits

782
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:59,240
Speaker 1: with well tested theories that otherwise predict the physical world.

783
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,359
Speaker 1: And I think that's the case that some of these

784
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 1: investigators have run into with psychic photography, especially in the

785
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: cases we'll talk about with Ted serious. Absolutely. I should

786
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: also point out that we always have to remember that

787
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: the c i A sunk something like twenty million dollars

788
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:17,440
Speaker 1: into the Stargate project in the nine nineties and an

789
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 1: attempt to ascertain the effectiveness and military potential of remote viewing,

790
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: and this project was ultimately terminated in remote viewing was

791
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 1: found unfruitful to their needs. But maybe it was a conspiracy, No, No,

792
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I tend to think like if there.

793
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, I've got major objections to

794
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 1: remote viewing just on like a plausibility basis. Like you know, again,

795
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: you can't rule things out just because you don't know

796
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: the mechanism. But if you've got a pretty good picture

797
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: of how physics works, and they just you know, their

798
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 1: powers proposed that don't seem to fit in any way

799
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:57,240
Speaker 1: with any you know, any physical forces that you could identify.

800
00:44:57,440 --> 00:44:59,839
Speaker 1: That's that should definitely be a red flag to start with.

801
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:02,120
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, I think there are

802
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 1: additional plausibility problems with remote viewing, which is like, if

803
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,479
Speaker 1: it is, if it does exist, why isn't it being

804
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: taken better advantage of Yeah? Uh, and that thing said,

805
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:14,560
Speaker 1: I do come back to like what I said earlier, like,

806
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: even though it's not scientifically feasible as far as we

807
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 1: understand it, um, you know, that doesn't mean that you know,

808
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: people shouldn't be interested in it and uh or even

809
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: you know, practice it, but it needs to be more

810
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 1: of I feel like it is more definitely in the

811
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:34,000
Speaker 1: line of like a spiritual or religious practice, you know. Um.

812
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 1: But that's my just my two cents on it. And

813
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the problems that and we're

814
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:39,839
Speaker 1: going to see that with a lot of these these

815
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: people that are they're claiming these abilities, is they are

816
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: not presenting them as something that is uh, you know,

817
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: ultimately like the domain of the spiritual, something that can't

818
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: really be proven or disproven. But they're but they're agreeing

819
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 1: to test, they're agreeing to uh to uh performances of

820
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: their ability and in fighting in some cases experts, to

821
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,439
Speaker 1: to see what they're doing and to to to try

822
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:08,879
Speaker 1: and find the problems in it. Uh. So Um, it's

823
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: something to keep in mind as we've moved forward. All Right,

824
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:13,839
Speaker 1: So let's come back to a figure that we've We've

825
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 1: mentioned the name already, uh ted Sirius. That's s c

826
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: r iOS. Is it serious or Sirios Sirius? With Sirius,

827
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 1: well you say that, I'll say Sirius just confusing like

828
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 1: serious black Um. So. Sirius lived through two thousand six,

829
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:35,319
Speaker 1: and he claimed to be able to create thoutographs on

830
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 1: polaroid film. So, um, this is an interesting figure, um

831
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 1: to say the least. So um. I was reading a

832
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 1: little bit about this in that in that book The

833
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 1: Perfect Medium, paras psychologist Stephen E. Broad writes about him

834
00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: who brought is also a philosophy professor, uh, and he

835
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 1: contends that Sirius is photograph fee is perhaps the best

836
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 1: documented and perhaps the most impressive. Does he seem a

837
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 1: little uh sympathetic to maybe he did have some psychic powers? Um?

838
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: I mean I encourage everyone to read Broad's work for

839
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 1: themselves because he um. He certainly is more inclined to

840
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 1: to criticize some of the the individuals who have been

841
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:29,359
Speaker 1: attributed as being like solid debunkers. At the very least,

842
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: he seems to be saying, look, whatever Ciris was doing,

843
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as debunked as you think it is.

844
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 1: Um And I'm and he is a para psychologist. He

845
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: is a para psychologist. So so I want to stress

846
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: all of that, but it's still an interesting read. He

847
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: does seem to be more inclined to um entertain the

848
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: possibility though. So. Sirius was a Chicago bellhop who had

849
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 1: experimented with with hypnosis and uh. He claims that during

850
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: this time he found that he could use his trying

851
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: to project images onto camera film in later instant polaroid film.

852
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: And he apparently demonstrated this to various folks and was

853
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,799
Speaker 1: quite convincing. And this caught the attention of Denver psychiatrist

854
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 1: and researcher Jewel Eisenbudd, who took a strong interest in

855
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:21,000
Speaker 1: his work and conducted numerous trials resulting in hundreds of images. Yeah,

856
00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 1: and I've read that Eisenbudd is one of the main

857
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:26,359
Speaker 1: reasons that people really know about Ted Seriously, he sort

858
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: of took up the cause like or at least from

859
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:33,440
Speaker 1: what I read, Eisenbudd claimed he was initially skeptical of

860
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 1: Ted Serious his abilities, but then after spending time with

861
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: him and seeing his photographs, he he came more and

862
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:42,319
Speaker 1: more to believe that these powers were real and that

863
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:45,839
Speaker 1: Serious really could project his mind's eye onto a piece

864
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:50,120
Speaker 1: of film. Yeah, Eisenbud at one point believed that Sirius

865
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:54,560
Speaker 1: was seeing the essentially remote viewing the surface of the

866
00:48:54,680 --> 00:49:00,200
Speaker 1: Jovian moon Ghannamede, and then using photography to imply at

867
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:03,399
Speaker 1: that image on onto film. Right, And it gets more

868
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:06,120
Speaker 1: complex than that, actually, because I was reading that so

869
00:49:07,120 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: Serious apparently made these images that Eisenbudd later said, oh,

870
00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:13,319
Speaker 1: this is the surface of Ganymede, because he said that

871
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 1: Serious was very interested in space exploration and had been

872
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 1: thinking about the voyager to probe and that must have

873
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 1: been what triggered his generation of this image of the

874
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 1: surface of of Ganymede. But at the time he generated

875
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: the image, the photographs from the voyager probe had not

876
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: been taken yet. So I think Eisenbudd is suggesting that

877
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 1: if these photos are real, serious actually not only projected

878
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: his thoughts directly on the film, but also pre cognitively

879
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 1: remote viewed the surface of of wait, precognitively. Well, I

880
00:49:48,719 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: guess it wouldn't have mattered whether the voyager probe got

881
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: there yet he was seeing the surface of the moon

882
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: before the probe got there, right, And I've seen this

883
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 1: in other uh you know, accounts of remote viewing, where

884
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: they have they have essentially seen other worlds or have

885
00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:06,600
Speaker 1: encountered historic figures, that sort of thing. Right now, Another

886
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 1: thing worth noting about Cirios here is that is that

887
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 1: even eisenbud like points out that that that ted it

888
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 1: was definitely an alcoholic and that's sort of part of

889
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:21,239
Speaker 1: the thing, but also displayed like a lot of you know,

890
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 1: at times kind of like irrational behavior and seemed to

891
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: have you know, definite uh you know, psychological issues. So

892
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:34,239
Speaker 1: but but anyway, this was basically Sirius is process. So

893
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: he generally he needed to be drunk, generally very drunk

894
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 1: to perform this art, which I mean, I guess that's

895
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 1: fair enough, right, I mean, I mean, really even podcasting,

896
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 1: I remember when when when we first started podcasting, um,

897
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:50,799
Speaker 1: Jerry told us like, have a little to drink before

898
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: you go into the podcast, but if it'll help. Jerry

899
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: Ever told me that, well maybe maybe I just look

900
00:50:56,360 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: like I needed to drink at the time. I don't know.

901
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:00,840
Speaker 1: But wait, are you serious? Serious? Yeah? I mean I

902
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:04,240
Speaker 1: think she's joking. But at any rate, like the idea

903
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 1: that you would need a social lubricant to essentially to

904
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:14,680
Speaker 1: perform something, um either you know, a legitimate psychic ability,

905
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: or to perform some sort of a trick, some sort

906
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: of a um an illusion or even a confidence trick. Right, um,

907
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:25,520
Speaker 1: So that's one part of it. Also, he preferred to

908
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 1: hold a quota he called a gizmo in his hand

909
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 1: to help him focus his powers. And it was a short,

910
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 1: open cylinder about an inch in diameter. And of course

911
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: this is highly suspicious. You don't have to be Sherlock

912
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 1: Holmes to suspect that the gizmo is either the heart

913
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: of the trick that he is going to perform, or

914
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 1: it's a decoy to distract onlookers from the actual trick.

915
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:53,600
Speaker 1: Because he'd often placed this in front of the camera lens,

916
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: like he'd get up into the into the camera lens

917
00:51:56,680 --> 00:51:59,800
Speaker 1: with the gizmo and then also like you know, mugging

918
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 1: or the camera, placing his forehead in the way and

919
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: somehow using the gizmo allegedly to focus his thoughts into

920
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:09,560
Speaker 1: the camera. Yeah, he said he needed to connect his

921
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: body to the camera. Uh. Though there are allegations also

922
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:16,319
Speaker 1: that he was able to produce autographs and uh and

923
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: and actually make images on a camera while being far

924
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:22,719
Speaker 1: away from the camera. That at least is alleged. But

925
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: he most of the time, it has said, would like

926
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:28,239
Speaker 1: put his forehead right on this thing and stick it

927
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: in the camera camera lyn So, Yeah, raises some red flags, right,

928
00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 1: But then the idea is that he's essentially taking a

929
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:37,719
Speaker 1: snapshot of the mental image that he is forming in

930
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:41,200
Speaker 1: his mind. The be it a mental image that is

931
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:45,800
Speaker 1: formed via memory or just sort of general mental imaging,

932
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: or it's something that is that he has acquired through

933
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:52,400
Speaker 1: um uh you know, sending his consciousness to a to

934
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,399
Speaker 1: the moons of Jupiter. Yeah. And now I read some

935
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 1: conflicting reports that sometimes it seems like the images he produced,

936
00:52:59,880 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: he claimed, were like not what he was thinking about consciously,

937
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 1: but just would be these unconscious kind of associative images.

938
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:11,440
Speaker 1: That's what's suggested by Eisenbud uh, the Galilean moon, right,

939
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 1: is that he just had the Voyager two probe on

940
00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: his mind and happened to generate an image of the

941
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:19,919
Speaker 1: surface of Ganymede. And so if we're approaching it from

942
00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 1: the you know, the pro psychic side, we can say, well,

943
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:25,360
Speaker 1: that makes sense. The mind is difficult to control. Mental

944
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 1: images may form in the mind that you're not trying

945
00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:30,239
Speaker 1: to summon. Certainly we can all attest to that. On

946
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:32,680
Speaker 1: the other hand, from a purely skeptical point of view,

947
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:35,279
Speaker 1: if you're going to be drawn in and put to

948
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:38,120
Speaker 1: the test by asking, you know, being asked to think

949
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 1: of a particular thing, how convenient would it be if

950
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: you could say, well, I tried to think of that

951
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:45,760
Speaker 1: that that bird feeder that you wanted me to imagine,

952
00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 1: but I'm just so obsessed with space travel right now,

953
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 1: I give you Ganymede instead, right. I mean that makes

954
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: that suggests that maybe you've already got an image of

955
00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:57,120
Speaker 1: something that looks like a moon's surface on hand with

956
00:53:57,160 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 1: you or something, right, And I guess that gets to

957
00:53:59,680 --> 00:54:01,759
Speaker 1: what the actual trick would be if there is a

958
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 1: trick here, which I assume there probably is right now

959
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: now in that article in the Perfect Medium, A broad

960
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 1: certainly focuses on the aspects of Ted's art that kind

961
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 1: of continue to mystify, as he mentions, for instance, that

962
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: Eisenbudd offered a cash reward for anyone able to replicate

963
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: Ted's results quote under conditions similar to those prevailing during

964
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,040
Speaker 1: the during the experiments. Now I've read that there was

965
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: serious dispute about like them negotiating with skeptics about what

966
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:31,439
Speaker 1: would be acceptable for those uh conditions, Like I think

967
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,920
Speaker 1: I read that James Randy wanted to try to replicate it,

968
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: but that Eisenbudd said, well, you have to be really drunk,

969
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:41,120
Speaker 1: because Ted is always really drunk when he does it. Yeah,

970
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:44,560
Speaker 1: the famous debunker James Randy, who we had the privilege

971
00:54:44,600 --> 00:54:48,600
Speaker 1: to meet, um but last year. Um. It definitely plays

972
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: into some of this, And it's kind of if you

973
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: if you read some of the more pro serious material,

974
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: Randy's kind of portrayed as a villain. Oh all, Randy

975
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: is always the villain of some thing written by pro

976
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:05,960
Speaker 1: psychic powers people. Uh so so Yeah, some of these

977
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:09,319
Speaker 1: account like brought accountants to highlight the things that were

978
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:13,520
Speaker 1: not you know, they're still a little mysterious or or

979
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:19,160
Speaker 1: or certainly accounts of replications that don't meet the same

980
00:55:19,200 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 1: degree of replication, Like you weren't able to do exactly

981
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:25,879
Speaker 1: what Sirius is doing, therefore you didn't fully debunk him.

982
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: I've I've read some of his defenders say, Okay, people

983
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 1: have used tricks to replicate what serious was doing, but

984
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: they couldn't do it without those tricks being evident to

985
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:38,879
Speaker 1: people who were watching, right. Um. I mean the other

986
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,839
Speaker 1: way to think about it is, can I can I

987
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 1: paint the Mona Lisa? No? I cannot. Can I demonstrate

988
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: some of the techniques personally that that that the artists

989
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:54,279
Speaker 1: used to create the Mona Lisa? Uh? Certainly, Uh. We

990
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 1: have to take it into account that Sirius, assuming again

991
00:55:57,239 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 1: that he's not a psychic, that he's not a not

992
00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:05,320
Speaker 1: capable of photography, that he's just a performer, an illusionist, Uh,

993
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,040
Speaker 1: you know, a trickster, there is still an art to

994
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: what he is doing. Uh. There is still a performance

995
00:56:10,680 --> 00:56:13,880
Speaker 1: aspect of charismatic aspect to it, and their aspects of

996
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:16,640
Speaker 1: that that are going to depend in part on like

997
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:21,440
Speaker 1: innate charisma, but also in in practice, in in like

998
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:25,880
Speaker 1: sheer devotion to to the trick and I think you

999
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: can't discount that and on likewise, you can't expect a

1000
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:32,719
Speaker 1: debunker to rise to that level of performance. Well, I

1001
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: guess you can expect them to try. But I mean

1002
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: that's one thing that you know, as long as we're

1003
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: probing the depths of the unexplained, you could say, well,

1004
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:44,880
Speaker 1: you know, there's some kind of mystical power that this

1005
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:46,799
Speaker 1: person has that we just don't have the power to

1006
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:49,840
Speaker 1: explain it. Or you could say that there's an extreme

1007
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:53,320
Speaker 1: talent this person has for performing a trick that hasn't

1008
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:55,920
Speaker 1: been explained yet. Yeah, because certainly one of the things

1009
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 1: that would come into play is slight of hand, right,

1010
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: because the main charge is that is that Sirios had it.

1011
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:05,680
Speaker 1: Kind of varies. Sometimes they talk of just using the

1012
00:57:05,719 --> 00:57:10,360
Speaker 1: microfilm um or using microfilm affixed to a marble or

1013
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:13,239
Speaker 1: you know, a film affixed to the end of a

1014
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 1: tiny tube like inside the quote gizmo that her up

1015
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:19,520
Speaker 1: against the camera, because that's the obvious, right, is that

1016
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,560
Speaker 1: the gizmo contains something, And if it contains something, some

1017
00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 1: film would be ideal because then you have that pre

1018
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:28,960
Speaker 1: existing photograph that can be the thing that he imprints.

1019
00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:34,080
Speaker 1: Um skeptic Karen's Hines also charged that Ted used a

1020
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:37,880
Speaker 1: secondary tube about one inch long with a tiny magnifying

1021
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 1: lens that could hold a small slide, and then he

1022
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: would conceal this within the gizmo, but also he could

1023
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:46,000
Speaker 1: use it when the gizmo was taken away, again getting

1024
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: into that idea that the gizmos not merely useful as

1025
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 1: something to um to hide the trick, but also can

1026
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:56,240
Speaker 1: be used as a distraction, can be the thing that, oh,

1027
00:57:56,240 --> 00:57:58,320
Speaker 1: when it's taken away, look I can still do it.

1028
00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: I don't even have the gizmo on me, right, And

1029
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 1: it was alleged that sometimes he could, I mean usually

1030
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:05,960
Speaker 1: he used the gizmo, but it's alleged that sometimes he

1031
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:08,760
Speaker 1: did it without the gizmo. Now, there were a number

1032
00:58:08,840 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 1: of expose a s at the time that claimed to

1033
00:58:11,200 --> 00:58:14,360
Speaker 1: show that Ted Sirius was a fraud. The entry in

1034
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:17,200
Speaker 1: the Skeptics Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll suggests that two

1035
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 1: amateur magicians and photographers named Charlie Reynolds and David Eisendraft

1036
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:26,320
Speaker 1: exposed Serious as a fraud. Basically, they would and spend

1037
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:28,680
Speaker 1: a weekend with him and jewel Iz and bud and

1038
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 1: they saw his stuff, and they came to the conclusion

1039
00:58:31,840 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 1: that he was a fraud and wrote this up in

1040
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: the article. Uh and Reynolds and Eisendraft claimed to have

1041
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:42,360
Speaker 1: spotted Serious quote slipping something inside his little gizmo before demonstrations,

1042
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 1: and they think it was a picture of something that

1043
00:58:44,880 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: Sirius wanted to show up in the camera exposure. They

1044
00:58:48,200 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 1: also published an article explaining their findings in October nineteen

1045
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:56,600
Speaker 1: sixty seven issue of Popular Photography. It was a photography magazine. Now,

1046
00:58:56,640 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 1: according to the skeptic investigator Joe Nichols account of Serious

1047
00:59:00,680 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 1: is confrontation with magicians and sleight of hand experts. Quote.

1048
00:59:04,160 --> 00:59:07,439
Speaker 1: At one point during the session, after an exposure was made,

1049
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 1: a magician asked to examine the paper tube to see

1050
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 1: if there was anything inside. This would be the gizmo, right,

1051
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:16,720
Speaker 1: the gizmo. Uh. Serious backed away, putting his hand in

1052
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: his pocket. Now that's suspicious behavior. But then, weirdly, during

1053
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:24,520
Speaker 1: this session, Serious was unable to produce the autographs, so

1054
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: apparently he had been using the gizmo. They said, let

1055
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:29,120
Speaker 1: me see the gizmo, he wouldn't show it to them,

1056
00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:31,280
Speaker 1: And then none of the pictures came out anyway, there

1057
00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 1: were no autographs. Uh, And he and Eisenbudd blamed the

1058
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:38,720
Speaker 1: quote hostile atmosphere for interfering with Serious his powers. This

1059
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:41,920
Speaker 1: is always a red flag also, I think. But there's

1060
00:59:41,920 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 1: still plenty of people, I think, who hold out for

1061
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: psychic photography, claiming that Ted Serious's powers were real and

1062
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:51,880
Speaker 1: could not be explained. And he's got defenders who say

1063
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:55,160
Speaker 1: that some of his feats are just impossible to explain.

1064
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,320
Speaker 1: For example, I was reading claims in an article in

1065
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:01,360
Speaker 1: the Chronicle of Higher Education which about a gallery exhibit

1066
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:04,240
Speaker 1: of Serious as thoutographs which I would like to see that.

1067
01:00:04,680 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean they're interesting images, certainly when you

1068
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:09,920
Speaker 1: know the background for them, especially if you just think

1069
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: about him as works of art, not as like displays

1070
01:00:12,080 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: of real psychic powers. Um. But to quote from this

1071
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:17,920
Speaker 1: article quote, on occasion, volunteers were asked to attend the

1072
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 1: experiment with a photograph sealed and a cardboard back to

1073
01:00:21,040 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: Manila envelope. Serious then managed to reproduce the image with

1074
01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 1: no prior knowledge of it. So again, that's like double

1075
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:31,040
Speaker 1: psychic powers. That's not just the photography, which would be

1076
01:00:31,080 --> 01:00:33,160
Speaker 1: a feat even if he was looking directly at what

1077
01:00:33,200 --> 01:00:36,600
Speaker 1: the photo should be. Um. But also I guess seeing

1078
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: into this envelope if I'm reading that right, I don't know.

1079
01:00:39,440 --> 01:00:41,760
Speaker 1: That might also be suggesting that they just arrived with

1080
01:00:41,800 --> 01:00:43,560
Speaker 1: it sealed and then showed it to him and he

1081
01:00:43,680 --> 01:00:46,560
Speaker 1: reproduced it. Either way, I mean, if you saw that,

1082
01:00:46,600 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that would prove it was real, but

1083
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 1: that would be impressive. You know, you'd be like, wow,

1084
01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:54,200
Speaker 1: that that's either real or some impressive trickery. I'd lean

1085
01:00:54,240 --> 01:00:57,440
Speaker 1: toward the ladder. Um. But in other cases, he apparently

1086
01:00:57,480 --> 01:00:59,840
Speaker 1: managed to produce what appeared to be images of land

1087
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:03,240
Speaker 1: arcs from up above, like aerial views that his supporters

1088
01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: claimed could not be explained through trickery. But it seems

1089
01:01:06,960 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: like he stopped doing his thing after the late nineteen sixties,

1090
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:12,840
Speaker 1: which seems a little weird, Yeah, especially consider he lived

1091
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:15,560
Speaker 1: until two thousand and six. You know, I mean, that's

1092
01:01:15,600 --> 01:01:18,040
Speaker 1: that's a lot of time to not at least not

1093
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:22,720
Speaker 1: be publicly doing this displaying this uh this ability. Uh.

1094
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:25,000
Speaker 1: But then again, UM, you know, we do have to

1095
01:01:25,080 --> 01:01:29,160
Speaker 1: come back to you. The fact that Eisenbud himself wrote

1096
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: that serious was you know, psychologically disturbed. Alcoholic, So you know,

1097
01:01:34,520 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: you can come up with various, you know, reasons that

1098
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 1: somebody with that kind of with with those kind of

1099
01:01:40,400 --> 01:01:44,400
Speaker 1: demons would not engage in their art. Now, he wasn't

1100
01:01:44,440 --> 01:01:46,600
Speaker 1: the only one in the later twentieth century to get

1101
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:48,800
Speaker 1: in on the psychic photography thing. Over the years, a

1102
01:01:48,840 --> 01:01:52,680
Speaker 1: lot of figures, including Uri Geller, got into psychic photography.

1103
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:55,920
Speaker 1: One of one of Geller's many demonstrations was that he

1104
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:58,720
Speaker 1: would leave the lens cap on a camera, placed the

1105
01:01:58,760 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 1: camera to his forehead, then take a picture, supposedly saying,

1106
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:03,800
Speaker 1: you know the same kind of thing. I'm using my

1107
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:06,960
Speaker 1: mind's eye to imprint upon the film, and then the

1108
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:10,240
Speaker 1: photo would reveal whatever he had been imagining. Again, James

1109
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 1: Randy shows up, as he often does whenever Uri Geller

1110
01:02:13,000 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: claims something. James Randy criticized this and other psychic photography

1111
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:21,160
Speaker 1: is having two main explanations, either using a handheld device

1112
01:02:21,240 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 1: to project the image into the camera lens as the

1113
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: photo was taken, or loading the camera with pre exposed

1114
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: film already bearing the desired image, and the latter seems

1115
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:34,640
Speaker 1: to be the case with a later twentieth century alleged

1116
01:02:34,640 --> 01:02:38,840
Speaker 1: psychic named Matsuaki Kyota, who claimed to be able to

1117
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 1: produce photographs on film again, and skeptical critics such as

1118
01:02:42,440 --> 01:02:45,600
Speaker 1: Joe Nicole have pointed out that when Massaaki Kyoto was

1119
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:49,720
Speaker 1: asked to perform his thoughtography under controlled conditions for a

1120
01:02:49,800 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 1: TV crew in London, he couldn't produce the images, and

1121
01:02:53,520 --> 01:02:56,040
Speaker 1: Nicol claims that it was only times when he was

1122
01:02:56,120 --> 01:02:59,920
Speaker 1: able uh to get the film and have it alone

1123
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:02,600
Speaker 1: one with him, like basically to get hold of the

1124
01:03:02,640 --> 01:03:05,640
Speaker 1: film and have it in a private place before the test,

1125
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:09,120
Speaker 1: that he could demonstrate his powers, which again makes you

1126
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:11,160
Speaker 1: think he was doing something to the film before it

1127
01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:13,920
Speaker 1: was loaded in the camera. Alright, Well, on that note,

1128
01:03:14,120 --> 01:03:16,800
Speaker 1: we are going to have to call it for episode

1129
01:03:16,840 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: one of this exploration, but we are going to return

1130
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: in a second episode where we're going to continue to

1131
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 1: explore this idea, like how would it work if this

1132
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:30,360
Speaker 1: were possible? Like what what what can we grasp onto

1133
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 1: in the labyrinth of the human mind and the complexity

1134
01:03:33,760 --> 01:03:38,120
Speaker 1: of our our our sensory perception, but also what can

1135
01:03:38,200 --> 01:03:41,480
Speaker 1: this question reveal about the reality of of mental imagery

1136
01:03:41,520 --> 01:03:45,480
Speaker 1: and how that happens in the brain, Which is fascinating

1137
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: mysterious and even spooky topic on its own, even though

1138
01:03:48,160 --> 01:03:51,680
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily credit the reality of psychic photography. There's

1139
01:03:51,680 --> 01:03:54,000
Speaker 1: a lot of spooky stuff going on when you picture

1140
01:03:54,080 --> 01:03:56,800
Speaker 1: something right. And we'll probably talk about the Ring a

1141
01:03:56,800 --> 01:03:59,200
Speaker 1: little bit more, and we'll probably bring up a few

1142
01:03:59,200 --> 01:04:03,800
Speaker 1: other film such as Scanners, so hey, be sure to

1143
01:04:03,840 --> 01:04:05,560
Speaker 1: tune in for that episode. Tune in for all of

1144
01:04:05,600 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 1: our episodes in October, which are going to be Halloween flavored.

1145
01:04:09,600 --> 01:04:12,080
Speaker 1: Uh and we encourage you again to check out Invention

1146
01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:13,840
Speaker 1: if you haven't already, can find it wherever you get

1147
01:04:13,880 --> 01:04:16,760
Speaker 1: your podcast. You can find the website at inventioned pod

1148
01:04:16,880 --> 01:04:19,160
Speaker 1: dot com. If you want to support our show, the

1149
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:20,760
Speaker 1: best thing you can do is rate and review it

1150
01:04:20,800 --> 01:04:22,240
Speaker 1: wherever you have the power to do so, and make

1151
01:04:22,280 --> 01:04:25,160
Speaker 1: sure you have subscribed. Huge thanks as always to our

1152
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:28,760
Speaker 1: awesome audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

1153
01:04:28,800 --> 01:04:30,600
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

1154
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:33,240
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

1155
01:04:33,400 --> 01:04:36,360
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact

1156
01:04:36,440 --> 01:04:46,480
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

1157
01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:48,440
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How

1158
01:04:48,480 --> 01:04:51,000
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit

1159
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:53,800
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

1160
01:04:53,840 --> 01:04:58,560
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. Bla bla bla bla bla bl

1161
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:18,560
Speaker 1: bl blah blah blah blad. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

1162
01:05:18,560 --> 01:05:27,880
Speaker 1: Your Mind, a production of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

1163
01:05:27,960 --> 01:05:30,040
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

1164
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:33,240
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back

1165
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:36,720
Speaker 1: with part two of our discussion of psychic photography the

1166
01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:40,520
Speaker 1: press of the Mind's eye. That's right. We kicked off

1167
01:05:40,600 --> 01:05:46,000
Speaker 1: last episode talking about the ring in which a psychically gifted,

1168
01:05:46,760 --> 01:05:51,280
Speaker 1: disturbed little girl is able to use her the power

1169
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:55,720
Speaker 1: of her mind to burn images into things, including into

1170
01:05:55,840 --> 01:06:00,120
Speaker 1: the film of a VHS tape. Sure, but all so

1171
01:06:00,160 --> 01:06:02,919
Speaker 1: into all kinds of surfaces, right, Yeah, But but she's

1172
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:08,040
Speaker 1: most famous for her her video work is the video artist. Yeah,

1173
01:06:08,040 --> 01:06:12,280
Speaker 1: she's a video artist, true artist and true artist Harrington. Yeah,

1174
01:06:12,400 --> 01:06:14,800
Speaker 1: so that's where we started out. But we use that

1175
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:18,920
Speaker 1: then to get into this idea of photography of uh,

1176
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 1: this this alleged psychic power by which certain individuals were

1177
01:06:23,840 --> 01:06:27,040
Speaker 1: able to use the powers of their mind, uh to

1178
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:33,160
Speaker 1: either you know, focused mental images into say, undeveloped camera film,

1179
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:36,040
Speaker 1: or make it so they could like point a camera

1180
01:06:36,080 --> 01:06:39,480
Speaker 1: at their own forehead and take a picture of the

1181
01:06:39,520 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 1: interior imaging of their mind. Things of that nature. Yeah.

1182
01:06:43,680 --> 01:06:46,800
Speaker 1: The idea was that somehow mental imagery, you know, things

1183
01:06:46,880 --> 01:06:50,720
Speaker 1: that you are picturing in your brain, could be projected

1184
01:06:50,840 --> 01:06:53,880
Speaker 1: out onto the world without being translated through you know,

1185
01:06:54,000 --> 01:06:58,000
Speaker 1: you putting them into language or you sketching with a hand. Um.

1186
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:00,880
Speaker 1: And so I was wondering if you try to take

1187
01:07:00,880 --> 01:07:04,640
Speaker 1: this idea seriously and say, okay, if this really did work,

1188
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:08,760
Speaker 1: how would it work. I was having trouble coming across

1189
01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:11,880
Speaker 1: anything that seemed all that plausible to me. Uh, you know,

1190
01:07:11,920 --> 01:07:15,520
Speaker 1: I found one article with somebody's talking about how, well,

1191
01:07:15,600 --> 01:07:20,880
Speaker 1: maybe consciousness is like an electromagnetic field. I'm not sure

1192
01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:22,640
Speaker 1: if I buy that. But even if you did buy

1193
01:07:22,680 --> 01:07:26,280
Speaker 1: the consciousness as an electromagnetic field, how exactly would that

1194
01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:30,200
Speaker 1: translate into you thinking about an image physically pressing the

1195
01:07:30,280 --> 01:07:32,560
Speaker 1: image onto a thing outside your brain, Because there's no

1196
01:07:32,600 --> 01:07:35,600
Speaker 1: reason to think that the electromagnetic field would be like

1197
01:07:35,640 --> 01:07:38,640
Speaker 1: a two dimensional image that's the same as the thing

1198
01:07:38,720 --> 01:07:42,680
Speaker 1: you're picturing. Yeah, and then I mean there's so many

1199
01:07:42,680 --> 01:07:45,800
Speaker 1: problems with it's almost difficult to roll out individual problems,

1200
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 1: like what would be the evolved necessity of doing that?

1201
01:07:50,040 --> 01:07:52,160
Speaker 1: You know why we would have to just be like

1202
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:56,200
Speaker 1: an accidental byproduct or something, you know, random mutation? Uh?

1203
01:07:56,240 --> 01:07:58,680
Speaker 1: And then would there be a survival advantage to having

1204
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:04,520
Speaker 1: that mutation? It gets it gets really sticky, really fast. Yeah,

1205
01:08:04,520 --> 01:08:09,040
Speaker 1: and I think it highlights a kind of like shallow

1206
01:08:09,160 --> 01:08:12,080
Speaker 1: understanding of what mental image rey is. So yeah, and

1207
01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:15,560
Speaker 1: then specifically what photography is concerning those examples of the

1208
01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:19,360
Speaker 1: photography we discussed in the last episode, Yes, exactly. So

1209
01:08:19,400 --> 01:08:22,200
Speaker 1: I thought maybe we should start today by thinking about

1210
01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:26,760
Speaker 1: what is the physical reality of an image in the

1211
01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:29,679
Speaker 1: mind's eye? When you okay, so you stopping, you picture

1212
01:08:29,800 --> 01:08:35,160
Speaker 1: something you picture Garfield Garfield in mind? What is happening

1213
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:39,559
Speaker 1: in your brain when you picture Garfield? Like, is there

1214
01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:42,920
Speaker 1: some two dimensional grid of brain cells that's like a

1215
01:08:43,040 --> 01:08:46,639
Speaker 1: screen where colors fill in like pixels on a computer

1216
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:51,080
Speaker 1: screen and they form Garfield. It seems kind of implausible,

1217
01:08:51,120 --> 01:08:54,080
Speaker 1: but you know, entertained that for a second. If there

1218
01:08:54,120 --> 01:08:57,480
Speaker 1: were a way for a mental image to be projected

1219
01:08:57,600 --> 01:09:01,360
Speaker 1: into a physical space, what would be the physical nature

1220
01:09:01,360 --> 01:09:04,280
Speaker 1: of the original signal in the brain and how would

1221
01:09:04,320 --> 01:09:08,120
Speaker 1: it be transferred to the physical form without being interpreted

1222
01:09:08,160 --> 01:09:10,280
Speaker 1: through the body. So I was looking at a couple

1223
01:09:10,280 --> 01:09:13,360
Speaker 1: of papers on the subject of like research and thought

1224
01:09:13,520 --> 01:09:16,400
Speaker 1: about mental imagery. And one one of the ones I

1225
01:09:16,439 --> 01:09:19,480
Speaker 1: was looking at was called Unpicturing a Candle The Prehistory

1226
01:09:19,520 --> 01:09:22,640
Speaker 1: of Imagery science, and this was published in Frontiers and

1227
01:09:22,720 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: Psychology by Matthew mckissicks, Susan Aldworth, Fiona McPherson, John Onion's,

1228
01:09:29,320 --> 01:09:32,480
Speaker 1: Crawford Winlove, and Adam Zema and this lot of names.

1229
01:09:32,600 --> 01:09:37,000
Speaker 1: Uh In and the authors here focus on the history

1230
01:09:37,080 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: of scholarship and philosophy concerning visual imagination before modern neuroscience,

1231
01:09:42,760 --> 01:09:46,599
Speaker 1: but they also cover some modern neuroscience with a specific

1232
01:09:46,640 --> 01:09:50,680
Speaker 1: focus on the idea of imagining a concrete object, for

1233
01:09:50,720 --> 01:09:55,840
Speaker 1: example picturing a candle. And so the authors explored the

1234
01:09:55,920 --> 01:09:58,680
Speaker 1: history and so for example, they start by looking at

1235
01:09:58,720 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: like Plato and Aristotle, and they point out that Plato

1236
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:04,240
Speaker 1: actually did not hold a very high regard for the

1237
01:10:04,280 --> 01:10:09,600
Speaker 1: importance of mental imagination uh Like. For Plato, mental imagery

1238
01:10:09,640 --> 01:10:11,800
Speaker 1: is a copy of a copy. It is a sort

1239
01:10:11,800 --> 01:10:15,439
Speaker 1: of imperfect fac simile of an object in the world

1240
01:10:15,800 --> 01:10:19,639
Speaker 1: which is already merely an imperfect copy of a perfect

1241
01:10:19,800 --> 01:10:22,880
Speaker 1: divine form that we're getting into the idea of the

1242
01:10:22,880 --> 01:10:26,960
Speaker 1: realm of forms, the idea that a chair, that there's

1243
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:28,840
Speaker 1: a perfect version of a chair that exists in the

1244
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:31,599
Speaker 1: realm of forms. The chair we can build is an

1245
01:10:31,600 --> 01:10:36,000
Speaker 1: imperfect interpretation of that. But then the then his view

1246
01:10:36,200 --> 01:10:38,880
Speaker 1: is because I'm more likely to think of it the

1247
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:41,600
Speaker 1: other way, like I'm thinking, then, well, the version of

1248
01:10:41,600 --> 01:10:43,880
Speaker 1: the chair in our mind, that's the realm of forms.

1249
01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:47,760
Speaker 1: But he's saying, no, that's that's even another level removed

1250
01:10:47,800 --> 01:10:50,439
Speaker 1: from the realm of forms. It's an imperfect version of

1251
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:53,840
Speaker 1: the imperfect chair that is in itself an imperfect version

1252
01:10:53,880 --> 01:10:57,160
Speaker 1: of the ideal chair. Absolutely, your mental image of a

1253
01:10:57,240 --> 01:11:00,840
Speaker 1: pineapple is a flawed copy of some act wold pineapple,

1254
01:11:01,040 --> 01:11:05,080
Speaker 1: which is an imperfect realization of eternal pineapple nous. Yeah,

1255
01:11:05,120 --> 01:11:07,639
Speaker 1: and I and I think I think he is correct here, because,

1256
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: as we stayed in the last episode, we often we

1257
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:14,599
Speaker 1: often attribute a lot of detail and accuracy to our

1258
01:11:14,640 --> 01:11:19,040
Speaker 1: mental images when they're when it's really not there. It's

1259
01:11:19,160 --> 01:11:23,760
Speaker 1: it's often a lot more obscure and unfinished than we

1260
01:11:23,800 --> 01:11:26,040
Speaker 1: give it credit. Yeah, I mean I almost wouldn't think

1261
01:11:26,080 --> 01:11:28,439
Speaker 1: about it in terms of accuracy, but in terms and

1262
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:31,479
Speaker 1: maybe this is more specific to the way my brain works,

1263
01:11:31,520 --> 01:11:34,760
Speaker 1: but I think about it even in terms of completeness,

1264
01:11:34,800 --> 01:11:37,200
Speaker 1: like that, when I have a mental image of something,

1265
01:11:37,520 --> 01:11:40,439
Speaker 1: it's not the same as looking at the thing, because

1266
01:11:40,479 --> 01:11:45,160
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm only vaguely grasping the totality of the image.

1267
01:11:45,200 --> 01:11:48,800
Speaker 1: When I'm mentally picture something, it's not like it's just

1268
01:11:48,880 --> 01:11:51,920
Speaker 1: not like looking at a fixed version of the image.

1269
01:11:51,920 --> 01:11:55,479
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a hazy scanning of different little

1270
01:11:55,560 --> 01:11:58,320
Speaker 1: elements of the image that I can picture in a

1271
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:02,240
Speaker 1: moment against a field of a general impression of the

1272
01:12:02,360 --> 01:12:04,559
Speaker 1: larger image. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, I believe.

1273
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:07,599
Speaker 1: An example that's often used here is that of a bicycle.

1274
01:12:07,640 --> 01:12:10,800
Speaker 1: If I say, hey, imagine a bicycle. Easy done. I'm

1275
01:12:10,800 --> 01:12:12,960
Speaker 1: imagining a bicycle right now. But if we go to

1276
01:12:13,000 --> 01:12:16,439
Speaker 1: the next step and say that bicycle you're imagining, describe

1277
01:12:16,439 --> 01:12:19,040
Speaker 1: for me the functionality of its of the of the

1278
01:12:19,040 --> 01:12:22,719
Speaker 1: wheels and the gears and the pedals and everything. Explain

1279
01:12:22,800 --> 01:12:24,920
Speaker 1: to me how that works. Oh yeah, This goes back

1280
01:12:24,960 --> 01:12:29,200
Speaker 1: to our illusion of explanatory depth. Episodes where everybody can

1281
01:12:29,240 --> 01:12:32,640
Speaker 1: picture a bicycle, but can you draw a bicycle? And

1282
01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:35,720
Speaker 1: it turns out it's just try it. You might end

1283
01:12:35,800 --> 01:12:38,240
Speaker 1: up laughing really hard at yourself because you think you

1284
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:41,160
Speaker 1: can draw a bicycle, but there's a decent chance you can't.

1285
01:12:41,400 --> 01:12:45,479
Speaker 1: I don't know where the bars go, which wheel connects

1286
01:12:45,479 --> 01:12:48,080
Speaker 1: to what? You just don't know even though you think

1287
01:12:48,120 --> 01:12:51,600
Speaker 1: you can picture it right now. So again, Plato, I

1288
01:12:51,600 --> 01:12:54,360
Speaker 1: think was definitely onto something here. I think Plato hit

1289
01:12:54,400 --> 01:12:57,559
Speaker 1: this one out of the park. Yeah. But Aristotle, to

1290
01:12:57,680 --> 01:13:01,679
Speaker 1: the contrary, he thought that not only was mental imagery important,

1291
01:13:02,040 --> 01:13:05,280
Speaker 1: he thought that you literally could not think without it.

1292
01:13:05,720 --> 01:13:10,040
Speaker 1: They quote him saying, the soul never thinks without a fantasma,

1293
01:13:10,080 --> 01:13:12,799
Speaker 1: and the phantasma is like some kind of mental image,

1294
01:13:13,240 --> 01:13:15,599
Speaker 1: which I'm sure this would come as news to our

1295
01:13:15,640 --> 01:13:19,280
Speaker 1: many listeners who tell us about their experiences with a fantasia,

1296
01:13:19,360 --> 01:13:22,519
Speaker 1: meaning that they say they don't have the ability to

1297
01:13:22,760 --> 01:13:26,080
Speaker 1: form mental images, they can't picture something in their heads.

1298
01:13:26,280 --> 01:13:28,519
Speaker 1: And yet you know, we've got no reason to disbelieve

1299
01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:30,439
Speaker 1: them on that, And at the same time they seem

1300
01:13:30,479 --> 01:13:34,280
Speaker 1: perfectly capable of thinking. So it seems perfectly clear to

1301
01:13:34,320 --> 01:13:37,760
Speaker 1: me that mental imagery is not necessary for thought, right,

1302
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:41,320
Speaker 1: it is necessary for choosing the form of the Destroyer.

1303
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:46,000
Speaker 1: Should Gozer uh the Traveler appear to you. I have

1304
01:13:46,120 --> 01:13:49,360
Speaker 1: to think back of that scene and Ghostbusters. Uh, that's

1305
01:13:49,360 --> 01:13:52,439
Speaker 1: how they choose the stay Puff marshmallow man form. But

1306
01:13:52,800 --> 01:13:55,480
Speaker 1: you have all of the Ghostbusters that had a fantasia,

1307
01:13:55,880 --> 01:13:59,160
Speaker 1: then the the Destroyer would not have been able to manifest.

1308
01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:02,000
Speaker 1: I think you of that in the original episode. Probably did.

1309
01:14:02,160 --> 01:14:04,400
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it since then. But that's great

1310
01:14:04,760 --> 01:14:07,240
Speaker 1: unless goes Are the Destroyer is even more nefarious than

1311
01:14:07,280 --> 01:14:10,920
Speaker 1: we imagine, and he can also manifest in the shape

1312
01:14:11,040 --> 01:14:15,559
Speaker 1: of something that you put together through, say words or whatever. Maybe,

1313
01:14:15,680 --> 01:14:18,559
Speaker 1: but I kind of like the idea that it's being

1314
01:14:18,600 --> 01:14:22,439
Speaker 1: an interdimensional entity. It's it's limited, and it really like it.

1315
01:14:22,520 --> 01:14:26,000
Speaker 1: It cannot venture into this form unless there is a

1316
01:14:26,040 --> 01:14:29,960
Speaker 1: clear visual image that it can draw from, Like that

1317
01:14:30,040 --> 01:14:33,360
Speaker 1: has to be the uh, the foothold for it to

1318
01:14:33,760 --> 01:14:36,519
Speaker 1: climb back in and begin destroying. Well, to tie it

1319
01:14:36,560 --> 01:14:39,559
Speaker 1: back to psychic photography, actually, this is what the case

1320
01:14:39,600 --> 01:14:41,960
Speaker 1: of goes Are taking the form you imagine would be

1321
01:14:42,080 --> 01:14:45,679
Speaker 1: exactly like thoughtography would be the case of mental imagery

1322
01:14:45,720 --> 01:14:49,400
Speaker 1: being manifested as a physical object in the world. Yeah,

1323
01:14:49,520 --> 01:14:51,599
Speaker 1: but but it would also it would make more sense

1324
01:14:52,000 --> 01:14:56,120
Speaker 1: that a god can read your mind, then your mind

1325
01:14:56,439 --> 01:15:01,160
Speaker 1: can blast a photo, blast an image. John Toison undeveloped

1326
01:15:01,200 --> 01:15:04,800
Speaker 1: sel I agree. Uh So, picking up again with the

1327
01:15:05,120 --> 01:15:08,519
Speaker 1: history of mental imagery. Uh, Descartes had thoughts about visual

1328
01:15:08,560 --> 01:15:12,320
Speaker 1: imagination apparently placed it on par with the senses as

1329
01:15:12,439 --> 01:15:16,639
Speaker 1: manifestations of the body, which, of course, for in Descartes's view,

1330
01:15:16,680 --> 01:15:19,240
Speaker 1: that makes them fallible because of course they can always

1331
01:15:19,280 --> 01:15:23,080
Speaker 1: be mistaken, unlike in his view pure logical deduction. If

1332
01:15:23,120 --> 01:15:27,320
Speaker 1: you recall like the fight between Descartes and the the empiricists,

1333
01:15:27,320 --> 01:15:29,919
Speaker 1: you know, the empiricists thought that the senses should be primary,

1334
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:32,240
Speaker 1: but deck Heart thought, no, you can't ever fully trust

1335
01:15:32,280 --> 01:15:34,280
Speaker 1: the senses. You've got to go on just like pure

1336
01:15:34,400 --> 01:15:37,759
Speaker 1: logical proofs. I'm not quite sure why, for some reason

1337
01:15:37,800 --> 01:15:40,519
Speaker 1: that that seems like a funny belief looking back on

1338
01:15:40,600 --> 01:15:43,559
Speaker 1: it now. Of course, later mental imagery became the domain

1339
01:15:43,600 --> 01:15:46,200
Speaker 1: of psychology. Uh. And of course you know that that

1340
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:48,599
Speaker 1: would be treated in different ways depending on the different

1341
01:15:48,640 --> 01:15:51,200
Speaker 1: schools of psychology. One thing that I think is interesting

1342
01:15:51,240 --> 01:15:54,360
Speaker 1: in the history of psychology is the behaviorist school of course,

1343
01:15:54,520 --> 01:15:58,320
Speaker 1: not being interested in mental imagery because it's not an

1344
01:15:58,360 --> 01:16:03,240
Speaker 1: outwardly measurable behavior. So J. B. Watson apparently referred to

1345
01:16:03,320 --> 01:16:08,240
Speaker 1: mental imagery as quote motor habits in the larynx, which

1346
01:16:08,280 --> 01:16:11,000
Speaker 1: I think is a behaviorist way of saying something you

1347
01:16:11,080 --> 01:16:15,200
Speaker 1: only know about because people talk about it. I am

1348
01:16:15,320 --> 01:16:19,639
Speaker 1: continually fascinated by thinking about behaviorism because we occasionally hear

1349
01:16:19,680 --> 01:16:22,479
Speaker 1: from people, uh we We've gotten a couple of listener

1350
01:16:22,560 --> 01:16:25,280
Speaker 1: emails over the years, people responding to topics from a

1351
01:16:25,320 --> 01:16:29,679
Speaker 1: behaviorist point of view, essentially not crediting anything that's about

1352
01:16:29,760 --> 01:16:33,920
Speaker 1: the inner experiences or consciousness of people. It's only you know,

1353
01:16:34,000 --> 01:16:38,240
Speaker 1: the psychology can only be about outwardly measured behaviors. Yeah,

1354
01:16:38,320 --> 01:16:40,439
Speaker 1: it's a statement like that. Though. It makes me wonder

1355
01:16:40,520 --> 01:16:44,400
Speaker 1: if J. B. Watson was perhaps perhaps had a fantasia.

1356
01:16:44,520 --> 01:16:47,040
Speaker 1: You know, I mean this idea because we this lines

1357
01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:48,840
Speaker 1: up with what we've heard from a lot of people

1358
01:16:49,000 --> 01:16:51,920
Speaker 1: who's claimed to have a fantasia. And they'll say, oh, yeah,

1359
01:16:51,960 --> 01:16:54,439
Speaker 1: I heard people talking about picturing something in their mind

1360
01:16:54,439 --> 01:16:56,599
Speaker 1: when they read a book, and I thought they were

1361
01:16:56,640 --> 01:16:59,599
Speaker 1: just being you know, just figurative. You know, they weren't

1362
01:17:00,000 --> 01:17:02,519
Speaker 1: saying that they actually saw something in their head like

1363
01:17:02,560 --> 01:17:06,680
Speaker 1: it's it seems like it is difficult to imagine the

1364
01:17:06,720 --> 01:17:09,360
Speaker 1: mental image if you have no frame of reference for it,

1365
01:17:09,439 --> 01:17:12,320
Speaker 1: you know. Uh yeah, Except I would say that for Watson,

1366
01:17:12,320 --> 01:17:15,720
Speaker 1: it's not just mental imagery. It's all internal mental phenomenon.

1367
01:17:15,880 --> 01:17:19,479
Speaker 1: I mean, that's everything that's not outward behavior. So it

1368
01:17:19,560 --> 01:17:21,800
Speaker 1: wouldn't be just I think he would probably think that

1369
01:17:21,880 --> 01:17:23,920
Speaker 1: mental imagery is not the only thing that's just a

1370
01:17:23,960 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 1: motor habit in the larynx. That uh that, I don't know,

1371
01:17:27,080 --> 01:17:30,960
Speaker 1: imagination that, like anything inside your head, is a motor

1372
01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:33,240
Speaker 1: habit in the larynx. Do you think Ether would have

1373
01:17:33,320 --> 01:17:37,639
Speaker 1: changed his mind at all? I don't know. Then again,

1374
01:17:37,680 --> 01:17:39,400
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not being fair. I don't want to put

1375
01:17:39,400 --> 01:17:42,760
Speaker 1: words in Watson's mouth, but uh yeah, So I think

1376
01:17:42,800 --> 01:17:45,880
Speaker 1: we don't need to feel bound by the behaviorist view

1377
01:17:45,880 --> 01:17:47,720
Speaker 1: of this thing, and we can entertain the idea of

1378
01:17:47,760 --> 01:17:51,320
Speaker 1: mental imagery. You experience it, other people say they experience it.

1379
01:17:51,360 --> 01:17:53,479
Speaker 1: You've got no reason to disbelieve them. So I think

1380
01:17:53,560 --> 01:17:58,040
Speaker 1: humans probably have mental imagery. But but long in history,

1381
01:17:58,400 --> 01:18:02,040
Speaker 1: it has clearly been assumed that there is some kind

1382
01:18:02,120 --> 01:18:08,519
Speaker 1: of physical representation space and perceiver within the brain for

1383
01:18:08,640 --> 01:18:11,680
Speaker 1: mental imagery. Uh. And one thing I'm thinking about that

1384
01:18:11,720 --> 01:18:14,120
Speaker 1: I came across while preparing for this episode is an

1385
01:18:14,160 --> 01:18:18,280
Speaker 1: illustration by the sixteenth seventeenth century English physician and occultist

1386
01:18:18,800 --> 01:18:23,040
Speaker 1: Robert Flood spelled f l U d D kind of

1387
01:18:23,040 --> 01:18:26,320
Speaker 1: like Elmer Flood Flood with an L flood, also like

1388
01:18:26,400 --> 01:18:30,360
Speaker 1: Randall Flag. Oh yeah, that's true. Maybe this is one

1389
01:18:30,360 --> 01:18:34,320
Speaker 1: of the incarnations of the Man from the Desert. But anyway,

1390
01:18:34,320 --> 01:18:38,559
Speaker 1: And one of Robert Flood's tracts he illustrated the eye

1391
01:18:38,600 --> 01:18:43,439
Speaker 1: of imagination or the oculus imagination onis, which was this

1392
01:18:43,680 --> 01:18:46,880
Speaker 1: third eye inside the brain which, getting it wrong and

1393
01:18:46,920 --> 01:18:51,439
Speaker 1: backwards in multiple ways, projected mental images onto some kind

1394
01:18:51,479 --> 01:18:55,200
Speaker 1: of screen or representation space in the back or like

1395
01:18:55,280 --> 01:18:57,200
Speaker 1: in the back of the head or behind the head,

1396
01:18:57,600 --> 01:19:01,160
Speaker 1: where mental images would take form after being projected by

1397
01:19:01,200 --> 01:19:03,680
Speaker 1: this third eye. And now, of course we know that

1398
01:19:03,720 --> 01:19:06,439
Speaker 1: the eye does not project a beam of seeing, but

1399
01:19:06,560 --> 01:19:11,120
Speaker 1: receives incoming light. So even yeah, I think we're we're

1400
01:19:11,160 --> 01:19:13,519
Speaker 1: confused in more ways than one here. Yeah, Like if

1401
01:19:13,520 --> 01:19:17,000
Speaker 1: there really were a tiny viewing screen inside the brain

1402
01:19:17,120 --> 01:19:18,800
Speaker 1: and an eye to see it, it would be too

1403
01:19:18,840 --> 01:19:21,760
Speaker 1: dark to watch the movie, right, so that would be

1404
01:19:21,760 --> 01:19:24,120
Speaker 1: a problem. But but yeah, I mean, like I think

1405
01:19:24,320 --> 01:19:28,519
Speaker 1: third eye views are are popular throughout history. People kind

1406
01:19:28,560 --> 01:19:31,479
Speaker 1: of think there's an observer in the observer, right, And

1407
01:19:31,479 --> 01:19:34,760
Speaker 1: and granted, we do have a pennial gland, which is

1408
01:19:34,840 --> 01:19:39,160
Speaker 1: essentially an atrophied photo receptor with some connections to the

1409
01:19:39,240 --> 01:19:44,000
Speaker 1: parietal eye of reptiles. But but it produces uh a melotonin,

1410
01:19:44,200 --> 01:19:47,360
Speaker 1: a serotonin derived hormone, and is not involved in the

1411
01:19:47,400 --> 01:19:50,120
Speaker 1: generation of mental images, or at least I don't think

1412
01:19:50,120 --> 01:19:53,200
Speaker 1: there's any evidence that, not that I've ever seen. Uh.

1413
01:19:53,760 --> 01:19:55,719
Speaker 1: This is funny because I was reading that deck Cart

1414
01:19:55,800 --> 01:19:58,880
Speaker 1: believed that the pineal gland was the point of interaction

1415
01:19:59,000 --> 01:20:01,880
Speaker 1: between the body and the immaterial soul. That did you

1416
01:20:01,920 --> 01:20:05,320
Speaker 1: know this, um? And may we did. We did episode

1417
01:20:05,320 --> 01:20:07,680
Speaker 1: on the pineal gland way back in the day, so

1418
01:20:07,720 --> 01:20:11,040
Speaker 1: it's possible, Okay, I came across this. Yeah, but I'm

1419
01:20:11,080 --> 01:20:13,200
Speaker 1: thinking back to this idea of having, yeah, a viewer

1420
01:20:13,240 --> 01:20:16,839
Speaker 1: inside the viewer, like an internal I inside the brain

1421
01:20:17,040 --> 01:20:21,120
Speaker 1: for mental imagery. And there are reasons I think that

1422
01:20:21,320 --> 01:20:24,400
Speaker 1: there are problems with this because if in order to

1423
01:20:24,439 --> 01:20:28,960
Speaker 1: see mental images we have to project them physically somewhere

1424
01:20:29,000 --> 01:20:32,320
Speaker 1: inside the brain. What is the part of the brain

1425
01:20:32,439 --> 01:20:35,479
Speaker 1: that is looking at the image? Is that another brain

1426
01:20:35,840 --> 01:20:40,360
Speaker 1: with eyes inside the brain? Uh? Incognitive philosophy. This is

1427
01:20:40,400 --> 01:20:43,720
Speaker 1: sometimes called the homunculous theory. That's a you know, a

1428
01:20:43,840 --> 01:20:46,360
Speaker 1: name of ridicule for it, like the idea that there

1429
01:20:46,360 --> 01:20:48,400
Speaker 1: has to be somebody inside your brain to see what

1430
01:20:48,520 --> 01:20:51,080
Speaker 1: your brain is seeing or thinking. Right, as with like

1431
01:20:51,120 --> 01:20:54,439
Speaker 1: the homunculous ideas and human reproduction where there's a tiny

1432
01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:58,120
Speaker 1: little version of you inside of a sperm cell. Yes,

1433
01:20:58,160 --> 01:21:01,439
Speaker 1: And like the homunculous idea of of reproduction, it's an

1434
01:21:01,439 --> 01:21:04,400
Speaker 1: infinite regress, right, because if there's a little eyes and

1435
01:21:04,439 --> 01:21:06,840
Speaker 1: a brain inside your head in order to see what

1436
01:21:06,880 --> 01:21:09,479
Speaker 1: you're thinking, then that brain must have little eyes and

1437
01:21:09,520 --> 01:21:11,920
Speaker 1: a brain inside that brain to see what that brain

1438
01:21:12,040 --> 01:21:15,479
Speaker 1: is thinking about. And it goes on forever. And another

1439
01:21:15,600 --> 01:21:18,640
Speaker 1: version of this, extended to total brain function, is what

1440
01:21:18,760 --> 01:21:22,799
Speaker 1: Daniel Dennet calls the Cartesian theater. Again, this is something

1441
01:21:22,880 --> 01:21:28,400
Speaker 1: he's he's ridiculing. Basically, it's uh imagining or implicitly assuming

1442
01:21:28,439 --> 01:21:31,320
Speaker 1: that the brain has some sort of little pilot inside

1443
01:21:31,320 --> 01:21:35,639
Speaker 1: who witnesses all of our sense data and controls our reactions. Um,

1444
01:21:35,760 --> 01:21:38,679
Speaker 1: and again it's basically a reduct, you ad absurdam because

1445
01:21:38,680 --> 01:21:41,559
Speaker 1: it leads to this infinite regress. Who's seeing the images

1446
01:21:41,600 --> 01:21:44,519
Speaker 1: inside the brain, and the homunculus or the pilot or

1447
01:21:44,560 --> 01:21:47,840
Speaker 1: the Cartesian theater must be another smaller one. So I

1448
01:21:47,840 --> 01:21:50,320
Speaker 1: don't think it can be that inside the brain mental

1449
01:21:50,360 --> 01:21:53,840
Speaker 1: images are seeing the same way our eyes see things

1450
01:21:53,880 --> 01:21:57,240
Speaker 1: in the world. So what actually is happening in the

1451
01:21:57,280 --> 01:22:00,000
Speaker 1: brain when you're asked to imagine a concrete image. Maybe

1452
01:22:00,000 --> 01:22:01,720
Speaker 1: we should take a break and then explore that when

1453
01:22:01,720 --> 01:22:05,519
Speaker 1: we come back. Yes, everyone think of a bicycle during

1454
01:22:05,560 --> 01:22:10,960
Speaker 1: this commercial break. Alright, we're back, and hopefully you still

1455
01:22:11,000 --> 01:22:14,360
Speaker 1: have that bicycle floating around inside your mind. We should

1456
01:22:14,360 --> 01:22:19,240
Speaker 1: give them something more interesting to picture concretely, something with details.

1457
01:22:19,840 --> 01:22:23,879
Speaker 1: Picture a democorgan democgorgan is good. Yeah, It's just interesting

1458
01:22:23,920 --> 01:22:30,800
Speaker 1: how many like fabled unreal entities are good things to

1459
01:22:30,840 --> 01:22:32,880
Speaker 1: focus your mind on. And I think it perhaps it's

1460
01:22:32,920 --> 01:22:37,040
Speaker 1: because there are there are combinations, they're they're hybrids with

1461
01:22:37,080 --> 01:22:40,479
Speaker 1: different elements. So you you're you're you know what, you're

1462
01:22:40,520 --> 01:22:43,559
Speaker 1: kind of thinking of a list and compiling that list

1463
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:48,240
Speaker 1: into this single mental image and ultimately gives you something

1464
01:22:48,280 --> 01:22:51,479
Speaker 1: to focus on, right, but the details are provided to you.

1465
01:22:51,960 --> 01:22:54,880
Speaker 1: Whereas the bicycle, you're just saying bicycle, we're not saying,

1466
01:22:54,960 --> 01:23:00,320
Speaker 1: imagine a contraption with two wheels and its etcetera. Two

1467
01:23:00,360 --> 01:23:04,680
Speaker 1: wheels and nine tentacles and three baboon heads. Yes, yes,

1468
01:23:04,760 --> 01:23:06,400
Speaker 1: and in one hand the sun and in the other

1469
01:23:06,400 --> 01:23:09,760
Speaker 1: hand and move. Okay, Now, when you do picture the demogorgon,

1470
01:23:10,040 --> 01:23:13,560
Speaker 1: what is actually happening in your brain? Has modern neuroscience

1471
01:23:13,640 --> 01:23:18,280
Speaker 1: discovered any answers to this question? Actually the answer is yes,

1472
01:23:18,360 --> 01:23:20,439
Speaker 1: we do know a decent amount. We don't know everything,

1473
01:23:20,520 --> 01:23:22,479
Speaker 1: we know a decent amount about what happens in the

1474
01:23:22,520 --> 01:23:26,799
Speaker 1: brain when you picture mental imagery. Um, So, brain cells

1475
01:23:26,920 --> 01:23:30,080
Speaker 1: in the temporal lobe, and this is the temporal lobes

1476
01:23:30,080 --> 01:23:32,439
Speaker 1: are at the bottom and sides of the brain, sort

1477
01:23:32,439 --> 01:23:37,040
Speaker 1: of around the ears. They become activated. And previous research

1478
01:23:37,120 --> 01:23:41,360
Speaker 1: has shown that the temporal lobes are involved in attributing

1479
01:23:41,400 --> 01:23:46,920
Speaker 1: and storing information about the visual characteristics of objects. So normally,

1480
01:23:47,000 --> 01:23:50,760
Speaker 1: like when you see something, uh, information might there might

1481
01:23:50,800 --> 01:23:53,160
Speaker 1: be activity in the temporal lobes that seems to be

1482
01:23:53,560 --> 01:23:57,720
Speaker 1: creating associations with the thing you're looking at right, like

1483
01:23:58,479 --> 01:24:02,280
Speaker 1: the foam on the walls in our studio, they look

1484
01:24:02,320 --> 01:24:04,960
Speaker 1: like tiny pyramids. So I can look at one of those,

1485
01:24:04,960 --> 01:24:07,720
Speaker 1: and then I can I can't help but imagine a

1486
01:24:07,800 --> 01:24:10,880
Speaker 1: great pyramid. Yes, And so what's happening there when you're

1487
01:24:10,960 --> 01:24:13,639
Speaker 1: using your eyes is probably the lights coming through the eyes.

1488
01:24:14,080 --> 01:24:18,080
Speaker 1: Signals are passing from your optic nerve, from your retina's

1489
01:24:18,120 --> 01:24:20,800
Speaker 1: the optic nerve, and uh, they're ending up in the

1490
01:24:20,880 --> 01:24:23,600
Speaker 1: visual processing areas and the back of your head, and

1491
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:26,599
Speaker 1: that's known as the occipital cortex, the back of the head,

1492
01:24:27,080 --> 01:24:30,720
Speaker 1: and then that start signals that cascade out to other

1493
01:24:30,760 --> 01:24:34,080
Speaker 1: brain regions. Where you form those associations probably has a

1494
01:24:34,080 --> 01:24:37,120
Speaker 1: lot to do with your temporal lobes. But when you're

1495
01:24:37,120 --> 01:24:40,000
Speaker 1: asked to picture something concrete, like I say, picture the

1496
01:24:40,120 --> 01:24:43,320
Speaker 1: great Pyramids of Gizah, we seem to be starting with

1497
01:24:43,400 --> 01:24:47,040
Speaker 1: activity that involves visual memory. So there's stuff going on

1498
01:24:47,120 --> 01:24:50,679
Speaker 1: in the temporal lobes, and the excitation of these cells

1499
01:24:50,680 --> 01:24:54,360
Speaker 1: then triggers activity in the visual cortices of the occipital lobe.

1500
01:24:54,360 --> 01:24:57,000
Speaker 1: Again that's the very back of the head. And of

1501
01:24:57,040 --> 01:24:58,800
Speaker 1: course this is the same part of the brain that

1502
01:24:58,880 --> 01:25:02,000
Speaker 1: receives and begins to process visual information received by the

1503
01:25:02,040 --> 01:25:05,559
Speaker 1: retina transmitted by the optic nerve when you normally see something.

1504
01:25:06,080 --> 01:25:08,280
Speaker 1: And the authors of this paper I mentioned earlier, they

1505
01:25:08,400 --> 01:25:11,760
Speaker 1: they point out that when you conjure mental imagery, it's

1506
01:25:11,800 --> 01:25:15,280
Speaker 1: not exactly but it's sort of roughly an inversion of

1507
01:25:15,360 --> 01:25:18,960
Speaker 1: the process of seeing with the eyes. Basically, it's similar

1508
01:25:19,000 --> 01:25:23,080
Speaker 1: cascades going in opposite directions. And it also, i would say,

1509
01:25:23,080 --> 01:25:25,919
Speaker 1: seems to suggest that if it were possible to project

1510
01:25:25,960 --> 01:25:29,799
Speaker 1: an image from ted serious head onto film, if anything,

1511
01:25:30,120 --> 01:25:32,519
Speaker 1: he should have been holding the gizmo and the camera

1512
01:25:32,600 --> 01:25:35,040
Speaker 1: on the back of his head rather than the forehead.

1513
01:25:35,040 --> 01:25:37,720
Speaker 1: Because it seems like the activity is going from a

1514
01:25:37,840 --> 01:25:41,280
Speaker 1: sort of beginning with uh, with executive function. Of course,

1515
01:25:41,400 --> 01:25:44,920
Speaker 1: that's uh, you know, intentionally causing the memories. Then there's

1516
01:25:45,120 --> 01:25:48,400
Speaker 1: memory stuff in the temporal lobes, and then it's going

1517
01:25:48,439 --> 01:25:50,559
Speaker 1: to the occipital lobe in the back of the head.

1518
01:25:50,680 --> 01:25:52,280
Speaker 1: I'll see, if you'd only known that, it would have

1519
01:25:52,320 --> 01:25:57,120
Speaker 1: worked every time. Now, why do you need executive function

1520
01:25:57,160 --> 01:25:59,559
Speaker 1: in the front of the brain as well? Well? Apparently

1521
01:25:59,600 --> 01:26:03,040
Speaker 1: that's involved in intentionally trying to call up and hold

1522
01:26:03,240 --> 01:26:07,320
Speaker 1: mental images. So like conscious management of what's happening in

1523
01:26:07,360 --> 01:26:10,639
Speaker 1: the brain tends to be thought that that's executive function.

1524
01:26:10,680 --> 01:26:15,240
Speaker 1: It's deliberate thinking and maintenance of attention, and that entails

1525
01:26:15,280 --> 01:26:18,120
Speaker 1: activity in the frontal and parietal regions of the brain.

1526
01:26:18,200 --> 01:26:21,240
Speaker 1: So stuff up front and to the front and sides. Uh.

1527
01:26:21,280 --> 01:26:25,040
Speaker 1: And mental imagery may also involve executive function because it

1528
01:26:25,160 --> 01:26:31,080
Speaker 1: requires the suppression of incoming imagery from the eyes, or

1529
01:26:31,120 --> 01:26:36,280
Speaker 1: at least the diversion of visual processing resources from quote

1530
01:26:36,360 --> 01:26:39,840
Speaker 1: signals based on light entering the eyes. Right now, two

1531
01:26:40,360 --> 01:26:44,200
Speaker 1: images generated from memory. It's crazy to think about the

1532
01:26:44,560 --> 01:26:46,360
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking about it in this terms because we're

1533
01:26:46,400 --> 01:26:48,719
Speaker 1: also researching an episode that has to do with driving

1534
01:26:49,240 --> 01:26:51,320
Speaker 1: and the what's going on in your mind when you

1535
01:26:51,400 --> 01:26:55,320
Speaker 1: drive an automobile? And isn't it crazy that we can

1536
01:26:55,360 --> 01:27:01,360
Speaker 1: engage in the cognitively demanding job of say, driving up

1537
01:27:01,439 --> 01:27:05,519
Speaker 1: a speeding automobile down an interstate, watching what all the

1538
01:27:05,560 --> 01:27:08,759
Speaker 1: cars are doing, and you know, reading an occasional sign

1539
01:27:08,800 --> 01:27:11,200
Speaker 1: looking up for speed traps, all of these things that

1540
01:27:11,240 --> 01:27:13,679
Speaker 1: we're doing, and at the same time, we might have

1541
01:27:14,439 --> 01:27:17,880
Speaker 1: an audio book playing that is filling our head with

1542
01:27:18,040 --> 01:27:21,240
Speaker 1: like with a you know a rich visual world, and

1543
01:27:21,280 --> 01:27:24,080
Speaker 1: we're entertaining both of these at the same time. I

1544
01:27:24,120 --> 01:27:27,439
Speaker 1: would say that that is, while I accept that we

1545
01:27:27,520 --> 01:27:29,680
Speaker 1: can handle those things both at the same time, I

1546
01:27:29,720 --> 01:27:32,960
Speaker 1: would say it is not without costs to uh to

1547
01:27:33,080 --> 01:27:35,439
Speaker 1: either one. Like I would say that you probably have

1548
01:27:35,640 --> 01:27:39,840
Speaker 1: a more rich experience of the book and mental image

1549
01:27:39,840 --> 01:27:42,519
Speaker 1: reassociated with the book if you were not driving, and

1550
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:44,840
Speaker 1: you'd probably be better at driving if you were not

1551
01:27:44,920 --> 01:27:48,480
Speaker 1: listening to the book, because there is actually a competition

1552
01:27:48,520 --> 01:27:51,800
Speaker 1: for resources going on. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. I mean,

1553
01:27:52,520 --> 01:27:54,960
Speaker 1: of course that I think a lot of us tended

1554
01:27:55,120 --> 01:27:58,760
Speaker 1: to read in environments where there are other distractions. Maybe

1555
01:27:58,840 --> 01:28:03,479
Speaker 1: not is cognitively demanding as piloting an automobile, but but still,

1556
01:28:03,520 --> 01:28:05,120
Speaker 1: this would be an interesting one to get some feedback

1557
01:28:05,120 --> 01:28:06,840
Speaker 1: from listeners, because I know that we have a number

1558
01:28:06,880 --> 01:28:09,240
Speaker 1: of listeners who who are on the road a lot

1559
01:28:09,320 --> 01:28:11,080
Speaker 1: and listen listen to us on the road and listen

1560
01:28:11,120 --> 01:28:14,720
Speaker 1: to to other bits of audio as well. Yeah, that's

1561
01:28:14,720 --> 01:28:17,280
Speaker 1: a good point. Please only listen to our podcast if

1562
01:28:17,439 --> 01:28:22,080
Speaker 1: if it is safe to do so. It's don't devote

1563
01:28:22,080 --> 01:28:25,280
Speaker 1: too much mental resources to us. If if you're piloting

1564
01:28:25,280 --> 01:28:27,439
Speaker 1: a dangerous vehicle. But then again, even if you're not

1565
01:28:27,560 --> 01:28:30,439
Speaker 1: listening to a podcast or an audio book, oh yeah,

1566
01:28:30,439 --> 01:28:33,040
Speaker 1: your mind's want your mind's gonna wander. And then I mean,

1567
01:28:33,080 --> 01:28:35,719
Speaker 1: it's not even going to necessarily be a situation where

1568
01:28:35,720 --> 01:28:38,800
Speaker 1: you're consciously choosing things to imagine. You know, you're you're

1569
01:28:38,800 --> 01:28:43,240
Speaker 1: gonna be subject to the visual summonings of the default

1570
01:28:43,240 --> 01:28:46,160
Speaker 1: mode network where uh, you know, mental images from the

1571
01:28:46,520 --> 01:28:48,920
Speaker 1: past or the physy future are going to you know,

1572
01:28:49,040 --> 01:28:53,400
Speaker 1: venture into your mind like Victorian ghosts. But speaking of ghosts,

1573
01:28:53,400 --> 01:28:55,320
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think it's a little bit spooky

1574
01:28:55,400 --> 01:28:58,200
Speaker 1: that once I read this, this does in fact seem

1575
01:28:58,240 --> 01:29:00,160
Speaker 1: true to me. I just had never really thought of

1576
01:29:00,160 --> 01:29:04,360
Speaker 1: it this way, that when you mentally picture something, you're

1577
01:29:04,400 --> 01:29:07,680
Speaker 1: you are intentionally using your brain. You're performing some kind

1578
01:29:07,680 --> 01:29:12,080
Speaker 1: of internal brain resources management with the executive function mostly

1579
01:29:12,080 --> 01:29:15,000
Speaker 1: in your frontal lobe. I think to say, turned down

1580
01:29:15,120 --> 01:29:19,760
Speaker 1: resolution on incoming mint visual imagery and devote some of

1581
01:29:19,800 --> 01:29:23,360
Speaker 1: those resources to mental imagery. And if you, if you

1582
01:29:23,439 --> 01:29:25,920
Speaker 1: practice it right now, I think you'll probably notice the

1583
01:29:25,920 --> 01:29:28,479
Speaker 1: same thing. You just like, look at something and then

1584
01:29:28,520 --> 01:29:32,080
Speaker 1: try to picture something mentally, and you'll notice that you're

1585
01:29:32,200 --> 01:29:37,120
Speaker 1: looking kind of gets downgraded in like quality and and arrested.

1586
01:29:37,479 --> 01:29:39,680
Speaker 1: Are are you feeling this? Yeah? I mean, but this

1587
01:29:39,800 --> 01:29:43,679
Speaker 1: is also kind of the It kind of goes both ways, right,

1588
01:29:43,960 --> 01:29:48,160
Speaker 1: Like both cannot have have complete dominance at the same time.

1589
01:29:48,640 --> 01:29:52,160
Speaker 1: So you might be able to to dim the thermist

1590
01:29:52,240 --> 01:29:55,880
Speaker 1: that you're staring at by allowing mental images to you know,

1591
01:29:55,960 --> 01:29:57,840
Speaker 1: to to be summoned into your mind. But on the

1592
01:29:57,880 --> 01:30:04,320
Speaker 1: same level, if you feel haunted by various visual imagery ghosts,

1593
01:30:04,560 --> 01:30:07,839
Speaker 1: you know, the visualizations that are in some way troubling

1594
01:30:07,960 --> 01:30:10,519
Speaker 1: or traumatic, uh, you know, one of the exercises is

1595
01:30:10,560 --> 01:30:13,880
Speaker 1: to focus your awareness on something, uh that that is

1596
01:30:13,920 --> 01:30:17,200
Speaker 1: a physically present be at the ambient environment or a

1597
01:30:17,200 --> 01:30:20,960
Speaker 1: specific object. I think that that would probably absolutely work,

1598
01:30:21,000 --> 01:30:23,000
Speaker 1: at least based on what I've read, that you can

1599
01:30:23,040 --> 01:30:26,240
Speaker 1: that you can greatly lessen the power of mental image

1600
01:30:26,320 --> 01:30:30,160
Speaker 1: ory just by using your senses. Yeah, Like it reminds

1601
01:30:30,200 --> 01:30:32,639
Speaker 1: me of meditation practices. Like, certainly they are closed eye

1602
01:30:32,640 --> 01:30:36,320
Speaker 1: meditation practices, which in that environment you're really opening it

1603
01:30:36,400 --> 01:30:39,400
Speaker 1: up to the visual way of seeing, you know, uh,

1604
01:30:39,640 --> 01:30:42,400
Speaker 1: to to the mental image alone. But there are plenty

1605
01:30:42,439 --> 01:30:45,599
Speaker 1: of open eye practices where you know, the instructor will say,

1606
01:30:45,640 --> 01:30:47,559
Speaker 1: you know, pick something in the room, doesn't matter what

1607
01:30:47,640 --> 01:30:50,200
Speaker 1: it is. It can be an electrical socket. But stare

1608
01:30:50,200 --> 01:30:53,439
Speaker 1: at that electrical socket. Stare long and hard at that

1609
01:30:53,520 --> 01:30:56,519
Speaker 1: electrical socket, and that becomes kind of the you know,

1610
01:30:56,560 --> 01:31:01,439
Speaker 1: the visual mantra that will force out the other other ghosts. Yeah.

1611
01:31:01,680 --> 01:31:04,200
Speaker 1: I like this metaphor for thinking about it, that there's

1612
01:31:04,280 --> 01:31:07,200
Speaker 1: this war in your brain, this war for control of

1613
01:31:07,240 --> 01:31:10,040
Speaker 1: the resources in your brain, and one of them is

1614
01:31:10,720 --> 01:31:14,320
Speaker 1: things in your immediate surroundings, your sense perceptions, and the

1615
01:31:14,360 --> 01:31:17,400
Speaker 1: other is things conjured by the void, which could be good,

1616
01:31:17,400 --> 01:31:19,840
Speaker 1: things could be bad, things could be useful, things could

1617
01:31:19,880 --> 01:31:23,000
Speaker 1: be debilitating things. I mean, it's just what comes up

1618
01:31:23,040 --> 01:31:26,160
Speaker 1: out out of you know, either the intentional use of

1619
01:31:26,240 --> 01:31:29,120
Speaker 1: mental imagery by the executive part of your brain, or

1620
01:31:29,400 --> 01:31:33,599
Speaker 1: just you know, things that are subconsciously arising from the depths.

1621
01:31:34,040 --> 01:31:36,560
Speaker 1: And your brain has to have some kind of partitioning

1622
01:31:36,560 --> 01:31:40,240
Speaker 1: system for this, this sort of visual processing, right. Uh.

1623
01:31:40,640 --> 01:31:43,800
Speaker 1: It uses regions in the occipital lobe to process image

1624
01:31:43,880 --> 01:31:46,439
Speaker 1: data coming from your eyes, but you also use some

1625
01:31:46,520 --> 01:31:50,680
Speaker 1: of the same regions to process images generated based on

1626
01:31:50,760 --> 01:31:53,280
Speaker 1: your memories or based on your imagination, which I think

1627
01:31:53,320 --> 01:31:56,759
Speaker 1: involves the memories, and these two processes are just constantly

1628
01:31:56,840 --> 01:32:01,479
Speaker 1: going on simultaneously and competing for the same neural resources. Yea,

1629
01:32:01,600 --> 01:32:05,360
Speaker 1: most of the time, most people, uh, this is an

1630
01:32:05,360 --> 01:32:07,920
Speaker 1: interesting thing. Most of the time, most people manage not

1631
01:32:08,040 --> 01:32:11,720
Speaker 1: to get confused. Isn't that interesting too, Like what kind

1632
01:32:11,720 --> 01:32:14,240
Speaker 1: of partitioning must be going on in the brain, because

1633
01:32:14,320 --> 01:32:17,920
Speaker 1: you can picture a pineapple on the desk in front

1634
01:32:17,960 --> 01:32:20,880
Speaker 1: of you right now, and you can picture that, But

1635
01:32:21,160 --> 01:32:23,960
Speaker 1: most of the time you don't become confused and think

1636
01:32:23,960 --> 01:32:27,840
Speaker 1: you're actually seeing a pineapple there. Yeah, not even awareness

1637
01:32:27,920 --> 01:32:30,360
Speaker 1: is focused, you know, certainly, certainly we all have those

1638
01:32:30,479 --> 01:32:32,840
Speaker 1: those situations where you walk into a room and out

1639
01:32:32,840 --> 01:32:34,880
Speaker 1: of the corner of your eye you think, for a second,

1640
01:32:35,080 --> 01:32:37,120
Speaker 1: there's a there's a goblin standing in the corner, or

1641
01:32:37,160 --> 01:32:40,080
Speaker 1: there's a cat, or or something's out of place, and

1642
01:32:40,120 --> 01:32:42,280
Speaker 1: then you know a second glance, you realize, oh, it's

1643
01:32:42,320 --> 01:32:45,559
Speaker 1: just the way that the shadow is following, or it's

1644
01:32:45,560 --> 01:32:48,360
Speaker 1: the way that the drape is positioned, etcetera. Like we

1645
01:32:48,720 --> 01:32:51,800
Speaker 1: come back to it again, like our awareness doesn't just

1646
01:32:52,360 --> 01:32:54,360
Speaker 1: do a single take. It as a double take, and

1647
01:32:54,400 --> 01:32:57,720
Speaker 1: it you know, you confirms or denies the presence of

1648
01:32:57,720 --> 01:32:59,639
Speaker 1: the thing you thought was there initially, right. I think

1649
01:32:59,680 --> 01:33:03,320
Speaker 1: the the persistence of the stimulus is one key there

1650
01:33:03,360 --> 01:33:06,080
Speaker 1: that like, you can keep looking at something and your

1651
01:33:06,200 --> 01:33:09,320
Speaker 1: you know, your imagination will fluctuate, but the light coming

1652
01:33:09,360 --> 01:33:11,040
Speaker 1: into your eyes is going to stay about the same.

1653
01:33:11,960 --> 01:33:14,360
Speaker 1: Um and some beautiful lyrics there that could be an

1654
01:33:14,360 --> 01:33:20,400
Speaker 1: eagle song. I just tried to sing some eagles. But

1655
01:33:20,439 --> 01:33:22,360
Speaker 1: we don't want to get night cheese, so we're not

1656
01:33:22,360 --> 01:33:24,920
Speaker 1: gonna leave it in. Uh Now, Now, it does appear

1657
01:33:24,960 --> 01:33:28,519
Speaker 1: that there's a possibility for some bleed over in the

1658
01:33:28,880 --> 01:33:33,880
Speaker 1: visual processing between mental imagery and actual uh uh seeing

1659
01:33:33,880 --> 01:33:37,640
Speaker 1: with the eyes. For example, this thing called the Perky effect.

1660
01:33:38,160 --> 01:33:41,680
Speaker 1: This is named after the American psychologist C. W. Perky.

1661
01:33:41,840 --> 01:33:44,559
Speaker 1: So how does this work? Well? Uh Perky She she

1662
01:33:44,600 --> 01:33:48,879
Speaker 1: would have somebody try to visualize something like a leaf

1663
01:33:49,000 --> 01:33:52,439
Speaker 1: or a banana while looking at a blank screen, and

1664
01:33:52,479 --> 01:33:57,320
Speaker 1: then meanwhile she would project a very faint, soft focus

1665
01:33:57,479 --> 01:34:01,040
Speaker 1: image of something like a leaf or a banana onto

1666
01:34:01,080 --> 01:34:06,280
Speaker 1: the screen at just about the threshold brightness of visual perception.

1667
01:34:06,920 --> 01:34:11,120
Speaker 1: And in these experiments, Perky found that subjects would incorporate

1668
01:34:11,360 --> 01:34:15,520
Speaker 1: visual features of the actual image that was faintly projected

1669
01:34:16,080 --> 01:34:20,240
Speaker 1: thinking that these were features of their imagined image, for example,

1670
01:34:20,520 --> 01:34:24,360
Speaker 1: the type of leaf or the orientation of the banana.

1671
01:34:24,479 --> 01:34:27,080
Speaker 1: And there have been various attempts to replicate this finding,

1672
01:34:27,200 --> 01:34:30,599
Speaker 1: some successful and some unsuccessful, so I think we're not

1673
01:34:30,720 --> 01:34:34,439
Speaker 1: totally sure how robust this effect is. But I think

1674
01:34:34,479 --> 01:34:37,960
Speaker 1: now a common assessment of what of this effect is

1675
01:34:38,000 --> 01:34:40,360
Speaker 1: that what's really being detected here is the fact that

1676
01:34:40,680 --> 01:34:47,280
Speaker 1: using visual imagination steals processing resources from normal visual perception,

1677
01:34:47,320 --> 01:34:49,360
Speaker 1: like we were talking about earlier, So if you're trying

1678
01:34:49,400 --> 01:34:53,240
Speaker 1: to imagine something, you're less likely to notice consciously than

1679
01:34:53,280 --> 01:34:56,080
Speaker 1: an image is being faintly projected in front of you,

1680
01:34:56,160 --> 01:34:59,240
Speaker 1: even though you might pick up some visual cues such

1681
01:34:59,280 --> 01:35:02,960
Speaker 1: as color shape from that image and just hold them

1682
01:35:02,960 --> 01:35:05,800
Speaker 1: in mind to think they're part of your imagination, which

1683
01:35:05,800 --> 01:35:08,080
Speaker 1: again is creepy. I mean, this isn't the only finding

1684
01:35:08,160 --> 01:35:11,360
Speaker 1: like this that that you can like give people cues

1685
01:35:11,439 --> 01:35:13,960
Speaker 1: from the outside that people come to believe or just

1686
01:35:14,080 --> 01:35:17,200
Speaker 1: part of their own imagination. But I guess maybe it's

1687
01:35:17,240 --> 01:35:19,920
Speaker 1: needless to say that after looking through all this, I

1688
01:35:19,960 --> 01:35:23,720
Speaker 1: don't think there's any evidence at all that representation of

1689
01:35:23,760 --> 01:35:27,519
Speaker 1: an image in the mind involves the brain building a

1690
01:35:27,560 --> 01:35:31,519
Speaker 1: physical two dimensional picture of the image which could be

1691
01:35:32,160 --> 01:35:35,720
Speaker 1: projected onto an external substrate like film. It's kind of

1692
01:35:35,760 --> 01:35:39,320
Speaker 1: like imagining that you could save a JPEG of Garfield,

1693
01:35:39,360 --> 01:35:42,000
Speaker 1: to say, got Garfield and a jpeg, and that's not

1694
01:35:42,080 --> 01:35:45,759
Speaker 1: an old computer floppy disk, and then you could somehow

1695
01:35:46,320 --> 01:35:50,040
Speaker 1: you're trying to project the image of Garfield physically from

1696
01:35:50,040 --> 01:35:54,040
Speaker 1: the floppy disk onto a photograph or a piece of paper.

1697
01:35:54,560 --> 01:35:58,240
Speaker 1: The two D pixel layout of Garfield is not found

1698
01:35:58,320 --> 01:36:01,160
Speaker 1: anywhere on the disc. You know, it's broken down and

1699
01:36:01,280 --> 01:36:04,439
Speaker 1: encoded as information which can later be read by a

1700
01:36:04,479 --> 01:36:07,240
Speaker 1: program to create a copy of the same original image

1701
01:36:07,240 --> 01:36:10,000
Speaker 1: on a computer screen. But the image of Garfield can

1702
01:36:10,080 --> 01:36:12,360
Speaker 1: be seen anywhere on the disk. You can't pull it

1703
01:36:12,360 --> 01:36:16,080
Speaker 1: out by projecting something through it, even with the strongest microscope.

1704
01:36:16,400 --> 01:36:19,479
Speaker 1: It's encoded as information that only yields the image when

1705
01:36:19,560 --> 01:36:24,759
Speaker 1: decoded correctly, and as best I can tell, imageries works

1706
01:36:24,800 --> 01:36:27,960
Speaker 1: a similar way. In the brain. It's somehow coded through

1707
01:36:28,040 --> 01:36:31,080
Speaker 1: neuronal activity. It's it's not an image that you could

1708
01:36:31,160 --> 01:36:35,600
Speaker 1: find anywhere in the brain. You've touched on. One of

1709
01:36:35,600 --> 01:36:39,880
Speaker 1: my big problems with David Cronenberg scanners, which is a

1710
01:36:39,920 --> 01:36:43,120
Speaker 1: movie I love otherwise. Uh, there's a lot to love

1711
01:36:43,120 --> 01:36:46,120
Speaker 1: about Crona about about scanners and not just you know,

1712
01:36:46,160 --> 01:36:50,320
Speaker 1: people's heads exploding and Michael ironsides of you know, fabulous

1713
01:36:50,680 --> 01:36:54,680
Speaker 1: you know, psychic facial strains. But but there is this

1714
01:36:54,760 --> 01:36:57,439
Speaker 1: with this one section of the film where the character

1715
01:36:57,520 --> 01:37:02,040
Speaker 1: Cameron Veil can cyberpath thickly scan a computer hide hard

1716
01:37:02,160 --> 01:37:06,040
Speaker 1: drive with his brain. Uh. And that always bugged me

1717
01:37:06,120 --> 01:37:09,160
Speaker 1: because I'm like, Okay, it's one thing to imagine one

1718
01:37:09,240 --> 01:37:13,240
Speaker 1: brain speaking to another brain, you know, even though there's

1719
01:37:13,360 --> 01:37:18,400
Speaker 1: you know, there's no defined way that that would actually occur, uh,

1720
01:37:18,439 --> 01:37:20,679
Speaker 1: you know, at least in terms of like the human

1721
01:37:20,680 --> 01:37:23,639
Speaker 1: mind talking to another human mind. But but it's even

1722
01:37:23,680 --> 01:37:26,599
Speaker 1: a greater stretch than to imagine that he is scanning

1723
01:37:26,680 --> 01:37:29,960
Speaker 1: a computer hard drive. Yeah, because his brain does not

1724
01:37:30,120 --> 01:37:34,320
Speaker 1: it can't execute the code right, Like, in order for

1725
01:37:34,360 --> 01:37:37,080
Speaker 1: the data on the hard drive to be read correctly

1726
01:37:37,160 --> 01:37:40,480
Speaker 1: has to be executed somehow. There's like a decoding procedure

1727
01:37:40,920 --> 01:37:43,920
Speaker 1: that yields the text or the sound files or whatever

1728
01:37:43,960 --> 01:37:47,320
Speaker 1: it is he's trying to discover, and presumably his brain

1729
01:37:47,439 --> 01:37:51,280
Speaker 1: doesn't have that decoding function within it. Yeah. Yeah, so

1730
01:37:51,720 --> 01:37:55,280
Speaker 1: it's the same problem with this idea of photography, that

1731
01:37:55,280 --> 01:37:57,479
Speaker 1: that somehow you could you could put the mental image

1732
01:37:57,520 --> 01:38:01,559
Speaker 1: in your mind onto the film. That's why I prefer one.

1733
01:38:01,560 --> 01:38:05,719
Speaker 1: A great example of a far more believable system of

1734
01:38:05,760 --> 01:38:09,840
Speaker 1: telepathic communication would be that used by the Gelflings in

1735
01:38:09,960 --> 01:38:13,519
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystal and also in the the new so

1736
01:38:13,600 --> 01:38:19,080
Speaker 1: far really fabulous Netflix of prequel series. Oh I also

1737
01:38:19,120 --> 01:38:22,479
Speaker 1: started it, haven't finished great loving it so far. But

1738
01:38:22,600 --> 01:38:26,120
Speaker 1: the the Gelflings are able to to dream vast where

1739
01:38:26,160 --> 01:38:29,760
Speaker 1: they're able to u to to like touch grasp hands,

1740
01:38:29,840 --> 01:38:33,719
Speaker 1: and in doing so, they share their mental images mental

1741
01:38:33,760 --> 01:38:36,880
Speaker 1: images of you know, their memories with each other so

1742
01:38:36,920 --> 01:38:40,080
Speaker 1: that they can share an inexperience and uh, you know,

1743
01:38:40,200 --> 01:38:42,880
Speaker 1: that's a version of mental image sharing that you know.

1744
01:38:42,920 --> 01:38:45,880
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what the you know, the biological

1745
01:38:45,920 --> 01:38:50,280
Speaker 1: explanation would be for it, but it's conceivable. It's conceivable

1746
01:38:50,320 --> 01:38:53,840
Speaker 1: that these two um you know, you know, neural systems

1747
01:38:53,880 --> 01:38:58,760
Speaker 1: in the same species could link up to share information

1748
01:38:59,080 --> 01:39:01,240
Speaker 1: and that would also have that would have a survival

1749
01:39:02,040 --> 01:39:04,000
Speaker 1: that would be a survival adaptation as well. Like that's

1750
01:39:04,000 --> 01:39:07,160
Speaker 1: something that would be uh, you know, supported through natural selection. Well,

1751
01:39:07,200 --> 01:39:09,080
Speaker 1: you can think about it as another form of language.

1752
01:39:09,120 --> 01:39:12,120
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got language to code experiences and share

1753
01:39:12,160 --> 01:39:15,320
Speaker 1: them between each other. So you could imagine creatures could

1754
01:39:15,360 --> 01:39:19,880
Speaker 1: I don't know, project electromagnetic symbols or something to each other,

1755
01:39:19,920 --> 01:39:22,759
Speaker 1: you know, pulses of stuff that would encode and decode

1756
01:39:22,800 --> 01:39:25,880
Speaker 1: information across brains the same way. I don't think there's

1757
01:39:25,920 --> 01:39:28,559
Speaker 1: any good evidence that humans can do that, but you

1758
01:39:28,560 --> 01:39:32,400
Speaker 1: could imagine a species that did do that. Right. Likewise,

1759
01:39:32,560 --> 01:39:35,080
Speaker 1: it's and perhaps there's a science fiction Surely there's a

1760
01:39:35,080 --> 01:39:37,360
Speaker 1: science fiction or fantasy treatment of this out there somewhere.

1761
01:39:37,680 --> 01:39:42,160
Speaker 1: You can imagine something with the chromatophores along the lines

1762
01:39:42,200 --> 01:39:45,840
Speaker 1: of cuttlefish, or you know, an octopus being able to

1763
01:39:46,840 --> 01:39:49,720
Speaker 1: take a ntal image in its head and recreated on

1764
01:39:49,800 --> 01:39:52,880
Speaker 1: its body. Oh, I love that that. Somebody has surely

1765
01:39:52,920 --> 01:39:54,600
Speaker 1: done that before, and that would be that would be

1766
01:39:54,640 --> 01:39:57,280
Speaker 1: an interesting way to do it. And of course humans

1767
01:39:57,320 --> 01:40:01,320
Speaker 1: have a similar ability through language and uh and and

1768
01:40:01,320 --> 01:40:05,240
Speaker 1: an artistic skill. We can take a mental image and

1769
01:40:05,320 --> 01:40:09,280
Speaker 1: we can recreate some version of it outside of our

1770
01:40:09,320 --> 01:40:12,760
Speaker 1: body in a way that that stays stationary. But it

1771
01:40:12,920 --> 01:40:15,800
Speaker 1: is not uh, it is not the you know the

1772
01:40:15,960 --> 01:40:21,040
Speaker 1: art of of of telepathy. Or or or the thoughtography

1773
01:40:21,120 --> 01:40:23,720
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. It is the the the it

1774
01:40:23,880 --> 01:40:25,640
Speaker 1: is the arts themselves. It is that it is the

1775
01:40:25,720 --> 01:40:28,160
Speaker 1: use of language. I think that's dead on. I mean,

1776
01:40:28,680 --> 01:40:31,400
Speaker 1: we're used to it, so it seems less astounding to us.

1777
01:40:31,400 --> 01:40:33,920
Speaker 1: But I try to make people remember all the time

1778
01:40:33,920 --> 01:40:36,360
Speaker 1: that language is like magic. I mean, the language is

1779
01:40:36,400 --> 01:40:41,160
Speaker 1: the most is the most astounding, strangest thing you can.

1780
01:40:41,280 --> 01:40:44,040
Speaker 1: You can use words, you make sounds with your mouth

1781
01:40:44,160 --> 01:40:47,839
Speaker 1: to change what's in somebody else's brain. And it works.

1782
01:40:47,960 --> 01:40:50,920
Speaker 1: It works almost all the time. Now quickly, before we

1783
01:40:50,960 --> 01:40:52,840
Speaker 1: go to another break, I just wanted to mention I

1784
01:40:52,880 --> 01:40:56,320
Speaker 1: was looking at another paper about a recent research in

1785
01:40:56,880 --> 01:40:59,960
Speaker 1: mental imagery, and this is called mental imagery, Functional Mechanisms

1786
01:41:00,120 --> 01:41:03,559
Speaker 1: and Clinical Applications. This is in Trends and Cognitive Sciences

1787
01:41:03,600 --> 01:41:08,680
Speaker 1: from but Joel Pearson, Thomas Nasa Lauris, Emily Holmes, and

1788
01:41:08,760 --> 01:41:12,479
Speaker 1: Stephen Kostlin Um. And one of the things that they

1789
01:41:12,520 --> 01:41:14,560
Speaker 1: said in the paper it echoes a lot of the

1790
01:41:14,560 --> 01:41:18,080
Speaker 1: stuff we were talking about already. But um, one thing

1791
01:41:18,120 --> 01:41:21,320
Speaker 1: they say that stuck with me is that the authors

1792
01:41:21,400 --> 01:41:25,960
Speaker 1: conclude that the existing research suggests mental imagery should be

1793
01:41:26,000 --> 01:41:31,479
Speaker 1: considered quote a weak form of perception. And that's interesting

1794
01:41:31,479 --> 01:41:35,360
Speaker 1: because you don't normally think about mental imagery as perception. Normally,

1795
01:41:35,360 --> 01:41:37,800
Speaker 1: perception is what you know, your five senses, or maybe

1796
01:41:37,800 --> 01:41:41,000
Speaker 1: the other senses, if you know about the weirder ones. Um.

1797
01:41:41,040 --> 01:41:43,519
Speaker 1: But here they're saying, no, it is like a form

1798
01:41:43,600 --> 01:41:49,080
Speaker 1: of perception. It's almost like a lower resolution form of seeing. Now,

1799
01:41:49,160 --> 01:41:52,000
Speaker 1: why is it a weak form of perception? Well, visual

1800
01:41:52,040 --> 01:41:55,800
Speaker 1: regions in the brains show less blood flow and less

1801
01:41:55,840 --> 01:41:59,599
Speaker 1: excitation of neurons during the generation of mental imagery than

1802
01:41:59,640 --> 01:42:02,639
Speaker 1: they do in the actual viewing of images with the eyes,

1803
01:42:02,800 --> 01:42:05,599
Speaker 1: even though you use some of the same regions for both.

1804
01:42:05,920 --> 01:42:08,520
Speaker 1: And I also just wanted to mention some interesting questions

1805
01:42:08,560 --> 01:42:11,600
Speaker 1: that the authors bring up as sort of unresolved in

1806
01:42:11,640 --> 01:42:15,200
Speaker 1: this review. Again, this was from so there maybe development

1807
01:42:15,280 --> 01:42:18,400
Speaker 1: since then. But um. One of the things they ask is,

1808
01:42:18,400 --> 01:42:21,639
Speaker 1: we know that there are strong similarities between normal visual

1809
01:42:21,640 --> 01:42:25,120
Speaker 1: perception seeing with the eyes and mental imagery. What are

1810
01:42:25,280 --> 01:42:29,480
Speaker 1: the major differences. Another thing that I was really interested

1811
01:42:29,520 --> 01:42:33,240
Speaker 1: in is they asked the question of can mental imagery

1812
01:42:33,240 --> 01:42:37,880
Speaker 1: be unconscious? And if you try to understand that for

1813
01:42:37,880 --> 01:42:42,360
Speaker 1: a second, is it possible to picture something without being

1814
01:42:42,400 --> 01:42:46,400
Speaker 1: aware that you're picturing it or is mental imagery something

1815
01:42:46,439 --> 01:42:50,519
Speaker 1: that only occurs consciously? Can you only picture something if

1816
01:42:50,560 --> 01:42:53,719
Speaker 1: you're aware that you're picturing it? So? Well, what would

1817
01:42:53,720 --> 01:42:56,280
Speaker 1: be what would be an example then, based on that

1818
01:42:56,360 --> 01:43:00,720
Speaker 1: logic of someone picturing something without realizing they pick drink something. Well,

1819
01:43:00,760 --> 01:43:02,200
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean that that's sort of the

1820
01:43:02,240 --> 01:43:05,640
Speaker 1: tough question, like is because it would be difficult to

1821
01:43:05,720 --> 01:43:09,200
Speaker 1: measure that. I think it. Would it be like an hallucination? Well, no,

1822
01:43:09,400 --> 01:43:12,960
Speaker 1: because you'd be presumably you'd be conscious of an hallucination.

1823
01:43:13,520 --> 01:43:15,559
Speaker 1: So the idea would have to be that, you know,

1824
01:43:15,840 --> 01:43:19,439
Speaker 1: you can show unconscious things going on in the brain

1825
01:43:19,600 --> 01:43:22,280
Speaker 1: just by like asking people if they're aware of things,

1826
01:43:22,280 --> 01:43:25,080
Speaker 1: but tracking their behaviors that realize, you know, the show

1827
01:43:25,120 --> 01:43:27,599
Speaker 1: they are aware of this thing or that thing. But

1828
01:43:28,160 --> 01:43:31,320
Speaker 1: it's difficult to say, can people imagine a picture of

1829
01:43:31,360 --> 01:43:35,920
Speaker 1: something without knowing that they're picturing it? I would think,

1830
01:43:36,040 --> 01:43:38,360
Speaker 1: you know, I would say the default answer would probably

1831
01:43:38,360 --> 01:43:40,760
Speaker 1: be no, because it's hard to imagine what that would be.

1832
01:43:40,840 --> 01:43:42,800
Speaker 1: Like you tend to think, Okay, the only times I

1833
01:43:42,880 --> 01:43:46,280
Speaker 1: know that I'm picturing something or when I'm conscious of it, Well,

1834
01:43:46,280 --> 01:43:49,320
Speaker 1: for that matter, is it possible to unconsciously look at

1835
01:43:49,400 --> 01:43:52,439
Speaker 1: something with your visual perception. Like I think maybe that

1836
01:43:52,600 --> 01:43:55,880
Speaker 1: is possible, Like because if I'm but I'm looking at something,

1837
01:43:55,960 --> 01:43:58,880
Speaker 1: I am looking at something, right, I mean, it seems

1838
01:43:58,920 --> 01:44:01,920
Speaker 1: like it follows the same process. Well, I don't know

1839
01:44:01,960 --> 01:44:04,800
Speaker 1: what about Like there could be some stuff along the

1840
01:44:04,800 --> 01:44:08,559
Speaker 1: lines of like the Invisible Guerillas experiment that indicate that

1841
01:44:08,680 --> 01:44:11,320
Speaker 1: sometimes you can see things without being aware that you're

1842
01:44:11,360 --> 01:44:13,800
Speaker 1: seeing them, right, Or certainly we've already touched on what

1843
01:44:13,880 --> 01:44:16,439
Speaker 1: happens if you are looking at something in the physical

1844
01:44:16,439 --> 01:44:19,479
Speaker 1: world but focus focusing far more intently on something that

1845
01:44:19,640 --> 01:44:24,120
Speaker 1: is just a mental image. But yeah, I mean I

1846
01:44:24,120 --> 01:44:26,080
Speaker 1: can see why it's an unanswered question, but it is

1847
01:44:26,160 --> 01:44:28,720
Speaker 1: kind of it's a tricky question too. Yeah. Now, I

1848
01:44:28,800 --> 01:44:31,479
Speaker 1: think what does seem pretty clear is that there can

1849
01:44:31,479 --> 01:44:34,920
Speaker 1: be unconscious reasons for the generation of mental imagery. I

1850
01:44:34,920 --> 01:44:37,920
Speaker 1: mean that this is a huge thing in mental imagery research.

1851
01:44:38,000 --> 01:44:41,520
Speaker 1: Is like the origins of mental imagery, for example, intrusive

1852
01:44:41,600 --> 01:44:44,640
Speaker 1: unwanted mental images. Yeah, I think that's that's that's an

1853
01:44:44,640 --> 01:44:47,559
Speaker 1: example that I imagine a lot of us can relate to.

1854
01:44:48,320 --> 01:44:52,120
Speaker 1: But also in terms of say meditative states, you know,

1855
01:44:52,160 --> 01:44:56,000
Speaker 1: the idea of encountering an image that isn't at least

1856
01:44:56,080 --> 01:44:58,599
Speaker 1: consciously summoned. You know, not to say that it comes

1857
01:44:58,640 --> 01:45:01,960
Speaker 1: from the outside. It's still coming from sort of the

1858
01:45:01,960 --> 01:45:06,599
Speaker 1: the internal contents of your your psychic library, but but

1859
01:45:06,800 --> 01:45:11,040
Speaker 1: not in a way that feels um lately you assembled

1860
01:45:11,040 --> 01:45:13,920
Speaker 1: it hands on. Uh And then likewise, there's a domain

1861
01:45:13,960 --> 01:45:17,280
Speaker 1: of hallucination and dream. Yeah, I've got another maybe weird

1862
01:45:17,360 --> 01:45:20,599
Speaker 1: question about mental imagery. See if this makes any sense.

1863
01:45:21,080 --> 01:45:23,920
Speaker 1: Um So, the authors in these studies find strong links

1864
01:45:23,920 --> 01:45:27,640
Speaker 1: between visual imagery and things like working memory. But I

1865
01:45:27,720 --> 01:45:32,840
Speaker 1: wonder does the ability to recall visually recognized features of

1866
01:45:32,840 --> 01:45:38,160
Speaker 1: a thing always or even usually rely on mental imagery?

1867
01:45:38,320 --> 01:45:41,120
Speaker 1: And uh? So? For example, if I ask you to

1868
01:45:41,400 --> 01:45:44,519
Speaker 1: picture a character from a movie, you've seen a picture

1869
01:45:44,960 --> 01:45:50,400
Speaker 1: the Chamberlain from the Dark Crystal or let's see, Actually, uh,

1870
01:45:50,680 --> 01:45:52,880
Speaker 1: I think I screwed that up. Okay, No, actually, don't,

1871
01:45:52,920 --> 01:45:55,080
Speaker 1: don't picture him yet. It's too late. I've done it

1872
01:45:55,200 --> 01:45:58,000
Speaker 1: like twice. Okay, Well, I just want you to list

1873
01:45:58,080 --> 01:46:04,400
Speaker 1: physical characteristics of the Chamberlain from the Dark Crystal. Okay, um,

1874
01:46:04,600 --> 01:46:16,360
Speaker 1: bird like, um, sneaky, serpentine um, splendid, decade, I guess

1875
01:46:16,400 --> 01:46:19,479
Speaker 1: I bring this up because my question is, when you

1876
01:46:19,560 --> 01:46:23,599
Speaker 1: recall visual characteristics of a thing you've seen, do you

1877
01:46:23,640 --> 01:46:27,519
Speaker 1: recall them exclusively by calling up a mental image of

1878
01:46:27,520 --> 01:46:30,720
Speaker 1: the thing and examining it like you would a thing

1879
01:46:30,760 --> 01:46:33,840
Speaker 1: you're looking at currently, or do you have other ways

1880
01:46:33,920 --> 01:46:37,799
Speaker 1: of remembering the visual characteristics of something other than by

1881
01:46:37,840 --> 01:46:40,720
Speaker 1: picturing it and then examining what you're looking at in

1882
01:46:40,760 --> 01:46:43,519
Speaker 1: your mind's eye. Well, with the Chamberlain, I think I

1883
01:46:44,080 --> 01:46:48,040
Speaker 1: draw specifically on just visuals. Now, it would be different

1884
01:46:48,040 --> 01:46:50,240
Speaker 1: if I was described, if it was asked to describe

1885
01:46:50,240 --> 01:46:54,240
Speaker 1: a literary character in which the character is is like

1886
01:46:54,280 --> 01:46:58,040
Speaker 1: initially build out of language, but that the Chamberlain is

1887
01:46:58,080 --> 01:47:02,120
Speaker 1: all is all visual and does not, at least in

1888
01:47:02,160 --> 01:47:08,000
Speaker 1: anything I remember, describe itself. So because there are characters

1889
01:47:08,000 --> 01:47:11,400
Speaker 1: that one encounters visually where that the character is going

1890
01:47:11,439 --> 01:47:13,560
Speaker 1: to describe itself or there's gonna be some voice to

1891
01:47:13,600 --> 01:47:16,360
Speaker 1: describe it, but there's no language attached to it. So yeah,

1892
01:47:16,400 --> 01:47:19,920
Speaker 1: I would say almost purely visual. Yeah, I noticed most

1893
01:47:19,960 --> 01:47:22,800
Speaker 1: of the time when I'm trying to recall visual characteristics

1894
01:47:22,800 --> 01:47:25,800
Speaker 1: of something, I picture it first. But yeah, it gets

1895
01:47:25,880 --> 01:47:30,320
Speaker 1: especially complicated when you're thinking about characteristics of something that

1896
01:47:30,360 --> 01:47:34,840
Speaker 1: you've imagined from writing but not from seeing. Yeah, Like

1897
01:47:35,040 --> 01:47:36,680
Speaker 1: when you asked me to think of the Chamberlain, too,

1898
01:47:36,680 --> 01:47:39,680
Speaker 1: I found myself doing it in two ways. Like basically

1899
01:47:39,720 --> 01:47:43,800
Speaker 1: a mental image of a scene from the film, like

1900
01:47:43,840 --> 01:47:46,799
Speaker 1: where I'm seeing in my mind not only the character,

1901
01:47:46,920 --> 01:47:50,559
Speaker 1: but the backdrop, the lighting, everything. And then there's kind

1902
01:47:50,560 --> 01:47:53,919
Speaker 1: of a mental image of, say, the head of the creature,

1903
01:47:54,160 --> 01:47:56,360
Speaker 1: as if it were in the room with me, you know.

1904
01:47:57,120 --> 01:48:00,120
Speaker 1: So that makes me wonder too, Yeah, do we have

1905
01:48:00,200 --> 01:48:03,760
Speaker 1: different different sorts of mental imagery. Mental imagery that's more

1906
01:48:04,520 --> 01:48:07,320
Speaker 1: based on thinking. Maybe in a way, it's kind of

1907
01:48:07,360 --> 01:48:09,760
Speaker 1: like thinking about the way we uh we think about

1908
01:48:09,800 --> 01:48:11,920
Speaker 1: the past and the future, a way of thinking about

1909
01:48:11,960 --> 01:48:15,000
Speaker 1: the way something was and then imagining the way something

1910
01:48:15,080 --> 01:48:16,880
Speaker 1: would be, what it would be like if it were

1911
01:48:16,960 --> 01:48:19,759
Speaker 1: here or if I were encountering it in the near future.

1912
01:48:20,400 --> 01:48:22,640
Speaker 1: I wonder if that plays into it at all. All Right,

1913
01:48:22,680 --> 01:48:24,160
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, but

1914
01:48:24,200 --> 01:48:29,200
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Thank alright, we're back. Okay. So

1915
01:48:29,240 --> 01:48:34,400
Speaker 1: we've been talking about psychic photography or thoughtography, this alleged

1916
01:48:34,560 --> 01:48:37,960
Speaker 1: ability that some people have to project the contents of

1917
01:48:38,000 --> 01:48:41,840
Speaker 1: their mental imagery onto film or onto objects in the

1918
01:48:41,880 --> 01:48:44,920
Speaker 1: external world. And I think we're probably in agreement that

1919
01:48:45,160 --> 01:48:47,720
Speaker 1: even though a lot of people have claimed to have

1920
01:48:47,880 --> 01:48:50,800
Speaker 1: this power or claim to have demonstrated this power, this

1921
01:48:51,000 --> 01:48:54,120
Speaker 1: probably is not really going on in in some ways,

1922
01:48:54,200 --> 01:48:57,400
Speaker 1: the mechanism of it seems incoherent, right, And that's what

1923
01:48:57,520 --> 01:49:00,720
Speaker 1: it basically, the mechanism is in going are It's it's

1924
01:49:00,760 --> 01:49:04,800
Speaker 1: again like imagining the psychics and scanners being able to

1925
01:49:04,840 --> 01:49:08,439
Speaker 1: read hard drives, like this just doesn't make sense. But

1926
01:49:09,280 --> 01:49:13,160
Speaker 1: there are a number of experiments that sort of would

1927
01:49:13,200 --> 01:49:17,400
Speaker 1: find a way around this incoherence. We're talking about through

1928
01:49:17,520 --> 01:49:21,840
Speaker 1: another layer of encoding and decoding of brain activity that

1929
01:49:22,280 --> 01:49:26,719
Speaker 1: that could be learned through brain computer interfaces and machine learning.

1930
01:49:27,160 --> 01:49:31,080
Speaker 1: And this we're getting into into the creation of a

1931
01:49:31,160 --> 01:49:34,840
Speaker 1: of a technological translator. Yes exactly. It kind of the

1932
01:49:34,840 --> 01:49:37,680
Speaker 1: same way that you would use language to translate the

1933
01:49:38,040 --> 01:49:41,479
Speaker 1: contents of your mind's eye into something in the outside world.

1934
01:49:42,000 --> 01:49:46,200
Speaker 1: A computer could potentially translate the brain activity that it

1935
01:49:46,240 --> 01:49:48,760
Speaker 1: reads off of your scalp or in blood flow in

1936
01:49:48,760 --> 01:49:52,080
Speaker 1: your brain through fm r I into something in the

1937
01:49:52,120 --> 01:49:55,760
Speaker 1: outside world that could be trained to correlate with your

1938
01:49:55,800 --> 01:49:59,639
Speaker 1: mental imagery. Now, I think I've got lots of questions

1939
01:49:59,640 --> 01:50:02,960
Speaker 1: about how accurate and how realistic this project actually is.

1940
01:50:03,360 --> 01:50:05,720
Speaker 1: But there are at least these experiments that that have

1941
01:50:05,840 --> 01:50:08,360
Speaker 1: purported to get part of the way there, and they're

1942
01:50:08,400 --> 01:50:11,040
Speaker 1: they're kind of freaky. I won't lie. I would say

1943
01:50:11,200 --> 01:50:12,880
Speaker 1: this starts to get me a little bit worried. I

1944
01:50:12,960 --> 01:50:16,400
Speaker 1: want to start with a news piece in Science from January.

1945
01:50:17,479 --> 01:50:20,320
Speaker 1: The news piece was by Matthew Hudson and it covers

1946
01:50:20,600 --> 01:50:23,600
Speaker 1: the brain computer interface work of a group of researchers

1947
01:50:23,640 --> 01:50:28,639
Speaker 1: including uh u Kiasu Kamitani, a neuroscientist at Kyoto University

1948
01:50:28,640 --> 01:50:32,519
Speaker 1: in Japan, and a computer scientist named Zoe ming Lu

1949
01:50:32,800 --> 01:50:36,320
Speaker 1: at Purdue University in the United States. And this work

1950
01:50:36,400 --> 01:50:40,240
Speaker 1: is focused on it's using brain computer interfaces to directly

1951
01:50:40,400 --> 01:50:43,720
Speaker 1: read and record mental imagery, which is the imagining of

1952
01:50:43,760 --> 01:50:47,280
Speaker 1: a picture. So you try to imagine, like, why would

1953
01:50:47,280 --> 01:50:49,400
Speaker 1: anybody be doing this? You know, what would be the

1954
01:50:49,439 --> 01:50:53,880
Speaker 1: supposed benefits of a technology to read people's mental imagery. Well,

1955
01:50:54,000 --> 01:50:56,639
Speaker 1: we're asked to imagine in this article, maybe being able

1956
01:50:56,680 --> 01:51:00,240
Speaker 1: to search through a collection of digital images simply by

1957
01:51:00,280 --> 01:51:03,439
Speaker 1: mentally picturing the image we want Okay, that might be

1958
01:51:03,479 --> 01:51:06,360
Speaker 1: a thing like I bet you've tried before to Google

1959
01:51:06,400 --> 01:51:08,920
Speaker 1: an image that you've seen before, but you didn't know

1960
01:51:09,000 --> 01:51:12,720
Speaker 1: what search terms to use and couldn't find it. Yeah, yeah,

1961
01:51:12,800 --> 01:51:16,880
Speaker 1: there's I could see where that could have an application. Well, granted,

1962
01:51:16,920 --> 01:51:19,640
Speaker 1: it's not something that is really life or death, and

1963
01:51:20,240 --> 01:51:22,640
Speaker 1: it would be more like, Oh, I vaguely remember a

1964
01:51:22,720 --> 01:51:28,400
Speaker 1: really cool advertisement for a community college on television in

1965
01:51:28,439 --> 01:51:31,479
Speaker 1: the summer in my childhood, and they played a song

1966
01:51:31,560 --> 01:51:33,400
Speaker 1: on it that kind of sounded like Boards of Canada.

1967
01:51:33,439 --> 01:51:35,800
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was actually Boards of Canada. Like

1968
01:51:35,880 --> 01:51:38,080
Speaker 1: that is a legit thing that I think about from

1969
01:51:38,080 --> 01:51:39,880
Speaker 1: time to time, and there's no way for me to

1970
01:51:39,920 --> 01:51:43,960
Speaker 1: look it up. But true enough, if a machine could

1971
01:51:44,000 --> 01:51:48,000
Speaker 1: look at my mental imagery of that memory of watching

1972
01:51:48,040 --> 01:51:51,599
Speaker 1: that TV spot, then it's conceivable that it could then

1973
01:51:51,720 --> 01:51:56,040
Speaker 1: look into some vast database and find that footage for me. Yeah.

1974
01:51:56,080 --> 01:51:58,760
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that will necessarily ever get there, but

1975
01:51:58,880 --> 01:52:01,080
Speaker 1: that that is the kind of thing they're asking you

1976
01:52:01,120 --> 01:52:05,120
Speaker 1: to imagine. Another one, this is probably more straightforward drawing

1977
01:52:05,120 --> 01:52:08,680
Speaker 1: without the hands, straight from imagination too, recorded two D

1978
01:52:08,800 --> 01:52:11,280
Speaker 1: media that might be interesting. I mean, I wonder if

1979
01:52:11,280 --> 01:52:14,479
Speaker 1: I could open up whole other realms of visual art

1980
01:52:15,120 --> 01:52:17,920
Speaker 1: for people who are not good at drawing with their hands, right,

1981
01:52:18,040 --> 01:52:20,759
Speaker 1: or or for people who are disabled to some degree.

1982
01:52:20,920 --> 01:52:23,400
Speaker 1: Right that I could see that being advantageous as well.

1983
01:52:23,560 --> 01:52:25,559
Speaker 1: And it can go further than that. I mean, technically,

1984
01:52:25,600 --> 01:52:28,320
Speaker 1: you could imagine something like this allowing people without the

1985
01:52:28,360 --> 01:52:31,840
Speaker 1: power of speech you're writing to share their thoughts. Uh,

1986
01:52:31,880 --> 01:52:33,600
Speaker 1: you know you can't Maybe if you can't speak, you

1987
01:52:33,640 --> 01:52:36,360
Speaker 1: can't describe your visual imagery, maybe you could share it

1988
01:52:36,400 --> 01:52:39,679
Speaker 1: with something like this. But I want to say, Okay,

1989
01:52:39,720 --> 01:52:42,240
Speaker 1: those are the positive versions of what we're imagining. We

1990
01:52:42,479 --> 01:52:46,000
Speaker 1: could explore negative versions later on. And so the researchers

1991
01:52:46,040 --> 01:52:49,360
Speaker 1: here have been working on computer algorithms that are trained

1992
01:52:49,400 --> 01:52:53,799
Speaker 1: through machine learning to match patterns of brain activity recorded

1993
01:52:53,800 --> 01:52:56,680
Speaker 1: through things like fm r I with imagery that a

1994
01:52:56,760 --> 01:53:00,640
Speaker 1: subject is looking at. And because actually looking at an

1995
01:53:00,680 --> 01:53:03,840
Speaker 1: image and then mentally imagining the same image are sort

1996
01:53:03,880 --> 01:53:06,040
Speaker 1: of similar in the brain, They're not exactly the same,

1997
01:53:06,080 --> 01:53:09,680
Speaker 1: but there's some similar stuff going on, researchers have experimented

1998
01:53:09,720 --> 01:53:12,640
Speaker 1: with measuring activity in the visual processing areas of the

1999
01:53:12,680 --> 01:53:15,040
Speaker 1: brain with f m R I while person is looking

2000
01:53:15,080 --> 01:53:18,360
Speaker 1: at different images and then using that data about blood

2001
01:53:18,360 --> 01:53:21,679
Speaker 1: flow in the brain to later guess what a person

2002
01:53:21,800 --> 01:53:24,960
Speaker 1: is looking at without knowing now ideally what you would

2003
01:53:24,960 --> 01:53:27,799
Speaker 1: have at the end of this kind of research. Multi

2004
01:53:27,840 --> 01:53:31,200
Speaker 1: stage process is an algorithm that could read the activity

2005
01:53:31,240 --> 01:53:35,479
Speaker 1: of a person's visual processing center and materialize an image

2006
01:53:35,560 --> 01:53:38,840
Speaker 1: directly on the screen that corresponds to what the person

2007
01:53:38,960 --> 01:53:42,880
Speaker 1: is either looking at or imagining. Uh and again, to

2008
01:53:42,960 --> 01:53:46,000
Speaker 1: whatever extent the technology will ever fully be realized, it's

2009
01:53:46,000 --> 01:53:48,880
Speaker 1: still in the very early stages. Um. But in the

2010
01:53:48,960 --> 01:53:51,280
Speaker 1: example sided in this article, I should say that the

2011
01:53:51,320 --> 01:53:54,879
Speaker 1: image generation portion was not carried out on real brains.

2012
01:53:55,000 --> 01:53:58,519
Speaker 1: The data acquired from human subjects was instead used to

2013
01:53:58,640 --> 01:54:01,720
Speaker 1: train a deep neural net work that stood in for

2014
01:54:01,800 --> 01:54:05,840
Speaker 1: an actual brain while they tested their image generating program.

2015
01:54:05,880 --> 01:54:09,160
Speaker 1: And to quote from Hudson's article here quote the system

2016
01:54:09,200 --> 01:54:13,040
Speaker 1: starts with something random similar to TV static, and slowly

2017
01:54:13,080 --> 01:54:16,000
Speaker 1: refines its painting over the course of two hundred rounds

2018
01:54:16,360 --> 01:54:19,280
Speaker 1: to get closer to the ideal image. The system calculates

2019
01:54:19,320 --> 01:54:22,519
Speaker 1: the difference between the deep neural network activity and the

2020
01:54:22,600 --> 01:54:26,600
Speaker 1: templated deep neural network activity. Those calculations cause it to

2021
01:54:26,720 --> 01:54:30,000
Speaker 1: nudge one pixel this way and another pixel that way

2022
01:54:30,240 --> 01:54:33,520
Speaker 1: until it gets closer to the ideal image. Now, apparently

2023
01:54:33,520 --> 01:54:35,880
Speaker 1: at the stage, the algorithms are not very good at

2024
01:54:35,920 --> 01:54:38,680
Speaker 1: all at guessing what imagery people have in mind when

2025
01:54:38,720 --> 01:54:42,280
Speaker 1: they're imagining realistic photos, but they are pretty good at

2026
01:54:42,320 --> 01:54:45,720
Speaker 1: picking out when people imagine abstract shapes. And that makes

2027
01:54:45,720 --> 01:54:49,040
Speaker 1: sense because I think those would be like clearer signals

2028
01:54:49,080 --> 01:54:53,040
Speaker 1: in the brain probably. But yeah, there's some images along

2029
01:54:53,040 --> 01:54:58,200
Speaker 1: with this article that are the paintings generated by this algorithm. Uh,

2030
01:54:58,240 --> 01:55:01,480
Speaker 1: and then they're they're compared with the images that originally

2031
01:55:01,520 --> 01:55:06,120
Speaker 1: gave rise to them, and the comparisons are wonderfully creepy. Yeah.

2032
01:55:06,200 --> 01:55:09,400
Speaker 1: They look like like psychedelic entities that have come to

2033
01:55:10,120 --> 01:55:14,760
Speaker 1: convey some sort of occult knowledge under the listener. Like

2034
01:55:14,960 --> 01:55:17,839
Speaker 1: there's a there's one that's originally a picture of an owl,

2035
01:55:18,040 --> 01:55:20,920
Speaker 1: and then the approximation of it is some kind of

2036
01:55:20,960 --> 01:55:27,640
Speaker 1: like like primordial worm walrus from the center of the earth. Yeah. Yeah,

2037
01:55:27,240 --> 01:55:32,640
Speaker 1: a red mailbox becomes this kind of alien burning crimson pillar.

2038
01:55:32,880 --> 01:55:35,560
Speaker 1: So there are some patterns that seems like they're picking

2039
01:55:35,640 --> 01:55:39,760
Speaker 1: up in in this version, where like some basic shapes emerge,

2040
01:55:39,880 --> 01:55:44,080
Speaker 1: some color patterns seem like detectable. It seems like you

2041
01:55:44,080 --> 01:55:47,600
Speaker 1: can detect when something is basically a face. But I

2042
01:55:47,640 --> 01:55:50,680
Speaker 1: have questions about the ultimate potential of this technology, like

2043
01:55:50,720 --> 01:55:53,720
Speaker 1: the versions that exist today have limitations such as relying

2044
01:55:53,760 --> 01:55:56,560
Speaker 1: on training and feedback. And also I wonder about the

2045
01:55:56,720 --> 01:56:00,600
Speaker 1: rules for reading mental imagery, like how transfer are they

2046
01:56:00,720 --> 01:56:04,960
Speaker 1: from one person to another? How idiosyncratic is your brain

2047
01:56:05,160 --> 01:56:08,040
Speaker 1: looking at an image versus somebody else's brain looking at

2048
01:56:08,080 --> 01:56:11,320
Speaker 1: the same image. It makes me think of the holophoner

2049
01:56:11,480 --> 01:56:15,000
Speaker 1: from Futurama. Do you remember this instrument? It's a musical

2050
01:56:15,040 --> 01:56:18,000
Speaker 1: instrument that Fry attempts to learn at one point and

2051
01:56:18,040 --> 01:56:22,560
Speaker 1: at one point masters thanks to the parasitic worms living

2052
01:56:22,560 --> 01:56:25,120
Speaker 1: inside his gut that have made him super intelligent. Uh,

2053
01:56:25,320 --> 01:56:27,760
Speaker 1: but then he pleases that ability. But anyway, it's it's this.

2054
01:56:28,280 --> 01:56:32,600
Speaker 1: It's basically like a small musical instrument, like a woodwind instrument,

2055
01:56:33,080 --> 01:56:36,760
Speaker 1: but it has the technologically capability to take a mental

2056
01:56:36,800 --> 01:56:39,040
Speaker 1: image in your mind and projected into the air for

2057
01:56:39,080 --> 01:56:42,800
Speaker 1: others to see. But it takes It's like it's notably

2058
01:56:42,840 --> 01:56:45,640
Speaker 1: difficult to learn and takes a lot of intense training

2059
01:56:45,640 --> 01:56:49,640
Speaker 1: and concentration to even form a very vague image in

2060
01:56:49,680 --> 01:56:51,919
Speaker 1: the air, and so some of the like the initial

2061
01:56:51,960 --> 01:56:55,240
Speaker 1: images that Fry is able to summon using the holophone

2062
01:56:55,400 --> 01:56:59,160
Speaker 1: are basically as abstract as these examples we've discussed in

2063
01:56:59,160 --> 01:57:03,080
Speaker 1: this study. Uh. But I mean, so on one hand,

2064
01:57:03,080 --> 01:57:04,840
Speaker 1: you could say, well, maybe this kind of thing will

2065
01:57:04,880 --> 01:57:07,800
Speaker 1: just never get very accurate in any way that's applicable.

2066
01:57:07,880 --> 01:57:11,520
Speaker 1: That's possible. But also if this technology ever does get

2067
01:57:11,520 --> 01:57:14,920
Speaker 1: more accurate, can you imagine this would I mean, I'm

2068
01:57:15,000 --> 01:57:18,320
Speaker 1: thinking about the way it would be incorporated into machine

2069
01:57:18,400 --> 01:57:24,960
Speaker 1: learning user feedback mechanisms that serve us content on social media. Um,

2070
01:57:25,200 --> 01:57:28,080
Speaker 1: you know, imagine a Facebook news feed that could not

2071
01:57:28,120 --> 01:57:30,320
Speaker 1: only fine tune itself based on what you do with

2072
01:57:30,360 --> 01:57:32,840
Speaker 1: your mouse cursor and how you scroll and what you

2073
01:57:32,880 --> 01:57:35,360
Speaker 1: click on and how long you look at things, but

2074
01:57:35,480 --> 01:57:38,920
Speaker 1: based on neurofeedback that allows it to detect how you're

2075
01:57:39,040 --> 01:57:42,920
Speaker 1: using your visual imagination, you know, so they sell you

2076
01:57:42,920 --> 01:57:45,000
Speaker 1: on the good stuff, right draw without your hands, and

2077
01:57:45,320 --> 01:57:47,720
Speaker 1: you get this kind of interface that that hooks up

2078
01:57:47,720 --> 01:57:50,480
Speaker 1: to your brain and then it can sense patterns and

2079
01:57:50,600 --> 01:57:54,000
Speaker 1: what users are picturing in their mind's eye and reaction

2080
01:57:54,040 --> 01:57:57,280
Speaker 1: to media stimuli at a massive scale. Even if this

2081
01:57:57,360 --> 01:58:01,400
Speaker 1: can't be used to pull images accurate directly from your brain.

2082
01:58:02,080 --> 01:58:04,280
Speaker 1: Just imagine what it could do based on the brain

2083
01:58:04,360 --> 01:58:09,120
Speaker 1: activity correlations across populations alone. Uh. And also I'm imagining

2084
01:58:09,160 --> 01:58:11,880
Speaker 1: if it ever did get good enough at reading brain activity,

2085
01:58:12,640 --> 01:58:16,280
Speaker 1: the brain activity underlying mental imagery, and turning that directly

2086
01:58:16,320 --> 01:58:19,879
Speaker 1: into physical images outside the brain, what kind of crazy

2087
01:58:19,920 --> 01:58:23,600
Speaker 1: cyber feedback processes could that lead to? Yeah, I mean,

2088
01:58:23,640 --> 01:58:30,360
Speaker 1: anyway you shake it, it's a it's a nightmare. Yeah. Yeah.

2089
01:58:30,360 --> 01:58:33,600
Speaker 1: I really don't like the idea of machines being able

2090
01:58:33,640 --> 01:58:36,640
Speaker 1: to look inside our head and do anything with our

2091
01:58:36,680 --> 01:58:39,680
Speaker 1: our mental images and draw them out. I mean, that's

2092
01:58:39,680 --> 01:58:44,320
Speaker 1: that's just pure dystopia juice right there. Anyway, anyway you

2093
01:58:44,360 --> 01:58:46,360
Speaker 1: shake it, I mean, it seems like even the positives

2094
01:58:46,440 --> 01:58:50,040
Speaker 1: I have to like really construct an artificial scenario where

2095
01:58:50,080 --> 01:58:52,400
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, there's been a kidnapping and we have

2096
01:58:52,520 --> 01:58:54,720
Speaker 1: to draw the mental images out of the the only

2097
01:58:54,760 --> 01:58:58,200
Speaker 1: so you know, you get into ridiculous scenarios like that, which, okay, yes,

2098
01:58:58,280 --> 01:59:01,560
Speaker 1: given that very particular scenario, perhaps it would make sense.

2099
01:59:01,840 --> 01:59:05,520
Speaker 1: But then you get into just basic considerations of of

2100
01:59:05,560 --> 01:59:08,600
Speaker 1: privacy to like, would you ever have the right to

2101
01:59:08,960 --> 01:59:12,760
Speaker 1: look inside someone's head and draw out their mental images.

2102
01:59:13,040 --> 01:59:15,120
Speaker 1: Depends on who writes the laws, and I would think

2103
01:59:15,160 --> 01:59:17,360
Speaker 1: it is the big corporation with all the lawyers that

2104
01:59:17,400 --> 01:59:19,920
Speaker 1: will write the laws. And I guess looking at the

2105
01:59:20,680 --> 01:59:23,240
Speaker 1: like sort of certainly the social media examples too, it's like,

2106
01:59:23,280 --> 01:59:26,120
Speaker 1: are you It depends to are you born into a

2107
01:59:26,200 --> 01:59:30,560
Speaker 1: world in which it's normal for your machines to look

2108
01:59:30,600 --> 01:59:33,640
Speaker 1: inside your brain and draw from your mental images, probably

2109
01:59:33,640 --> 01:59:36,360
Speaker 1: with some sort of an agreement. Uh. In the same

2110
01:59:36,400 --> 01:59:39,320
Speaker 1: way that you know, our emails are read by machines,

2111
01:59:39,400 --> 01:59:42,080
Speaker 1: but they're not actually read by people, there would be

2112
01:59:42,120 --> 01:59:45,440
Speaker 1: this idea like, oh yeah, nobody's actually watching your mental images.

2113
01:59:45,480 --> 01:59:47,840
Speaker 1: It's just our algorithms are keeping track on them so

2114
01:59:47,880 --> 01:59:51,280
Speaker 1: we can better serve you content. I mean, I think

2115
01:59:51,560 --> 01:59:56,120
Speaker 1: a lot of times we have overestimated our people's desire

2116
01:59:56,400 --> 02:00:01,640
Speaker 1: for privacy. Uh. Like, I just think about how years

2117
02:00:01,680 --> 02:00:05,200
Speaker 1: ago if you had told people here's all the things

2118
02:00:05,240 --> 02:00:07,680
Speaker 1: people will be sharing on social media and all the

2119
02:00:07,760 --> 02:00:11,520
Speaker 1: kinds of privileges they will be allowing these companies to

2120
02:00:11,560 --> 02:00:14,320
Speaker 1: have and learning about their lives and learning about their data,

2121
02:00:14,480 --> 02:00:17,760
Speaker 1: people will be like, no way, nobody will ever surrender

2122
02:00:17,840 --> 02:00:20,800
Speaker 1: that amount of you know, privacy and autonomy about their

2123
02:00:20,800 --> 02:00:23,080
Speaker 1: lives and their data. But people just gave it up

2124
02:00:23,120 --> 02:00:27,560
Speaker 1: so willingly. Yeah, and so many are still seemingly fine

2125
02:00:27,600 --> 02:00:30,640
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah. So I wonder if I don't know,

2126
02:00:30,760 --> 02:00:33,400
Speaker 1: maybe it has to do with something about the advertising,

2127
02:00:33,440 --> 02:00:35,760
Speaker 1: the marketing, how these things are are rolled out to

2128
02:00:35,800 --> 02:00:39,840
Speaker 1: the public that that breaks down our defenses and and

2129
02:00:40,040 --> 02:00:42,640
Speaker 1: has us ending up being like, ah, yeah, you know whatever,

2130
02:00:42,680 --> 02:00:45,880
Speaker 1: I'll get the brain device. You know, Jeffrey's got one.

2131
02:00:45,960 --> 02:00:49,360
Speaker 1: He likes it, you know, Yeah. Yeah, Well, I hold

2132
02:00:49,360 --> 02:00:50,840
Speaker 1: out hope that it would be a you know, the

2133
02:00:50,880 --> 02:00:54,360
Speaker 1: bridge too far, and that that humans would would rise

2134
02:00:54,440 --> 02:00:57,240
Speaker 1: up and reject it so as well. But but I

2135
02:00:57,240 --> 02:00:59,960
Speaker 1: also feel like we're already at that point where humans

2136
02:01:00,000 --> 02:01:03,840
Speaker 1: should rise up and reject what is being presented to them. Uh,

2137
02:01:04,000 --> 02:01:06,960
Speaker 1: you know, certainly by the large social media companies and

2138
02:01:07,160 --> 02:01:10,000
Speaker 1: um and uh, I don't know. Some people are rising up,

2139
02:01:10,320 --> 02:01:12,240
Speaker 1: but we're not quite rising up in the numbers so

2140
02:01:12,360 --> 02:01:17,080
Speaker 1: far to limit their power. Protect your mental imagery instead,

2141
02:01:17,400 --> 02:01:20,040
Speaker 1: if you want to have more power in sharing your

2142
02:01:20,040 --> 02:01:22,920
Speaker 1: mental imagery in the cases where you actually do want

2143
02:01:22,920 --> 02:01:26,080
Speaker 1: to share it, when your powers of translation, that means

2144
02:01:26,120 --> 02:01:29,440
Speaker 1: practice becoming better at language, better at drawing, better at

2145
02:01:29,600 --> 02:01:32,440
Speaker 1: art of whatever kind. Yeah, and indeed, I don't want

2146
02:01:32,440 --> 02:01:35,520
Speaker 1: to in this on a you know, too pessimistic note

2147
02:01:35,760 --> 02:01:38,840
Speaker 1: dystopian and note is, etcetera, because ultimately, like what all

2148
02:01:38,920 --> 02:01:43,160
Speaker 1: this reveals, it's just like just how incredible our brain's

2149
02:01:43,280 --> 02:01:47,280
Speaker 1: capacity for mental imagery really is. Because you know, certainly,

2150
02:01:47,320 --> 02:01:50,400
Speaker 1: these technologies that attempt to understand it or even replicated

2151
02:01:50,760 --> 02:01:55,440
Speaker 1: these uh pseudo scientific or outright superstitious ideas about what

2152
02:01:55,480 --> 02:01:57,840
Speaker 1: a mental image is and how it might be you know,

2153
02:01:57,880 --> 02:02:01,040
Speaker 1: inflicted on the world, they all get. They're all circle

2154
02:02:01,160 --> 02:02:04,760
Speaker 1: circling the mystery and the wonder uh that we all

2155
02:02:04,800 --> 02:02:08,040
Speaker 1: experience every day. It's yet another case where you know,

2156
02:02:08,080 --> 02:02:12,440
Speaker 1: there's a purported magical ability that is actually maybe less

2157
02:02:12,480 --> 02:02:15,960
Speaker 1: fascinating than the reality that we're just so used to

2158
02:02:16,080 --> 02:02:19,760
Speaker 1: of the fact that we have something like language. Absolutely

2159
02:02:20,760 --> 02:02:22,960
Speaker 1: all right, Well, there you have it are two part

2160
02:02:23,040 --> 02:02:27,120
Speaker 1: look at the mental image and various ideas surrounding it.

2161
02:02:27,160 --> 02:02:30,440
Speaker 1: And I think we we crammed a fair number of

2162
02:02:30,440 --> 02:02:34,800
Speaker 1: of horror film and other uh you know, horror related

2163
02:02:34,880 --> 02:02:38,120
Speaker 1: ideas in there, so I think it's it's firmly implanted

2164
02:02:38,240 --> 02:02:42,120
Speaker 1: in our October offerings, but if you're new to the show,

2165
02:02:42,360 --> 02:02:44,760
Speaker 1: we do this every October. Every October is wall to

2166
02:02:44,800 --> 02:02:48,440
Speaker 1: wall Halloween related content. Uh So, if you want to

2167
02:02:48,480 --> 02:02:50,200
Speaker 1: you want more, you can go to stuff to Blow

2168
02:02:50,240 --> 02:02:53,839
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com and check out past October's. Likewise,

2169
02:02:54,080 --> 02:02:55,920
Speaker 1: if you want to check out some of our Invention

2170
02:02:56,080 --> 02:02:59,000
Speaker 1: episodes that are October theme, go check that out as well.

2171
02:02:59,040 --> 02:03:01,880
Speaker 1: That's our other show. It's a journey through human techno history,

2172
02:03:02,200 --> 02:03:06,080
Speaker 1: and indeed we are rolling out October episodes as well

2173
02:03:06,080 --> 02:03:09,280
Speaker 1: over there, so help both shows out. Make sure you

2174
02:03:09,320 --> 02:03:12,640
Speaker 1: have subscribed and rate in review huge thanks as always

2175
02:03:12,680 --> 02:03:16,000
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

2176
02:03:16,000 --> 02:03:17,879
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

2177
02:03:17,880 --> 02:03:20,280
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for

2178
02:03:20,280 --> 02:03:23,120
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us

2179
02:03:23,240 --> 02:03:34,240
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

2180
02:03:34,360 --> 02:03:36,560
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios.

2181
02:03:36,560 --> 02:03:38,920
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works for more podcasts from my Heart Radio

2182
02:03:39,080 --> 02:03:41,640
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2183
02:03:41,680 --> 02:04:00,960
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