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  • Whoa. Well, that's just a balloon.

  • - Come on. - All right, that was an easy one.

  • All right, balloon in the cup.

  • - Oh, no. - What?

  • - You didn't do that. - What are you doing?

  • - I'm never going to look at anyone's pictures of their room the same anymore. - I'll tell you.

  • My assumptions, they were wrong.

  • Guys, today we're talking about optical illusions.

  • And I know you think my eyes are huge but they're just normal.

  • What?

  • You might remember a few weeks ago, we started the show off with the OK Go video, the new one that is filled with optical illusions.

  • It took over three weeks to put together. It is a beautiful thing.

  • That's what we're talking about today: all about optical illusions, things that look one way but are actually another.

  • Who said that?

  • Who did?

  • We don't know.

  • That was a video called "Assumptions" from a channel called Quirkology. It got over 5 million views because nothing in that video...

  • ...is as it seems.

  • Ladies and gentlemen, the Hyper-matrix.

  • - Look at that. That is— - It's wave in a wall.

  • What is happening?

  • What is happening?

  • And the reason it says Hyundai Motor Group is because this is part of an art installation called Hyper-matrix.

  • And it's at the Hyundai Motor Group pavilion in Korea, and this comes from a Seoul based artist that the group has called jonpasang.

  • But there are thousands of motors behind 300 by 300 millimeter cubes that are going in and out.

  • The cubes are moving with the sounds, but there's also projection mapping on top of the cubes, which makes this full immersive experience like this, like we're seeing right here.

  • - That is not a real guy. - That's a Hadouken.

  • Hadouken.

  • We're talking optical illusions. - Yup.

  • This is a really freaky one. It'll make you feel like you're hallucinating.

  • If you have any kind of epilepsy or sensitivity to flashing lights, do not watch this.

  • - T... L... - No, you don't say the letters.

  • O... F...

  • You can look away now.

  • No.

  • Don't look at me. Don't look at me.

  • You look fine.

  • That video is from the Science Forum channel.

  • This is obviously a popular video, because it's got almost 13 million views.

  • That made things wavy, like everything was a heat wave.

  • It's created when your brain cells that are detecting motion just get fatigued.

  • So after your eyes look away, the cells that are detecting the motion in the other direction are more active.

  • You sound like the substitute teacher in physics class that got stuck explaining the hardest thing there is to explain.

  • When I'm like a gym teacher.

  • You know, like there's some cells.

  • And they're going to go over here.

  • OK, Miles. We are going to watch the style of dance that is called sock trousers dance, or strumpfhosentanz if you're saying it in its native tongue.

  • - Oh, "strumpfrozenhands," yeah. - Beautiful.

  • Actually, it's "strufrozentonsils."

  • See?

  • Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

  • - It looks like the biggest conjoined twin ever. - It looks horrifying.

  • - Your brain so badly wants to connect the right arms and legs to the right torso. - But it doesn't work, and then you end up

  • Just confused.

  • 4.5 million views on this. That means that 4.5 million other brains have also failed to connect the right body parts and the right

  • Yeah.

  • Earnest, did you ever play with sidewalk chalk when you were growing up?

  • Of course I did.

  • This guy, Edgar Mueller, takes sidewalk chalk to a whole thousand new levels.

  • I like the people who are like posing on the side.

  • That's absolutely what I would be doing.

  • This particular artist's name is Edgar Mueller. He's sort of very well known for his 3D sidewalk art.

  • This particular piece was commissioned as part of the Festival of World Culture that took place in Dublin, Ireland in August, of 2008.

  • Since 1998, he has held the title of Maestro Madonnari, which is Master Street Painter, which is a title I didn't even know existed.

  • OK, what you're going to see is completely real.

  • There's no Hollywood magic. There's no computer wizardry, no wizard computery.

  • What do we have here? Just a couple of slopes.

  • Wait, but they just did that in reverse, right?

  • I said no Hollywood magic.

  • What sorcery is this!?

  • This was made by Koukichi Sugihara.

  • Your brain likes to take shortcuts, so it sees this, and it thinks that it knows what it's looking at.

  • - Yeah. - And it fills in the gaps for you.

  • It was the winner of the Illusion of the Year in 2010.

  • Sugihara-san, you are the best.

  • I know this is an optical illusion show, but sometimes what you see can mess with what you hear.

  • We did feature this before on the show recently.

  • Listen to Greg speaking.

  • - Bar. Bar. Bar. - Bar. Bar.

  • If you heard bar bar bar, you'd be right. How about now?

  • Bar. Bar. Bar.

  • Chances are, you heard far far far this time, except you didn't.

  • This is a perfect example of something called the McGurk effect, which shows how our visuals can alter what we believe we're hearing.

  • I'll play two tones, and you tell me if they're ascending or descending.

  • High, low.

  • Low, high.

  • If you compare with enough people, you'll all have different answers.

  • It's an auditory illusion called the Tritone paradox.

  • It's created in such a way that the tones contain both a higher and lower frequency in them, but our brains have a preference of which to listen to.

  • - Oh. - Hm.

  • - So our brains are different. - Yeah.

  • We have different brains.

  • What this episode taught me is that our brains are stupid.

  • Get with it, brain! Stop being so tricked.

  • What, you're going to let your eyes tell you what to do?

  • So those are some of our favorite illusions. Let us know some of your favorites in the comments.

  • We have some more optical illusions coming up for you after the show, so stick around. Check those out.

  • Now play us out, Young Rival.

  • Literally, I don't see anything.

  • You see nothing?

  • I see it! I see it!

  • There you go. You got it.

  • Now I'm locked into this.

  • The end. It says the end.

  • Now you can see it. So now you can

  • I feel like now I'm scared to move my eyes back to normal.

Whoa. Well, that's just a balloon.

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