Why don’t vampires cast reflections? | Eric Nuzum

0:04This is Ted Health, a podcast from the Ted Audio Collective, and I'm your host Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider. Okay, I have to admit something to you. I have a bizarre fascination with vampires. The way these mythical creatures have evolved over centuries is so telling. They're a reflection of our fears, our beliefs, and even our understanding of science and medicine. And here's where things get interesting. Some of the most famous vampire traits, like avoiding sunlight, an aversion to garlic, sudden bursts of aggression, aren't just the stuff of legend. They're actual symptoms of diseases that have existed for centuries.

0:45So what if our fears of the undead were really just misunderstandings about human health? In his talk, author Eric Newsom takes us on a fascinating journey through history, folklore, and even epidemiology to explore how myths shape our understanding of medicine. But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.

1:13And now, Eric Newsom takes the TED stage. We're here today to hear compelling ideas, new innovations in thinking, science and medicine, and innovative solutions to our most vexing problems in society. So they said to me, Eric, do you have anything that you can add to this compelling list of stories or ideas? is something you can talk about here on the TED stage. And I said, of course I do. And the question I want to explore with you today is, why don't vampires cast reflections in mirrors?

1:53So, you've probably seen this before in movies. The humans are suspicious of the new dark stranger, and they band together in this moment of confrontation. And they open up a mirror in front of them, and bam, there's no reflection there. Proving to the humans that the new dark stranger is, in fact, a vampire. That's right. So where did this start? How did this happen? This idea that you can hold a mirror up to an undead creature and learn that they are a vampire. Well, we're going to find that out. But the thing you have to keep in mind is as we look through the history of vampires, they change over time.

2:35Every culture in history has had a variation on a vampire. So they don't always call them vampires, but every culture has a version of a supernatural creature who comes back from the dead and gains power by preying on the living. Our version of the vampire really came about in the 16th century. It was a way to conveniently explain some misunderstandings about death and dying. Some sketchy activity happens in the village. Someone gets an idea, hey, let's dig up Wolfgang. And they open his coffin, and they find that his hair and his fingernails and his teeth have all seemed to grow since he died.

3:16And they see some fluid around his mouth, which they mistakenly think is blood. proof that Wolfgang is a vampire. But this is actually what happens to a body when it's decomposing. Not that they're not dead. Our understanding of vampires really exploded, or our lexicon for vampires, really exploded in the 18th century after a rabies outbreak in Hungary and Romania. Now, the thing to remember is when a human contracts rabies, it can take a couple weeks before symptoms start to manifest. So some really common vampire characteristics, like an avoidance of bright lights, or strong smells like garlic, an aversion to water, and suddenly aggressive behavior, are not signs of the undead.

4:03They are signs of rabies. But back then, they couldn't put those things together. They didn't think that the neighbor who's acting funny now, it wasn't because of the raccoon that bit them two weeks ago. It's because now a much more logical explanation is that they are, in fact, a vampire. So most of our ideas of vampires that we all think of came about in the movies. Count Dracula and Sherlock Holmes have been in a decades-long battle to be the most depicted fictional character in film. It goes back and forth every couple of years. But when we think of the vampire in film, there are some things that are quite iconic to us, like Nosferatu, right?

4:46Here's a fun fact for you about Nosferatu. Outside of it, most people get something wrong. They think it's the first vampire movie. It was the first one that was anything like approaching a hit. The fun fact I want to share with you is that every copy of Nosferatu that any of us have ever seen is an illegal bootleg. The Bram Stoker's widow sued the filmmakers for copyright infringement. She was worried that Nosferatu was going to cut into the quite lucrative royalties from the stage version of Dracula that was being performed in the UK and the US. She won that lawsuit, and in her settlement, she demanded that every copy of the film be destroyed.

5:29Most people, when they think of vampires, think of the 1931 Todd Browning classic starring Regal Lugosi as Count Dracula. You almost can't overstate how huge a movie this was. It not only really established vampire movies, it started a vampire movie trend that lasted for over two decades. It was the first mainstream hit that was a horror film. It really established horror as a genre in film and set up expectations for like even Frankenstein. It came later that same year. Since this whole craze of vampires really started with Dracula, we've had so many hundreds of variations of the vampire. We have had samurai vampire.

6:13We have had plumber vampires. We have had vampire babies. We have had stripper vampires. We've had a vampire movie about every member of Dracula's extended family, son of Dracula, daughter of Dracula, father of Dracula, bride of Dracula. We've even had Dracula's dog and Zoltan, hound of Dracula. There is one definitive thing I can tell you about vampire movies, And that is vampire movies suck. And I'm not being metaphorical here. Vampire movies are not good movies. So why is this? Why is it that these movies don't really last very long? It's because we keep changing our idea of what terrifies us and what scares us.

7:01You know, speaking of things in common, there's one thing that vampire movies do not have in common. Does anyone want to guess what vampire movies do not have in common? Vampires. It became such a hot trend for vampire movies that people would slip the word vampire into the title even though there wasn't a vampire in the movie. There's multiple ones of these. The most notorious of these was the 1952 stinker called My Son the Vampire, which did star a late-career Bela Lugosi, but he didn't play a vampire, and no one else in the cast did either. But they figured it would be a big trend, get in on a big trend and did this.

7:41So not even this happened. So I think we've established over the last several minutes that there are many colors in the vampire rainbow. So let's not get too far away from our original point. Why don't vampires in all these bad films, bad novels, bad stories, why do none of them ever cast reflections in mirrors? I mean, they're not one, but several vampire tales where the vampires are deathly scared of uncooked rice. Yeah, true. Count von Count from Sesame Street is based off of the idea that vampires are obsessed with counting. If they see sand or rice on the ground, they're going to have to stop and count every grain.

8:23The sun comes up and they die. There you go. We'll improvise a little bit for you right there. So now see if I can find my place back into what I'm talking about. So if you want the answer to why they don't cast reflections in mirrors, the answer is that there really isn't a clear answer to this question. The consensus thinking is that when you hold, it comes from the habit or something people did of holding a mirror up to a deceased person's face to see if the warm breath would fog up the mirror. And if you think about it, if someone's laying thrown and you hold a mirror up to their face, what you're going to see in that mirror is the wall.

9:04You're not going to see that. Therefore, no reflection in the mirror. But I think there's actually a far simpler answer than this. When you look at vampires and how they change over time, what was once terrifying and evil becomes dull and campy. We change the vampire to match our time. In the 1890s, Bram Stoker's Dracula, the novel, was thought to be an allegory for the end of Victorian morals. In 1931, when Dracula starring Bela Lugosi came out, the idea was that that represented a fear of Eastern European immigration. In the 1950s, vampire films represented a fear of communism. We morph the vampire to match our tone.

9:55So with this, why don't vampires cast reflections in mirrors? I think it's because the vampire is the reflection. They are a reflection of us. They are a reflection of what we fear. They are a reflection of what we consider to be unchecked power without accountability. They are our idea of the ultimate villain that lies almost undetectable until someone holds a mirror to them. All our talks today are themed around unity. The idea that when we come together, we are stronger. I would argue that it's not only about the things that we share in common as far as beliefs and things that we believe, but also the darker things that unite us.

10:49when I know what you fear, when I know what goes bump in your night, perhaps I can help protect you. Perhaps we can help protect each other. There are so many vampires in the world today. But I want to leave you with this. One thing that I see in so many vampire stories is the thing that brings about the monster's decline is when the humans, who are weak and powerless individually, come together and unite, and they prevail. It's a concept called unity.

11:36That was Eric Newsom at TEDx Ashbury Park 2024. And that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. TED Health is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by me, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter, and Jess Shane. Edited by Alejandra Salazar and fact-checked by Vanessa Garcia-Woodworth. Special thanks to Maria Lages, Farrah DeGrange, Daniela Balarezo, Constanza Gallardo, Tansika Sang Marnivang, and Roxanne Heilash. If you enjoyed today's episode, rate and review the show on your favorite platform. It helps other people to find us. And I'd really love to hear your feedback.

12:16Send me a message on Instagram at ShoshanaMD.