Burned from the Mind’s Eye, Part 1

From the VHS horrors of “The Ring” and claims of psychic photography to cutting edge research into neuro technology, humanity continues to wrestle with the notion of the mind’s eye. In this two-part Stuff to Blow Your Mind exploration, Robert and Joe dive into the mystifying world of the mental image.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's October. So we're continuing
with our Halloween spooky, ghostly kind of theme, and today

(00:23):
we wanted to explore a somewhat ghostly topic that ties
into neuroscience to stuff we've talked about recently on the
Invention podcast with the history of photography. But before we
get into that, I wanted to start with a question
to kind of orient us here, and that question is,
what is it that makes somebody skilled at an art
like realistic drawing or realistic sculpture. I should say, by

(00:46):
the way, I am not skilled at this at all.
I cannot draw realistically for the life of me. In fact,
when I tried to draw pictures of people, it's the
it's a source of great amusement to Rachel. Oh yeah, yeah,
I'm in the same way. I can. I can draw
a pretty mean goblin, but um, I can't really draw
a human. My my son, who seven, is already a

(01:09):
better that better artist when it comes to depicting actual
human beings than I. But but obviously so, a huge
part of what's going on here is is practice, right,
you gotta learn techniques. But another part of this I
think could just be thought of as some kind of
motor power of translation. Like how do you take an
image represented in your brain and it's in your brain

(01:31):
either way, whether you're currently looking at it or calling
up out of a memory or an imagination. Either way,
the image is coming from your brain, and then it's
being translated somehow through a series of hand motions into
a physical object in the world, whether that's a sculpture, painting,
or drawing. Like, there's some kind of skill there that

(01:51):
I think remains ineffable to us. It's mysterious. Sometimes it's
even kind of spooky because we don't understand what's happening
with that translate process. But what if there were no
translation process? What if there were no way for clumsy
arms and hands and failures of technique to impede the

(02:12):
physical manifestation of what you've got in your mind's I
what if we could just project the objects of the
mind's eye directly onto the physical world. Would such a
thing be possible, and if so, would such a power
be in a way terrifying, sort of godlike in the
worst and most ancient sense. Ah, and here you're getting

(02:33):
into the uh, the Halloween aspects of this topic. This
is the reason that we have decided to approach this
during the month of October, exactly because this power does
show up in horror fiction. One place that you might
have encountered it is in the books or the movies. Uh.
There have been several different series at this point, but
The Ring, the story of The Ring, the the scary

(02:55):
ghost girl who can print media with her brain. You
can psychically print images onto photographs or onto the wall
of a barn, or onto a videotape. She can just
make a videotape without filming it, just straight out of
her mind's eye. Of course, this is played up for
horror in the film, and I I sort of stand

(03:17):
by taking it in that direction. I think if anybody
actually had this power, it would be horrifying, and it
would be it would be a little irritating to everyone
who's has put a lot of time and effort into
honing their craft. Right. Um, so it's possible. You're you're
familiar with The Ring via Gore Rabinski's two thousand and

(03:37):
two remake The Ring. This is where I saw it
for the first time too, but you also may have
seen it by watching the original Japanese horror film directed
by Hideo Nakata. This came out, and I severely hope
that if you, if you did see the original Japanese
version back in the late nineties, you watched it on

(03:58):
a crumb a dubbed VH tape because that would be
most appropriate, right, because either way, if you haven't seen
the movies or read see The original Japanese movie was
also based on a book by by Koji Suzuki, but
in any case, the story is about a cursed videotape
that is made by this ghost girl. She uses the

(04:19):
psychic power of projecting her thoughts directly onto media to
make a videotape that kills the people who watch it. Yeah,
a curse video tape containing disturbing It is basically a disturbing,
surrealistic art video kills you in seven days. So there's
kind of a uh what do you call it in
medicinal terms? Uh? Delayed react effects effects. Uh. It takes

(04:43):
that along to work through your system, you know, time
to release. Sometimes artists like that it's time released. You go,
you want to see it at the museum, and you're like,
I don't really know what what I how I feel
about this or or you know, how I think about
this piece and how it relates to me, and then
seven days later it kicks in and you die with
a weird look kind of fist. But yeah, this is
basically an update of a very old notion, right of

(05:05):
a haunted object, or of haunted media. Only instead of
a dark and magical book, instead of something like you know,
the Necronomicon or you know the Book of sand or
any of these other treatments, we have a dark and
magical video recording and it unleashes a world of terror
and death. It's an inherently compelling idea. In horror, I

(05:25):
think actually some piece of media, whether it's a book
or now a movie, I think there there's some There
are Stephen King's story with like a painting that kills
you or something. There's the representage horror, and it's one
of one of King's best short stories. I highly recommend.
I agree. Maybe that is what I was thinking of.
That is a fantastic story. Um, but yeah, I mean,

(05:47):
obviously the idea of like a a work of art
or something that cannot be experienced without cursing or killing you. Yeah,
that's scary. It's also fertile ground for any kind of
metaphor that the artist wants to sew about, you know,
about art itself. And and art does have an effect
on us. I mean there's an old episode of Stuff
to Blow your Mind where Julie and I discussed Stendahl

(06:08):
syndrome and some of its related uh alleged syndromes. You know,
it deals with the reality that, yes, sometimes great works
of art, uh, you know, with great works of art
with appropriate priming, uh can overwhelm us, can have a
physical reaction on us. So uh, you know, it's it's
not unrealistic. Um. Yeah, you know. I want to say
about the gor Verbinsky remake of The Ring, Well, I

(06:31):
don't inherently love the idea of just like American remakes
of foreign films just to sort of americanize it because
it had only been like a few years since the
original film had been made at that point, right, and
they americanized the heck out of exactly. But at the
same time, one thing I will defend about it is
it is a very um visually imaginative film, Like it's

(06:53):
got great creepy abstract imagery in it. Oh yeah, great,
great visuals, great performances, uh in, wonderful special effects. Uh
That remake I remember really had an effect on me.
Was the last time a horror film like made me
sleep with the lights on? Uh? So I look back
fondly on it for that reason. However, I have to

(07:15):
say certain aspects of the film stuck with me and
others I kind of forgot about. Like some of you
might be like, oh, yeah, I guess that girl did
write video tapes with her mind like that I kind
of forgot about. I also kind of forgot that it
had this that it's essentially adoption sploitation horror not the
only country, yeah, basically, yeah, basically because the whole idea

(07:36):
is that this this couple that adopts this child, and
the child is troubled, and I forgot that she was adopted. Yeah.
So you know, I have a very uh queasy attitude
towards that kind of horror at this point in my life.
For sure, totally. But but still, those are the things
I tend to forget about it. I remember, you know,

(07:57):
those scenes with Samara um iimbing out of the television
with the creepy walk where they think they filmed her
backwards and then made it go forwards. I remember, I
think Hans Zimmer did the music, and it's very effective
horror music. Um. And then on and then on to
the On top of that, you have some great performances. Uh.
Did you ever see the sequel? I didn't spoil it all.

(08:18):
I saw it in the theater even um and I
don't recommend it, but but no, it's a it is
a film that is still both films are considered classics
in their own way, and I think they earned that
that reputation just if nothing else, by just scaring us
so terribly and really connecting with our relationship with media.

(08:41):
And at that time it was it was dealing with
the VHS and uh and and and how we were
connecting with with this kind of you know, physical media.
And I should say also you know, getting into that
idea of finding weird things, finding weird footage. And at
that point it was most of us through like tape
trading or I guess to a certain extent, downloads, but

(09:01):
I definitely remember, uh, you know, ordering up like weird
dubs of the Japanese laser disc of say um El
Topo or Holy Mountain, and there was this weird you know,
like you do. You have not really sure exactly how
this got to you. You know, what are the hands
that dubbed it from this format to this format and
then re dubbed it here and then finally it's in

(09:23):
my hands. I think that is actually one of my
favorite types of story forms for horror is the the
creepy found piece of media. I can remember one of
my favorite horror short stories I've read in a long
time was won by Laird Baron. I think it's called
Mysterium Tremendum, where the narrator of the story you just

(09:43):
finds this travel guide and I think some weird use
bookstore or something, but it turns out to be a
nefarious sort of magic travel guide that leads to very
dark places. So yeah, I love that nowadays though, and
and maybe they do this so I think maybe they
did this in one of the recent Ring movies. It's like,
essentially it's gotta be on YouTube, which takes the punch
out of it because it's like you have the dark media,

(10:05):
but then the dark media is on an even more
um deplorable social media you know, bummer format. But it
also takes away the ironic distance that makes the horror
fun because YouTube just will melt your brain and kill you.
It doesn't, it doesn't need any like horror upgrades. The real,
actual YouTube is just waiting to destroy you at the moment. Yeah,
though it is, it is kind of comforting to think

(10:27):
that that all the commentators at the bottom of the
Ring video, then YouTube died seven days later. So, like
the guy says, w TF is disreal? Yes, is real.
As long as we're just talking about the Ring, though,
the American remake, we should point out again that that
cast is tremendous. Um talking about Samara. Her mom is

(10:49):
played by Shannon cochrane who plays who played Pam's mother
on the Office, and then her father is played by
Brian Cox, the legendary Brian Cox. Brian Cox of my
favorite actors of all time. He he kind of makes
the movie and in the the the the young actor
playing Samara herself. I don't know if we said Samara
is the ghost Girl, the ghost Girl, she's Samara and

(11:10):
the American version, and she's Sadako in the Japanese version,
so that the name changes. But anyway, in the in
the in the remake Devey case Chase, I hope I'm
saying her name right. Uh. This actor played Samara, and
she also voiced Lilo in Lilo and Stitching, the Disney
film about the you know, the the alien visiting Hawaii.

(11:31):
Going to her IMDb page is hilarious because I found
out she also is the girl in the Sparkle Dance
Troupe in Donnie Dark. And she's the voice of the
main character in the in the English dub of Spirited Away. Ah. Yeah,
the Minazaki film great. Okay, So, first of all, the
idea that Samara can create a surrealistic film that she

(11:53):
can pour like all the the nihilistic, misanthropic visions in
her head into a videotape and make it so potent
that it can kill people, either just through the sheer
power of the art or you know, probably through some
sort of supernatural um you know whatever. Uh. That's a
really cool trick and one that I would think could

(12:13):
have been put to much more profitable use. Um, Like,
why isn't there a sequel where like the U. S
Military ends up acquiring Samara, Like that would be great
because since she ends up killing all the like the
evil mk Ultra gate dudes, it basically rights itself. But
sort of a crossover with The Ring and Stranger Things
would have been yea. Now to to go a little deeper, though,

(12:34):
I think in a way this concept really really works though,
Like you can think of any creative endeavor, especially filmmaking,
as an attempt to bring that ideal image, that mental
image in your head into the world, and of course,
for a number of reasons, we generally don't succeed in
pulling that off. And part of the reason, of course,
is that is that the idea in our mind is

(12:54):
rarely as fully formed as we think it is. I
think that's exactly right. I mean an experience so I
definitely have when writing. And I think you've said you
have this before, is I don't necessarily know what I'm
going to write until I start writing, Like if I'm
writing a scene in fiction, you know, like that it's
the process of writing that helps bring out the content. Yeah, exactly. Uh,

(13:15):
you know in other issues coming to play as well,
in the final version perhaps feels a bit lacking, So
you know, you can forgive a lot of us if
we we we wonder, you know, imagine how perfect it
would it would have been if you've been able to
simply beam your vision directly onto a video tape. You
don't have to worry about casting it where you're gonna
film all your weird art, film your artifacts. How are

(13:37):
you going to get that that chair to go upside down? No,
you can just beam it directly onto the onto the
tape um. And so maybe the power then of your
vision would be so pure and uncut that it would
just literally slay people. Well, I like that, But on
the other hand, I mean, I think it's sort of
trying to imagine. This highlights the unreality of what it

(13:59):
is you're trying to imagine. I mean, I feel like
our image of the thing we want to create is
never really fully formed, even when it seems like it is.
I wonder if even people who have extremely vivid mental
imagery can actually see a full completed painting that they
haven't finished painting yet, uh, and and not just sort

(14:20):
of like see glimpses of little bits of color and
shape that that ultimately add up to something concrete and
finalized once you've you know, translated it through your hand
movements into that painting. I kind of doubt that people
can actually see a full painting that they haven't painted yet, right,
And maybe we may be part of his linguistic you know,
like we we might tend to say a sculptor might say,

(14:43):
I see the horse trapped in this block, and I
wish to free it. I'm just going to remove all
the pieces around the finished piece that I envisioned within it,
within reality. It's more like I see the inspiration for
the thing that I am going to create. Yeah, a
kind of fuzzy, low resolution suggestion of the thing that
you will create. Yeah. And then comes the hard work.

(15:03):
Then comes the talent, uh, and the skill. One more
one more thing about the ring, and then I'll I'll
mostly let it go. But ultimately, what is the message
of this film. It's It's seen because basically the whole
plot is, oh, this these tapes are killing people. Why
is it killing people? Oh, it's because of this little
girl that died. And then they go on this question like, oh,

(15:23):
well we can set her spirit free, she'll be happy
and everyone will be saved. And then you realize, oh, no,
that doesn't work, because she can't be saved. She's just
evil to the core, and everybody's gonna keep on dying, right, Well,
but they do figure out a way to get around
the curse, which is just keep passing it, keeps spreading it.
So right, if you spread the curse to more people,
she won't kill you. Yeah, when basically the plot of

(15:47):
of it follows as well, right, But but ultimately in
the Ring, well you only get temporarily spirit and it follows, right,
But then I think in the Ring they acknowledge what
happens when like you know, that did it might come
back to them as well. But maybe that's in the sequels. No, No,
I think that was it was kind of at least
hinted at in the first book. Yeah, I don't really
don't trying to think about the sequels. But but ultimately,

(16:09):
like the messages, don't try to help people, don't try
and fix the world like everybody's gonna do. That's so
just so bleak and nihilistic. Maybe it's just too bleak
and nihilistic for me now. It's the kind of thing
I would have loved when I was younger. But but yeah,
that's such a harsh way to land it. Isn't it. Yeah, Um,
it's not an inspiring story on close examination. But but

(16:30):
I do still stand by a lot of the visual
imagery in the film, which I think holds up really well.
And Brian Cox is just an absolute treat absolutely. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break when we come back.
We're going to move on from just discussing the ring
in general, and we're going to discuss this this thing
that she is supposed to do, this idea that a
mind could somehow imprint an image on something or in

(16:55):
something or in like on tape or on film. Uh.
And it's gonna be one of these top that I
think you know, draws in from a number of past
episodes of both stuff to blow your mind and invention.
Thank alright, we're back. So we're exploring the topic of
psychic photography, or just generally being able to print the

(17:19):
mind's eye into some manifestation in the physical world without
going through any kind of normal motor translation process like
drawing with your hand or explaining a mental image with
your mouth, just printing the mind's eye directly onto film
or onto a piece of paper. Yes, and this is
a topic that if you're if you're already thinking, well,

(17:40):
that just sounds silly. Um, we'll hang with us, because
you know, ultimately, I mean, I think it's pretty safe
to say this is not actually occurring, This is not
a power that human beings actually have. But but by
looking at it and considering, like how we get to
this point of thinking that it's possible in some cases,
uh you know, what it reveals as about our relationship

(18:02):
with our own mind and considerations of our own mind
and mental states, as well as our understanding of photography itself. Yeah,
this episode made me keep thinking back to the series
on photography that we did on our other podcast, Invention,
which if you're not subscribed yet, go subscribe to Invention.
That's right, it's a journey through human techno history. And
oh yeah, we did a whole series on photography, also

(18:23):
stuff before photography, like the camera obscura, and then also
on motion picture technology afterwards. And really, you know, we can't,
uh you know, overstate the degree to which photography change
the world. It changed the way we thought about the world,
how we thought about ourselves. It gave us new metaphors
for uh, you know, thinking about our own minds and

(18:45):
how we're perceiving the world and uh also arguably made
the modern celebrity possible. Uh So we can lay that
crime at its feet as well, but it also lent
itself well to a number of pseudo scientific ideas and
ultimately downright occult notions about what photography was and what
it might capture. Well. Sure, because if you are, say,

(19:09):
somebody who is adamant that there is a type of
reality that we can't normally see, a very commonplace to
go to try to find bits of evidence of that
reality that we can't normally see is some kind of
objective recorded media. I mean, I think about the people
who do e VP ghost recordings electronic voice phenomena. Again,

(19:31):
this is not something that I think is real evidence
of ghosts, but a lot of people think, Okay, you know,
I take my tape recorder to a haunted graveyard and
I just leave it going, and then I play it
back and in through the static and the rustling in
the wind, I hear voices saying things. If I can
be psychological for a minute, I think what's mostly going
on is that drawing from objective recording media like that

(19:53):
allows people to generate the noise into which they can
read a signal, yes, And of course photogra raphe when
it was new, provided a whole new way of doing
something like this, right, And then other technologies that were
coming out around, you know, in the same era, we
also had the X ray, which we also have an
episode of Invention about which deals with invisible um, you

(20:14):
know processes, you know, invisible rays, an invisible world and
and also was a big game changer and how we
we thought about reality. Sure, so I was reading a
little more about this, and I ran across a two
thousand five book titled The Perfect Medium by Shiro at
All and it it gets into the intersections between the

(20:34):
occult and photography, which are numerous, numerous, but the author's
point out that they generally they generally fall into three categories.
First of all, photographs of spirits, in which a spirit
entity shows up in the photograph. I think we awph
movie with the examples of this, uh uh. And then
another is photographs of mediums in which the spirit medium,

(20:55):
which is a you know, human like as someone who's
leading a seance or something, is doing something supernatural. Okay,
so it might be like a photograph that shows that
during a seance, this medium was levitating, or that this
medium during some kind of session, was generating ectoplasm, right,
And that's the next one, photographs of fluids And and

(21:16):
this one is interesting because the obvious subject matter here
is exoplasm, some weird substance emerging from the individual, and
in reality it's generally wet sheep's cloth or something like that. Uh.
And it's easy to just think of this as ghost
slime and a ghostbuster's fashion. Maybe we should explain ectoplasm
just a little bit more so. It was this phenomenon

(21:37):
where a medium would claim that they can generate some
kind of physical manifestation of the spirit world that shows
up when you take a picture of them in the dark. Maybe, uh,
and it would yeah, so it would look like some
kind of weird cloth or slime beside their head or
on their body, like like a big like mucus something

(21:57):
like don't even generally it just looks like some it
a weird mucacy cloth they got slimed. Yeah, slimber exactly.
I mean, that's where that comes from. But it's also
a bit more more complex in the society. You know
that the fluids in these photographs as sharrow and I'll
point out, you know, it's dealing with this the idea
that you're capturing a sense of the vital force, the soul,
the thoughts, feelings, dreams, etcetera. All of this directly captured

(22:20):
on a photographic plate without the use of a camera
in some cases. So it has a strong connection to
what was going on at the time and observation of
X rays and radioactivity. They point out that in France,
so Luis darg and others quote, sought to photograph their
own vital energy or thoughts simply by placing their fingers
or foreheads on the censusized plate, despite numerous refutations by

(22:43):
scientists who demonstrated that the traces thus obtained were no
more than photographic artifacts arising out of the experimental conditions themselves.
Attempts to record human fluids continued throughout the twentieth century,
and so this these fluids would not just be like
blood or something. That would be these the spiritual fluids. Yeah,
and it gets beyond just like mere fluids and into
also things like horrors. Um. So in other words, and

(23:07):
the people still do photographing as absolutely, that's like big business. Yeah,
So you know, in other words, in the midst of
all this what was essentially future shock, you know, uh
at this emerging technology and the hidden worlds exposed through
X rays. This idea of capturing thoughts through photography carried
a fair amount of weight, no matter what the science
said and is still saying about it. So the author's

(23:30):
point to to uh to a couple of examples, one
of which is the work of Simion Kurlean in the
nineteen forties. Uh. Kurlean, of course, is where we get
Kurlean photography. He lived nineteen seventy eight, and it's the
process in which an image is obtained by the application
of a high frequency electric field to an object so

(23:51):
that it radiates a characteristic pattern of luminescence that is
recorded on photographic film. And it ultimately has to do
with moisture and other factors. But but claims were made
that it captured some aspect of an individual's health, their essence,
or their vital bodily energy. So there's some kind of
like invisible quality they have this showing up when you
run this electric current and take a picture, right, And

(24:13):
I think it's still factors into some sort of to
some like alternative like new age of systems, and I'm
not saying there's anything wrong with that. I mean, it's
ultimately you're you're dealing with something that is perhaps a
a what you know, a supernatural interpretation of some visual
data that you've created, which you know, as long as

(24:37):
you're not not you know, claiming that it's scientific, I
guess you know, go for it. Um. It just falls
under the domain of of of of spiritualism and religion.
They also point to a man by the name of
ted Sirius, who we will come back to in a bit. Yes,
because we before we get to Sirius, we have to
explore the origins of this very act that Samara in

(25:01):
the Ring is Uh is engaging in. UH, this idea
that human beings are capable not only of photography, which
photography in and of itself is an amazing accomplishment. This
this this much seemed magic when it was new. Oh, absolutely,
because at least we discussed an invention. You know. It's
it's this perfect convergence of of optical expertise and chemical

(25:24):
expertise and artistic expertise, all of it coming together in
this new way of of of of dealing with the
visual world. Um. But then we have this added idea
that people can also engage in thought ptography, right thoughtography. Uh,
it goes by several names, now psychic photography maybe thoughtography,

(25:45):
and it's modern origins are I think you could you
could argue that they are in Japan. So I want
to talk about a researcher named Fukuai Tomokuchi, who is
a Japanese psychologist who lived from eighteen sixty nine to
nineteen fifty two. He was educated at Tokyo Imperial University
in the eighteen nineties. He studied in their philosophy department.

(26:07):
Because this would have been when psychology was brand new.
There weren't like psychology departments you know at there would
have been many if there were any at the time,
and he received his PhD after doing a dissertation on hypnotism.
And according to the History of Japanese Psychology by Brian J. McVeigh,
which is my source on most of this about Fukarai,
Fukarai played an important role in introducing the work of

(26:29):
the pioneering American psychologist William James to Japanese scholars. Of course,
William James would have been a contemporary of fukurais James
Is The Principles of Psychology came out in eighteen ninety
and his lectures which became the Varieties of Religious Experience,
which we've talked about a number of times on the show.
That those happened around nineteen o one and nineteen o two,
I think, But so this would have been around the

(26:51):
same time that Fukarai was working and UH and doing
his dissertation and doing his early research. And now, according
to McVeigh, Fukarai also published work on the subject of education,
and he became a lecturer and an associate professor in
the field of abnormal psychology, which today we would just
call the study of mental illnesses. And he so he

(27:12):
was a lecturer at Tokyo Imperial University on these subjects.
But from here his interests apparently took a turn for
the paranormal. So, beginning sometime around nineteen ten, Fukarai became
extremely interested in spiritualism, especially in the subject of clairvoyance. Now,
of course, we should note that he would not have

(27:33):
been alone in this at the time. Interest in spiritualism, mediums,
and the paranormal enjoyed extreme popularity and elite circles all
around the world at this time now Today, clairvoyance is
usually understood to be a special kind of psychic power.
Common definition of it is quote the supposed faculty of
perceiving things or events in the future or beyond normal

(27:56):
sensory contact. Now, like a lot of psychic concepts, I
see clairvoyance invoked to refer to sort of a broad
range of things. So I think it can include all
manner of cases of remote viewing. So like seeing things
that are behind physical barriers. You know, you shouldn't be
able to see through the closed door into the next room,

(28:18):
but you can seeing things that are far away, you know,
maybe seeing things that are happening in another country, seeing
things that are separated in time, in the future or
the past. Uh. And sometimes, but less often, seeing things
that can't normally be seen at all, such as spiritual
essences or the contents of other people's thoughts, or otherwise
having knowledge that you just couldn't acquire by normal means. Now,

(28:42):
of course, it's worth noting that all of these things
as psychic phenomenon, they are basically exaggerations of things that
the human mind does through um, you know, through a
mental time travel, for instance, imagining what the future will
be like a or remembering what the past was. The

(29:02):
idea of not being able to see through a wall
into the next room and see what's going on there,
but perform, but you know, conceiving a mental picture of
what it might be like. Like for instance, there's another
recording studio here in the office. I cannot see in
there with my mind, but with my mind, I can
imagine that the guys from stuff they don't want you
to know are in there right now recording something. But

(29:24):
you cannot imagine what they are doing. But I can
form a pretty basic idea that you're setting around a
table talking. It will not fit in your brain, and
they're doing it's it's it looks just like what we're doing.
The subject matter is slightly different. But but at any rate,
what I'm saying is I can form a pretty good idea,
but I know that that is just my brain creating

(29:45):
a simulation of my environment, right. But I mean, I
think a lot of this clairvoyant stuff hinges on the
concept of generating accurate knowledge. It's like all the stuff
we can do with our imagination, except they can do
it to see reality. Um, And the kind of clairvoyants
that Fukurai was most interested in I think would be
covered by the first two categories of things I said,

(30:06):
so mostly like seeing things that are far away and
seeing across physical barriers. According to McVeigh, he was focused
on something called toshi, which meant something like seeing through,
as in seeing through barriers, and on syndrigan, which meant
the far seeing I And in this para psychology phase
of his life, Fukurai was aided by another Japanese researcher

(30:28):
named Imamura Shinkichi. Now Fukuai studied a reputed Japanese clairvoyant
named Mifuna Chizuko and another named Nagao Ikuko, and McVeigh
writes that in nineteen ten, Fukurai performed a series of
experiments in front of a panel of scholars and experts
that he believed would demonstrate Mifuna Chizuko's power to read

(30:51):
out written messages even after they'd been sealed inside envelopes
and then placed inside lead containers, and apparently an attempt
to rep locate these experiments the following year in nineteen eleven,
was not as successful as Fukurai and Mifune had hoped,
and a lot of people considered that Fukarai's research was
clearly misguided after some failed demonstrations, and he and his

(31:14):
supposed clairvoyance subjects like Nagau and Mfune were criticized in
the press. And at least I think it's implied that
partially as a result of these failures and subsequent criticism,
McVeigh writes that both Mfuni and Nagaikuko committed suicide in
the year nineteen eleven, but before I've also seen another
cause of death attributed to Nagaikuko, so I'm not sure

(31:37):
about that. But McVeigh says that that she also died
by suicide. But before she died in nineteen eleven, Nagaikuko
appeared to demonstrate a novel form of psychic power that
fascinated Fukurai, and this was apart from traditional clairvoyance. This
was the power that Fukurai called ninsha, which would have
roughly translated as thoughtography. That the Japanese term ninha comes

(32:01):
from the combination of nin meaning like sense or feeling,
and shah meaning picture, and in concrete terms, this just
means that Fukura I believe that Negau had the power
to use her mind's eye to expose a dry plate
of photographic film, essentially burning her thoughts directly onto the
physical substrate, the same way that light prints and image

(32:22):
onto a piece of film. After Mifune and Nagau died,
Fukurai continued his research, and he published a book about
clairvoyance and photography in nineteen thirteen, which was widely criticized
as credulous and unscientific, and Fugura I eventually lost his
university position moved on to other things that he apparently
continued to be interested in paranormal research well into his

(32:43):
retirement in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. UM one
weird thing is before he was publicly ridiculed and ousted
from his position, it took you a university. Fugara was
considered an elite scholar at the head of Japanese psychology.
He was not you know, just some crank right pamphlets
in his basement. He was uh. He was a top scholar,

(33:04):
and his his academic exile had consequences. I was reading
in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology, Global
Perspectives by David B. Baker that, in reaction to the
Fukarai Affair, a new head of the psychology department at
Tokyo Imperial University, decided that the department could rehabilitate its
reputation by only focusing on quote normal psychology, ignoring both

(33:29):
of Fukara's areas of study, meaning parapsychology like the study
of psychics and quote abnormal psychology, which again would amount
to the study of mental illness. Uh. Now, of course,
saying we're not going to study mental illnesses is a
huge limitation on academic psychology, which the authors right in
this book a quote stunted the rise of clinical psychology

(33:49):
and pre war Japan. Yeah, absolutely though, because he had
studying an mental illness is a way not only of
understanding how to trade mental illness, but also to understand
like what, uh you know, how the mind is functioning
in individuals who are are not experiencing mental illness, right,
I mean it. It provides a frame of reference. Yeah,

(34:11):
A lot of the For example, a lot of the
biggest breakthroughs in the history of psychology have come from
studying patients who have brain injuries or legions or some
kind that like they show you how the brain changes
when certain or how the mind changes and how behavior
changes when certain physical changes are made to the brain.
And of course, I I've seen it alleged by a

(34:32):
number of writers that the stories of people like me,
Funa Chizuko, and Nagai Kuko inspired the fictional ghost in
the original Ring by Suzuki Koji. I don't know if
that's uh correct, but it's at least been alleged that
there's some threat of inspiration there um. And you know,
I want to be a little bit sympathetic to Fukurai
and consider the historical context, Like in the year nineteen ten,

(34:56):
it was only fifteen years previous that X rays and
X ray photog graphy had been discovered. We sort of
alluded to this earlier, right. The German physicist Wilhelm Runkin.
He discovered X rays by accident in the year eight
when he was performing experiments with the type of early
cathode ray tube, which was an electrical device that shoots
a beam of electrons across space inside and evacuated tube

(35:20):
from one electrode to another. And Runkin noticed when he
was running these experiments, he'd put current through the cathode
ray tube in the darkened room it would make this
particular screen in the room. It was a screen of
barium platinum cyanide, which is like a type of photographic plate.
It would make that glow. And this puzzled him, of course,
so he tried to run some more experiments, and he

(35:41):
discovered that he could use the cathode ray tube to
expose photographic plates inside a completely dark room, except the
photos were nothing like anybody on Earth had ever seen.
A human hand placed in front of the tube, between
the tube and the plate would create an exposed you're
almost completely ignoring the fleshy parts of the hand, but

(36:03):
showing the bones hidden underneath the flesh. And when Runkan
created an X ray exposure of his wife's hand, she
reportedly looked at the images of her bones and said,
I have seen my death. Uh yeah. And if you
want more about this, we talked about this in our
x ray episode of Invention. But the X ray photo
was a radically completely new way of imaging the hidden

(36:24):
reality inside the body. It had been discovered almost completely
by accident, and it had been only like fifteen years
before this. Of course, photography itself was maybe like eighty
to ninety years old at the time. And so you
add to that the fact that people were proposing all
kinds of other hypothetical classes of rays at the time.
You remember we talked about n rays. Those didn't exist,

(36:45):
but people were just thinking that there were all kinds
of rays we didn't detect or understand yet invisible forces
beaming out from one object to another. Um Fukurai was wrong.
I think. I think he was misguided, But I don't
think it was crazy the time, or certainly not as
crazy as it seems now to think that the hidden
anatomy that governed the mind's eye and the brain might

(37:08):
leave some kind of print on a piece of film
via raise projected out of the head. I don't know.
Does does that make sense to you? Yeah? Yeah, I
mean we have to put ourselves in the framework of
the time, and uh and and and really again in
that the sense of future shock that would have would
have still been resonating, and to a certain extent still resonates,
because I think one of the one of the things

(37:29):
that we're going to keep seeing in these episodes is
that and I think this was revealed again in our
our photography series on Invention, is that photography is a
complicated process that brings in uh, you know, at least
two different fields the third if you count the artistic
world as well, but certainly optics and chemistry, and not

(37:52):
everyone really has a firm grasp on that like it too.
For a lot of us, it's still kind of feels
like magic. A polaroid camera, uh, you know, we're you know,
instantly gives you the the images sort of magic. Uh.
And when we when we don't understand something completely, it
it allows us to engage in uh, unrealistic modes of

(38:16):
thought about what is going on with the camera, what
is going on with photography. All right, we're gonna keep
talking about all this, but we're gonna take one quick
break first. Alright, we're back. So I want to talk
just a little bit about this idea of remote viewing,
which which Fukurai was definitely involved in. This idea that

(38:39):
you know, you could just you could see what's going
on in another place, either in another room, another part
of the world, sealed envelope, sealed envelope, or another planet.
And you know, another example of an accomplished individual in
their field who is also a prominent, uh proponent of
remote viewing is Atlanta's own Courtney Brown, an associate professor

(39:01):
in the Political Science Department at Emory University. It also
works in nonlinear mathematics. So we see in fukarai and
interest in hypnosis uh and then Brown is versed in meditation. UH.
Meditation induced light experiences can occur and have been linked
to similar experiences in sensory deprivation UH and and I've

(39:23):
seen things like that in yoga meditation as well, where
you will be you know, you're you're you're seeing lights
or shapes or or some sort of imagery that feels
as if it is it is arising, and it is
not called forth you know what I'm saying, Like, it
doesn't feel like it's something that you are consciously imagining.
It doesn't feel like something that is dictated by the

(39:45):
default mode network, you know, it doesn't feel like the
sort of images um or thoughts that are normally bombarding
our brain. Well, I think about how often in psychedelic
experiences people talk about believing they have encountered an other
where if you just you know, it's impossible to know
for sure, but it seems like probably what's going on
is they're having an internal experience with their own brain.

(40:06):
But there are some types of experiences that we've just
for whatever reason, feel our exogenous. It feels like it's
coming from outside you, right. And so with with the
right amount of of priming, expectation, and ultimately consolidation, like
any one of these experiences, be it something that is
due to the use of psychedelics or something that is

(40:29):
acquired through meditation, hypnosis, etcetera um. Because as we've discussed before,
like even normal our normal sensory view of the world
is inherently hallucinatory, you know, it is in its in
its own way and illusion. It's not the way things are.
It's just like a useful sort of movie that we
can interact with the world through. Right. So if you're

(40:50):
having an experience like that and it feels real, right,
and then you can see how even like like certainly
very intelligent people uh can can can come to believe
that that they are actually perceiving the reality of a
distant location and become very convinced of it. And then
certainly if you have a name for this as well,

(41:13):
you know, it becomes kind of established in parapsychology. Than
than that also helps that gives you even more like
priming and conditioning, uh too, in which to frame this experience.
And and also I mean just to go back to
psychedelics too, and certainly our episode on psychedelics, like we
see that trend uh in the twentieth century, right this,
this counterculture emerged, this idea taking shape that secular individuals

(41:38):
can have a essentially a mystical experience that is not
due to the imachinations of gods or angels, you know,
um and and so you know, it's it's not surprising
that we see all, you know, cases like this arising. Well,
I also say on top of that, there's just I
think there's a very respectable humilitium el that says, like, Okay,

(42:02):
you know, we should always accept that there may be
forces at work in our day to day surroundings that
we don't fully understand. You know, we don't have a
scientific theory that accounts for them yet. And I think
that's a good thing to to start from. But I
think a lot of like parapsychology and paranormal type people
jump from there too, because we we should acknowledge that

(42:22):
there are lots of things about the world we don't
understand yet. Therefore, remote viewing is real you know, or
like therefore, you know, you can't discount thoughtography and finding
the right balance there I think is part of the
difficulty of living the skeptical life. You know, you don't
want to live a life of denialism where you're just like,
anytime something is strange or unexplained, you just say like, oh,

(42:44):
that's nonsense. But at the same time, you want to
maintain a high standard of evidence, and that's that's the
tightrope walk I guess you've got to do if you
want to be a scientific investigator, if you want to
try to have the most accurate view you can of
the world, and they're always going to be these edge
cases where some he's presenting, you know, evidence that maybe
maybe seems compelling for some kind of phenomenon that doesn't

(43:07):
really seem like it like it fits with well tested
theories that otherwise predict the physical world. And I think
that's the case that some of these investigators have run
into with psychic photography, especially in the cases we'll talk
about with Ted serious. Absolutely, I should also point out
that we always have to remember that the c i
A sunk something like twenty million dollars into the stargate

(43:29):
project in the nineteen nineties and an attempt to ascertain
the effectiveness and military potential of remote viewing. And this
project was ultimately terminated in remote viewing was found unfruitful
to their needs. But maybe it was a conspiracy. No, No,
I mean, yeah, I I tend to think like if
there I mean, first of all, I've got major objections

(43:51):
to remote viewing, just on like a plausibility basis, Like
you know, again, you can't rule things out just because
you don't know the mechanism. But if you've got a
pretty good picture of how physics works and it just
you know, their power is proposed that don't seem to
fit in any way with any you know, any physical
forces that you could identify. That's that should definitely be

(44:12):
a red flag to start with. And then on top
of that, I think there are additional plausibility problems with
remote viewing, which is like if it is, if it
does exist, why isn't it being taken better advantage of Yeah? Uh,
and that thing said, I do come back to like
what I said earlier, like even though it's not scientifically
feasible as far as we understand it, um, you know,

(44:35):
that doesn't mean that you know, people shouldn't be interested
in it and uh or even you know, practice it.
But it needs to be more of I feel like
it is more definitely in the line of like a
spiritual or religious practice, you know. Um. But that's my
just my two cents on it. And I think that's
one of the problems that and we're going to see
that with a lot of these these people that that
are they're claiming these abilities, is they are not presenting

(44:58):
them as something that is uh, you know, ultimately like
the domain of the spiritual, something that can't really be
proven or disproven. But they're but they're agreeing to tests,
they're agreeing to uh to uh performances of their ability
and inviting in some cases experts to to see what
they're doing and to to to try and find the

(45:19):
problems in it. Uh So, uh, it's something to keep
in mind as we've moved forward. All Right, So let's
come back to a figure that we've We've mentioned the
name already, uh Ted Sirius. That's s c r I O.
S Is it serious or Sirius Sirius with Sirius, well
you say that, I'll say Sirius just to be confusing

(45:40):
like serious black. Um. So Sirius lived through two thousand six,
and he claimed to be able to create thoutographs on
polaroid film. So, um, this is an interesting figure, um
to say the least. So Um, I was reading a
little bit about this in that in that book The

(46:01):
Perfect Medium, paras psychologist Stephen E. Broad writes about him.
Who Broad is also a philosophy professor, uh and he
contends that sirius Is photography is perhaps the best documented
and perhaps the most impressive. Does he seem a little
uh sympathetic to maybe he he did have some psychic powers? Um.

(46:23):
I mean, I encourage everyone to read uh Broad's work
for themselves because he Um. He certainly is more inclined
to to criticize some of the the individuals who have
been attributed as being like solid debunkers. At the very least,
he seems to be saying, look, whatever Ciris was doing,

(46:47):
it's not nearly as debunked as you think it is. Um.
And I'm and he is a paras psychologist. He is
a paras psychologist. So so I gonna stress all of that,
but it's still an interesting read. He does seem to
be more climbed to um entertain the possibility though. So.
Sirius was a Chicago bellhop who had experimented with with

(47:08):
hypnosis and uh. He claims that during this time he
found that he could use his mind to project images
onto camera film and later instant polaroid film. And he
apparently demonstrated this to various folks and was quite convincing.
And this caught the attention of Denver psychiatrist and researcher
Jewel Eisenbud, who took a strong interest in his work

(47:30):
and conducted numerous trials, resulting in hundreds of images. Yeah,
and I've read that Eisenbudd is one of the main
reasons that people really know about Ted. Seriously, he sort
of took up the cause like uh, or at least
from what I read. Eisenbudd claimed he was initially skeptical
of Ted serious his abilities, but then after spending time
with him and seeing his photographs, he he came more

(47:53):
and more to believe that these powers were real and
that Serious really could project his mind's eye onto a
piece of holm. Yeah. Eisenbud at one point believed that
Sirius was seeing the essentially remote viewing the surface of
the Jovian moon Ghannamed and then using photography to implant

(48:14):
that image on onto film. And it gets more complex
than that, actually, because I was reading that so Sirius
apparently made these images that Eisenbudd later said, oh, this
is the surface of Ganymede, because he said that serious
was very interested in space exploration and had been thinking
about the voyager to probe, and that must have been
what triggered his generation of this image of the surface

(48:37):
of of Ghanymede. But at the time he generated the image,
the photographs from the voyager probe had not been taken yet.
So I think Eisenbudd is suggesting that if these photos
are real, serious actually not only projected his thoughts directly
on the film, but also pre cognitively remote viewed the

(48:57):
surface of of Wait precognitiant. Well, I guess it wouldn't
have mattered whether the voyager probe got there yet. He
was seeing the surface of the moon before the probe
got there, right, And I've seen this in other, uh
you know, accounts of remote viewing, where they have they
have essentially seen other worlds or have encountered historic figures

(49:18):
that sort of thing, Right, Now, another thing worth noting
about Cirios here is that is that even eisenbud like
points out that that that ted it was definitely an
alcoholic and that's sort of part of the thing, but
also displayed like a lot of you know, at times
kind of like irrational behavior and seemed to have you know,
definite uh you know, psychological issues. So but but anyway,

(49:43):
this was basically Sirius his process. So he generally he
needed to be drunk, generally very drunk to perform this art,
which I mean, I guess that's fair enough, right, I mean,
I mean, really even podcasting, I don't know when when
when we first started podcasting, um, Jerry told us, like,
have a little to drink before you go into the

(50:05):
podcast booth, it'll help. Jerry ever told me that, oh
well maybe maybe I just look like I needed to
drink at the time. I don't know. But wait, are
you serious? I'm serious? Yeah, I mean I think she's joking.
But at any rate, like the idea that you would
need a social lubricant too, essentially to perform something um
either you know, a legitimate psychic ability or to perform

(50:30):
some sort of a trick, some sort of a um
an illusion or even a confidence trick, right, um, so
that's one part of it. Also, he preferred to hold
a quota he called a gizmo in his hand to
help him focus his powers. And it was a short,
open cylinder about an inch in diameter. And of course
this is highly suspicious. You don't have to be Sherlock

(50:52):
Holmes to suspect that the gizmo is either the heart
of the trick that he is going to perform, or
it's a d e cooy to distract onlookers from the
actual trick. Because he'd often placed this in front of
the camera lens, like he'd get up into the into
the camera lens with the gizmo and then also like

(51:13):
you know, mugging for the camera, placing his forehead in
the way and somehow using the gizmo allegedly to focus
his thoughts into the camera. Yeah, he said he needed
to connect his body to the camera. Uh. Though there
are allegations also that he was able to produce the
autographs and uh and and actually make images on a
camera while being far away from the camera that at

(51:35):
least as alleged, But he most of the time, it
has said, would like put his forehead right on this
thing and stick it in the camera camera lens. So, yeah,
raises some red flags, right, But but then the idea
is that he's essentially taking a snapshot of the mental
image that he is forming in his mind, be a
the be it a mental image that is formed via

(51:56):
memory or just sort of general mental imaging, or it's
something that is that he has acquired through um uh,
you know, sending his consciousness to a to the moons
of Jupiter. Yeah. Now, I read some conflicting reports that
sometimes it seems like the images he produced, he claimed
were like not what he was thinking about consciously, but

(52:17):
just would be these unconscious kind of associative images. That's
what's suggested by eisenbudd Uh the Galilean moon, right, is
that he just had the Voyager two probe on his
mind and happened to generate an image of the surface
of Ganymede. And so if we're approaching it from the
you know, the pro psychic side, we can say, well,
that makes sense. The mind is difficult to control. Mental

(52:39):
images may form in the mind that you you're not
trying to summon. Certainly we can all attest to that.
On the other hand, from a purely skeptical point of view,
if you're going to be drawn in and put to
the test by asking, you know, being asked to think
of a particular thing, how convenient would it be if
you could say, well, I tried to think of that
that that bird feeder that you wanted me to imagine,

(52:59):
but I'm just so obsessed with space travel right now,
I gave you Ganymede instead, right. I mean that makes
that suggests that maybe you've already got an image of
something that looks like a moon's surface on hand with
you or something, right, And I guess that gets to
what the actual trick would be, if there is a
trick here, which I assume there probably is right now now.
In that article in The Perfect Medium, a Broad certainly

(53:22):
focuses on the aspects of Ted's art that kind of
continue to mystify, as he mentions, for instance, that Eisenbudd
offered a cash reward for anyone able to replicate Ted's
results quote under conditions similar to those prevailing during the
during the experiments. Now I've read that there was serious
dispute about like them negotiating with skeptics about what would
be acceptable for those uh conditions, Like I think I

(53:45):
read that James Randy wanted to try to replicate it,
but that Eisenbudd said, well, you have to be really drunk,
because Ted is always really drunk when he does it. Yeah. Yeah,
the famous debunker James Randy, who we had the privilege
to meet. Um. But last um, it definitely plays into
some of this, and it's kind of if you if

(54:05):
you read some of the more pro serios material, Randy's
kind of portrayed as a villain. Oh all, Randy is
always the villain of something written by pro psychic powers people.
Uh so, uh so, Yeah, some of these account like
brought accountants to highlight the things that were not you know,
they're still a little mysterious or or or certainly accounts

(54:29):
of replications that don't meet the same degree of replication,
Like you weren't able to do exactly what Sirius is doing,
therefore you didn't fully debunk him. No, I've I've read
some of his defenders say, Okay, people have used tricks
to replicate what Serious was doing, but they couldn't do
it without those tricks being evident to people who were watching. Right. Um,

(54:52):
I mean The other way to think about it is,
can I can I paint the Mona Lisa? No? I cannot.
Can I demonstrate some of the techniques personally that that
that the artists used to create the Mona Lisa? Uh? Certainly, Uh,
we have to take it into account. That's sirius assuming
again that he's not a psychic, that he's not a

(55:14):
not capable of photography, that he's just a performer, an illusionist. Uh,
you know, a trickster. Uh. There is still an art
to what he is doing. Uh, there is still a
performance aspect, of charismatic aspect to it. And there are
aspects of that that are going to depend in part
on like innate charisma, but also in in practice, in

(55:35):
in like sheer devotion to to the trick. And I
think you can't discount that. And on likewise, you can't
expect a debunker to rise to that level of performance. Well,
I guess you can expect them to try. But I
mean that's one thing that you know, as long as
we're probing the depths of the unexplained, you could say, well,

(55:56):
you know, there's some kind of mystical power that this
person has that we just don't have the power to
explain it. Or you could say that there's an extreme
talent this person has for performing a trick that hasn't
been explained yet. Yeah, because certainly one of the things
that would come into play is slight of hand, right,
because the main charge is that is that Sirius had it.

(56:17):
Kind of varies. Sometimes they talk of just using the
microfilm um or using microfilm affixed to a marble or
you know, a film affixed to the end of a
tiny tube to be like inside the quote gizmo that
he put up against the camera. Because that's the obvious, right,
is that the gizmo contains something, and if it contains something,
some film would be ideal because then you have that

(56:39):
pre existing photograph that can be the thing that he
imprints UM. Skeptic Terence Hines also charged that Ted used
a secondary tube about one inch long with a tiny
magnifying lens that could hold a small slide, and then
he would conceal this within the gizmo, but also he
could use it when the gizmo was taken away. Again

(56:59):
getting an of that idea that the gizmos not merely
useful as something to um to hide the trick but
also can be used as a distraction, can be the
thing that, oh, when it's taken away, look I can
still do it. I don't even have the gizmo on me, right,
And it was alleged that sometimes he could, I mean
usually he used the gizmo, but it's alleged that sometimes

(57:19):
he did it without the gizmo. Now, there were a
number of expose a s at the time that claimed
to show that Ted Sirius was a fraud. The entry
in the Skeptics Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll suggests that
two amateur magicians and photographers named Charlie Reynolds and David
Eisendraft exposed Serious as a fraud. Basically, they wouldn't spend

(57:40):
a weekend with him and jewel Iz and Bud, and
they saw his stuff and they they came to the
conclusion that he was a fraud and wrote this up
in the article. And Reynolds and Eisendraft claimed to have
spotted Serious quote slipping something inside his little gizmo before demonstrations,
and they think it was a picture of something that
Sirius wanted to show up in the camera exposure. They

(58:02):
also published an article explaining their findings in in October
nineteen sixty seven issue of Popular Photography of Photography magazine. Now,
according to the skeptic investigator Joe Nichols account of Serious
is confrontation with magicians and sleight of hand experts. Quote,
at one point during the session, after an exposure was made,
a magician asked to examine the paper tube to see

(58:24):
if there was anything inside. This would be the gizmo, right,
the gizmo. Uh. Serious backed away, putting his hand in
his pocket. Now that's suspicious behavior. But then, weirdly, during
this session, Sirius was unable to produce the autographs. So
apparently he had been using the gizmo. They said, let
me see the gizmo, he wouldn't show it to them,
and then none of the pictures came out. Anyway, there

(58:45):
were no autographs. Uh. And he and Eisenbudd blamed the
quote hostile atmosphere for interfering with Serious his powers. This
is always a red flag also, I think. But there's
still plenty of people, I think, who hold out for
psychic photography, claiming that Head Serious his powers were real
and could not be explained. And he's got defenders who

(59:05):
say that some of his feats are just impossible to explain.
For example, I was reading claims in an article in
the Chronicle of Higher Education which was about a gallery
exhibit of Serious as thotographs, which I would like to
see that. Oh yeah, I mean they're interesting images, certainly
when you know the background for them, especially if you
just think about him as works of art, not as
like displays of real psychic powers. Um. But to quote

(59:28):
from this article quote, on occasion, volunteers were asked to
attend the experiment with a photograph sealed and a cardboard
back to manila envelope. Serious then managed to reproduce the
image with no prior knowledge of it. So again, that's
like double psychic powers. That's not just the thoughtography, which
would be a feat even if he was looking directly
at what the photo should be. UM. But also, I

(59:49):
guess seeing into this envelope if I'm reading that right,
I don't know. That might also be suggesting that they
just arrived with its sealed and then showed it to
him and he reproduced it. Either way, I mean, you
saw that. I wouldn't say that would prove it was real,
but that would be impressive, you know, you'd be like, wow,
that that's either real or some impressive trickery. I'd leaned
towards the ladder um. But in other cases he apparently

(01:00:11):
managed to produce what appeared to be images of landmarks
from up above, like aerial views that his supporters claimed
could not be explained through trickery. But it seems like
he stopped doing his thing after the late nineteen sixties,
which seems a little weird. Yeah, especially consider he lived
until two thousand and six. You know, I mean, that's
that's a lot of time to not at least not

(01:00:32):
be publicly doing this displaying this uh this ability. Uh.
But then again, um, you know, we do have to
come back to you the fact that Eisenbud himself wrote
that serious was you know, psychologically disturbed alcoholic. So you know,
you can come up with various, you know, reasons that
somebody with that kind of with with with those kind

(01:00:54):
of demons would not engage in their art. Now, he
wasn't the only one in the later twentie tree to
get in on the psychic photography thing. Over the years,
a lot of figures, including Uri Geller, got into psychic photography.
One one of Geller's many demonstrations was that he would
leave the lens cap on a camera, placed the camera
to his forehead, and then take a picture, supposedly saying,

(01:01:15):
you know the same kind of thing. I'm using my
mind's eye to imprint upon the film, and then the
photo would reveal whatever he had been imagining. Again, James
Randy shows up, as he often does whenever Uri Geller
claims something. James Randy criticized this and other psychic photography
is having two main explanations, either using a handheld device
to project the image into the camera lens as the

(01:01:37):
photos taken, or loading the camera with pre exposed film
already bearing the desired image, and the latter seems to
be the case with a later twentieth century alleged psychic
named Matsuaki Kyota, who claimed to be able to produce
photographs on film again, and skeptical critics such as Joe
Nicol have pointed out that when Matsuaki Kyota was asked

(01:01:59):
to reform his thoughtography under controlled conditions for a TV
crew in London, he couldn't produce the images, and Nickel
claims that it was only times when he was able
uh to get the film and have it alone with him,
like basically to get hold of the film and have
it in a private place before the test that he

(01:02:20):
could demonstrate his powers, which again makes you think he
was doing something to the film before it was loaded
in the camera. Alright, Well, on that note, we are
going to have to call it for episode one of
this exploration, but we are going to return in a
second episode where we're going to continue to explore this idea,
like how would it work if this were possible? Like

(01:02:41):
what what what can we grasp onto in the labyrinth
of the human mind and the complexity of our our
our sensory perception, but also what can this question reveal
about the reality of mental imagery and how that happens
in the brain, which is fascinating, mysterious, and even spooky
topic on its own, even though we don't necessarily credit

(01:03:03):
the reality of psychic photography, there's a lot of spooky
stuff going on when you picture something right. And we'll
probably talk about The Ring a little bit more, and
we'll probably bring up a few other films such as Scanners,
So hey, be sure to tune in for that episode,
and tune in for all of our episodes in October,
which are going to be Halloween flavored uh and we

(01:03:24):
encourage you again to check out Invention if you haven't already,
can find it wherever you get your podcast. You can
find out the website at invention pod dot com. If
you want to support our show, the best thing you
can do is rate and review it wherever you have
the power to do so, and make sure you have subscribed.
Huge thanks as always to our awesome audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

(01:03:45):
to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff Works. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

(01:04:05):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.