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