If you know the story of Snow White, you remember that moment when the evil queen steps in front of her magic mirror and says, mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

The mirror tells her it's no longer her, who is the fairest. Things, of course, go downhill from there. And Snow White

is a fairy tale, of course, but there is a mirror that is said to reveal the truest, most accurate

reflection of yourself. And it's called the Arunmula Kanadi. Journalist Elliot Stein traveled to a

small village in India,

where the community there has been hand-crafting these incredible mirrors for more than 300 years.

It's a process that has been guarded and passed down through the generations.

I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, the celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Elliot Stein has traveled the world reporting on the people who are keeping rare and ancient traditions alive.

He wrote about it in his book, Custodians of Wonder, Ancient Customs, Profound

Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive. And we are talking to Elliot Stein today. Thanks for

being with us. Welcome back. Thanks so much for having me. So first, I just have to ask, like,

how did you hear about this mirror?

Yeah, you know, like so many journalists, you often wander around the globe, and you kind of hear these little tidbits where you read them somewhere.

And you file it away in this kind of rolodex of ideas that, you know, one day, maybe, when the time is right, I'll have a chance to report on this.

And so this was actually a local story in an Indian newspaper about one of the craftsmen about

seven years ago. And it's not easy for me to whisk off to India and to go report on these things,

but the opportunity for this book came about,

and I knew that that was my chance. And so I took a, took around the world journey and headed

to India and spent about 10 days embedded with this extended family of alchemists who live on

the bank of a river in a mangrove forest and learned all about the process. Wow. So how is

an Arunmula Kanadi different from the kind of mirror that most of us, I would say, are used to

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