WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Halo, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:11.480 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:13.520 Time to go into the vault for an older episode 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:16.239 of the show. It is Let's see what's up today? 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.120 Oh it's the Halo Part two. This one originally published 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.759 on March second, twenty twenty one. We reran the first 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:25.239 part of the Halo series last Saturday, so if you 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:27.680 miss that, you can go check that out as well. 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:30.360 I remember this. The series was a lot of fun, 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:35.720 so we hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff to 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:45.720 Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.360 to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:50.839 I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:54.880 our talk about Halos and the Nimbus and the aureol, 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.680 the glory that glows behind the figure, whether that's a 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:02.080 Christian saying to or who wah wah the Terrible Or 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.000 did we end up last week actually talking about Lucadors 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:10.360 at all? I think we did very briefly, partially because 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:12.720 we were in the process of putting together a weird 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:16.200 house cinema episode on a El Santo film. But yeah, 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:20.640 the question came up, are there any halos used with 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:23.800 luchador designs, with the idea being that, yeah, they're a 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:28.679 number of different Catholicism themed Lucia doors. So after we recorded, 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:30.880 I did look into it a little bit. I looked 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:33.199 at some of the usual suspects, and looked on Luca 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:36.520 Wiki and looked at some photos. I didn't notice any 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:39.959 halo motifs in the mass for the most part, like nothing, 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:45.360 nothing like like actually physically emerging and positioned above the head. 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:48.840 You know, you see a lot of crosses, etc. The 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.200 best example I did find though, was a luchador named 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.840 Angel Azul, one of at least four different lujadors who's 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:01.000 used that name. And this particular mass depicts an entire angel, 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:04.280 like a like a Christmas top or angel on the 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.520 front of the mask, and that angel has a halo, 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:10.440 so it's positioned so that that the angel's head in 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:13.160 halo appear more or less in the center of the forehead. 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.320 So I assume this is a technico, not a ruto, 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.000 I guess. So I don't know anything about this guy, 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:21.840 but it looks like a technico mask. You know, if 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.040 you have an angel like that. Uh, you know, it's 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:25.760 it's got to be. But then again, he could easily 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:27.920 turn Ruto and become a fallen angel, especially if he 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.000 loses that mask. Oh yeah, I mean a bad angel 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.760 can be really bad. You get angels of death, You've 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:39.040 got You've got a remember a particularly haunting mickloshred Nodi 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.480 poem called The Terrifying Angel, where he an angel appears 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.560 to him and advises him to remove his own skin. Yeah, 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:48.360 there's a There are a number of different and Lucia, 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.160 there have been a few different angels of death, Angel 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:55.160 de la Monte. There's one I remember seeing on TV 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.880 that did not really have any any kind of angelic 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:01.560 themes in his out fit. But I did run across 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.640 on Lucawiki an old photo from a magazine that had 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:08.400 showed a guy with a halo motif again on the forehead, 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:10.920 almost like a third eye. But that's the only thing 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:13.959 I could really find in terms of dudes like this 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.520 with halos. Now another thing that comes to mind, though, 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:20.120 you know, we're talking a little bit about a halo's 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:23.880 and angels and certainly an art. But I started thinking 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.280 more and more about films, and I can't think of 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:33.119 a single example of an angelic being presented in say 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:36.160 a horror film or some sort of supernatural film in 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:38.120 which they have a halo. Like I was thinking, like, 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:41.120 what are some of the angel visitation scenes that come 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:42.800 to mind? And I thought of, well, the I thought 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.120 of Bill Paxton's film Frailty, which has a great angel 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:50.320 visitation scene, like a you know, hallucination that emerges in 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.960 his mind, but there's no halo. Now I might be 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.600 remembering that wrong. I thought that the angel in that 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.520 it doesn't have like a ring halo around the head 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.560 or anything specifically concentrated on the head. But I did 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.839 recall a kind of like full body glow. Am I wrong? 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.560 But definitely definitely has a glow to it, and there 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:12.760 is there's a lot of like heavenly architecture going on 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:17.080 above it, But in terms of something more instantly recognizable 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.400 as a halo, not so much. Likewise, I was thinking 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:23.960 back to the Prophecy films with Christopher Walkin. Uh, you know, 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:25.520 a lot of a lot of a lot of a 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:27.679 lot of angels in that, a lot of angel wings. 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.440 And you can think of various things that were clearly 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.440 influenced by that you know, we have angels and fallen 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:37.119 angels popping up and filmmakers will go nuts given them big, 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:41.120 big feathery wings, but I don't think they ever really 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.800 include the halo. And it's kind of interesting because I 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:46.799 guess it comes down to the fact that it's easy 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:49.440 to think of it as such a cliche thing, but 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.680 at the same time it is so weird and and 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:54.719 there's so many ways to depict it. You'd think you 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:56.640 would you would see more of it. I don't know. 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:58.920 I'd love to hear it from folks out there who 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.520 have encountered really cool halos and genre pictures, because I'd 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:05.839 love to I'd love to see it now. In the 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:07.960 last episode, did you bring up the idea of a 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.120 cinobyte from like the Clive Barker verse with the with 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.080 a Halo? I can't remember if we if we did, 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.320 but I started looking into it after the podcast, and 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.159 I think there's an a comic hell Raiser comic book. 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.960 There's a there's a Cinabyte named Halo, but he doesn't 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:28.400 really have a halo. Now, there was a Clive Barker 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.719 action figure for the Todd McFarlane toys for the Tortured 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:38.080 souls line, and this guy, uh, this particular guy agnistis 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.320 has kind of a has like a surgical halo around 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.679 his head, like a halo, and then he also has 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:47.479 what I think is like a human face maybe his 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.359 own human face position behind him that also seems to 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:56.240 mimic halo iconography. So it's a very Cinobyte asked character. 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:59.080 So I'm this seems to come close. And certainly Clive 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:03.240 Barker loves toying around with religious imagery, so it makes 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:05.039 sense that we would find an example of this and 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:09.279 something he designed. Yeah. Fun fact, those those figures that 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.000 came out, turns out they each had a portion of 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.839 a novella in them that I think for a long 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:17.040 time you could only get if you bought all the figures. 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.120 But it's subsequently been put out sometimes in the last 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:25.919 five years or so titled Tortured Souls the Legend of Primordium, 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.080 and I read it over the weekend enjoined some time 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:31.800 out in the Hammock, and it was pretty fun. You know. 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.520 It's it's like there's not a relatable human character in 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:37.200 the whole thing. It's just like a bunch of like 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:40.800 sort of monsters and and so forth. It's in a 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.600 kind of a dark fantasy setting, kind of hell razory 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.520 at times for sure, but but not entirely like it felt. 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.240 It was really good. It's one of the I haven't 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:51.080 read a lot of Clive Barker recently, but this one 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.120 was new to me and I enjoyed it. So a 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.880 novella that comes serially within the Action figures that you 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.320 would buy at Spencer's Gifts in the nineties, Yeah, it was, 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:02.359 and to my shock it was like it was. It 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:06.160 was actually really enjoyable, So there you go. I wonder 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.039 if the Insane Clown Posse action figures had a novella 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.360 that came with them. I doubt it. I think this 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.560 was the only I think there was actually another Clive 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:17.400 Barker line, who is some sort of like Carnival kind 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.280 of a theme, where he did another one like this 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.040 where he had different different chapters in a novella that 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.800 all came together if you bought all the figures. But 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:28.960 but and that one and that one is also available 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.480 to read now, but I haven't read it. It's interesting though, 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:33.760 with the Action figures though, because the whole thing, right 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:35.600 is that you don't take them out of the box. 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.280 If you're collecting them. And if that was the case, 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.880 you wouldn't get to read the cool little novella chapters 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:43.760 that are hidden within there. Well, you wouldn't get to 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:45.520 play with them either. I mean, what are you supposed 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:47.960 to do with these things? I don't know. They don't 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.040 look tremendously fun to play with. They kind of they're 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.400 very grizzly. Have a little tea party with your barbie 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:58.280 and your cinebites. Yeah, But like I say, the novella 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:01.760 was fun. So in the last episode we ended up 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.360 talking about a lot of the different ways that the 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:07.920 halo or the nimbus has been represented or characterized in history. 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.360 You know, sometimes as a glowing disc behind the head, 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.080 or even a solid looking kind of gold disc, sometimes 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.760 even as a square or as a ring around the head. 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.360 Other times as a kind of just general emanation of light, 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.080 like a glow coming from behind the head, almost as 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:27.160 if there's bioluminescent hair or a light bulb behind the 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.480 head or behind the whole body. A full body glow 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.800 is sometimes characterized as a halo or aureole or nimbus. 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:35.880 And when it comes to the kind that's just like 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.520 a glow or an emanation of divine light from around 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:44.360 the body. I started to wonder about the idea of 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:47.680 the aura. Now, I guess there's a general concept of 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:49.400 an aura that you could just think of as like, 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.480 this is any emanation of color or light from a body, 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.280 like in the in the ancient Mesopotamian mythology, where we 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.760 talked about Humbaba or Hubaba having the seven terrors or 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.160 the radiance, the terrifying radiance that emanated from his body. 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:06.880 Those things could be viewed as an aura. But there's 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:10.120 also a more specific definition of an aura, which is 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:12.960 a sort of standard claim in the modern world of 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:17.600 psychics and New Age spirituality and parapsychology. People often claim 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.880 to be able to see some kind of aura around 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:24.880 human bodies and sometimes around other objects. So I wonder, 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.480 could this modern belief in auras in any way be 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.840 related to the origins of the religious belief in the halo, 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:36.800 the glory, the melom, the sun, disc crown, etc. And 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.600 this sounds perfectly reasonable, right, I mean, a lot of 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:41.480 it is getting it would seem on the surface at 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.640 least to get to the same ideas, the idea that 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:49.720 there's something either emanating out of you or through you? Right, Yeah, totally. 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:53.960 And the secondary question if people do really sometimes see 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.800 a glow of color or a cloud of blazing light 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:01.000 around someone, what would cause that? So I'm going to 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.080 transition into this subject for a bit and look at 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.079 it a few different ways. The first thing I wanted 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:08.439 to know was, wait a second, is it actually possible, 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:12.199 in just a straightforward scientific physical sense that humans do 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.560 actually sometimes glow? I don't know. I've come across weirder 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.079 facts on this show before, so I started looking into this. 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.400 The first thing I thought of was, I wonder if 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.640 there's ever been a case where somebody was made to 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:28.240 glow by exposure to I don't know, something in the environment. 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:29.960 And the thing that popped in my mind was in 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.320 The Simpsons when characters who work at the nuclear power 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:37.080 plant acquire what mister Burns would call a healthy green glow. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.120 So I was wondering, does exposure to radiation actually have 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:45.320 the potential to make people glow? Unfortunately, it seems the 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:51.200 answer is no. Ionizing radiation is generally invisible itself, and 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:53.880 being exposed to it can of course wreck your body, 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:57.440 but it won't make you glow. This myth actually probably 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.760 comes from a combination of facts, the first of which 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:05.359 would be about radio luminescence. So there are some materials 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:10.000 that do glow in the presence of ionizing radiation. For example, 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:13.840 the paint that was once commonly used for radium dials 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.439 on clock faces and is sometimes still used for like 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:20.480 instruments that are made to be viewed in the dark, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:24.400 for example in spacecraft. You know, so you want a 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.040 dial or an instrument that will glow in the dark 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.880 without having to have any kind of power supply to it, 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.640 or a you know, or an led inside it or 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:37.920 anything like that. This radioluminescent paint actually had to have 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:41.199 a combination of two major elements in order to make 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.440 it glow. In the old school kind that was used 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:47.680 by like the company Undark or you know that was 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:50.920 tragically the cause of the death and sickening of the 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:54.560 Radium girls. This was a paint that was made with radium, 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.360 which is the radioactive element that's applied the ionizing radiation. 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:00.760 But then it also had to have an element that 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.640 is known as a phosphour, which is a chemical that 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.200 glows when it's stimulated by alpha and beta particles and 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.520 gamma rays from the radioactive element, and in the case 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:15.120 of the radio luminescent paint that was used by undark 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:16.880 in companies like that in the first half of the 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.199 twentieth century, the phosphour was usually zinc sulfide that was 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:23.760 then laced with a metal like copper to give it 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.520 a green color. And so because of the specific nature 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.440 of this material, this phosphour, when the atoms in it 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.880 are struck by ionizing radiation, they get excited, their electrons 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.280 jump up to a higher energy level, and then they 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:38.520 fall back down to their ground state. And when they 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:40.920 fall back down to their ground state, they emit a 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.560 photon of light. As they do that, they release the 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.440 energy back out and this is the glow we see. 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:48.320 And of course the color of the glow can be 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.839 determined by what kind of metal it's laced with. Again, 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:53.839 copper tends to give a green color. So I think 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.720 this is the source of the belief that radiation will 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.199 cause something to have a green glow. Won't call is 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.800 anything to have a green glow, It will specifically give 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.480 a green glow. To paint with a phosphour in it, 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.560 and something to make that glow the color green, like 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:12.760 copper Okay, So, long story short, exposure to ionizing radiation 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.840 can absolutely kill you, but it will not make you glow, 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:19.560 I guess, unless you coat yourself in a phosphour. Okay, 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.240 so that one episode of The Simpsons where mister Burns 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:30.160 has been found to be wandering through the woods, Yeah, no, 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.680 no, no no, and unless yeah, maybe he somehow paints his 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.360 body in zinc sulfide or something zinc sulfide and copper 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:40.560 and then just get some plutonium in there. Maybe. Okay. 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.640 I don't know how long he would survive that though, well, 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.720 As we I think was explained on the show, mister 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.160 Burns is imperil from so many different causes of death 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:52.840 that they are they're stuck in the door right right, 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.720 three Stooges syndrome. Yeah, so even the ionizing radiation is 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:02.599 going whoa. So anyway, you know you're not going to 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.320 have a situation where I don't know, an ancient a 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.280 person in the ancient world came across a stash of 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.680 uranium or and then somehow ended up glowing green, so 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.400 everybody would see him and think, wow, you know, that 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.920 guy's a god or something. That just wouldn't happen. But 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.840 I came across another fact that is pretty weird, which 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:25.760 is that, in a qualified sense, the human body actually 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:31.520 does just naturally glow, meaning it doesn't only reflect light 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:36.120 from external sources, but the body actually does emit electromagnetic 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:40.000 radiation in the visible spectrum. Visible light comes out of 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:44.040 your body. Huh. But before you get too excited, the 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.840 amount of light that our bodies put out on average 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.920 is really really tiny. It's roughly a thousand times too 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.200 dim to see with the naked eye. You need special 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.640 scientific instruments in a very dark room to pick it up. 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.240 But you should know that this is different from the 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:04.040 heat that we emit as infrared radiation. If this light 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:06.520 were bright enough, it would be light. They would actually 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:08.520 have a color that you could see with your eyes. 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.680 It is that kind of light. And of course it's 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:14.840 not just us, most or maybe all other animals would 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.400 also emit a similar kind of light. Nevertheless, this glow 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.680 is kind of interesting. I was wondering, so what makes 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:26.440 this glow happen. It appears to be chemical reactions involving 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.280 free radicals within the body. There was a two thousand 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:33.200 nine study that tried to measure this photon emission from 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.480 the human body using special equipment. So this was by 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:42.440 Misaki Kobayashi, Daisuke Kikuchi, and Hitoshi Okamura, published in PLS 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.960 one in two thousand and nine called Imaging of ultraweek 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:51.440 spontaneous photon emission from human body displaying diurnal rhythm. And 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.200 so what the researchers did here was they used a 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:58.880 cryogenic CCD camera to image five healthy male subjects in 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:01.880 their twenties at different times throughout the day. So the 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:04.200 subjects would come in, they'd sit in a chair I 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.800 think they were partially naked or at least bare chested 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.320 in the chair in a dark room for at least 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.360 twenty minutes. I think there was a period of adjustment 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:15.320 to the darkness, and then after that they'd be photographed 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:18.000 for twenty minutes with the special camera. And they do 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.400 this every day for every three hours from ten am 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.720 to ten pm. And the researchers actually found that the 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.680 amount of light emitted from the body varied significantly over 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.480 the day, so people glowed the most at about four 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:35.720 pm and the least at ten am. And they hypothesized 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:38.280 that this probably has something to do with how energy 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:42.200 metabolism changes throughout the day according to our circadian rhythms. 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:46.040 But also interesting, or at least I thought this was interesting, Rob, 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:48.320 I've attached a picture for you to look at down here. 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:53.880 The body did not glow equally everywhere. In fact, faces 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.320 tended to glow more than the rest of the body, 0:16:57.400 --> 0:16:59.960 it seems like. And there were other kinds of different 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.720 It says like upper shoulders seemed to glow a little 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.280 bit more than down lower around like the chest or 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:08.880 the stomach, And different parts of the face glowed more 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:11.880 than other parts. So it looks like the area around 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.560 the mouth in particular, was usually glowing more than say, 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:18.639 like the forehead or around the eyes or the sides 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.640 of the face. This thing about the mouth especially makes 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:25.000 me imagine an alternate history of halo imagery where the 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:27.920 glow is not just surrounding the crown of the head, 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.520 but emanating from the mouth and jaw a kind of 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:35.680 glory beard okay, also kind of a low Pan effect, right, oh, yes, 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:38.400 when we first encountered low Pan and he has light 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:40.680 coming out of his eyes and then out of his mouth. 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:43.840 One of my favorite line deliveries there is the incredulous 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:46.760 way that Kurt Russell says that he had light coming 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:51.120 out of his mouth. Yes, it's big Trouble and little 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.479 China for anyone who's not familiar. But anyway, so I 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.200 was reading an NBC News report about this study from 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.159 two thousand and nine by Charles Q. Choi, and he 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:04.640 wrote that one reason that the face might glow more 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:06.760 than the rest of the body is that is that 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:10.040 usually faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.240 since they get it more exposure to sunlight. And that 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.680 he said that the pigment behind that tanning in the skin, melanin, 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.760 has fluorescent compounds that might might help the skin produce 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:26.720 even more light than other skin on the body does. Okay, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.160 but since this glow is not detectable with the naked eye, 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:31.840 none of this is going to have anything to do 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.600 with the origins of halo or nimbus or arial imagery. 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:44.720 Though it is a nice thing to know, nonetheless, But 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:47.200 to come back to the place we started, people do, 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:50.920 of course, sometimes make various paranormal claims that they can 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:55.560 see a glow of colored light emanating from human beings. Again, 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:59.040 this is sometimes called like an aura or an energy field. 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.879 So I have to be kind of circumspect here, the 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.800 belief in auras is I have discovered an exceedingly complicated 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.080 subject with a weird and interesting history. Maybe one will 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.399 have to come back to and explore more in the future, 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.040 since this is one of those subjects. I'm sure you've 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:18.320 had this experience on the show before, Rob where it 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.040 like I was trying to read into it so I 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:23.280 could give a brief overview, but it was kind of 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:25.280 like you go down into a basement and you open 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.600 an old chest to just like get the things out 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:29.720 and see what's inside it. But then something in there 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:34.760 starts moving and and I'm like, ah, okay, so I 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.520 cannot I cannot get my brain fully around this subject. 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.480 I think I can only mention some aspects of it. 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:44.800 From what I can tell, the New Age belief in 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.720 seeing auras seems to stem from a kind of reinterpretation 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:55.640 of the medieval Tantric belief in chakras. So chakras would 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.920 have been a belief original to esoteric Hindu It's all. 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.360 So it's kind of hard to succinctly describe even what 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.320 these are, but I think you can think of them 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.199 as sort of a collection of nodes or channels that 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:12.600 are positioned at different points inside the body and correspond 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:16.760 to elements of an imagined subtle body, a second non 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:21.600 material energy based body, and the images of these channels 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.360 or nodes throughout the body would be used in some 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:29.080 kinds of tantric meditations. So you might focus mental imagery 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.680 on one of these nodes at various points positioned, often 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.080 along the sort of vertical axis through the middle of 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.920 the body, but also at a few other points. So, Rob, 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:39.720 I think you probably know more about this world. Is 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:43.280 that basically your understanding? Yeah? Yeah, I think that's a 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:48.159 good basic summary of it. And I've engaged in yoga 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.440 and meditation that uses chakras as well, and I find 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:54.280 that I guess one way that I like to think 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.119 of it is it is not it is not the 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:01.359 way the body actually works, but it is a way 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:06.879 that the body can be interpreted, uh to aid in 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:11.480 meditation or yoga, like thinking about you know, like this 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:15.640 energy point moving from chakra to chakra, focusing on say, 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.680 like breathing through your third eye. You know, obviously you're 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:22.000 not really breathing through a hole in your your skull, 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:26.879 but somehow like focusing on that can be very helpful. 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:29.720 It gives you like a different physical focus to get 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.720 out of your thoughts and uh and even you know, 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.800 sort of focus on the on the physicality of that 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:38.720 part of your body. Uh So, yeah, I find it 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.919 very helpful though though again I do not engage with 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:43.520 it in a way where I think of this is 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:45.720 like the actual way that the energy in my body 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.400 is working. Right, It might not correspond to like physical 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.520 anatomical realities, but can serve as a focal point for 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.159 mental imagery and in the way of directing the thoughts. Yeah, 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.119 but so that's that's chakras. I think like within the 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:03.040 the esoteric and do tradition. Then in the late nineteenth 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.200 and early twentieth century, it seems this idea somehow got 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:11.120 sort of picked up and reinterpreted by various people associated 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.560 with new religious movements like Theosophy, and a lot of 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.720 the twentieth century New Age belief in auras as an 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.000 emanation from the body seems to trace back to a 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:27.200