Making Sense: Sight unseen

Unexplainable

Vox

Life Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Close your eyes and try to imagine an apple. Can you see anything? Aphantasia is the inability to see with your mind’s eye. Since it was discovered, scientists have been asking the question: What is the mind’s eye even for? This is the fifth episode of our six-part series, Making Sense. For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It’s a great place to view show transcripts and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email. Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.0	It's unexplainable. I'm no, I'm Hassan Feld.
1:12.0	And this is the fifth episode of our series on this census.
1:16.0	So far, we've talked about auditory illusions, how touch could potentially work as a treatment for pain.
1:22.0	But scientists don't really know how smell works and the fuzzy, often confusing borders of our sense of taste.
1:29.0	This week, our producer, ManningWin, has a story about our sense of vision.
1:34.0	About what's possible to see in the mind's eye.
1:39.0	When I close my eyes and let my mind wander, I start to see images.
1:44.0	The green canopy of redwood trees or the mushroom risotto I ate last night for dinner or my sister's face.
1:50.0	Like, I can picture all this in my head and that's something that I've always taken for granted, until I spoke to Alice Coles.
1:57.0	There's just a lot of words going in my brain all the time.
2:00.0	Words, but not pictures.
	...

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