Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: We're going into the Vault for an older episode of
Speaker 1: the show. This one originally aired on August five, and
Speaker 1: it's part one of our series about the Mirror Uh.
Speaker 1: This is going to be a series that I think
Speaker 1: will span all of the Vault episodes this month, So
Speaker 1: settle in for part one. In those days, the world
Speaker 1: of mirrors and the world of men were not as
Speaker 1: they are now, separate and unconnected. They were, moreover, quite
Speaker 1: different from one another. Neither the creatures, nor the colors,
Speaker 1: nor the shapes of the two worlds were the same.
Speaker 1: The two kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in peace,
Speaker 1: and one could pass back and forth through mirrors. One night, however,
Speaker 1: the people of the mirror world invaded this world. Their
Speaker 1: strength was great, but after many bloody battles, the magic
Speaker 1: of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. The Emperor pushed back the invaders,
Speaker 1: imprisoned them within the mirrors, and punish them by making
Speaker 1: them repeat, as though in a kind of dream, all
Speaker 1: the actions of their human victors. He stripped them of
Speaker 1: their strength and their own shape, and reduce them to
Speaker 1: mere servile reflections. One day, however, they will throw off
Speaker 1: that magical lethargy. The first to awaken will be the
Speaker 1: fish deep in the mirror. We will perceive a very
Speaker 1: faint line, and the color of this line will be
Speaker 1: like no other color. Later on, other shapes will begin
Speaker 1: to stir. Little by little, they will differ from us.
Speaker 1: Little by little, they will not imitate us. They will
Speaker 1: break through the barrier of glass or metal, and this
Speaker 1: time will not be defeated. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, the production of by Heart Radio album Hey you,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're kicking
Speaker 1: off a series of episodes about the mirror as a
Speaker 1: human invention. This is actually an idea that I guess
Speaker 1: we talked about doing before, but but it was prompted
Speaker 1: by a recent listener suggestion from a listener named Heather.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the idea, Heather. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is gonna be one that will be at least two episodes,
Speaker 1: maybe more, because there's so many different angles you can
Speaker 1: take once you start gazing into the mirror. Uh. You
Speaker 1: have the history of the technology, various cultural traditions involving mirrors,
Speaker 1: the psychology of mirrors. So we'll just see, we'll see
Speaker 1: how far we get and if we ever make it
Speaker 1: back out again. You know, that opening reading from Bores
Speaker 1: made me think, how do you know that you're not
Speaker 1: the one inside the mirror and that the the other
Speaker 1: side of the mirror is the real world. That's a
Speaker 1: very bores question to ask. Yes, yeah, that that cold
Speaker 1: opening is from animals that live in the mirror, Which
Speaker 1: is a just a couple of page section in the
Speaker 1: Book of Imaginary Beings by Jore Louis Borges, which is
Speaker 1: a fabulous little book. I recommend anyone interested in creatures
Speaker 1: and sort of poetic dreamlike interpretations of creatures to pick
Speaker 1: that up. It's it's a lot of fun with Borges
Speaker 1: writing about established creatures from different mythologies, but also as
Speaker 1: in this case, seemingly you know, just dreaming up something
Speaker 1: of his own, uh, which which I like quite a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: He was certainly an author who was captivated by by
Speaker 1: mirrors and additions in addition to things like dreams and mazes,
Speaker 1: and he has other works that involved mirrors, such as
Speaker 1: covered mirrors, and also an excellent poem simply titled Mirrors. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's one passage from that that I always come back to. UH.
Speaker 1: This goes as follows. I see them as infinite elemental
Speaker 1: executors of an ancient pact to multiply the world, like
Speaker 1: the act of begetting sleepless bringing doom. So is the
Speaker 1: them there the mirrors or the creatures inside the mirrors?
Speaker 1: It is? It's just the mirrors here, right, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think he's just talking about mirrors in this case
Speaker 1: as opposed to beings within the mirror. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the great things about both of these were
Speaker 1: excited here is that that is that that Borges understood
Speaker 1: the weirdness of mirrors in a way that I think
Speaker 1: we all connect to at times. But then we're we
Speaker 1: live in such a mirrrored age that we we often
Speaker 1: forget it. We often let the weirdness of mirrors pass
Speaker 1: us by. UH. And it's only when we were reminded
Speaker 1: of the strangeness of the whole scenario, UH, that that
Speaker 1: once again we enter this kind of mind set. Also,
Speaker 1: just generally, like borrees to to read motivations into inanimate objects.
Speaker 1: But another way I wanted to get us started today
Speaker 1: is with a very strange fact that many people may
Speaker 1: have considered before, but many may not have. I don't
Speaker 1: think I had really thought about this before we started
Speaker 1: doing this episode. So I want you to start by
Speaker 1: closing your eyes and picturing your own face. You got it, right,
Speaker 1: You know what you look like, So you think about
Speaker 1: the lines, the colors, the proportions. Um, maybe the little
Speaker 1: asymmetries the way your hair parts, or maybe you have
Speaker 1: a mole on one side or one iris that's a
Speaker 1: little bit different than the other. Uh. If you're practiced
Speaker 1: at getting photographed, you probably know you have a good side, right.
Speaker 1: You know, most people who get their picture taken a lot,
Speaker 1: they figure out which side of their face they like better,
Speaker 1: and they kind of orient to position that one for
Speaker 1: the camera. But now we want you to consider that
Speaker 1: it is almost a guarantee that this face you're imagining
Speaker 1: right now, your own face, is not really what you
Speaker 1: look like to other people. And this is not just
Speaker 1: because of the fuzziness of memory and imagination, but because
Speaker 1: it's almost certain that your mental image of your own
Speaker 1: face is based mostly on your experience of looking in
Speaker 1: a mirror, and a mirror does not show you the
Speaker 1: version of yourself that people see when they look at you, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, the image in a mirror is reversed
Speaker 1: your mental image of your own face, unless for some
Speaker 1: reason it's based on something other than looking in a
Speaker 1: mirror is inverted from reality. Isn't that bizarre? It is? Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: this is something that I think most of us have
Speaker 1: encountered since we're very young. You know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the first sort of tricks of the mirrors
Speaker 1: that you learn, uh, and we grow accustomed to it,
Speaker 1: and then we forget that it's strange. Um. Another way
Speaker 1: of thinking about this goes as follows. So, if you
Speaker 1: hold a dagger in your right hand and you confront
Speaker 1: your reflection in a mirror, like hold it out, brandish
Speaker 1: the dagger against your reflection. Okay, you're holding it in
Speaker 1: your right hand, but your reflection is technically holding the
Speaker 1: dagger in its left hand. So this night against smack
Speaker 1: a bit of like like like an overstatement of the obvious.
Speaker 1: But I think that's kind of shocking, you know, the
Speaker 1: the idea that that you are using opposite hands to
Speaker 1: hold it, and not merely in a reflective sense. But
Speaker 1: if you were to like take that individual out of
Speaker 1: the mirror, if they could actually climb out of the
Speaker 1: mirror and stand next to you, they would be holding
Speaker 1: their dagger in the opposite hand. Another way of looking
Speaker 1: at it is that the mirror world is a world
Speaker 1: of reversed chirality. Chirality is a term that's often used
Speaker 1: to describe, like molecules, the handedness of molecules. So you
Speaker 1: can have a molecule that has the same chemical constituents,
Speaker 1: but one is the left handed orientation and the other
Speaker 1: is the right handed orientation. The versions of images you
Speaker 1: see reflected in a mirror have opposite chirality of the
Speaker 1: versions that exist in the real world. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Now I have to admit I had never thought about
Speaker 1: this dagger um explanation until I was reading about the
Speaker 1: great person Active Glass, which was in the possession of
Speaker 1: the Elizabethan Polly math and wizard Dr John D. And
Speaker 1: as Benjamin Woolley points out in his book The Queen's
Speaker 1: Conjure Um, this was This is one of several I
Speaker 1: think curios that Dr D kept in his study. And
Speaker 1: you know, amid his library. He had a famous library
Speaker 1: of books. Um. And there's another mirror that he had
Speaker 1: in his possession that we'll get to in a bit.
Speaker 1: But as far as the Great perspective glass went, it
Speaker 1: was said that anyone who lunged at the mirror with
Speaker 1: a dagger or sword found their reflection lunging back at
Speaker 1: them with like hand and weapon. And again, of course,
Speaker 1: this is not the typical way of mirrors, and the
Speaker 1: effect was said to be quite unsettling. You know, if
Speaker 1: you were visiting Dr D, he would he would, he
Speaker 1: might show you this mirror, and then when you were
Speaker 1: you know, when you realize there was something strange about this,
Speaker 1: he would explain the effect to you via mathematics of perspective.
Speaker 1: So I found that interesting as well, especially since Dr
Speaker 1: D was also very interested in things like divination and
Speaker 1: um and uh and and and you know, alchemical matters. Uh.
Speaker 1: This seems to be an artifact that he would use
Speaker 1: to explain just merely like the mathematics of perspective and optics.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like what's being described here is something
Speaker 1: that you can actually find today known as a non
Speaker 1: reversing mirror, sometimes called a true mirror. And this is
Speaker 1: typically done by having two mirrors that are at a
Speaker 1: right angle to each other, and then having the subject
Speaker 1: stands so that they're looking at the at the vertex
Speaker 1: where these two mirrors come together. Uh. And so the
Speaker 1: way that actually works out is that the reflections of
Speaker 1: the mirrors are reflected in the mirrors at the angles.
Speaker 1: So what you actually see is your correct handed version
Speaker 1: of yourself. Yeah. Now, um, one of these other mirrors
Speaker 1: survives to this day, and we'll get to it in
Speaker 1: a bit. But as far as I know, the Great
Speaker 1: Perspective Glass either did not survive or there's no there's
Speaker 1: no artifact that is now own as the Great Perspective Glass.
Speaker 1: So I think it's just mostly speculation and exactly what
Speaker 1: this mirror might have looked like. But but I was
Speaker 1: looking around and I found that you had multiple optical
Speaker 1: devices at the time were referred to with the term perspective.
Speaker 1: And we also see this reflected in the work of
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare. Uh, there's a the for instance, the play
Speaker 1: Richard the Second. Uh, there's a there's a crucial scene
Speaker 1: that involves a mirror. But there's some there's some wonderful
Speaker 1: lines that refer to it. Quote for sorrow's eye glazed
Speaker 1: with blinding tears, divides one thing entire to many objects,
Speaker 1: like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon show us nothing but confusion.
Speaker 1: I to ride distinguished form. Well, I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: sort that one out. That that is complex imagery. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think Richard the Second has really been adapted
Speaker 1: as much, or perhaps has performed as much as some
Speaker 1: of the other plays. Um. But it looks like there
Speaker 1: was there was a recent performance of it that was
Speaker 1: filmed um in Britain that had what I think Daniel
Speaker 1: Tennant in it, playing the title role. But I was
Speaker 1: looking around online to find some some footage of that
Speaker 1: particular scene and I couldn't. I couldn't find it. So
Speaker 1: I have to admit it's not one of the Shakespeare
Speaker 1: plays that I'm super familiar with. I know, the movie
Speaker 1: adaptation of Richard the Third with Ian McKellen as Richard,
Speaker 1: and and it's got Jim Broadbent is a particularly bizarre Buckingham. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. Yeah, I fondly remember that one
Speaker 1: for sure. Now all of this reminds me of another
Speaker 1: reality about mirrors that I think underlines just how strange
Speaker 1: they are to us, and that is we tend to
Speaker 1: not really understand what we're looking at with a mirror.
Speaker 1: I know this is one of your favorite facts. This
Speaker 1: has come up several times. Yeah, I have brought this
Speaker 1: up before. Um, this is really interesting though. So back
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, a psychology study from the University
Speaker 1: of Liverpool judge that will tend to not really understand
Speaker 1: how mirror reflections work. Specifically, they don't understand that the
Speaker 1: location of the viewer matters and determining what is visible.
Speaker 1: So this study investigated people's perception and knowledge of of
Speaker 1: a planner mirror reflections. One researcher on this study, Dr
Speaker 1: Marco Bertamini, pointed out that the Venus effect is a
Speaker 1: great example of this. So um, the Venus effect. It
Speaker 1: basically works like this. If you consider the seventeenth century
Speaker 1: painting UH the the the Rugby Venus by Diego Velaquez,
Speaker 1: which you can you can look up if you look
Speaker 1: up a picture of if you just do a search
Speaker 1: for r O K E b Y Venus, you'll see this.
Speaker 1: It is uh a nude woman reclined on a uh
Speaker 1: sort of a bed and a cupid cherub type being
Speaker 1: is holding a mirror so that she can look in it.
Speaker 1: She's looking away from us, the viewer. She's looking in
Speaker 1: the mirror, and we the viewer, see her face in
Speaker 1: the mirror. And of course this this raises the question
Speaker 1: what is she looking at in the mirror. Well, we,
Speaker 1: as the viewer of this painting, we tend to assume
Speaker 1: she is looking at her own image. This is some
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, a contemplation of vanity or
Speaker 1: what have you. But if we can see her face,
Speaker 1: if you, the viewer, can see her face in the mirror,
Speaker 1: that means she's looking at your face. She's not looking
Speaker 1: at herself, She's looking at you. That's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would not have noticed. I initially saw this and
Speaker 1: assumed she was looking at herself. But absolutely we see
Speaker 1: her face directly in this mirror, and that means she
Speaker 1: would see our face directly in the mirror. Because I
Speaker 1: think the the optics term for this is that the
Speaker 1: on flat reflective surfaces, the angle of incidence of the
Speaker 1: light waves bouncing off is reproduced across what's called the normal.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine a line hitting the mirror perpendicular
Speaker 1: to the mirror surface. The angle of viewing relative to
Speaker 1: that perpendicular line is then reproduced on the other side
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. So yeah, that means if you can
Speaker 1: see their face, they can see your face. I want
Speaker 1: to read a quick quote from Burdamini here, uh in
Speaker 1: reference to this paper. Uh. He's quoted as saying, quote,
Speaker 1: mirrors make us see virtual objects that exist in a
Speaker 1: virtual world. They are windows onto this world. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, we trust what we see, but on the
Speaker 1: other hand, this is a world that we know has
Speaker 1: no physical existence. This is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: throughout history people have been fascinated by mirrors. I know
Speaker 1: this is something I've brought up before, but I think
Speaker 1: the fact that also helps explain why we mirrors are
Speaker 1: weird to us is that if you ever encounter a
Speaker 1: mirror in a video game, First of all, there's a
Speaker 1: very good chance that the mirror does not work. You
Speaker 1: know that it's just kind of a weird flat surface,
Speaker 1: and you might just in passing say, huh, I wonder
Speaker 1: why none of the mirrors in Silent Hill work. Is
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just because this is a haunted place and
Speaker 1: mirrors don't work here. Um. But of course the reality
Speaker 1: and I stink is quite complicated. This changes with the
Speaker 1: evolution of of of video game programming. But uh, it's
Speaker 1: my understanding that yet to create a mirror, Uh, it
Speaker 1: requires a great deal of work. And if you encounter
Speaker 1: a working mirror in a video game, it's essentially um
Speaker 1: the programmer showing off to a certain extent, right, And
Speaker 1: that in some of the older cases, at least, to
Speaker 1: create the effect of a reflecting mirror in a video
Speaker 1: game where you're you know, creature or being your avatar
Speaker 1: is reflected, they would have to actually reproduce that being.
Speaker 1: So they would have to do in the context of
Speaker 1: the game what a mirror appears to do in our reality. Right,
Speaker 1: So like across from the bathroom, you'd have a a
Speaker 1: chirality reverse reflection of the bathroom with the same with
Speaker 1: like a mirror image of your thing moving around in there,
Speaker 1: and you're just seeing it through windows. Yeah, as if
Speaker 1: the Yellow Emperor has punished this other being and made
Speaker 1: them stand in that little room and reproduce all of
Speaker 1: your movements. That's great. This may have changed. I don't
Speaker 1: know a lot about how video games work, but you
Speaker 1: hear the phrase when people are bragging about how cool
Speaker 1: the new video games and processors are, and all that
Speaker 1: they talk about ray tracing. I think that actually does
Speaker 1: have to do with simulating the pathways of rays of light.
Speaker 1: So maybe that would change how mirrors work in games.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yeah, it would make it sounds like
Speaker 1: like it potentially could, Yeah, because we would be talking
Speaker 1: about actually creating a virtual world with working optics um
Speaker 1: which which I think is often one of the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Once you start reading about how optics have worked, how
Speaker 1: lighting a room works in a video game, it gets uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's rather complicated, but fascinating and ultimately makes
Speaker 1: you rethink about how light works in our reality and
Speaker 1: how we perceive it to work. Right. Okay, So anytime
Speaker 1: we talk about an invention, we like to talk about
Speaker 1: what came before, what was there before the such a
Speaker 1: thing as an artificial mirror, And in this case, I
Speaker 1: think the evidence is pretty clear naturally reflective surfaces. So
Speaker 1: I was looking around at some papers about the prehistory
Speaker 1: of mirrors, and almost all authorities that I could find
Speaker 1: seem to agree that by far, the most common natural
Speaker 1: reflective surface for our pre technological ancestors would have been
Speaker 1: a very still body of water. Now, of course, not
Speaker 1: all bodies of water are are useful in this regard.
Speaker 1: Rushing rivers and ocean waves are not very reflective. But
Speaker 1: still bodies of water, quiescent bodies of water under the
Speaker 1: right circumstances can form extremely clear reflective surfaces. So these
Speaker 1: in the natural world might have been pools or ponds,
Speaker 1: or water collected in rock or clay containers. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was reading a paper about the the ancient history
Speaker 1: of mirrors by a scholar named J. M. Enoch, published
Speaker 1: in the journal Optometry and Vision Science in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand six. It was called history of Mirrors dating
Speaker 1: back eight thousand years and Enoch points out something interesting
Speaker 1: that that I didn't find anywhere else. He says that
Speaker 1: quote from approximately seven twenty two BC onward, Chinese characters
Speaker 1: for mirrors, known as Gion and Jing were best translated
Speaker 1: as a large tub filled with water. M interesting. This
Speaker 1: is a great point. Reminds me of a couple of things.
Speaker 1: First of all, obviously we have to acknowledge the myth
Speaker 1: of Narcissus uh in the Greek tradition, the what the
Speaker 1: mighty hunter who becomes captivated by his own reflection falls
Speaker 1: in love with his own reflection in the water. Right now,
Speaker 1: by the time that myth was floating around, there were
Speaker 1: already artificial mirrors, but just the idea of looking in
Speaker 1: a still pond and seeing your reflection, it's clear that
Speaker 1: is a phenomenon that goes back, you know, as far
Speaker 1: as as the history of the earth, and so this
Speaker 1: would have been something that was there was experienced by
Speaker 1: not just our human ancestors, but pre human ancestors. This
Speaker 1: also reminds me of the nineteen five Japanese anthology film
Speaker 1: that some of you may have seen, called Kaiden Um.
Speaker 1: It has a several different just very visual, almost psychedelic
Speaker 1: um you know, haunted sequences. One of them is in
Speaker 1: a cup of tea, and it concerns a ghostly reflection
Speaker 1: in a cup of tea, a reflection that doesn't match
Speaker 1: up with the real world, and I've always found that
Speaker 1: one particularly creepy. Well, think about how common mirrors are
Speaker 1: in horror movies. I think this is not a coincidence,
Speaker 1: And though this does play into it, I think it's
Speaker 1: also not just the fact that you can close a
Speaker 1: medicine cabinet door that has a mirror on it and
Speaker 1: suddenly reveal something that wasn't there behind you before. Though,
Speaker 1: that that's a big one. I think there's very clearly
Speaker 1: a natural anxiety people have about things they might see
Speaker 1: in a mirror that they don't expect to do, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And like a lot of old
Speaker 1: ghost stories concerned this. But but horror movies today are
Speaker 1: still reproducing this a fact, there's something behind your shoulder
Speaker 1: that you didn't expect to see their Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think A great short story example of this can be
Speaker 1: found in Stephen King's short story The Reaper's Image, which,
Speaker 1: from my mindy is just one of his absolute best
Speaker 1: best works. Uh. It concerns seeing something. It concerns a
Speaker 1: haunted mirror and things seen in a haunted mirror, and
Speaker 1: I have to admit I'm a sucker for a good
Speaker 1: haunted mirror movie. Um. The film Oculus comes to mind,
Speaker 1: which I think I've mentioned before, is a bit of
Speaker 1: a bit of a gut punch of a film. But
Speaker 1: but it really does some some fabulous things. It's been
Speaker 1: a long time I remember that one goes a lot
Speaker 1: more nuts than I expected it too. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: do some great stuff with like characters losing track of
Speaker 1: time and you really you really grow to hate that mirror.
Speaker 1: We we've spoken about films and what do you do
Speaker 1: with an inhuman adversary and how do how do you
Speaker 1: depict them as having like a Will and U and
Speaker 1: actually being an evil enemy in a in a film
Speaker 1: elm and and they were able to pull that off
Speaker 1: in Oculus, like you really you really hate that haunted
Speaker 1: near by the end of the film. Yeah. Now, I
Speaker 1: wanted to take a brief moment to uh, to do
Speaker 1: a digression on something that I just thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Which are some of the most amazing natural reflective surfaces
Speaker 1: on Earth, which are flooded salt flats. For example, the
Speaker 1: biggest salt flat in the world, the Solar de Uni
Speaker 1: in the southwest of Bolivia. This is actually it's it's
Speaker 1: a remarkable landscape. It's been used as a set for
Speaker 1: a number of films. I think there was a battle
Speaker 1: sequence set here in The Last Jedi Um. But if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen pictures of Solar de Uni, that's s
Speaker 1: A L A R space D space, U, Y, you
Speaker 1: and I. It is absolutely magical looking it and it
Speaker 1: calls to mind the you know, the Kenny Rogers song
Speaker 1: in the Big Lebowski I tripped on a cloud and
Speaker 1: fell eight miles high. There's just photo after photo. This
Speaker 1: is clearly a heaven for photographers and especially photographers who
Speaker 1: want to capture really psychedelic, unreal looking imagery. And I
Speaker 1: found a really good one that was highlighted on NASA's
Speaker 1: website that was taken by someone named Jason Wherta or
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's pronounced Jason's j h E I
Speaker 1: s O N where to And so a lot of
Speaker 1: these images show what looks like someone just standing in infinity,
Speaker 1: like someone just standing in the middle of a mirror
Speaker 1: that stretches to eternity in all directions. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: sky below, sky above, and then a person standing and
Speaker 1: possibly upon it, or standing in some cases standing upon
Speaker 1: the feet of their own reflection. And it can be
Speaker 1: difficult to tell which side is the reflection in which
Speaker 1: is the reality, right, and a lot of so the
Speaker 1: one highlighted by NASA is in the nighttime, but in
Speaker 1: the daytime, especially if there's a lot of cloud cover,
Speaker 1: you see all the clouds reflected in the in the
Speaker 1: surface of the of the salt flat, and it's just unbelievable,
Speaker 1: but it's so remarkable looking, mainly because it is so
Speaker 1: flat and shallow. This the Salt Flat covers more than
Speaker 1: ten thousand square kilometers, and yet its altitude varies by
Speaker 1: no more than a few feet across the entire plane.
Speaker 1: So when nearby lakes overflow during the rainy season, the
Speaker 1: Salt Flat will fill up with a very shallow sea
Speaker 1: of water. I think the depth is never more than
Speaker 1: than a few feet. In some places it appears to
Speaker 1: be only inches deep, and that means that it forms
Speaker 1: this gigantic, incredibly still puddle of water stretching for miles,
Speaker 1: and a very still puddle like that can essentially create
Speaker 1: a gigantic mirror, reflecting the sky all the way to
Speaker 1: the horizon, and in some places you can just walk
Speaker 1: on it like it's so shallow it looks like you
Speaker 1: are walking out over the mirror that goes on forever.
Speaker 1: So one thing I was wondering about is why exactly
Speaker 1: does water reflect images like this while so many other
Speaker 1: materials don't. In researching this, it seems like this is
Speaker 1: one of those questions that has a simple answer and
Speaker 1: a very complicated answer. And I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: stick with the simple one, at least for now. So
Speaker 1: the simple version is basically, all objects reflect light. That's
Speaker 1: how we can see them, right. You know, objects around
Speaker 1: you don't produce their own light. They're reflecting light from
Speaker 1: the environment, from the sunlight or from light bulbs. And
Speaker 1: what makes mirrors or mirror like pools of water special
Speaker 1: is the way they reflect the light. Whereas most objects
Speaker 1: tend to scatter the light they reflect in all different
Speaker 1: directions at once, objects that form mirror like reflections tend
Speaker 1: to reflect photons back in parallel instead of scattering them
Speaker 1: in different directions. Uh. And so you can explain this
Speaker 1: basically in terms of things like still water or mirrors
Speaker 1: being much smoother and flatter at the molecular level than
Speaker 1: other surfaces. And by virtue of being smoother and flatter
Speaker 1: than other surfaces, the light that reflects off of these
Speaker 1: materials stays organized in its original arrangement rather than being
Speaker 1: bounced off in all different directions and turning the signal
Speaker 1: into noise, turning the original image into just a blur.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a term for this in physics, in
Speaker 1: the physics of light. It's specular reflection versus diffuse reflection,
Speaker 1: so specular reflection specular means like a mirror, mirror like
Speaker 1: reflection versus diffuse reflection, which is the way most things
Speaker 1: reflect light, just kind of bouncing it all over the place.
Speaker 1: For a very rough analogy, you can kind of imagine
Speaker 1: you you line up a bunch of those tennis ball
Speaker 1: shooter guns. I'm not sure what those are called, but
Speaker 1: you have played tennis with one of those things. Okay,
Speaker 1: well they they've got them in some tennis clubs. They'll
Speaker 1: like shoot tennis balls at you and you can hit
Speaker 1: them back. Uh. So you take a bunch of those
Speaker 1: tennis ball shooter guns, you line them up in some
Speaker 1: kind of arrangement, and then you shoot them all at
Speaker 1: a wall. You can imagine how this would go. If
Speaker 1: the wall is extremely flat, the balls will probably bounds
Speaker 1: back in parallel in something close to their original arrangement
Speaker 1: as they were shot at the wall. But if you
Speaker 1: shoot them at a wall that is not very flat,
Speaker 1: that has a bunch of bumps and contours and different
Speaker 1: stuff poking out on it, they will just bounce all
Speaker 1: over the place. Now this might be kind of confusing
Speaker 1: because you can think of all kinds of objects that
Speaker 1: seem perfectly smooth, and yet you can't see your reflection
Speaker 1: in them, like a white sheet of paper. You know,
Speaker 1: your printer paper is very smooth, and while it reflects
Speaker 1: a lot of light, that's the you know, the white
Speaker 1: color coming off of it, it clearly isn't specular reflection.
Speaker 1: You can't see images reflected in it. So the main
Speaker 1: issue with surfaces like this is that while they might
Speaker 1: be relatively smooth at the macroscopic scale, at the microscopic scale,
Speaker 1: these surfaces are not actually smooth. Now, remember when you're
Speaker 1: when you're talking about light, the tennis balls you're shooting
Speaker 1: at the surface are photons, and so it matters is
Speaker 1: the molecular level. Uh Rabbi attached to picture for you
Speaker 1: to look at what paper looks like under a scanning
Speaker 1: electron microscope, and it is not smooth at all. Now,
Speaker 1: it looks like some sort of kind of like crazy
Speaker 1: fiber art or or you know, if you'll occasionally find
Speaker 1: homemade paper that that looks like it's barely usable because
Speaker 1: it's so rustic and rough, and you can see all
Speaker 1: the different grains and the you know, the the and
Speaker 1: the like the remnants of plants in it. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what this looks like. It looks like a tattered
Speaker 1: portion of I don't know, some sort of a bog
Speaker 1: mummy shroud. Oh yeah, yeah, that's very good. It looks
Speaker 1: like a million mummies all unraveled at the same time
Speaker 1: into a pile. And and and now you're using it
Speaker 1: to to print out your resume, yeah, or even a
Speaker 1: plate of noodles of some kind. It has that more
Speaker 1: of that appearance than anything like a flash sheet of paper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's made out of fibers. And and once you zoom
Speaker 1: into the level that would be relevant to how photons
Speaker 1: are reflected off of it, those fibers are incredibly apparent.
Speaker 1: But surfaces that produce a clear specular reflection tend to
Speaker 1: be very smooth and flat, even at the molecular level,
Speaker 1: so that they can again reflect those rays of light
Speaker 1: in parallel formation instead of scattering them all over the place.
Speaker 1: And uh, And I think it's interesting to observe how
Speaker 1: sometimes even smooth, relatively non reflective surfaces can start to
Speaker 1: display some amount of specular reflection when they become wet.
Speaker 1: So think about the way that something that is normally
Speaker 1: not doesn't have specular reflection at all, you know, a
Speaker 1: rough concrete surface or or black asphalt street, you know.
Speaker 1: But now imagine it's raining, and suddenly these surfaces becomes
Speaker 1: slick with with rain water they can start to turn
Speaker 1: into a kind of hazy mirror in the rain. So
Speaker 1: what we're left with here is that there are natural
Speaker 1: mirrors in the environment, mostly flat, shallow, stable bodies of water.
Speaker 1: And then there are also, you know, somewhat less clear
Speaker 1: but still at least partially mirror like phenomena that occur transiently, say,
Speaker 1: just whenever it rains and certain types of surfaces get wet.
Speaker 1: Even a normally non reflective rock surface can start to
Speaker 1: become a little bit like a mirror once it gets
Speaker 1: slicked with rain. So this experience of seeing reflections would
Speaker 1: go deep, deep, back into prehistory. But I guess the
Speaker 1: question we want to think as well. Okay, so a surface,
Speaker 1: a very still surface of a pool can show your reflection.
Speaker 1: You might see a very hazy reflection in a wet rock.
Speaker 1: But what is the earliest evidence we have of people
Speaker 1: intentionally making mirrors as a deliberate piece of technology. Because
Speaker 1: you with a still pool of water, you can't take
Speaker 1: it with you somewhere or hang it up on your wall.
Speaker 1: What are the earliest artifact mirrors in the archaeological record?
Speaker 1: And so what I found was that probably the oldest
Speaker 1: mirrors made by humans were obsidian mirrors. The the oldest
Speaker 1: examples of these, I believe, are still from Anatolia in
Speaker 1: modern day Turkey, specifically found in graves associated with the
Speaker 1: Neolithic settlement of Chattelhoyuk, which is an extremely fascinating archaeological site.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about it on the show a
Speaker 1: number of times before. A kind of proto city. Imagine
Speaker 1: a city without streets, with houses all bunched together and
Speaker 1: sharing walls that you would access through openings in the
Speaker 1: roofs of the houses and uh, and you got a
Speaker 1: very very interesting settlement with lots of cool stuff about
Speaker 1: that we can infer about their culture, religious beliefs and
Speaker 1: all that um, but also a very early site for
Speaker 1: the discovery of mirrors. So again I want to reference
Speaker 1: that paper I mentioned earlier by J. M. Enoch. Enoch
Speaker 1: writes that archaeologists have found graves associated with the region
Speaker 1: of Chatte Hooyuk from approximately six thousand BC s that's
Speaker 1: roughly eight thousand years ago. Uh in these graves contained
Speaker 1: obsidian mirrors. These mirrors were apparently made by takeing a
Speaker 1: piece of obsidian, grinding it down to a sort of circular,
Speaker 1: flat or more often slightly convex surface, and polishing it
Speaker 1: until highly smooth and reflective. And there's a picture that's
Speaker 1: reproduced in nux paper, reproduced in color, I think because
Speaker 1: it's so striking showing that in in full sunlight and daylight,
Speaker 1: this mirror from the ancient, ancient world still produces a
Speaker 1: pretty clear picture. Yeah, I mean, there is a certain
Speaker 1: darkness to it. It is quite literally a black mirror,
Speaker 1: but you see color in it, you see the you know,
Speaker 1: the details of the face. It is an effective mirror.
Speaker 1: It's uh, you know, it's if we were forced to
Speaker 1: use this today. Obviously there are certain places you would
Speaker 1: be able to use it. You can't imagine your dentist
Speaker 1: using an obsidian mirror to uh, you know, to to
Speaker 1: to look around in your mouth. But if you just
Speaker 1: had to use this in the morning, I mean, it
Speaker 1: could work. This kind of reflection seems like the sort
Speaker 1: of reflection you could theoretically like shave or apply make
Speaker 1: up to that sort of thing. Now, obsidian to refresh
Speaker 1: is a glass like volcanic rock formed by the rapid
Speaker 1: solidification of lava without crystallization. So it's found in places
Speaker 1: that have undergone what's called rhyolitic eruptions, so you can
Speaker 1: find these. You can find this occurring in various places
Speaker 1: around the world where there's quickly cooling lava. Humans have
Speaker 1: been drawn to it since prehistoric times, though obviously depending
Speaker 1: on where those humans are, they're going to have less
Speaker 1: or more access to it, depending on you know, what
Speaker 1: their their local environment is like, and how far they've
Speaker 1: they've traveled, and how how far they're trading. Now we
Speaker 1: know this material as obsidian. Uh. And this apparently, or
Speaker 1: at least this is what Plenty of the Elder points
Speaker 1: out that it was discovered by a Roman explorer by
Speaker 1: the name of obsidious, you know, whilst traveling in Ethiopia.
Speaker 1: Obsidia sounds like a pejorative adjective that I would have
Speaker 1: to look up, you know, like a like an eighteenth
Speaker 1: century document would insult someone by calling them obsidious. Yes,
Speaker 1: here's a quote from Plenty in translation obviously quote. Among
Speaker 1: the various kinds of glass, we may also reckon obsidian
Speaker 1: glass a substance very similar to the stone which Obsidious
Speaker 1: discovered in Ethiopia. This stone is of a very dark
Speaker 1: color and sometimes transparent, but it is dull to the
Speaker 1: site and reflects, when attached as a mirror to walls,
Speaker 1: the shadow of the object rather than the image. What
Speaker 1: does that mean, the shadow rather than the image. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is you know, this is one of
Speaker 1: those cases where we we have to read read into
Speaker 1: what plenties talking about here and assume that he might
Speaker 1: be dealing with secondhand or third hand information about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I guess it has to do with the sort
Speaker 1: of image you see reflected in Obsidian that it may
Speaker 1: it has a dark appearance to it, So I can
Speaker 1: imagine that being described as being Oh well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually reflect the image. It reflects the shadow of the image,
Speaker 1: you know, almost like it's this kind of like window
Speaker 1: into a ring raithed world where everything has this darker
Speaker 1: semblance to itself. Oh yeah, that's interesting. And I was
Speaker 1: wondering if it was possible that could be referring to
Speaker 1: the idea of the reversed handedness of the image in
Speaker 1: the mirror. But but then again, Plenty would have been
Speaker 1: familiar with mirrors. I mean they had mirrors by the
Speaker 1: Roman period with with other types of mirrors made from
Speaker 1: other types of materials. So he yeah, he would have
Speaker 1: been familiar with how mirrors worked and would have known
Speaker 1: that generally they reflect a you know, an image with
Speaker 1: reverse handedness. But there are several more things I wanted
Speaker 1: to note about the ancient Anatolian obsidian mirrors that are
Speaker 1: again brought up in that paper by Enoch. So one
Speaker 1: of the things is that he quotes a scholar named
Speaker 1: Dr James Connolly who's done work with with Chattelhoy in
Speaker 1: this region. Uh Connolly giving his opinion that quote their
Speaker 1: uses mirrors in the sense that a reflective surface was
Speaker 1: the functional surface cannot be disputed, So Connolly saying, there's
Speaker 1: no confusion about what this artifact is supposed to be. Clearly,
Speaker 1: this is a mirror used for looking in and seeing
Speaker 1: a reflection. Uh. So descriptions of some of these artifacts,
Speaker 1: Enoch rights that one specimen stands upright on a small
Speaker 1: flattened base, and the finest one was set into lime plaster.
Speaker 1: These mirrors were believed to have originated in the graves
Speaker 1: of females based upon the contents of the grave. Okay,
Speaker 1: so these are typically grave goods, more often associated with women.
Speaker 1: They they are sometimes set into a kind of stand
Speaker 1: or have some kind of holder or handle. And then
Speaker 1: also uh Enoch wrights quote. Obsidian objects were among early
Speaker 1: exports from Anatolia, and they were used for spears, arrowheads
Speaker 1: and knives, axes, scrapers, and jewelry. It is reasonable to
Speaker 1: conject sure that mirrors were also exported from there. Connolly
Speaker 1: suggests that the first shaping slash grinding of an Anatolian
Speaker 1: mirror surface was quite coarse. The surface was then polished
Speaker 1: with a fine grained material such as silt, and buffed
Speaker 1: with materials such as leather. Uh. And then I wanted
Speaker 1: to note another interesting thing I came across that this
Speaker 1: was just a note about the production of these mirrors.
Speaker 1: I mentioned already that the mirrors from the ancient world, Uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes we're slightly convex, So that would mean they're they're
Speaker 1: kind of like the mirror that you would use to
Speaker 1: see around the corner when you're making a blind turn
Speaker 1: on the road. Right, Like, they bend outwards so that
Speaker 1: there there are a cone that points towards you in
Speaker 1: the middle, as opposed to concave, which would be more
Speaker 1: like a bowl bending away from you. From your perspective,
Speaker 1: Convex is like a bowl upturned bending towards you. So
Speaker 1: why would they be a little bit convex? Well, I
Speaker 1: was reading an article in Archaeology Magazine by James F.
Speaker 1: Vetter called Grinding It Out that concerns these ancient obsidian mirrors,
Speaker 1: and it concerns experimental archaeology attempts to reproduce by hand
Speaker 1: these types of mirrors, given the the techniques and materials
Speaker 1: that would have been available to the ancient people who
Speaker 1: made them. And the interesting thing I wanted to notice
Speaker 1: in a is in a paragraph here that I'll just
Speaker 1: read from better quote. All of the mirrors produced good images,
Speaker 1: and all were slightly convex, as expected from manual grinding,
Speaker 1: in which linear and rotary motions result in greater pressure
Speaker 1: being applied around the perimeter of the surface. The only
Speaker 1: technical reference that I've seen to an obsidian mirror from
Speaker 1: Chattelhoyac states that it is slightly convex. With special preparation
Speaker 1: of a core and great care during the grinding process,
Speaker 1: one could probably make a nearly flat mirror with no
Speaker 1: obvious distortions in the image. So he's saying that if
Speaker 1: you are grinding and polishing an obsidian mirror by hand,
Speaker 1: it is just natural that the process creates a mirror
Speaker 1: that is slightly convex because of the way you're like
Speaker 1: polishing it with circular motions, you tend to grind away
Speaker 1: the outer edge more than you grind away the middle.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this started getting the gears turning in my
Speaker 1: brain because if you were living in a culture that
Speaker 1: did create artificial mirrors, but just as a sort of
Speaker 1: byproduct of the of the technical production process that creates
Speaker 1: the mirrors, the mirror you have is likely to be
Speaker 1: a little bit convex. Does this change something about people's
Speaker 1: self image within these cultures? The same way that our
Speaker 1: self image is distorted by the fact that all mirrors
Speaker 1: at least are basically all mirrors, reverses your handedness and
Speaker 1: gives you this inverted picture of your own face. Would
Speaker 1: people within say, an ancient Anatolian civilization that had slightly
Speaker 1: convex mirrors, think of their own faces as slightly convex
Speaker 1: compared to what they actually were. I don't know, just
Speaker 1: something interesting to think about and also, like you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to overstate this because again, these mirrors would
Speaker 1: not be extremely convex, just slightly convex, but still might
Speaker 1: have some kind of effect on on how people viewed themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to see what a convex uh,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a convex mirror and you want
Speaker 1: to see what your image would look like, they're just
Speaker 1: look at your reflection in the back of a spoon,
Speaker 1: all right. It would tend to kind of like magnify
Speaker 1: and distort the features in a in a somewhat strange way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it will make your your nose in the middle
Speaker 1: of your face look very big and the outsides look
Speaker 1: kind of like they're receding away. But it can also
Speaker 1: cause strange effects with say the perspectives of different objects
Speaker 1: being reflected at different distances from a convex mirror. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I think of you know you talked about
Speaker 1: a poem about mirrors at the beginning. I think of
Speaker 1: the poem by John Ashbury self Portrait in the convex Mirror.
Speaker 1: Do you know that one? I don't think I know
Speaker 1: this one? Now, Well, he's in this poem he's talking
Speaker 1: about a painting by Parmesanino of himself in a convex mirror,
Speaker 1: and uh and so Ashbury writes, as parmesan Nino did
Speaker 1: it the right hand bigger than the head, thrust at
Speaker 1: the viewer and swerving easily away, as though to protect
Speaker 1: whatever it advertises. So again, I imagine the effect would
Speaker 1: be small here. But but yeah, I like this idea
Speaker 1: that the different physical properties of mirrors could lead to
Speaker 1: different self image cultures. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I guess
Speaker 1: you would have to factor in like when mirrors are
Speaker 1: used and how they're being used. Are they being used
Speaker 1: casually by individuals just to see what they look like,
Speaker 1: or are they more the domain of like of priests
Speaker 1: and uh and religious authorities. Oh yeah, that's something I
Speaker 1: guess we haven't even really gotten much into so far.
Speaker 1: Is is the religious use of mirrors, which does seem
Speaker 1: to be well attested in the ancient world, mirrors as
Speaker 1: devices for divination or other forms of religious rituals. And
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about that, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to come back for part two, because we will
Speaker 1: pick up with more discussion of obsidian mirrors and how
Speaker 1: they they factored into practices in Mesoamerica and in the
Speaker 1: pursuit of divination. So come back for part two and
Speaker 1: you'll be under the eye of the god of smoking mirrors.
Speaker 1: That's right. And who knows what else we'll get into. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, eventually we're definitely going to get into metal
Speaker 1: mirrors and the sort of mirrors of that you know
Speaker 1: and love from the world around you or have come
Speaker 1: to despise and and see as umu as as perverse objects,
Speaker 1: so as as Bores did in that one poem. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then eventually I think we'll also get into some
Speaker 1: other examples of mirror psychology, like what what happens when
Speaker 1: we are subjected to mirrors? How does it change the
Speaker 1: way we think about ourselves or others? Uh? So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff to explore. We'll see, we'll see
Speaker 1: if we can fit it all into a into just
Speaker 1: a second episode, but this might be a topic that
Speaker 1: goes for a third episode or maybe even more, who knows,
Speaker 1: who knows infinite episodes like and you know, infinity mirrors.
Speaker 1: I'm down. Let's just keep buffing it all right. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of stuff to blow your mind. You can find them
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. We have core episodes on two
Speaker 1: season Thursdays, The Artifact on Wednesday's Listener Mail on Monday's
Speaker 1: Weird House cinemon Fridays, that's the episode where we just
Speaker 1: talk about some sort of strange and interesting film, and
Speaker 1: then on the weekends we have a rerun Gotta Catch
Speaker 1: the Ball. Huge Thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at
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