Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Mirrors

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writers/podcasters Halle Kiefer and Alison Leiby (‘Ruined’ podcast) for a look at why mirrors are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. Direct link to see a "mirror tunnel": https://drive.google.com/file/d/17PElhM1UnBl8I3V0V_lk4lszNECJ_xtR/view?usp=sharing

Hey folks, it's Alex. This is episode number 43 of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. So from now until episode 50, you know, that big milestone 50, I'm running our biggest ever membership drive. Also, great news like right away, because we already hit our first membership drive goal. We are only two weeks into this drive and we're already knocking down goals. That's amazing. two weeks into this drive and we're already knocking down goals. That's amazing. Because we hit that first goal, every backer now gets community posts about all the fun stuff you're doing and gets more power to pick topics for the shows and can get a personalized video message from me on top of all the existing benefits of backing the show. You can go to sifpod.fun for full details on all of that. Also, you can go to sifpod.fun if you want to back the podcast,

because you'll get a huge pile of bonus shows right away. You'll get even more stuff as we hit even more membership drive goals, and you'll be someone who makes this entire podcast possible. I am thrilled our first goal is knocked out. The next goal is digital art, a special poster commemorating all 51st episodes. Details on that poster and how you can join the membership drive are at sifpod.fun. And in the meantime, enjoy this new episode. Mirrors. Known for being reflective. Famous for being breakable. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun.

Let's find out why mirrors are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two new guests on the show today. I am so excited to be joined by Hallie Kiefer and Allison Leiby. And Hallie and Allison are making a wonderful new podcast. It is called Ruined.

The idea of the show is if you cannot handle horror movies, and I cannot really handle most horror movies, they share what happens in the movie with you, so you don't need to see it. And they do it in a very funny way. There's great segmenting to make it work the absolute best it can. I think it's an awesome podcast, and I think you should check it out. And Hallie and Allison are also just very funny. Hallie Kiefer has been a writer for Vulture, MTV, Vox, True TV, to name a few. And then Allison Leiby is a stand-up comedian. She's also a writer for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She's also written for The President Show and for The Opposition with Jordan Klepper and for many, many other funny shows. I'm so glad Hallie and Allison took the time to do this. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like

native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Hallie recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Allison recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples, and acknowledged that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about mirrors. And thank you to Luke Andrew for that great suggestion. It's one of the poll winners for the month of May on the Patreon.

Mirrors are so universal, right? I'll bet you can look at one right now, whether you're driving or you're in your home or you're walking past the right business, you know, barbershop, clothing store, I don't know what. They are all around us. We rarely think about them. So please sit back or chant Bloody Mary into a mirror if you want to get freaky. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Hallie Kiefer and Allison Leiby. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Hallie, Allison, thank you so much for being here.

And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about mirrors? Go ahead, Hallie. I mean, I'm sure you have so many strong mirror opinions. I guess I feel like, you know, I'm trying to think about my personal opinion mirrors i feel like personally i'm neutral on it i feel fine about it i do think there's a odd phenomenon i haven't moved to los angeles last year where um everyone there's like a the in the bedroom on the closet there's a mirrored door which i find peculiar uh which i don't think i didn't notice as much when i lived in new york so i do that's

an la thing yeah i feel like a misplaced mirror is is awful but i will say you know i'm thinking about it as somebody who loves horror movies i was sort of thinking about the horror of the mirror um you know in movies like candy man or um you know oculus and i do love the mirror as like a source of horror because there is something bizarre and surreal about seeing yourself and and being able to analyze your face and also the concept which i forgot about i literally googled mirrors just to see if i forget about them but i was like what about What are they? Your Google history is like so weird. They're like, would you also like to Google steps? Listen, that's the next episode.

But about how like mirrors, you're seeing the reverse of your face. Like what you're seeing is the opposite of what people see when they look at you, which is also a very bizarre concept. So I guess I have complicated feelings on mirrors allison what do you feel about them i mean similarly uh i think i'm like neutral on the idea of mirrors existing you know i don't like i'm like great like we need i just don't think i look it at myself very often like i don't, I have mirrors in my home and you pass reflective surfaces, like when you're out in the world, but like zoom as which we are on now, like, I've just like, I have like a newfound hatred for just staring at my face that like now, like it,

it just looks so bad on zoom, like just technical, like it just is never going to look good that like now when I see myself in a mirror, I'm like, Oh, okay you're fine that wasn't real this is real this is like some kind of awful permutation of like what my face looks like and then in a mirror I'm like okay that's the face I know right really I never thought of mirrors as an upgrade over the zoom self-view that's fantastic yeah yeah they're way better I'll happily pre-pandemic, I would have been like, oh, standing in the mirror, like looking at myself. And now I'm like, I would kill to see a mirror and not a screen. Yeah. And then also, Haley, what you're saying about horror movies, you two make a great podcast called Ruined, all about horror movies. And

I can't watch them. So I really enjoy experiencing them that way. They're too much for me. Understood. But this topic was a patron pick. And then also with you two coming up, I was like, oh, people who think about horror movies, the perfect people for this. Yes, absolutely. They're just such a trope of maybe it's because they're fun for directors. Directors are like, I can storyboard the heck out of this mirror. Very exciting.

Maybe that's why. I don't know. Yeah. I also think we've talked about this on the pod where I feel like doppelgangers are like bored the the heck out of this mirror very exciting maybe that's why i don't know yeah i i also think uh we've talked about this on the pod where um i feel like doppelgangers are like an endless source of um uh horror fodder and there's something about the idea of like yourself in the mirror what is the self in the mirror another you that is very scary but there's also like scary about the idea of like if we didn't have mirrors you'd be able to see everyone else's face but not your own which also seems wrong yeah i don't want to live in that

world so it's like that's horrifying it's like you could see everyone's face but to your own face would be a mystery i don't know there's oh god so i'm glad they exist in that way yeah i'm glad i also do like like specifically bathroom mirrors provide like one of my favorite, like, movie gags or something. Like when somebody is like washing their face, and they like go down to like splash water, and then they like, look back up and there's somebody behind them. Absolutely. Which is like, so great.

Yeah. It's such a great device. Yeah, we... It's really fun. We saw the trailer for The Nun before another movie. I forget if it was a mirror or just a turning the corner but they did that thing of like someone glances at their watch or whatever and then when you look back up there's ultimate nightmares immediately yes either something being there or something no longer being there which is also like a scary like where is like

oh yeah i want keeping eyes on things is pretty important and that a little later we'll talk about some history of mirrors i i like that we're already thinking about like if you didn't have mirror access it would be it would be weird to not know what you look like in general yeah um it's sort of like i i'm sure you've done an episode on this but sort of like how you don't think about it but then it's sort of like i i'm sure you've done an episode on this but sort of like how you don't think about it but then it's like oh yeah for a lot of human history like there was music but it was just whoever was in your town making music and then like at a certain point you are then able to access recordings of like all sorts of different music by like professional

musicians you just been like what the hell like what i was looking at and i guess it's sort of similar to like before you had access to mirrors you're just like i guess when there's a puddle you can look at it but like that's a fleeting yeah uh you know you don't have that every day you know like a metal tray right you can see yourself but a large elaborate turkey dinner would be on um for a king right yeah you don't get to eat it, you're presenting it, and then in the glimmering silver you see yourself, and you're like, ah, today I am a king.

That's what history was like, right? Yeah, that's history. That seems pretty accurate. I like that it's like the joke on the popsicle stick when you're done, like, once we eat this whole turkey we'll know what we look like. Pretty great. Yes, exactly. Real bonus.

Well, we got a bunch of stuff about mirrors here. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about a topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that's in a segment called Stats Be in the Corner. Stats be in the spotlight. I'm using long division. Gorgeous. Thank you. That name was submitted by Dustin Decker. We have a new name for it every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Because now we have some stats and numbers about the world of mirrors.

And the first number here is 8,200 years old. Wow. 8,200 years old. And that's the age of the oldest man-made mirrors that we know about. Wow. They weren't great, but they were an attempt. And they're from around 6,200 BC. I, like, can't wrap my head around what civilizations were around then.

Like I, like what point, what part of history is I'm like, it's not ancient Greece, right? Like what's like, or, you know, that's obviously just like a very specific Western thing to point to, but like, Oh, who was, what were their countries yet countries yet no i think there were a lot of civilizations popping off you know yeah i think there were people yeah i was just thinking recently like i took a class in high school called western civilization and i'm like you know it would have been nice to learn about all the other civilizations right you know in china or or wherever that where people were you know you already had. You had a lot of stuff

going on at a certain point. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I guess that's a good question. Like, where were we? What other technologies were we having? Yeah, I was going to say, like, what else existed when the mirror was invented? Yeah, because that seems like that's one of the first things we would have developed as a mirror. Like, anytime we could make something, we would make a mirror. Narcissistic.

Listen. As I say narcissistic, narcissists, obviously like natural mirroring in water. So we are doomed to constantly be obsessed with our own reflections. Yeah. And it is that thing where we always had bodies of water. And then this time is around when the first sort of actual civilizations start up. This time is around when the first sort of actual civilizations start up. And those mirrors from 6200 BC are in what's now modern Turkey.

But they were just pieces of obsidian that they polished a bunch until you can kind of see a reflection in it. Wow. Even though that's very dark. I mean, I want that kind of mirror. Yeah, I want a giant obsidian disc. Hell yeah. Sounds awesome. I want that kind of mirror. Yeah, I want a giant obsidian disc. Hell yeah. Sounds awesome. I want that in my house. Really, if you put the right frame on it and upcycle it, you know, that's big bucks.

Yes. All I see on TikTok now is people doing that with like end tables and stuff, you know, like let's do that. Yeah. Mirrors go retro. And then and some other mirrors shortly after this time, the ancient Egyptians made mirrors out of polished copper. And there were also inventors in ancient China who developed mirrors made from polished jade. So the early mirrors are all like, what metals and rocks do we have that we can just elbow grease into being reflective? So glass didn't exist yet, probably?

Yeah, how old is glass? That's a good question. How old is glass? I don't know. I'm dying to know. How old is glass? How old is glass? Google it. Okay.

Or unless you know, Alex, I didn't want to. No, I don't have a number or anything, but it was definitely not the thing that was easy to make or the thing people were using for mirrors. Now, again, this is the first thing that comes up on Google, so take that as you will. So they say it's about it's about 5 000 years ago but i think you know to the point of using what you have is i i mean this might not be like the kind of glass you could use to make a mirror like right right you got glass for you

know storage or something but it might not be like that transparent perfect glass we have now yeah you know so it makes sense like i gotta rock i need to see myself i'm gonna have somebody like polished a million times wow yes i guess mirrors are older than glass mirrors are older than glass that's a fun little right cocktail party fact to spew out at people when we're still learning how to talk to humans again i know i can't wait my first my first cocktail party out i'm gonna be telling that you'll be like so i was googling mirrors but then i asked how old is glass everyone shut up already shut up mirrors are old like glass that's gonna be me i burst into my first party everyone's like who is that

right you weren't invited. You don't know these people. You just came and went. Yeah. I'm going to be like that candy man. I'm going to come in through the bathroom mirror. I'm just going to kick it out from the back. Well, also the source for this ancient stuff, it's an article from Smithsonian.

They do mention in it that the Greeks and then the Romans had some version of glass mirrors, but apparently they were very tiny. And like you're saying, Hallie, there's like a range of glass quality. I'm thinking at times I've been to like colonial Williamsburg pioneer type stuff where there's weird glass containers and you can't see through them. You know, there's like,

there's a lot of that kind of glass early on, I'm sure. Because glass is hard. I don't know. I don't know how to do it glass is hard no it makes sense i mean you have to like light sand on fire or something yeah heat it to burn my hand yeah forget it yeah i'm not doing that i want to look at my beautiful face i don't want to burn my beautiful hand what am i gonna do come on i'm not doing that right. And the next number here, this is 18 to 24 months. That's a range of 18 to 24 months. That's the approximate age when a human baby can recognize itself in a mirror. Wild.

Wow. So they can see themselves earlier. But according to developmental psychologists and researchers, that's when babies start to say, oh, that's me. You know, not with those words, probably, but there you go. I'm like 37 and I'm still like, who am I? I'm like, who is that? Who is that? What am I looking at?

Is that my mother? I do like watching pets try and figure out if that's another dog or just the same, or you, or just the same dog. The same dog I am. I do like that. It's very fun. I don't have children or anything, but I guess even younger babies kind of do some of that pet thing because National Geographic is a source for it. But they say that before 18 months, a baby might smile at its reflection or like make sounds at its reflection. But we're pretty sure they usually don't know that that's them. And also,

I guess there's a test that people do in studies to see whether a baby can recognize itself, which is they watch for it to like touch the top of its head or touch its nose or, or like touch something you can't just see from your eyeballs. Cause it's not in your field of vision as like a way to check that makes sense yeah it's interesting because like i imagine and that that's like age range where a lot of kids aren't necessarily fully verbal so you can't just ask them like you know

that's you you know like you have to approach it some other way and try to intuit it's like are they doing that because they know that's them or are they just babies and they're like i gotta do something i don't know yeah pointing and laughing and right being a baby right they don't talk like i wish stewie griffin wasn't the first thing i think of but they don't talk like that they don't you and me both brother yeah but yeah it is interesting to think of like the concept of recognizing yourself and understanding what that means. It is a very sophisticated thought for a baby to have. Yes. Considering they're anxious.

Now I'm shocked at how young we are able to recognize ourselves. We're very smart. Good for us. Yeah, we're doing great. It is pretty good for one and a half i'm into it yeah and the uh next number here is a very different number it is 18 tons uh so 18 tons is how much glass it takes to build one mirror for the giant magellan telescope oh oh i forgot also that mirrors do other things. That makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Science mirrors. Science mirrors. Space mirrors. I always forget that telescopes are not just some kind of magic magnification thing. It's a bunch of mirrors, it turns out.

Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, I forget. Mirrors have, like, other... That's how we, like like can see far away. And this, I hadn't really heard of this telescope before doing the research, but it's being built by like world astronomers on a mountaintop in Chile. And it's going to have 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope when they finish it. Wow. But it's a set of, it's going to be seven mirrors. They make each one of them by melting 10,000 slabs of glass

in a furnace that's over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is over 1,000 Celsius. And it takes one week to preheat the furnace. And then when they finish, it's going to be these seven giant mirrors. They just finished mirror number six. So we're most of the way wow to this cool telescope i see more space i feel like it's exciting yeah i feel

like that reaction gift that people always use um with uh monique where she's like i would like to see that i would like to see that i would like to see this telescope i'd like to see how big it is i want to see the telescope i want to see the oven they make it in i want to see the telescope. I want to see the oven they make it in. I want to see the space. I want to see more space. What can I say? And then send Elon Musk there and he can stay there. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll add Popular Science Link for

there's a laboratory at the University of Arizona where they cast these mirrors and it takes enough energy to heat over a thousand homes just to run this furnace to make the mirror, because that's what they're doing. That's how big it is. See, I'm like, is that worth it?

That seems like, well, I mean, that's the eternal question with space technology. It's like, I guess the truth is we could be doing both. It's within our reach as humans to do both. We just don't want to do both. But instead, we're choosing only space and nothing for humanity. I hope they see something good. They better. They see, like, just a really well-heated home.

Yeah, and they're like, oh, great idea. Well, and from here, those are the stats and numbers. We have three big takeaways for the episode, and I think we can get into them. Starting with takeaway number one. Most modern mirrors are either white or light green. Oh, okay. Like if you took a mirror and said, what color is this? With like paint swatches or whatever, it's one of those colors.

How do they know that? You know, we say mirror mirror what are we talking what are we talking about the glass or the thing behind the glass or the frame or the what are we talking about it's like is it sometimes how like when i turn like a piece of glass like if you see it from the side it looks like it's green is that green it probably is yeah it's and that's that's a perfect question about like is it the glass or the backing or whatever this is the white part is because of just how mirrors work and how our eyes work. And then the green part is because of the backing on most modern mirrors. Okay.

So when we say mirrors are white. I know. This is what I'm getting hung up on. What are we perceiving? Because if I looked at a mirror, I'd be like, oh, in my mind, it's either silver or something like that, or it's just the color of whatever is being reflected. So when you say it's white, what is measuring that? What is looking at a mirror and saying white? Does that make sense?

Totally, yeah. I did not study a ton of optics and physics in school, but I've come to this later on and it's all optics stuff. Okay. The white part is because of just like the basic way we see color, super short version, is that light is made up a lot of different wavelengths. And then those sort of line up to specific colors. specific colors. And so when light touches an object, that object absorbs specific wavelengths and then reflects the rest of them. Like all objects do this. And so whatever gets reflected back to us is what color something is. And so mirrors are kind of white because they're reflecting everything. Like when you see black, that's no color being reflected. When you see

white, that's all of the colors being reflected. Okay. So it's sort of a conceptual white, like it's a special white in that way. Okay. I trust you. I believe you. I trust. Yeah, I believe that. I choose to believe you. Yes. I will accept that as an answer. Yes. I accept it as an answer. It's a thing that i always have a hard time wrapping my head around because i just think stuff is colors right like it just oh it has pigment or whatever in it so it's that color but it's all how your eyes and brain are receiving light that's crazy yeah it's like don't they have that uh it's like some kind of shrimp that could see like colors beyond like 19 colors that we can't perceive and it's like it's just because it's eye is able to take in

different um yeah i don't know what the word for it something along the light spectrum that our eyes cannot we don't capture which i'm like i want to see that i want to see it what do the colors look like what are these other 19 colors yeah what does that mean man what does that mean i'm like what could there what's more i've seen all the colors no man there's more there's more yeah and that's that's a shrimp i've never heard of this that's amazing yeah here i'm literally doing shrimp that can see more colors also like what a waste that it's like a shrimp which like they just live underwater and there's just like less going on down there but i guess maybe that's why they can see it is because it is so dark they have to pick up more variation it's called a mantis shrimp and they have 16 color receptors compared to humans three color receptors um what's funny

is while they can see more colors they're not going to distinguishing between the colors but they can detect another property of light invisible to humans, which is polarization. So do with that what you will. Well, that's something. I love the idea of scientists saying they can see a lot more colors, but they're bad at

it. They're bad at appreciating what they get. Man, I feel for those mantis shrimp where they're like, listen, we're just doing the best we can. Yeah. Just because I can do it doesn't mean I'm good at it. Someone needs to help me. They're like a flustered person looking at interior decorating stuff.

Like these swatches do not mean different things to me. I don't know what to do. Yeah. This is a dumb anecdote. I remember I was like, did student government in college and I had to help plan some sort of big dinner. And I was with somebody and they're like, we'll do this and this and this. And then afterwards, the president, vice president of the student government was like, Hallie, you did a bad job because you did not prevent this person from making all these terrible decisions that look horrible. And government was like, Hallie, you did a bad job because you did not prevent this

person from making all these terrible decisions that look horrible. And I was like, first of all, I don't have good taste. So I didn't know. Second of all, I'm very sorry because it is bad, but it was just like someone who is so assertive that I was like, oh, I guess maybe I just don't understand what looks good. And then afterwards I'm like, yeah, this looks really bad, but they came with such confidence that I was convinced like, well, I guess that's what it's supposed to look like. Do you remember what was bad about it? What went wrong? It was like this very, they went with instead of like sort of like maybe a simple like a flower, you know, whatever, centerpiece.

It was like all this very kitschy like Christmas Santa stuff. I was like, okay, like a like christmas santa stuff where i was like okay like a very like john waters christmas or something but like not like in a fun like if john waters did a christmas party i mean my god we'd all be that would be the best thing that would ever happen like we were shopping at menards and this person was just buying like all this like really like cheap cheesy stuff i don't know I'm like, yeah, this does look like insane. This looks like Santa threw up in here. But again, he was like, we'll do this, this.

I was like, oh, sure. You know, what do I know? Yeah, I'm a doormat when it comes to people who are confident. And I'm like, I don't know if I agree, but you seem to know. So, okay. If somebody comes at me with confidence, I'm like, I don't know if I agree, but you seem to know. So, okay. If somebody comes at me with confidence, I'm like, you must be right. Cause. Oh yeah.

Just having that faith in the confidence of others. Like that's probably a signal. Right. Yeah. Right. And it's only later where you're like, well, that confidence meant nothing. That had nothing to do with what we're doing. Based on nothing.

I mean, to have that kind of confidence, I wish. If only. If only. Well, also with mirrors being white, there's one other way they are white, which is that not only are they reflecting all of the light, but apparently there are a couple directions light can be reflected in. One of them

is diffuse reflection where it gets scattered in all directions. And that's what happens with like a white piece of paper, right? Like you don't see a reflection in it. It's just bouncing all the light, all the places. But if something does specular reflection, it reflects the light in one specific direction. And that's how you get a mirror. That's sort of the, that's why a white mirror shows you and a white piece of paper is just nothing. I had no idea. Okay. Turns out. Yeah, no, I, yeah. I don't know how any of this works. I've heard it. I've heard it. And I still don't know if I know it yet.

I'm as dumb now as I was minutes ago, but I feel like at least I have the leg, the language to discuss it. Yeah. I'm letting it wash over my brain. I'm hoping some of it sticks. Some of it should stick. Just like mirrors are white. I'm going to be like, did you guys know mirrors are white? Everybody's going to be like, stop talking. I think I can say

mirrors are white and they'll say, well, what does that mean? And I'll say, um, I gotta go and they'll just open the window and just walk out of the fire escape. And they'll just open the window and just walk out of the fire escape. The other thing about their colors, so a lot of mirrors are a faint green color basis, like the one over your bathroom sink, are composed of a soda lime silica glass substrate and a silver backing. All right.

I'm imagining Sprite for some reason. Soda lime. Soda lime, yeah. All right, so mirrors are Sprite. Got it. Yeah, you want to obey your thirst when you look at a mirror. Yeah, obey your thirst. Look at a mirror. It's like green or white maybe we don't know um and i just i just dropped a picture in the chat here because you at home don't need to know what a soda lime silica

glass substrate is the point is that what happens is if you build what's called a mirror tunnel which is multiple mirrors reflecting back at each other. So you get that sort of illusion that it's an infinite series of mirrors. If you do that and you look into kind of the distance of the reflections, like the far away ones, they turn more and more green as you keep looking. And we'll have some examples of that like in the description of the show. Because it's a really cool, weird thing that you can see if there's like a mirrored hallway or dance studio or something yes yeah i feel like i've seen that but just never never occurred to me why it would be happening yeah i was always like oh it must be kind of green in here it's green in here it's green in here

green here today green yesterday it's like that that aesthetic from the matrix like oh everything's a little bit green that's why i'm in a simulation yeah everything looks like the net i feel like that's back i feel like that that kind of that like aesthetic is people are nostalgic for it yeah no thanks we had the first time enjoyed it then that's enough that's enough for me and uh and also this is this is a phenomenon people had like noticed and then in 2004 two professors one is javier hernandez andres of the university of granada in spain the other is raymond lee jr of the u.s naval academy some reason, the two of them teamed up on a study of mirrors to check this. And they did find that mirrors reflect light a little bit more powerfully if the wavelength is in the range between 495 nanometers and 570 nanometers, which is what we

perceive as green. So there's also been a scientific study to check this. And it's just like the way we make mirrors today is good at green. That's why they look a little green. Interesting. Thank you, science. Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast The JV Club with Janet Varney Is part of the curriculum for the school year Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Allison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman And so many more is a valuable and enriching experience One you have no choice but to embrace Because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. But then from here, I think we can go into takeaway two for the main show. Takeaway number two. But then from here, I think we can go into takeaway two for the main show. Takeaway number two. The first modern mirrors were luxury items that revolutionized philosophy. Okay. So this is about the point in history when we get like awesome mirrors, like when we're past just polishing up metal the best we can.

So what time period would that be happening? Yeah. So there's a would that be happening? Yeah. So there's a couple sources for this chunk. One of them is Smithsonian, another is Longreads, and then also a piece in Lapham's Quarterly by historian Ian Mortimer. But especially according to Smithsonian, they say that there's a specific year. It turns out that in 1507 AD, mirror makers in Venice figured out a revolutionary new way to flatten out glass and also use tin and mercury to make startlingly clear mirrors. They also have mercury in them,

so they're not good for you. But they figured out a good way to do it that had never been done before. So what effect did this have on the philosophy then, if these are suddenly now more widely available? Yeah, and this is all kind of a big theory, but I just really like it. And this is historian Ian Mortimer, who is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK. But he says that these first really good glass mirrors mark a crucial shift because they allowed people to see themselves properly for the first time with all their unique expressions and characteristics. He says that those like polished metal mirrors only reflected about 20% of light. And then suddenly like

starting in one point in the 1500s, Europeans were seeing themselves basically as well as we see ourselves. And the theory is that this helps like invent individuality. Like it really helped push the idea of you're not just one of many people in a household or a community or a religion. You're, you're a specific person who looks a specific way. Well, you know, the thing I like about philosophy is you don't have to prove that it's real, you know, you just throw it out there and have people like, oh, okay. i do feel like it's sort of downplayed the fact that like we've always been able to see ourselves in water or other liquids but i guess to your point that's not like that's like if you're doing something you'd see yourself versus a mirror you could always just like take time and look at

yourself yeah do different things in front of it different faces i have i feel like there's a sort of like right now like this idea of like oh body positivity or or sort of trying to distress people's physical appearance but i feel like um the internet just does the exact opposite so it's sort of like it reinforces these very stringent physical standards at least i feel a way as a woman and i feel like if you're a young person, it's probably doubly true. So it's almost like if you suddenly have access to a mirror, are you also more critical of yourself and both of your appearance or just in general? Then you would have been if you didn't necessarily think about your appearance that frequently. Right.

If you couldn't scrutinize it by constantly looking at it. Yeah. That's probably true. I don't have any answers to that. No. Yeah. Solve it by like constantly looking at it yeah that that's gotta that's probably true i don't have any answers to that but no yeah yeah solve it hallie fix it well the thing i said is true and right so okay well that you are a philosopher yes um it's almost like your phone's a black mirror oh wow they should make a show they should make a show. They should make a show. Love to stop having a phone. We should smash our phones.

Throw them into a river. Smash all these mirrors. Yeah, and I meant all that. I think especially you can see yourself in a pond for all of history. But, you know, the water's moving. You don't own the pond. And it's just a very different experience. Yeah're not gonna be there all day i guess that's what narcissists is about the idea like people who you know and there is such like all these like historical and like i don't know like these rules against like vanity or whatever and it's nowadays just seems so quaint

i don't know like man there's a lot of other problems like i understand it's like yeah you don't want to be having people be fixated on their appearance but if that's what they if that's the worst thing they're doing there's a lot of other stuff going on yeah that seems way worse other things are super way more harmful yeah i'm gonna say this i don't know that i've ever seen my reflection in water yeah wow and allison why do you think what do you think that means i don't know i don't mean like a swimming pool. I mean like a pond or a lake or something. Like how a vampire camps? Yeah, sure, yeah.

So you're asserting that because you haven't seen it, you're concerned you might not have. Do I have a reflection when it comes to water? No, I think I've just like, despite the fact that I love water and spend lots of time in and around it, ponds and lakes are like low level, like not. Yeah, you're not in those every day. Ever.

I would say maybe ever. Swimming pools, the ocean, rivers that are moving water, like you don't really see your reflection in. But like a flat, quiet pool of water that's a pond. I don't know that I've experienced that. I guess now in our busy modern life you know when's the last time anyone's got to stare at a reflection in a pond you know for hours on end that is something that capitalism has taken away from us yeah you know um my boyfriend has a

toddler and uh all all toddlers must do he was obsessed with peppa peppa pig peppa pig peppa pig yeah and peppa because she's british it has a british accent which so all kids his age speak with a little bit of a british accent which is very cute but they um whatever big things is wanting to splash in muddy muddy puddles and you put it on your rain boots and splashing in puddles so i feel like because of that i've just seen a bit aware of a lot more puddles you're looking down into the puddle they can see themselves and good maybe that's also like a developmental thing it's like you know because he's like three yeah seeing yourself in a puddle like i i don't know it's just like i see your point where it's just like you're not hanging out by a reservoir a lot that's just not your vibe yeah no that's just not it's not part of my life it's

not part of my routine but also we don't have to we live in an age where you would never we could buy mirrors versus it yeah we were if it was you know the you know middle ages my god people there's a puddle everyone runs over and looks themselves everyone running down the street trying to look at the puddle yeah everybody get to the puddle get trying to look at the puddle. Yeah, everybody get to the puddle, get in line, look at the puddle. That's probably really true with the Middle Ages because these sources say that before this invention of modern mirrors, mirrors in the Middle Ages were pieces of blown glass. They were really small. They were usually convex, bulging outward, sort of dome shapes, not concave or flat. So it was incredibly hard to see yourself in what passed for a mirror then.

It must have been thrilling to have like, oh, that's a still pond that doesn't have too much poop in it. Let's go look at ourselves. Yeah. There's not, the pond isn't full of horse shit yet. Come, run down here. It's interesting. It's like, were you more reliant than in uh then i get this is totally speculative but it's like were you more reliant on other people's

reaction to your appearance if you didn't know what it was you know like if ever because i mean i'm sure back then there were like a couple hot people in the village and everyone's like oh well like the good looking people yeah you know it's almost like that's how you would know like oh i must be hot like everyone's acting like i'm hot you would know, like, oh, I must be hot. Like, everyone's acting like I'm hot, you know? Yeah. I guess you would have to have, like, a best friend who, like, just told you exactly what you looked like. But were people doing that in the Middle Ages? Like, were people, like, you know, brutal honesty is the way.

I think they were more like a bear is eating the village or whatever, you know? I think I have leprosy. I don't know. Yeah. And also, like, there were just less people. village or whatever you know we gotta i think i have leprosy i don't know yeah and also like there were just less people so there were less references for like oh you look like you know more a tyranny like i don't know like you look like nicole kidman right now you look right who's that she's not gonna be alive for another thousand years but yeah you have like

a couple saints and no one agrees what they look like. And then that's it. And all those stories are just like getting cut off your boobs, being burned alive. You know, horrible. You're like, well, that's cool. You know, so. Yeah, you're right. I guess like the like the idea of church, too, and I being Catholic is sort of like the church is a place where you would see beauty or like, yeah, there'd be wealth around you.

And it's like i guess like the mirror as a symbol of wealth as well because like i'm sure not everyone was getting a mirror you know for a long time it's like oh well the rich can see themselves no mirrors were like early iphones you know yeah right did you see that she's a mirror? They're like, so I've got some stuff here. Mirrors were like, it's like if your iPhone was worth more than your house. That's what mirrors cost when they were first really great. That's crazy. You haven't seen my house.

Yeah, right. It's made of iPhones. Because the first, this was Venice where they did this 1507 leap in mirror making. And so it was new technology. It was sort of a trade secret in Venice. And also they were made with toxic chemicals. So a lot of the guys would die. And so then that's the production expense. But long story short, according to Longreads, the best Venetian mirrors early on had a price tag of 8,000 pounds. Wow. And for comparison at the time, a painting by the Renaissance master Raphael cost about 3,000 pounds. Yeah, I would just have somebody paint a picture of me every day.

That makes more economic sense. Yeah, a couple paintings. Yeah, do it. Yeah, a couple paintings. Yeah, do it. Yeah, and these mirrors, they were so expensive. It was the kind of thing where royalty at the time would brag about owning more than one. And there's also a letter people have found that was written by a European countess in the 1600s.

And she said, quote, I had some wretched land, which brought me nothing but wheat. So I sold it and bought this fine mirror. End quote. Like it was worth property. Wow. Selling land to buy a mirror. Also, you think that's a great thing. People always eat wheat.

Yeah. Like a bread. Back then. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what she wanted instead. But she was like wanted a mirror yeah right yeah that's that's a rich person's letter for sure like this has no rubies in it it just has crops i'm gonna get rid of it wild and then the the last steps of like a european mirror

development is that basically throughout the 1500s and mid 1600s, the Venetians hold onto this secret. And then the technique spreads because the French send a bunch of spies. And after a lot of espionage and counter espionage, the French get ahold of it. They figure it out too. They build the hall of mirrors at Versailles in 1684. And then from there modern mirror making kind of spreads because now it's not just one secret one place yeah i do like once they got the technology they just build a big you it's just like entirely of mirrors yeah i love that yeah when the it's it's almost hard to get in the heads of these people as like the best new mirrors came along.

But the theory goes that they just started seeing themselves as individuals more clearly. Like this historian Ian Mortimer says that in the 1500s, as mirrors spread, you start seeing a lot more personal journaling and diary keeping, a lot more people like tracking their birthdays and their horoscopes closely, also a lot more private rooms and homes. And then also artists get way into self-portraits at this time. Like the artist painting themselves becomes a thing, even though that probably would have been like kind of rude before. Like you're not a king. Why are you painting yourself?

Yeah, that's an interesting point. So it's hard to nail it down, but it's a mental change that is like just very different than how we think. I believe it. Yes. Yeah. I buy it. Yep. It tracks.

Thank you. Well, I would say thank you, mirrors, but I guess there's a trade off to everything. Right. And then we have one more takeaway for the main show. Let's get into it. Takeaway number three. Mirrors have incredible psychological powers if we use them that way yeah it's kind of two different tricks you can play on your own mind with a mirror one of them is the bloody mary type

incantation chanting thing and then the other is some medical technology for people with phantom limb so we got a couple okay oh yeah i feel like the bloody mary thing is is is great because it really speaks to the power of superstition in people's minds where it's like i don't believe in bloody mary but i'm you know i'm just gonna err on the side of caution and and not not try to evoke her spirit no need to tempt possess me fate no i'm good but um yeah i always think of um temple grandin one of her books i want to say it's like animals in translation and she talks about how like pigs are very intelligent and they're very superstitious and they i guess they've done studies and her

example was like if a pig put it but they put these pigs in these like different um corrals and then if it got close enough to a sensor a treat would come out um so it didn't have to do anything but whatever the pig was doing when it made the treat come out it would then do every time so if it was turning in a circle and the treat came out then the pig was like ah i must turn in a circle if it was hitting the wall or whatever it's like oh it's the wall and it speaks to like that part of ourselves where it's like i don't really know but i'm just gonna do this and then it gives me a sense of control and i thought that was an interesting that like the animals are doing that they're like well you know it worked last time so i'm just gonna do that because i'm able to put together a pattern and sort of think about

it and i guess bloody mary it's like listen i don't think a ghost will show up and kill me right but i you know i haven't done it before and yet i've yet think a ghost will show up and kill me right but I you know I haven't done it before and yet I've yet to have a ghost show up and kill me and so I'm gonna stick to the pattern that I've developed for myself and I had heard of phantom limb um but uh so I'm imagining they they use the mirror to sort of train your mind to essentially retrain your mind to remember you don't have the limb there anymore because you can see it. Is that the idea? Yeah, is that what it is? Yeah, let's I'll do and Bloody Mary. I want to just zip through real fast, partly because one source is a great podcast called Super Duper Stitious by Jake Withey and Wyatt Schell. And I don't want to step on them too much, but

that and Mental Floss and Scientific Americans say that there's just a couple psychological reasons we have that experience when we say Bloody Mary into a mirror. And one is something called the Troxler effect, which is a phenomenon where if you stare at the same object for a prolonged period of time, your brain adapts or gets used to the unchanging stimuli and then starts to cancel information out, which makes the image appear blurry or faded or distorted. It's almost like your your mind gets bored, and just starts to either not see it anymore or change it. And so that's one of the main reasons if you stare at a mirror for like

a long time chanting stuff, eventually you see stuff. Yeah, I feel like that's why we like every culture has like the idea of like fairies or like little people or like other creatures. We spend a lot of time just hanging out and just I feel like your brain's like, is that a guy? I think I saw it. I don't know. Is that a guy? Hey, I think I saw a little guy. Oh, cool.

There's like a guy here. You know, I think we've had a lot of time on our hands. The normal person. Maybe some people are really busy, but, you know, you spend a lot of time by yourself you know just a lot of stimulus and your brain's like what if yeah yeah yeah trolls or whatever let's give us something to do sasquatch yeah what if sasquatch what if what if sasquatch what if yeah because the because the other big reason is is almost what if that was a guy it's it's that we the super short version is we're just predisposed to see faces and stuff. You know, like there'll be that picture on Reddit where, hey, this outlet looks like a face.

Ha ha ha. That's kind of us with everything. And so as an image changes in front of us, we're like, is that an old spooky woman or me? Or I don't know. It could be anything. Is that a ghost coming to possess me? Is it a rabbit or a duck? Depends on how you look at it. Is that an old lady or a beautiful young lady?

Well, good or bad. I wish Bloody Mary was just famous optical illusions appear in your mirror. That's really fun. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. It's a vase. Wait, great wait no no it's two men kissing isn't that what the isn't that what the inverse or two people kissing no no i like yours

i wish i saw that in my mirror good for them yeah good for you guys just looking at your mirror kiss kiss kiss well and the and then the phantom limb part of this, the main source is an amazing New Yorker article called The Itch by Atul Gawande, which is mostly about people with incredibly chronic itchiness problems. It's a whole psychological issue. Oh, I think I've read that one. It's really tough. It's harrowing. Oh, God.

That's awful. Yeah. A thing that pops up in it is that that's one condition that they've looked at for what's called mirror therapy. And it's kind of what you were describing before. It's using a mirror to help people handle the psychological situation in a phantom limb situation where a limb is missing. According to Gawande, the theory goes like this, quote, when your arm is amputated, there are no nerve transmissions anymore to your brain. And the brain's best guess seems to be that the arm is still there, but it's paralyzed or it's clenched or it's beginning to cramp up, end quote. And then from there, your brain says, if my arm is

paralyzed or clenched or cramping, that should hurt. That's the thing that I signal this with. And so the mirror treatment is you just set up a mirror. So if you have somebody who's missing one arm or one leg, you just set up the mirror so it reflects that remaining limb a second time. And then our brain has to incorporate the new information of seeing two limbs. And that is surprisingly helpful for this, this pain of a phantom limb. Okay. Interesting.

Like, you know, you're lying to yourself, but your brain goes with it, you know? Okay. But you can trick yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess. So it's like, you could think that you could relax your hand or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. I wonder,

yeah. I wonder how they did or who had the idea to try that yeah because i feel like that's like a well might as well we got a mirror yeah so it's at low stakes see if we can trick you as opposed to probably like medical intervention yeah especially apparently a lot of other treatments for this kind of phantom limb thing or other issues or stuff like surgery and so if you can just set up a mirror yeah it's like nerves amazing yeah that's yeah that's wonderful it's like a very elegant less invasive yeah yeah i like when there's a simple solution to things and not a terrible procedure okay for this one i'll say thank you mirrors i feel i feel good about that. Yeah, for this, thank you, mirrors.

And also Gawande's article says that this idea is mostly credited to V.S. Ramachandran, who's a neuroscientist at UC San Diego. So that's one of the first people to figure this out. There's actually like a person we can thank along with the concept. Oh, great. Yeah. Shout out. I love that. And they've continued to use this with people with phantom limb. There was a 2018 review of the literature on it found that mirror therapy has been an effective treatment for phantom limb pain.

In one study, they tried it on 22 patients and all 22 of them saw positive results from trying this mirror therapy. Oh, wow. It seems to really work as a thing. That's great. Good for mirrors. Yeah. Coming through on a pitch.

That's nice that they're doing something good. Yeah. And then the further cutting edge is they're starting to test it on other issues. The article says that in Bath, England, several patients were suffering from what's called complex regional pain syndrome, which is severe disabling limb sensations of unknown cause. And they generally found that mirror therapy was helpful for that. Also, mirror therapy helped stroke patients recover from what's called hemi-neglect, which produces sort of the opposite of a phantom limb. Like you have a body part, but you don't know that it's part of your body anymore. That's how your mind is processing that.

So there might be a whole range of conditions that are what's called sensor syndromes, where there isn't something wrong with your body, just there's like a sensor going off in your brain saying there is. So it's cool that just reflections can trick it. Yeah. Interesting. your brain saying there is okay so it's cool that that just reflections can trick it yeah it almost feels like um you know it's like returning to some sort of medieval science where it's like i'm just gonna use a mirror it'll fix this and it's like but it actually works yes which is really i don't know it's very satisfying yes yeah yeah i guess there was a whole era of medicine when it was like oh you have you have a problem? What's in my garage?

What's in my house? Yeah. Hold on to this piece of wood. I've got some oils. Just drink these oils. Carry this piece of wood around. Yeah. And now that's Gwyneth Paltrow.

Oh, God. Yeah, don't let her know all this stuff about mirrors, man. Yeah, don't tell her about mirrors. She's going to be selling a mirror worth 8,000 pounds's for sure no question man yeah i will we'll take this down as soon as it's up everyone listen to it and then we're taking it down like she can't see it don't tell gwyneth paltrow do not tell her do not don't tell her about i'm gonna mail this in unmarked brown packages to the listeners right she? She can't know. Can you mail sound? Yeah.

I think you can. I think you have to pay extra for shipping, but yeah, you can mail sound. Stamps.com will help you mail your podcast to your listeners today. folks that's the main episode for this week my thanks to Hallie Kiefer and Allison Leiby for handling the spooky topic of the reflective surfaces around us anyway I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly

fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus show is two stories. I could not choose between these. We're talking about animals who can see themselves in mirrors and people who've used mirrors to illuminate the earth. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show for a library of more than three dozen other bonus shows and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring mirrors with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, most modern mirrors are either white or light green. Takeaway number two, the first modern mirrors were luxury items that revolutionized European philosophy. And takeaway number three, mirrors have incredible psychological powers if we let them. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests.

They're great. Hallie Kiefer and Alison Laibe co-host Ruined. Ruined is a podcast from Radio Point. You can just search that name, Ruined. You will experience horror movies the very funny, very not scary way. And I think if you love horror movies, it's like also fun because it's two incredibly funny friends getting into the bones of a horror movie and how it works. I use bones for a lot of stuff, but I guess that's extra spooky in this context, isn't it? Anyway, Ruined is the podcast hosted by Hallie Kiefer and Allison Leiby. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones.

A great article in Gizmodo. It's called What Color is a Mirror? And that's by Robbie Gonzalez. Another great article from Longreads, it's called The Ugly History of Beautiful Things. That is by Katie Kelleher. And then a big long piece from Lapham's Quarterly. The piece is called The Mirror Effect. And that's by historian Ian Mortimer, who is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK.

Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love the kind of double bonus show in this week's bonus show and thank you to all our listeners I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating

so how about that talk to you then Thank you.