Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: you know, we recently did a couple of episodes that
Speaker 1: related to Irish mythology. And as we were looking through
Speaker 1: these various accounts of various heroes and monsters and tales
Speaker 1: too often to dan and and so forth, UM, I
Speaker 1: was reminded again of of a motif that I remember
Speaker 1: coming up briefly, at least when we were looking at
Speaker 1: the hero Cocolin, and that is um, Irish heroes that
Speaker 1: are depicted as having either multiple pupils or multiple irises
Speaker 1: within their eyes. That is a strange detail, especially because
Speaker 1: I can picture multiple pupils, I have a harder time
Speaker 1: picturing multiple irises. So, of course, basic anatomical note, the
Speaker 1: pupil is the black dot in the middle of your eye,
Speaker 1: and the iris is the colored ring around that dot.
Speaker 1: So multiple pupils I'm seeing, Okay, multiple dots, multiple irises.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that just what like, how would
Speaker 1: you tell where one iris began or ended? Well, I
Speaker 1: guess you'd have to have like multiple irises and pupils
Speaker 1: in that department, and and is we'll get into. One
Speaker 1: of the things is that some of these accounts will
Speaker 1: say pupils and other versions of that same account will
Speaker 1: say irises. So you know, I'm not I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly how uh you know, the term maybe gets confused
Speaker 1: over time or it's lost in translation. Um so, but
Speaker 1: it kind of adds to the mystery of of not
Speaker 1: being exactly sure what we're talking about here when these
Speaker 1: details come up. Well, so, how did these details go?
Speaker 1: Like what's an example? Okay, so, um taking for example,
Speaker 1: Coucolon since we've we've just got to him before. The
Speaker 1: The Irish hero a warrior hero, a demi god uh,
Speaker 1: possessed by the ability to enter the warped spasm during battle.
Speaker 1: Lots of wonderful tales and about this character, and he's
Speaker 1: he's prominently featured in the early Irish epic The Cattle
Speaker 1: Raid of Coolie or the Tane as it goes sometimes called.
Speaker 1: But one of the other you know, interesting facts about
Speaker 1: this hero is that he's sometimes described as having seven irises,
Speaker 1: as translated from the epic by Joseph Dunn's I believe
Speaker 1: the nineteen translation quote seven jewels of the eyes brilliance
Speaker 1: was either of his keenly eyes, seven toes to either
Speaker 1: of his two feet, seven fingers to either of his
Speaker 1: two hands, with the clutch of hawk's claw, with the
Speaker 1: grip of hedgehog's talent in every separate one of them.
Speaker 1: I love how that's all majestic and fierce until you
Speaker 1: get to the hedgehog. I don't know. Hedgehog's talent sounds
Speaker 1: pretty the intense to me, even if I can't quite
Speaker 1: picture what that would be. Maybe I don't have enough
Speaker 1: experience with hedgehogs though. I Also this struck me because
Speaker 1: I love stories where beings have a strange, recurring, specific
Speaker 1: number of body features. It reminds me of visions in
Speaker 1: the Bible, like particularly the visions of the Dragon and
Speaker 1: the Beast in the Book of Revelation. And if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar, the Book of Revelation is is the last
Speaker 1: book in the Christian New Testament. It is mostly describing
Speaker 1: a vision that the author, someone named John says was
Speaker 1: given to him by Christ. And it's a book where
Speaker 1: the number seven has great significance. It's used in a
Speaker 1: number of ways throughout the apocalypse, there are messages sent
Speaker 1: to seven church congregations there and then within the vision,
Speaker 1: seven seals are opened, seven trumpets are sounded, and so forth.
Speaker 1: But they're also these wondrous beings, both great and terrible,
Speaker 1: with seven of something. So, for example, in chapter twelve,
Speaker 1: verse three, it says, and there appeared another wonder in heaven,
Speaker 1: and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and
Speaker 1: tin horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I always wondered if that meant okay, So he's got
Speaker 1: seven heads and then seven crowns on his heads, but
Speaker 1: does that mean seven crowns per head or just one
Speaker 1: crown per head? I'm not sure. One of the seven
Speaker 1: heads is wearing seven crowns, staff and top for each
Speaker 1: other that had a real dick. They fight over the crowns.
Speaker 1: But then later also the beast is said to have
Speaker 1: seven heads and tin horns quote end upon his horns
Speaker 1: tin crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
Speaker 1: And so I like these these specific numbers. It's not
Speaker 1: just like, oh, this beast has two heads. It's got
Speaker 1: seven heads. And of course, in Jewish and Christian traditions,
Speaker 1: seven is a very significant number. It's a holy number
Speaker 1: and one that most of the time seems to be
Speaker 1: associated with wholeness or completion or fulfillment. You know, God
Speaker 1: rested on the seventh day in the creation story, after
Speaker 1: creating Earth in six days, rested on the seventh, So
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the finishing of a of a
Speaker 1: good and wholesome cycle of something. Uh. Though, I guess
Speaker 1: in this case it's interesting because this is a sort
Speaker 1: of unholy seven. It's the opposite of God. And there
Speaker 1: are other beings in Jewish literature described with various specific
Speaker 1: numbers of features. For example, there is a vision described
Speaker 1: in the Book of Isaiah where the prophet sees the
Speaker 1: Lord sitting upon a throne and he's surrounded by angels
Speaker 1: called seraphim, which literally means the burning ones. And the
Speaker 1: Seraphim are said to each have six wings, and there's
Speaker 1: a reason given for this. In the vision, the wings
Speaker 1: are each doing something, so Isaiah says that with two
Speaker 1: of the wings he covered his face, with two of
Speaker 1: them he covered his feet, and with the other two
Speaker 1: he did fly. Though I wonder if the number six
Speaker 1: is also showing a different significance in that these beings
Speaker 1: are sort of the second highest beings in the heavenly
Speaker 1: hierarchy without being on the level of God himself. So
Speaker 1: seven is holy perfection and fulfillment. Six is one level
Speaker 1: under that. Oh wow. So first of all, I love
Speaker 1: how this actually is finding way to tie back to
Speaker 1: our recent episodes on the days of the week. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the seven day week, and yeah, all these
Speaker 1: there's something about examples like this where we're dealing with
Speaker 1: you know, literary motifs and symbolism and you know, mythic beings.
Speaker 1: But we take these non biological numbers and though they
Speaker 1: sort of bleed through their imagined bodies and and we
Speaker 1: instantly enter this zone of of of just of fantasy
Speaker 1: and in myth um. You know, it's the it's the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that I think, you know, today we
Speaker 1: would we would classify this sort of thing is like
Speaker 1: you know, visionary art or you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: a psychedelic notion um. But but clearly we've you know,
Speaker 1: we've been dreaming of these these things throughout human history.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, and you're right to note that seven
Speaker 1: is not a very biological number. Yeah, I mean, usually
Speaker 1: in animals with bilateral symmetry, there tend to be even
Speaker 1: numbers of things. There are some interesting exceptions, but that's
Speaker 1: that's most most often the case. We'll get to one
Speaker 1: exception within the human body later on that that I like,
Speaker 1: But yeah, so is so. I don't know exactly why
Speaker 1: you'd get these myths later on of like say, yeah, hero,
Speaker 1: who's got seven irises in his eye or seven pupils
Speaker 1: in his eye? But I would be surprised if it isn't,
Speaker 1: if it isn't part of a tradition, if it isn't
Speaker 1: all downstream from this ancient line of thinking that says, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this monster doesn't just have two heads. It
Speaker 1: has seven heads. And not only does it have seven heads,
Speaker 1: the fact that it has seven heads means something. This
Speaker 1: is like the ultimate bad monster because there's seven of it.
Speaker 1: Seven is kind of like a siren. It means whenever
Speaker 1: there's seven or of something, it's it's incredibly meaningful. It's
Speaker 1: intensely significant. And with with with Collin's it's it's really
Speaker 1: hard for me to to picture it, like I guess
Speaker 1: I end up picturing like this just sort of ring
Speaker 1: of pupils um and then when I try and picture
Speaker 1: seven irises in there. It doesn't really come together for me. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here a couple of other translations. Um Thomas Kinsella Translations
Speaker 1: says seven hard heroic jewels are set in the iris
Speaker 1: of Colan's eye and then done, also translating another section
Speaker 1: of the work. Here from a poem prophecy quote seven
Speaker 1: gyms of champions, brave deck the center of his orbs.
Speaker 1: Naked are the spears he bears, and he hooks a
Speaker 1: red cloak round. And I've seen the Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: these described as as pupils as irises, and there's a
Speaker 1: there's one version that reads, quote there were seven pupils
Speaker 1: and k Colin's royal eye and two of these pupils
Speaker 1: were squinting. The pupils were squinting, yes, And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is another area where I haven't found I
Speaker 1: haven't found much to really you know, break down what
Speaker 1: this means. And and that that just makes it more enticing,
Speaker 1: Like what what to imagine looking into this, uh, this
Speaker 1: hero's eyes and then like first of all, they're like
Speaker 1: seven pupils in there, and then and then to make
Speaker 1: things even weirder, to make that moment even weirder, two
Speaker 1: of them are squinting. A two of the pupils are squinting.
Speaker 1: But pupil I mean, so pupils do, of course contract.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that as we go on. That's one
Speaker 1: of their main anatomical functions. But I don't think that's
Speaker 1: usually what people mean with the words squinting. With squinting,
Speaker 1: I think of squeezing of like the muscles around the
Speaker 1: orbital you know, your face. Yeah, that was We'll discuss um.
Speaker 1: Pupils do weird things. Uh so, so maybe by the
Speaker 1: time we roll through some examples from the the animal world,
Speaker 1: we'll have a better idea of what this could conceivably
Speaker 1: look like. But cal Colin is not the only character
Speaker 1: in Irish tradition who has has mysterious eyes. Uh There's
Speaker 1: also a character by the name of fedom Or. I
Speaker 1: think the modern version of this is Fidelma. And this
Speaker 1: is she. She's a member of the two Offended don
Speaker 1: and she's a prophet, a poet. She's mentioned in the
Speaker 1: Ulster cycle, and I've also read that she Some um
Speaker 1: critics and historians think that she may be connected to
Speaker 1: later traditions of the Banshee um, which again, the Banshee
Speaker 1: one of its whole things is that it is it
Speaker 1: haunts a place, It wales in anticipation of death. So
Speaker 1: it is it is, in its own way, a profit,
Speaker 1: the profit of of one particular thing. She appears in
Speaker 1: the Tane as well. And she has described as having
Speaker 1: three irises in each eye, triple irises. Uh, and she
Speaker 1: this is. This gets really interesting because she's described at length,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to read a part of it,
Speaker 1: translated by Donne quote weaving lace was she, And in
Speaker 1: her right hand was a bordering rod of silvered bronze,
Speaker 1: with its seven strips of red gold at the sides,
Speaker 1: A mini spotted green man toll around her, a bulging,
Speaker 1: strong headed pin of gold in the mantle over her bosom,
Speaker 1: a hooded tunic with red interweaving about her. A ruddy,
Speaker 1: fair faced countenance. She had narrow below and broad above.
Speaker 1: She had a blue, gray and laughing eye. Each eye
Speaker 1: had three pupils. Dark and black were her eyebrows, The
Speaker 1: soft black lashes threw a shadow to the middle of
Speaker 1: her cheeks. Red and thin were her lips. Shiny and
Speaker 1: pearly were her teeth. Thou wouldst believe they were showers
Speaker 1: of white pearls that had rained into her head. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, I love how I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all beautiful, but the three pupils in the eye just
Speaker 1: gets like this brief description. But then the author is like,
Speaker 1: and let me tell you about her teeth. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had the same reaction. So then again, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the historical setting from which this story would have emerged,
Speaker 1: and maybe at that time seeing somebody with really clean
Speaker 1: teeth was even more rare than I with three pupils.
Speaker 1: So um, so okay, So we already have a couple
Speaker 1: of examples here cocullen um and we have we also
Speaker 1: have Fedom here, and Fedom Fedom is very much a
Speaker 1: seer and she has eyes of prophecy. So it's easy
Speaker 1: to to see where one interpretation here is that her
Speaker 1: eyes are unnatural because she has unnatural vision she can
Speaker 1: see into the future. Makes sense right, sure, But as
Speaker 1: as several different commentators have pointed out, this is what
Speaker 1: this is. Another level where it got even more interesting
Speaker 1: is that commentators have pointed out that, um, these are
Speaker 1: also signs of beauty. So think to this passage I
Speaker 1: just read, so, uh you know, yes, again, she is
Speaker 1: a seer, but she's described as as being as not
Speaker 1: being beautiful but possessed with weird eyes. Her triple pupils
Speaker 1: or iris eyes are listed as part of her beauty
Speaker 1: um though you know undeniably this connects to her attributed
Speaker 1: powers as well, so it's listed along other along other
Speaker 1: things like having long, lustrous eyelashes and pearly teeth, things
Speaker 1: that in a lot of other literature would be just
Speaker 1: clear markers that are supposed to mean beauty. And here
Speaker 1: it's also like and three people died. That is one
Speaker 1: of those things, right, we all know that thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is this is I think something that makes
Speaker 1: it so fascinating to read as a modern uh reader
Speaker 1: of the text because obviously, if you had, you know,
Speaker 1: a modern work of fiction that was referring to a
Speaker 1: character like this, everything would go in reverse, right, you
Speaker 1: would have all that you would say, oh, she was beautiful,
Speaker 1: and she looked totally human, a beautiful human, except woe
Speaker 1: those eyes, three pupils in each one. It was a
Speaker 1: bit weird. So one of the sources that I was
Speaker 1: looking at about this is Jacqueline Boors the Evil Eye
Speaker 1: in early Irish literature and Law two thousand three published
Speaker 1: in Um Celtica twenty four. It provides a lot of
Speaker 1: of insight into the literary mote of the eye in
Speaker 1: Irish literature. Uh. So she brings up, first of all,
Speaker 1: a different creature with a unique eye, and that is
Speaker 1: the one eyed giant Ngsil Case or eng Sol the Terrible,
Speaker 1: who is described as this great giant, uh something of
Speaker 1: a pirate I think with possible like English origins of
Speaker 1: the time. So you know, into the in this wee
Speaker 1: get like the idea that maybe if there is some
Speaker 1: sort of historical basis for this figure, maybe he was
Speaker 1: just some sort of a pirate rater from that region.
Speaker 1: But in the mythic connotation he becomes this, this this
Speaker 1: great big giant who not only has just this single
Speaker 1: eye in his head. He's not only a cyclops, but
Speaker 1: it is a solid black eye. And that solid black
Speaker 1: eye has seven pupils within it. Uh though I've also
Speaker 1: read descriptions where he just has three pupils. How would
Speaker 1: it have pupils if it's solid. The pupil is the
Speaker 1: black part of the eye. So that's thoroughly confusing. Yes,
Speaker 1: So he's known for the destruction of Daderga hostel. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a whole story about this. And so the author
Speaker 1: here is discussing ng Soul's I and she connects it
Speaker 1: not only with Colin, but also with the High King
Speaker 1: of Ireland, Cormac McCart who is also said to have
Speaker 1: had seven pupils in each eye. Um, she's so again,
Speaker 1: it's just driving home that this is a recurring motif.
Speaker 1: It's not like a one time thing that you know it.
Speaker 1: It clearly meant something and was worth repeating in the Cannon.
Speaker 1: But but she points out that, uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: the cases of these two heroes, quote, this is explicitly
Speaker 1: qualified as a sign of beauty. And furthermore, she says
Speaker 1: that the squinting ink Collin's pupils is also seen as
Speaker 1: adornment rather than disfigurement. And then she also comes back
Speaker 1: to Fedom, the female seer of the Tuath, to Donnan
Speaker 1: and says, quote, there is no explanation offered of this
Speaker 1: characteristic the triple I with with fedelm. It could be
Speaker 1: a sign of beauty and it could be a sign
Speaker 1: of her supernatural site. The latter is more probable because
Speaker 1: the characteristic is separated from the description of her looks
Speaker 1: by the mention of the weaver's beam, the weaver's beam
Speaker 1: has been interpreted as a supernatural tool for prophecy. The
Speaker 1: triple pupils could therefore very well be a symbol of
Speaker 1: her clear of lance. And yeah, so I'm not if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken here the weaver's beam, this is part
Speaker 1: of a loom. Uh, And so we're getting into the
Speaker 1: idea that like here, this, this piece of technology also
Speaker 1: had mystical connotations for divination. Alright, what about ing Sol though,
Speaker 1: the giant or pirate who has a single eye which
Speaker 1: is entirely black and also has either three or seven
Speaker 1: pupils in it. Well, she she's She says that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at these other examples and try and
Speaker 1: figure out eng Sole will say, first of all, he's
Speaker 1: definitely not beautiful. This is not a sign of his beauty.
Speaker 1: He's a rough and horrible monster. She she know. She
Speaker 1: points out some of the terms that are used to
Speaker 1: describe him. But his sight is described as being sharp.
Speaker 1: He can make out every detail of the hostile at
Speaker 1: a glance. And Boor says that he also might connect
Speaker 1: to the legendary evil eye of Balor the king of
Speaker 1: the Fomorians, whose great eye when opened and when his
Speaker 1: great brow could be raised up in some accounts, two
Speaker 1: warriors have to stand on either side of him. Put
Speaker 1: a woman wouldn't beam beneath his big, saggy brow and
Speaker 1: lift the brow up so that the evil eye can
Speaker 1: see out an unleashed destruction on the battlefield. Um, it
Speaker 1: could be connected to that ballor by the way, is
Speaker 1: eventually killed by his grandson Lug of the Tifata done
Speaker 1: and and there are multiple versions of the battor myth
Speaker 1: as well. Sometimes his destructive eye is described, you know,
Speaker 1: more or less like the single single eye of a cyclops,
Speaker 1: and other times it's depicted as more of a third
Speaker 1: eye in the center of the head alongside two ordinary eyes.
Speaker 1: So there's just a taste of the triple or sevenfold
Speaker 1: eye in uh in in Irish mythology and again and
Speaker 1: having you know, research to the bed and and and
Speaker 1: laid it out in the in the outline here, it's
Speaker 1: still just overwhelmingly mysterious and on inspiring to me. And
Speaker 1: uh we're gonna come back to some other traditions, some
Speaker 1: other ancient writings that refer to mysterious eyes of this nature.
Speaker 1: But at this point we're gonna we're gonna shift into
Speaker 1: the scientific world and and hopefully this will be a
Speaker 1: fun case where the science and the myth will sort
Speaker 1: of play off each other and each one will make
Speaker 1: the other more fabulous than Alright, well, since we're talking
Speaker 1: about eyes, I think we do need to do a
Speaker 1: quick overview of eyeball anatomy. So picture and eyeball, Robert,
Speaker 1: you doing it? Can you can see that eyeball in
Speaker 1: your mind's eye burning like the eye of sorrow. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that actually connects to something, because the eye of Saron
Speaker 1: you picture that that that's not just floating out in space, right,
Speaker 1: it's sitting in a tower, that's right. And so of
Speaker 1: course our eyeballs needs some some structural scaff holding as well.
Speaker 1: So the eyeball of humans, it's within a bony socket
Speaker 1: called the orbit, and the outer layer of the eyeball
Speaker 1: itself is a tough white tissue made of collagen that's
Speaker 1: called the sclera. This this is the white part of
Speaker 1: the eye that you can see. And then the pupil,
Speaker 1: of course, is the black dot in the middle of
Speaker 1: the eye, covering the pupil on the outside is a
Speaker 1: clear layer of cells known as the cornea, which both
Speaker 1: protects the eye. It protects the the iris and the pupil,
Speaker 1: and it also helps to focus incoming light into the pupil. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are two parts of your eyes that do focusing
Speaker 1: of light rays. The cornea does the majority of it.
Speaker 1: I think it does about two thirds of the focusing.
Speaker 1: And that's the first layer. And actually, if you've listened
Speaker 1: to our episodes on tiers that we did I think
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, you know there's something even
Speaker 1: to the outside of the cornea, which is that thin
Speaker 1: layer of tier film that covers the eye. It's secreted
Speaker 1: by the lachrymal glands. Actually has multiple parts that the
Speaker 1: the watery part of the tier film is secreted by
Speaker 1: the lacrym mole glands, and then there's an oily part
Speaker 1: of the tier film that comes from the base of
Speaker 1: the eyelids. Now coming to the pupil. While it's tempting
Speaker 1: to think of the pupil as a thing, the interesting
Speaker 1: truth is that the pupil is really an absence. The
Speaker 1: pupil is the whole or the opening through which light passes.
Speaker 1: So light comes through the cornea and then is directed
Speaker 1: through the pupil, and then is focused again a second
Speaker 1: time after the cornea by a clear structure on the
Speaker 1: inside of the eye, the inside of the pupil that's
Speaker 1: called the lens. And then finally, after it is focused
Speaker 1: through the lens, the light is reflected onto the layer
Speaker 1: of sensitive cells on the back of the inside of
Speaker 1: the eye known as the retina, and then the sensing
Speaker 1: cells of the retina transmit the information about the light
Speaker 1: via the optic nerve all the way to the visual
Speaker 1: cortex in the back of the brain, where the information
Speaker 1: is made sense of in a way that we experience
Speaker 1: as sight. So I think what we should say is
Speaker 1: that sight happens in the brain, which is why there
Speaker 1: are so many things that can that can affect what
Speaker 1: we see when we look at the world. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just like a video camera feed. There's there's
Speaker 1: some post processing that goes on that can be affected
Speaker 1: by all kinds of things from uh, you know, from UH,
Speaker 1: from biases and little little tricks of of how the
Speaker 1: brain works, to drugs and so so. So sight happens
Speaker 1: in the brain, but of course light has to go
Speaker 1: through all these stages within the eye before it is
Speaker 1: turned into the experience of vision in the visual cortex.
Speaker 1: You know. I just think you were talking about how
Speaker 1: about the pupil being an absence and not a thing,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about, um, you know, the various
Speaker 1: there's of course the Chinese story of the magic paint brush,
Speaker 1: and I think there are different variations on this, but
Speaker 1: there's one in which the paint brush, whatever you paint
Speaker 1: with it comes to life, but only after you have
Speaker 1: have added the eye. So I think perhaps that the
Speaker 1: uh you know, adding the pupil uh slash iris of
Speaker 1: the eye, because depending on the detail of your illustration,
Speaker 1: like the people in the eye are just gonna be one, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you're painting an eye, drawing an eye, you
Speaker 1: create the white and then you put that black dot
Speaker 1: in the middle to complete it, and it kind of
Speaker 1: brings life to something. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: think to the world of of miniature painting and off there.
Speaker 1: If if anyone's never seen this, you should look it
Speaker 1: up because it can be hilarious. Um. When people are
Speaker 1: just figuring out what they're doing with miniatures, they'll often
Speaker 1: want to complete like this, you know, we're talking like
Speaker 1: a small scale uh um, you know, soldier or something,
Speaker 1: and they'll want to put eyes on it, so they'll
Speaker 1: create the white dots and then they'll go to throw
Speaker 1: those little black dots in there as well. Often with
Speaker 1: just hilarious results. You'll end up with just the completely
Speaker 1: ridiculous googly eyes that that are you know, look too
Speaker 1: big for the head, and one eyes put looking off
Speaker 1: in one direction and the other in another direction. Um,
Speaker 1: but we have that compulsion. Were like, we it's not
Speaker 1: real until I add you know, the pupil iris. We
Speaker 1: can't just have white there, we can't just have dark there.
Speaker 1: We have to have both. Well, yeah, I think there
Speaker 1: is actually a strong biological reason why why having both
Speaker 1: is very important to us. You know, we've looked at
Speaker 1: research before on how humans are very sensitive to noticing
Speaker 1: gays direction in other humans, to monitoring the movement of
Speaker 1: other people's eyes to understand where they're looking. That is
Speaker 1: very socially relevant information and we keep close tabs on
Speaker 1: it even when you don't notice you're doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you're just see a representation of a human
Speaker 1: and and they like don't have pupils in their eyes,
Speaker 1: this is very disturbing because it's like, well, I can't
Speaker 1: tell where they're looking and that you know that that
Speaker 1: doesn't feel good at all. And this is probably why
Speaker 1: you know it's it's very popular in films and TV shows.
Speaker 1: If you need a character to have a very very
Speaker 1: other worldly air to them, just simply give them completely
Speaker 1: black eyes or completely wide eyes and uh and you
Speaker 1: know they'll have this angelic or dem on a hair
Speaker 1: about them. Oh yeah, absolutely. The one thing I do
Speaker 1: want to come back to when I said that the
Speaker 1: pupils are an absence and I said not a thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, it depends on what you mean
Speaker 1: by thing, but I mean, you know there they are
Speaker 1: the pinhole in a pinhole camera. Without the whole, the
Speaker 1: pinhole camera doesn't work. So they're very important. You've got
Speaker 1: to have them. But what they are is an opening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another weird thing. You ever think about the fact
Speaker 1: that your eye has muscles. I don't know, maybe this
Speaker 1: is one that everybody else is just fully metabolized and
Speaker 1: it's sitting with them just fine. But thinking about my
Speaker 1: eye muscles makes me a little woozy. But obviously it's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, in fact, your eye has multiple levels of muscles,
Speaker 1: and here's we're gonna come back to uh creatures with
Speaker 1: seven of something, So arranged around the back of each
Speaker 1: of your eyes on the attached to the sclera, there
Speaker 1: are seven muscles is the extraocular muscles, and these are
Speaker 1: muscles that move the eyeballs into some degree the eyelids
Speaker 1: as well, certainly the superior eyelids. So when you look
Speaker 1: up down side to side up at an angle, when
Speaker 1: you're trying to remember something, you're flexing these muscles. Do
Speaker 1: you think Colin had seven of days or did he
Speaker 1: have forty nine muscles under balls? Wait? Did he have
Speaker 1: different eyes or I know, I mean I think he
Speaker 1: only had two eyeballs. He just said seven irises or
Speaker 1: eye So these are apportioned according to eyeballs, not pupils
Speaker 1: and irises. Didn't know how how deep into his anatomy
Speaker 1: the numerology went. But to get even weirder, there are
Speaker 1: also muscles within the eye. There are muscles in your
Speaker 1: eyes responsible for changing the diameter of the pupil of
Speaker 1: that opening. So remember the pupil is basically a hole
Speaker 1: in the function of the pupil is to allow light
Speaker 1: to pass through the lens and onto the retina, and
Speaker 1: the eye has to adjust the size of the hole
Speaker 1: to help control light exposure and to focus the image.
Speaker 1: A very easy example to see for yourself. Everybody probably
Speaker 1: did this in elementary school at some point, but if
Speaker 1: you never did, check it out sometime watch your pupils
Speaker 1: in a mirror. When you're turning the lights in the
Speaker 1: room on and off. Your pupil will dilate in a
Speaker 1: dark room to allow more light in, to become more
Speaker 1: sensitive to less data, and when the light comes on,
Speaker 1: the people will contract to allow less light in. Now,
Speaker 1: I was reading about what function the people serves because
Speaker 1: I think the expansion and contraction of the people is
Speaker 1: not only for controlling for the amount of light in
Speaker 1: the environment, and I think it also helps control uh
Speaker 1: focus of the image that you're trying to to turn
Speaker 1: your gaze onto. So I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: a paper by Sebastian Methote called pupil lometry, Psychology, Physiology
Speaker 1: and Function in the Journal of Cognition and Mythote writes quote,
Speaker 1: Although people responses likely serve many functions, not all of
Speaker 1: which are fully understood, one important function is to optimize vision.
Speaker 1: Either for acuity, small pupils see sharper and depth of
Speaker 1: field small pupil will see sharply at a wider range
Speaker 1: of distances. Or for sensitivity, large peopils are better able
Speaker 1: to detect faint stimuli. And then finally says that that is,
Speaker 1: pupils change their size to optimize vision for a particular situation. Uh.
Speaker 1: And probably all of these are familiar to people who
Speaker 1: have ever had to work the aperture of of a
Speaker 1: film camera, because you manipulate the aperture not just to
Speaker 1: respond to different light conditions and to avoid overexposing or
Speaker 1: under exposing, but you also do it in order to
Speaker 1: control things like depth of field, like do you want,
Speaker 1: you know, things that are both close and far away
Speaker 1: in sharp focus, or only what's up close in focus
Speaker 1: and so forth. But to come back to those muscles
Speaker 1: within the eye, what causes the expansion or contraction of
Speaker 1: the pupil is actually the set of muscles within the iris.
Speaker 1: This is what your iris is for. And so here's
Speaker 1: a wonderful anatomy fact that everyone should know. When you
Speaker 1: hear a good love song or a poem about eye color,
Speaker 1: you know, my love, how how I long to gaze
Speaker 1: into your big brown eyes. The singer is technically longing
Speaker 1: to gaze into two sphincters. What certainly makes you rethink
Speaker 1: Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl, that right? Yes? Uh, speaking
Speaker 1: of which Irish singer, why why not? Why brown eyes?
Speaker 1: Instead of triple or seven pupil dies missed opportunity? Brown
Speaker 1: Eyed Girl is a song all about the appreciation of beautiful,
Speaker 1: glassy sphincters glinting in the sun. Okay, So the iris
Speaker 1: is composed of two types of muscle. Uh, You've got
Speaker 1: the dilator muscles, and these are long muscle fibers. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, relatively long within the eye. At least that
Speaker 1: caused the people to expand when they contract, So you
Speaker 1: can kind of think of muscles like pulling and opening
Speaker 1: wider by by pulling at its edges. And then the
Speaker 1: second type within the iris is the sphincter muscle. This
Speaker 1: is a ring of muscle tissue around the inner edge
Speaker 1: of the iris that shrinks the pupil when it contracts.
Speaker 1: And so the term sphincter is of course most famous
Speaker 1: for referring to the muscle that controls the anus, but
Speaker 1: it actually just means any ring of muscle that works
Speaker 1: to open and close a tube in in an animal body.
Speaker 1: So you actually have multiple sphincters throughout your body, not
Speaker 1: just in the anus, not just in the anus and
Speaker 1: the irises, but also internally controlling the openings of the stomach.
Speaker 1: By the way, we do have what at least a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes about the evolution of the anus that
Speaker 1: we did a few years back. So if anyone is
Speaker 1: interested in more information on that, uh, then I send
Speaker 1: you to the vault to seek those episodes out. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I recall that being great fun. But but but I
Speaker 1: wanted to say, believe it or not, this tidbit about
Speaker 1: sphincters is, uh, the sphincters of the eyes is not
Speaker 1: just an amusing digression. This will actually play into what
Speaker 1: I'm about to talk about, which is an extremely rare
Speaker 1: medical condition in which human beings do sometimes have multiple
Speaker 1: pupils in the same and this is a condition known
Speaker 1: as polychoria. So it's very very rare, but multiple pupils
Speaker 1: per ide does exist in the real world. And so
Speaker 1: as a source on this, I was looking at a
Speaker 1: book called The Handbook of Pediatric neuro Ophthalmology published by
Speaker 1: Springer in two thousand six by Kenneth W. Wright, Peter A. H. Spiegel,
Speaker 1: and Lisa S. Thompson. According to the authors here, there
Speaker 1: are actually two different conditions known as polychoria, though both
Speaker 1: are referring to conditions where there is more than one
Speaker 1: opening in the iris. They say these additional openings tend
Speaker 1: to be due to what they call local hypoplasia of
Speaker 1: the iris stroma and the pigment epithelium. So these are
Speaker 1: the layers of tissue within the iris. Uh the iris
Speaker 1: stroma is the bigger middle layer and the pigment epithelium
Speaker 1: is a layer that is what gives eyes their color,
Speaker 1: the pigment on the back of the irises and so
Speaker 1: hypoplasia within those tissues would mean a lack of cells
Speaker 1: or an incomplete formation of the cells within those tissues. Now,
Speaker 1: regarding the two varieties of this condition, there is true polychoria,
Speaker 1: in which there is more than one pupil and they
Speaker 1: each have their own iris sphincter muscle with the ability
Speaker 1: to contract. Then there is false polychoria or pseudo polychoria,
Speaker 1: in which there are multiple openings in the iris, but
Speaker 1: only one has the sphincter muscle so the sphincter muscle
Speaker 1: is what makes the difference. The having the sphincters around
Speaker 1: your extra pupils is what makes it true polychoria. Both
Speaker 1: conditions are rare, but true polychoria is much more rare.
Speaker 1: They write that in almost all clinical situations the correct
Speaker 1: diagnosis is pseudo polychoria, and given how rare polychoria is,
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be a ton of accessible medical
Speaker 1: literature on it. Most of what I did find was
Speaker 1: pretty old. I found one report from recent years, and
Speaker 1: this was an article publish in Jamma Optimology from by
Speaker 1: Antoine Safie and Shalenburg and Aki Kawasaki called poly Choria
Speaker 1: and a Young Girl. This was a case report of
Speaker 1: a nine year old girl in good health who was
Speaker 1: in for a regular check up with her doctor when
Speaker 1: the doctor noticed that she had two pupils in her
Speaker 1: left eye, one regular sized pupil in the middle and
Speaker 1: then another much smaller hole in the iris just the
Speaker 1: side of the primary robb. I've attached a picture for
Speaker 1: you to look at here, but this case was one
Speaker 1: of the extremely rare documented cases of true polychoria, because
Speaker 1: both pupils in the same eye would contract simultaneously when
Speaker 1: exposed to light, meaning they both had functional sphincter muscles
Speaker 1: surrounding them. And one of the proposed causes of true
Speaker 1: polychoria is what the authors call quote a sneering or
Speaker 1: pinching off from the margin of another pupil, and that
Speaker 1: would seem to make sense of why there would be
Speaker 1: a sphincter muscles surrounding it. So if you picture the
Speaker 1: pupil surrounded by this ring of sphincter muscle, and then
Speaker 1: you picture part of that pupil by just uh, some
Speaker 1: kind of quirk of how the cells are growing, part
Speaker 1: of the people getting pinched off and separated from the
Speaker 1: other one, like the irish cells around it kind of
Speaker 1: just come together and grow together and pinch off part
Speaker 1: of it that would still it would still be surrounded
Speaker 1: by those sphincter muscle cells. By the way, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times we'll say, definitely go do an image
Speaker 1: search so you can see what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: I have to advise if you're doing a search for polychoria,
Speaker 1: you will invariably turn up some actual images, but also
Speaker 1: a lot of doctored images and like clickbait images. Uh
Speaker 1: that that that don't represent anything that's actually happening, uh
Speaker 1: in in the in real biological world. If you definitely
Speaker 1: want to see a real photo, you can look up
Speaker 1: the article I just mentioned again that was in jam
Speaker 1: optomology called polychoria in a young Girl. It just as
Speaker 1: close ups of the pupils and you can see them
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, these images are quite impressive, though, of
Speaker 1: course I have to say that anytime you have a
Speaker 1: close up image of the inner workings of an eyeball um,
Speaker 1: you're getting into weird territory because he quickly becomes this
Speaker 1: strange alien world than now you might be tempted to wonder,
Speaker 1: whoa if somebody has two pupils in the same eye,
Speaker 1: how does that affect vision? Like do they see two
Speaker 1: images out of that eye or something? And the answer
Speaker 1: to that is no, because what's what's creating the what's
Speaker 1: sending the light data back to your visual cortex is
Speaker 1: the retina. So what tends to result from polychoria is
Speaker 1: usually just some impairment of vision in that eye. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't tend to, at least as far as I've read,
Speaker 1: create any extravagant unusual effects. More likely, if it has
Speaker 1: a vacs on vision. It's probably just some uh, some
Speaker 1: reduction in the function of the eye or impairment of vision.
Speaker 1: I mean you kind of come back to the same
Speaker 1: place where we've we've been here before, where you you
Speaker 1: you talk about site uh, and it's something that we
Speaker 1: know most of us take for granted. But then when
Speaker 1: you start thinking about what's actually happening, you know that
Speaker 1: you have these not one, but two different eyeballs functioning
Speaker 1: and uh and then this data is then um, you know,
Speaker 1: reassembled and created into this uh, stitched together into this
Speaker 1: the simulated model of the world inside our heads. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty crazy. Well yeah, and especially because as
Speaker 1: we said earlier, you know, vision happens in the brain.
Speaker 1: It just makes use of data gathered with the eyes,
Speaker 1: so the brain can actually do a lot of compensating, adapting,
Speaker 1: and adjusting based on what's going on in the first
Speaker 1: part of the process. Right. It also reminds me of
Speaker 1: talking to David Eagleman. You know, one of the things
Speaker 1: he points out is that we're basically Mr potato Heads
Speaker 1: and the more sensory tools that you plug into the brain,
Speaker 1: like it's just going to be integrated into the model
Speaker 1: so you know, it's like one eyeball, two eyeballs. Um,
Speaker 1: if you if you were to add additional eyeballs or
Speaker 1: additional things, that's that that fed in additional data like
Speaker 1: that would be consolidated into the whole. Yeah, he's pretty
Speaker 1: from what I understand, he's pretty bullish on plasticity, right,
Speaker 1: And I guess there are differences of opinion among experts
Speaker 1: on this, like how adaptable is the adult brain, how
Speaker 1: many types of new sensory information could a brain make
Speaker 1: use of? But yeah, I think he's more on the
Speaker 1: end of like we we would be shocked how much
Speaker 1: the brain can adapt to, right. Yeah. But then again,
Speaker 1: just coming back to the idea that, yeah, your vision
Speaker 1: is not the thing your eye does. Your vision is
Speaker 1: the thing your brain does using the eyes, right. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be back in the next episode. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have more ancient ideas about multi lobed eyes. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have We're gonna we have some more science at
Speaker 1: this time from the animal world and some of this
Speaker 1: strange pupils going on out there. Um. I did want
Speaker 1: to mention though, briefly, that yeah, you do have some
Speaker 1: some pretty neat pop culture examples of multi pupil, multi
Speaker 1: irist eyes. Um, I was trying to think of think
Speaker 1: of them. I feel like the ones that came to
Speaker 1: mind or are all kind of loosely connected to each other,
Speaker 1: or they all feel like they're very much within the
Speaker 1: same sort of genre of sort of weird horror themed
Speaker 1: visionary art. I was like, Rob, is it going to
Speaker 1: be Tool? Yeah, well it has to be Tool, right,
Speaker 1: So like and because I guess these were probably my
Speaker 1: first exposures to this kind of of imagery, even though
Speaker 1: again it's it's you know, it's clearly been around with
Speaker 1: us for a very long time. But there's the Adam
Speaker 1: Jones of Tool. His art for the The ep Opiate
Speaker 1: features something like, you know, eyes with multiple pupils and
Speaker 1: or eyes undergoing mitosis or their figure eight pupils. It's
Speaker 1: you know, hard to figure out exactly what's happening in
Speaker 1: a stationary image. There's also the cam de Leon album
Speaker 1: art Ocular Orifice for Tool album Onema, featuring an eye
Speaker 1: with two or more irises and pupils, And that's one
Speaker 1: that I believe is is animated as well, so it
Speaker 1: gets this, you get this idea of the eye turning.
Speaker 1: Was that an album that had some release where you'd
Speaker 1: like turn it in the light and it would move. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah, some of the images could be placed
Speaker 1: so that they're you know, they're looking out the front
Speaker 1: of the CD case and it creates this this this movement,
Speaker 1: uh really masters of the physical release, the horror movie
Speaker 1: you talked about with the VHS box with the light
Speaker 1: up eyes. Yeah, yeah, they're very very much And and
Speaker 1: then I mean they're still putting out albums with that
Speaker 1: kind of gimmick rick, which which I love. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: a film that comes to mind, there's John Carpenter's in
Speaker 1: the Mouth of Madness, which I know you you saw
Speaker 1: in the last few years. Anyway, there's a scene in
Speaker 1: which a deranged killer, uh like you know, crashes through
Speaker 1: the the store for unt this cafe front with an
Speaker 1: axe and then you get a close up of his
Speaker 1: eyes and he seems to have they're either like conjoined
Speaker 1: irises or perhaps irises that are undergoing mitosis, that are
Speaker 1: coming together or splitting apart, or something is going on there,
Speaker 1: and it's like a super creepy moment. And then he
Speaker 1: starts talking about Cutter Kane um and then of course course,
Speaker 1: you know that's a film that's often talked about in
Speaker 1: terms of the lovecrafty and influences. There's a great madness
Speaker 1: line at the end of HP Lovecraft's story The Haunter
Speaker 1: of the Dark that reads, I see it coming here,
Speaker 1: hell Win, Titan Blur, black wings, yog So thought save me,
Speaker 1: the three lobed burning I I mean, frankly, after all
Speaker 1: this talk of seven lobed burning eyes, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's what the same is not that impressive. I can
Speaker 1: easily imagine the three lobe burning, seven lobed Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: too mad to even right about. Yog So thought arrives
Speaker 1: on Earth after millions of years is like I have
Speaker 1: come to conquer runs into Kucullen colins, like I have
Speaker 1: so many more irises than you. And that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a cocolin could could totally WHIPIOK, sotha, no, no,
Speaker 1: no question about it. All right, Well, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close it out there, but we will be back Thursday.
Speaker 1: There'll be more um I related wonder, more I related science,
Speaker 1: So tune in. Uh. In the meantime, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone, though. If you have thoughts about this episode,
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts about Irish mythology, um, other tales
Speaker 1: and involve um multiple pupils or multiple irises in the
Speaker 1: same eye. Like I said, we're gonna mention some in
Speaker 1: the next episode, but it's very likely. I mean, it's it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's I'm definitely missing something. There's there's some sort
Speaker 1: of detail from some other folklore, mythology or certainly pop culture,
Speaker 1: and we would love to hear about any of those examples.
Speaker 1: So right in and let us know. Um those episodes.
Speaker 1: Of course, core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesday we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact. On Monday we
Speaker 1: do listener mail, and on Friday we do Weird How Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most serious matters and
Speaker 1: just discuss a strange film. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.