Brain Soda Podcast - Episode 16 - Whitest Mathematician U’Know

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

This week we'll be discussing the sketch comedy group Whitest Kids U'Know and the mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton!

Welcome everyone to the Brain Soda Podcast. I am Kyle. Join today by Brad. How's it going? I'm not going to give you a lot of ideas on an adventure, but we will be discussing Sir Isaac Newton. But first, in 1999, Brad, there was a man from Virginia. He had actually had his own like local cable access television show, and he went to the

New York School of Visual Arts. His name was Trevor Moore. No relation. Trevor Moore, man. Yep. Today, we're talking about the whitest kids you know, the sketch comedy group. That is really where our story starts. Born in Virginia, Trevor Moore goes to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and

going to comedy clubs and doing things of that nature, he met up with Sam Brown. Sam Brown and him kind of tool around and start a comedy troupe with Zach Crager. I believe he was more graphic design, but he obviously did do acting and things like that as well. But they all attended SVA together. Okay. Right? So SVA, that's high school or college?

That is, no, that is the New York School of Visual Arts, this is a college. They originally had a number of different members in the sketch troupe, and it was actually an official club, like a sanction club by SVA. They used to do monthly shows in their amphitheater, and by all accounts, it was pretty regularly filled for their shows. Just the three of them? So they had various other members, none of which held on by the point that we were watching them or at least knew of them from their online presence.

There is one guy, he's listed as Anthony, in watching some of the stuff with commentary tracks and stuff like that, you hear Zach say, there's my friend Tony. And I believe that that guy, who like as a frame of reference, do you remember the guy that Trevor does the blue screen with at the end of, my parents are dead? I don't think so. I was on a soundstage directly away from him, and so I was completely safe the whole time and they show him blue screen dead, and then there's this black guy in Central Park or whatever, doing a dab.

That I believe was an original member of the sketch troupe. But around September 11th, they had met Timmy Williams. Timmy wasn't attending SVA, but he was living in New York City, nearby their dorms. Really? Yeah, so that's... Wait, is he like at the same age as them? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, like I just don't think he was attending SVA, is essentially what it is. So either way, again, on the commentary tracks that I listened to as part of my research, they talked about how to get a better view of the towers they went to Timmy's room, and another amusing anecdote was the three of them decided they were going to kidnap Timmy and put him on the subway, or on a train, and send him to Coney Island. This is making so much sense, because it just seems like Timmy's always like... The one they dunk on? Yeah.

It is. It even shows in the sketches too, but so apparently they kick the door in and start tying him up and stuff like that, but they had kicked the door in so hard, they locked themselves in the room, so they had to get the room manager to come let them out, and he spotted Timmy, and they're like, oh, it's his birthday, and when Timmy escapes them, he's running away with a hood on, like, taped up or whatever, going, it's not my birthday! It's not my birthday! This went on until about 2003, when they were starting to get closer to graduation.

At that point, they obviously kind of had to dissolve themselves from their affiliation with the school, and on the set of some independent film, Zack had already met Darren, Darren Truemeater, and he joined the troupe as well. So after that, they began to tour, and that touring and working together really kind of culminated, at least to that point, of being a small New York City-based sketch troupe with touring, but then these guys won Best Sketch Group in 2006 at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, and the Aspen Comedy Festival as well. Really?

Yeah. Okay, so were they, like, this whole time, I haven't asked this, like, were they doing the type of sketch comedy that they were doing, like, in their show? Because I know we haven't gotten their show yet, but like, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty raw. Whoa, that's actually part of what we're going to cover when we talk about the show, but I would say to a certain extent, yes, because when you look at that first season, I feel like most of the stuff they had done within that first season is stuff that they were

doing live, and I think part of the reason why that first season works, even though it's not shot as well, it definitely doesn't look as good because it's on, like, a soundstage, but it does help with, like, the pacing of it, and them being acclimated to coming out to a soundstage and performing these bits the way that they have, I think is why so much of that first season translates as well as it does from what they were doing within the last number of years to what they're doing now on television. And then it's the second season going forward that you start to see more of that humor become more and more adult or even beyond adult extreme as it was labeled by Fuse.

And from that, I also feel like part of it is that they just had a bank of their sketches that they had been performing and was television ready. So with that, by that time, they started to work with a producer while he was part of them being able to do it. They had been recognized on a national level through winning these. And Trevor Moore was going around and shopping the show that they had go on to make to, like, Sundance Channel and various other networks. The one who picked them up, though, is Fuse.

Now that whole first season with Fuse is, like I said, again, for the most part, pretty much shot on select locations, but shot in studio for the most part. And I honestly find it to be some of my favorite stuff. But a lot of that stuff was actually things that they were already doing for YouTube. And they just straight up just took them right back. Yeah. So this was early YouTube then, right? Yeah.

Yeah. This would be 2006. Oh, wow. It's like really early YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Really? That's crazy.

Yeah. I mean, they likely weren't only posted to YouTube. They very well were on MySpace and things like that as well. But the point being is that early social media posts and stuff like that had things like the slap sketch and things like that. And then those just came with them. Actually, I think they had to buy back the rights to one of the sketches because it was picked up for a pilot.

And then this was Sundance. And then somebody stepped in, maybe even Robert Redford himself. And they bought that back and then took it with them to Fuse and posted it online beforehand, maybe. But regardless, there was stuff that they shot for online content that just came in and was put into the Fuse television show. So while they're at Fuse, it becomes a hit for Fuse as a network. Now if you don't know what Fuse is or was, it used to be much music in Canada.

Much music was the Canadian answer to MTV. Okay. Wait. Wasn't VH1 Canadian at one point? I don't believe so. I believe VH1 also had buildings in New York City. And to be honest, the thing that I always had with VH1 was that it was more about classic rock.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like VH1 seemed to cater towards more like, yeah, I don't know, I don't want to say older, but non-mater music. Right. Whatever the popular music was at the time. Yeah, it was always like oldies and stuff like that. It was either adult contemporary or oldies.

That's the way I looked at it. Anything that's top 40, obviously if you're a music network, you're going to play and cater to that market, that programming, but like for the most part, it was about that. And then like later on, it did the MTV thing too as well and became more about like, well, you know, we got to get these reality shows in, you know? Yeah. Like it is now. Yeah.

As VH1 even found out. I don't even know if it was anymore. I mean, love and hip-hop and stuff like that was a VH1 advent, so I don't, yeah, yeah. And then like, well, I do remember what you're saying, Fuse, like I think I had Fuse, or I remember Fuse on something, maybe only from White's Kids You Know, but because like I just remember like music on Fuse or something like that involved with Fuse. It was still a MTV Ask Channel, right? Like White's Kids You Know was some of the only original content it produced.

You could get it in America though, right? Yes. Yes. You could get, okay. I think it's just headquartered and based in Toronto. Like that's not make it seem like, like, you know, we were lucky because of our Jason scene. Well, I didn't post a Toronto channel, like, because there was like Canadian channels,

like white or trailer park boys, you know, it's like you can't, like it didn't, I guess it did eventually come to America, but you know, it wasn't on the original. No, and much music was already a part of most basic or expanded cable packages. I believe. I thought so. Yeah. I don't remember much music, but I remember Fuse. But that's what I'm saying is that like, but previous to it becoming Fuse, it was already

a part of like basic or expanded cable packages. And I believe part of Fuse having the name changed to that was Expandature, right? That's rebrand. That's not be the Canadian MTV and, you know, thus you get more coverage, more eyes, more, you know, etc. Yeah. So, because yeah, I mean, yeah, what I said, you know, it's definitely not music related. No, but, but it was slightly musical.

As we said, they, they got picked up at Fuse and it was a hit for the network. Now, almost immediately, they were picked up for a second season, but they, they had some caveats, some limitations on content specifically. They viewed an even season one, which comparatively to the other four seasons is tame, I believe. You know what I mean? Like that there is a lot of stuff in there that you could be like, whoa, they got away with that on, on basic cable. Yeah, they certainly did.

But like comparative to what they did later on, there's not, there is, there's nothing to scoff at. But they were directly trying to limit what these guys were going to do and say their sketches about and include within them. And I can understand that because I mean, some of the stuff they do is like, you know, looking at it now, I'm like, wow, yeah, that was pretty bold. You know, even doesn't matter the time. Well, and even I will say this, I feel like now you look at season one, which there is

a lot of season one that has like racially based humor. And I'm not saying like they were poking fun at minorities. I'm saying like they were poking fun at white fear. Like, you know what I mean? Like directly in what we referenced before, like you have Trevor Moore doing this skit and then the skit ends, air quotes, to show Trevor Moore dressed up in like a sweater vest and a button down shirt and drinking a coffee in like this nice little quaint suburban home talking about how he gets blue screened in with a black actor.

Like it is it is directly addressing white fear. And and that today. Could be as controversial as anything they've ever produced, you know, realistically. And like so again, I could see why anybody with a sketch group that would be to the extent that these guys are. I mean, they're they're kind of subversive. They're definitely dirty and it's all funny, though. And I don't think any of it was ever done with a hurtful angle or mindset

or even in a different one. Right. So with that, the the sketch group itself was kind of ready to not accept its second season. This, however, changed when the then head of programming for views became the general manager for IFC and decided to bring White's Kids You Know with her and Rainbow Media, owner of both companies, approved that move. So now you have the White's Kids You Know going to a more open and free space for its artistic endeavors.

And beyond that, when you look at the way these guys were doing, like, their online content and stuff like that, it's run and gun. Everybody, whether you're a talent or you're the director or whatever you may be, like you're handling things to do for production, as well as your role within the project. And that for IFC fit oh, so well. Now, that being said, that's going from a union to non-union set. And by the end, when like they're doing baked beans and things like that, like they shot Timmy with like a can of bushes baked beans poured into a a t-shirt gun

with like just a sheet behind him and like realistically on television, like there's a part of a reason why you have an union just like any other union there is. But like, yeah, I mean, that is part of it. Well, like that's the thing. Because like, I mean, I don't know if I'm kind of skipping it here, but I feel like I've heard Timmy kind of had a falling out with the group once like they ended. I mean, they got back together recently, but from what I read,

I don't know if it's true at all, but like he wasn't very happy with the way they treated him, obviously. Well, so after the show ended, all of these guys kind of went on. Well, what? Wait, when did the show end? The last season started to air in 2011. OK. Yeah. And after that, so just as a breakdown of what some of these guys were doing around that time. So Maureen Krieger within the last couple of seasons of the show actually

had done Miss March. It's a film that Maureen Kregger wrote and directed together and started and started together. We were probably one of the few people. Yeah, one of the few people that saw it in the theater. But it was good movie. It was good movie. Well, not according to rotting tomatoes, because not only was it a terrible flop, it has like a horrible rating.

I honestly don't see like how it's any worse than like any other movie that's out there. I mean, like, you know, like a love movie. I guess I think what it is. I think what it is is it's just the time frame in which it happened. It is it is American Pie Band Camp. But as a theatrical production with two out of five of the sketch group. Realistically, that is that is what makes it kind of a problem.

And like even when you look at the humor that those guys were doing in that film, it's not White as Kids, you know, it's not like either really, really like out there or really, really smart humor. It's it's just another movie. And I think that's exactly part of your point is it's just like every other American Pie movie that was made. It's just like a band Wilder, which is yeah, great. But like I've seen Van Wilder and all of the American Pies by 2009.

I was over it like the rest of America. But Hugh Hefner was in it, wasn't it? It's actually the last appearance of Hugh Hefner in a film before he died in two thousand really. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy, though. So after the events of Miss March and the show wrapping up, which the final season is an in and of itself contains a theatrical film that's now on Amazon. And apparently it has commentary on it as well called the Civil War on drugs.

That is I know that. Yeah, that is a 10 minute snippet at the end of every episode of season five. I am so watching that. We watched it together. Oh, yeah, but now it's on Amazon. I do think I do think you will walk away with this was something to add to your watch later list, though, for sure. OK. But so so to kind of go forward in 2013, Moore made his first album and it was

titled Drunk Text to Myself. He released a second called High in Church in 2015 and a third in 2018 called The Story of Our Times. OK, OK. So he was kind of doing his own thing. Zach Crager, on the other hand, during those years was having roles in sitcoms like Rap Friends with Benefits and Guys with Kids. So again, the two guys who from most of what I've figured out about these five guys as a comedic group was that Trevor and Zach were really kind of the brain

trust. The other three actors in the room were definitely a part of the writing process, and it's the whitest kids you know, because it's the five of them as a unit. But yeah, as a production and assemblage, right? I would say Zach and Trevor are the most important pieces, and it really shows based on who went on to do what. Now, to kind of clarify, while I've never discovered anything to say why exactly Timmy would have any big problems with the way that like he was treated within the show, you could understand it because the way a lot of

things were shot and the way that they dealt with certain things at points. But like, I feel a lot of it was those guys just kind of dissolved away. And by the time that two of them made a movie and didn't include the other ones, that very well could have been a part of it. But well, maybe they didn't. I mean, who knows how that all played out. I mean, yeah. Well, and I know from again, from the commentaries and research that I was able to find that like, as an example, the hot dog sketch, that Trevor wrote it

without Timmy being in a room and then would then call him and say, like, is this OK? So I don't ever want it to come off unless Timmy Williams wants to get on here and say it wasn't like that. Like they were all friends working on these things together. But to be the butt of the jokes as Timmy as often as he was could be a problem for him. I could understand that for sure. I mean, but overall, like, I mean, I don't know. Like, yes, he was a lot of the times.

It's been a long time since I watched the show. Yeah. But, you know, like some of the big ones that come back to me are like, you know, the Abe Lincoln one or the Gallant, a PCP or the The Greatest. Things like Gallant, a PCP, I'm pretty sure is one that they had shot to be online and and brought over as well. That's another season one one, just like Abe Lincoln. Yeah, Abe Lincoln was something they shot with you, as I think, though. Yeah, I would say that that is like a big set.

Timmy, though, I do know, moved to South Dakota, back to South Dakota. And he currently works in radio from everything I've been able to. Yeah, Sam has voiced characters for Netflix's 12 Forever and is writing or was writing for Tigg and the Sec, a cartoon network show. So. OK, so there's been some work, but like I could find nothing for Darren. Really? Yeah, I, you know, like, I mean, if you go, I don't know, when, unfortunately, I don't know. We'll get into this in a second about Trevor.

But like I started like, you know, hearing about them right before all that happened and like, yeah, I think he just kind of became like a family man, you know, and just like he has a regular job being a family man. I guess those two are regular jobs, too. But, you know, even acting as, but, you know, they weren't celebrities. They weren't actors, obviously, like you say. Yeah, well, and even when you look at some of the things these guys done, like so Trevor has done some bits that were on Comedy Central

and and released those albums and things like that. But like Trevor was on television doing his own like public access show before he was even out of high school. He actually has an appearance on Chuck Wooler. He's dating game from 1999, I found. And like, yeah, yeah, it's kind of weird to see. But beyond that, I guess my point is, is that like I feel like Trevor was always going to be doing something just like this.

Zach was always going to be doing stuff just like this. And like, sure, that's part of who they were. For Sam and for Darren and for Timmy. They probably were just working on, you know, their big drive at that moment. And then once that ended, do I have the drive? Do I have the chops to write a movie all by myself, whatever and what not? Probably not, right? So yeah, Trevor also had some production credits that I'm going to maybe wow you with.

In 2016, he was an executive producer and co-creator of a show called Walk the Prank. And then that ended and shortly thereafter, he executive produced and co-created another show called Joe's Roll with it. And that was for Disney. Wow. OK. Yeah. So surprisingly, now the other big thing that any of these guys had done is also be Zach was in the last year, one of the big hype films in the horror genre was Barbarian. Have you heard of Barbarian at all?

I don't think so. I thought I heard of a show about like the the Romans and in Germans that's called Barbarian. OK, that's a good one. Right. Well, that is that is it. It is it is a film that is written and directed by Zach Craig. Really? And yeah. And like I watched the half in the bag from Red Letter Media on it today. And I was I was so hopeful that they didn't just dunk on this movie.

And they certainly didn't. They did give it a lot of praise. But part of the whole like opening 15 minutes of that video is them saying like how big the hype machine was for this film. And yeah, I mean, definitely like it is one of those things where it takes a left turn from what you're expecting. And if you go in knowing nothing, it's it's better as a film overall. I think that could be said for a lot of films, though.

Like if you know nothing about a movie before you go and watch it, it's going to take you in wholesale versus the the typical market that films are viewed in today where like, you know what I mean? Like we know half the things that happened on set before the films out a lot of times between the coverage on every daytime talk show and nighttime talk show and whole television shows about Hollywood and things like that. But yeah, I really did think it was interesting

that like one of the bigger films critically, but it apparently did really, really well. The box office was that Craig's film now. That's good. Yeah, absolutely. Now, during the pandemic and through the whitest kids, you know, did reunite online and they would do several different streams throughout the week that like various shows for each cast member. On Twitch and then those would get thrown off into YouTube.

And one of the big revelations was that these guys were going to produce a movie called Mars. It was going to be animated. And unfortunately in 2021, Trevor Moore fell off his roof and hit his head. So blunt force trauma and died. His alcohol content was higher than the legal limit. And it's a tragedy for him and his family.

And just because of the influence that that guy had on us, I'd like to dedicate this episode to him with that. Apparently, Zach has said that Trevor's lines were already recorded and that the Mars that we will get will be the one that he signed off on. So, yeah. So the thing that kind of brought him into the forum for all of us will be the thing that he will have last been seen in, I guess, you know, or heard in. So, yeah, I it's crazy.

Yeah, I do. I do think that's awesome to hear, though, that like that that we're still going to get it. We're still going to get that last piece of whitest kids. But it is very sad that that Trevor passed away and left us as soon as he did. Yeah, because I was watching those things, you know, or like a few of them. And like, you know, I was really excited to hear about like I missed the part about them with the Mars thing that really sucks that like he's gone. But it's cool that like, you know, there is that one last piece.

Absolutely. Oh, and for everybody they ever covered from like Abraham Lincoln and to Trent Reznor and all these important figures, I'm really surprised they never covered Isaac Newton. Yeah, they haven't. Yeah, I mean, I think, man, he's a crazy person. And like, I wanted to talk about him just because like I haven't. I don't think I've done a actual like just biography of someone yet.

I don't plan on doing too many of them. But Isaac Newton is just kind of special because he created like science. And well, not really. But in a way, he kind of made science a lot of the ways that it is today. He was a big influence of that, you know. I was going to say, right? He's a founding father of sciences. We know it. Exactly.

Yes. Yes. Because OK, so he was born December 25th. You know, he's born on Christmas 1642. Neil deGrasse Tyson always wishes him a happy birthday on Christmas. He makes people mad. Yeah, it's funny. But but he died March 31st, 1727. So he lived a while.

You know, he's he lived to be like 84 years old. Yeah, that's wild, bro. Yeah. Yeah. But he was he was born in Wolfstorpe, Lincolnshire, England. I hope I said that right. He was he was a physicist and a mathematician. He trained in that and college and everything. College is where he really came up with most of his theories

and like develop them over his life. Did he go to Oxford? Where did he go to college? He went to Trinity College in Cambridge, Cambridge University. But oh, OK, OK. Yeah, but that was one of the things I was wondering is when you said college, I was like, OK, so colleges are a thing then. Which like I have a bad frame of reference for history.

So I probably should have known that. But I know of Cambridge and Oxford and things like that because of their level of prestige. So I figured Newton had to bend to one of those. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think like colleges, I want to say, like it was like the 1300s when like Oxford was first created. Like Oxford was like one of the first ones. Yeah, it's 1300s.

I know there's an earlier college than that than that. But I think Oxford is oldest one in England. I mean, it really does make sense. I probably should have known that by the 1600s, they were universities. But like eight reticence, you know, you got to think like 16, 1642. It's like middle reticence, I guess. You know, he was born in the Renaissance, essentially. So like this is one of like all this crazy scientific and artistic

and all these like revolutions are happening in Europe. It's pretty crazy. Right. Yeah. So like he worked a lot in optics. He worked in the laws of motion and math, you know, we'll get into a little later. Not much because calculus is crazy, but he was very pivotal calculus and also gravity was a big thing. So his book, The Principia was his, I guess, Magnum Opus kind of kind of laid out most of his theories and stuff like that.

OK. Yeah. So he was born to a middle class family, like so not like he wasn't rich. But you know, his dad, he was he wasn't destitute either as a child. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like his dad worked with the royalty, but like he wasn't part of the royalty. It's kind of like like a night. Yeah, like a servant, but not a certain like a night kind of type feel like middle class, middle class. Yeah, was that, you know, yeah.

But his dad died three months after he was born after that. Yeah, after that, his mom remarried, but he was also like really sickly as a baby. Like he thought he was going to die and he ended up living to be 84. So his mom remarried and then his stepdad already had a couple of kids. And I guess back then they were like, yeah, I'm not taking your kid, you know, I'll remarry, you know, I'll marry you, but your kid's not coming. I'll marry you, but not your kid, right? Wow. Yeah.

So so he got pwned off to his grandmother, unfortunately. And for nine years, he was separated from his mom. I don't know how much you know about Newton, but like he was kind of a crazy ish guy. So some attribute this separation from his mom to like maybe like, I'm sure that had a lot to do with it. It seems to me that like it was something that he was maybe bored with, not necessarily afflicted by exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, and I will say this, it seems like some of the most

advantageous minds of their time are often some of the most eccentric figures in that portion of history. So to me, like when we speak about Benjamin Franklin, there's a lot of things that people are like, oh, yeah, but did you know he did this? And he would like air dry himself out of the bath in a window and whatever else. And it's like, you know, I don't think he's doing all that out of perversion as much as he's just like the freest of free thinkers, maybe a little too free at times, you know, like it is part of that

eccentricity that kind of leads into advantageous thought. That being said, there definitely could be some emotional baggage there that at that time, what level of processing and figuring it out? Did they have not even so much at all? Probably like, I mean, even nowadays, you know, like if a mother left her kid for nine years and then. Right. Yeah. Like it's exactly like that's, yeah, that's terrible. So once the stepdad, the stepdad died, she was like, oh, well, now come back

and run the farm and everything like, oh, now stepdad's dead. So come back now. You know, like they could tell that that wasn't what he was meant to do. He was like very bookworm-ish and stuff. So like they sent him off to a grammar school, like Grantham, Grantham Grammar School, where I guess he was already studying there a little bit. But the notable thing there is that he learned Latin, which would allow him to like read a lot of things.

And like, yeah, obviously prepared him for college because school is a little different back then, you know, like college was kind of like where you learned the majority of the stuff in June of 1661. He enrolled in the Trinity College and at Cambridge. And by that time, I don't know how much you know about like the scientific revolution, but like Galileo had already been like, he actually died the day that or I think the same year that Newton was born, maybe it was the day of or the same year, one of the two. Right.

But Galileo, he was one of the like invented telescopes or, you know, refined telescopes to where they like were able to be used to to view stuff. Yeah, look to the moon and stuff like that. Copernicus was already around with his heliocentric theory of the solar system, where the sun is right. So everything's revolving around the sun, not around us. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And like Johannes Kepler was also like had had had described

like the orbits of everything of the planets and moons and stuff around that. So like these things like Isaac Newton, I think was the one that was credited with saying like, I discovered these things on the shoulders of giants. And like that's like one of my favorite quotes because like, yeah, it's true, man. That's what science is. You just you build upon, build upon, build upon. That's what we do in science. And like, that's the beautiful thing about it.

So like, he studied all these things. He also studied like Aristotle and this Rene de Startes. He was more of like a philosopher and stuff. By that time, like he was started forming ideas like within his time in college. But by 1669, he had like developed calculus, like a bunch of things and optics and stuff, which we'll get into. And like even the binomial theorem, he invented that. I don't know if you know what the binomial theorem is, but I do not know.

So that's like when you got like X plus Y in parentheses times X plus Y in parentheses. Calculus, I'll quickly go into this because we're going to skip past math. I know math's not interesting to a lot of people. Calculus deals with rates of change. So it's a lot of graphing and stuff like that. It's about it's to find out like what a certain point is on a line, right? Or on a graph and also dealing with the space underneath those points. So it's a lot of like rates of change, essentially is what math is.

Or what calculations math is. Yes, yeah. He researched like circular motions of the moons and planets and stuff like that. And that's one of the biggest thing about gravity is the inverse square law. And that's as you get closer to an object, every time you get twice as close to an object, gravity is squared is squared higher. So, you know, it's so every double you have X squared to X. Yeah, it's this is getting very complicated.

I'm trying to keep it in layman's terms, but that's a very important thing. When you think about it, yes, with light, it even matters with light. So how like how much light is that an object? And from that, we can like determine distances from things and stuff like that. Like it's it's it's super important. Like it's this is this is fundamental things that he discovered. Right. Yeah. Sixty sixty five.

He graduated and there was a plague hit right around then. So like he was like pretty much confined to his house, kind of like us for the past couple years. It's kind of funny, you know, that like that's where he really laid the foundations for calculus and thought about a lot of optics and stuff like that. And then that's that was when he he developed the inverse square law. And all of this stuff, though, nobody heard about it that time. And it wasn't until like many years later where like really he became big. But in 1667 is when he started working at the Trinity College.

He went back to Trinity College to work there. Soon after that, a friend retired and he became the Lucacean Professor of Mathematics. That like he did a lot of like he would give like lectures and stuff. It wasn't like so much like a professor as nowadays. He's more like, you know, you would like give lectures like not as often, you know, but he's optics a lot like he talks about optics a lot. And then from that, like he was the one that discovered that optics, what like a white light was actually all the colors of the rainbow together.

You know, he discovered the rainbow, essentially. Really? OK. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. He like, oh, I don't know if he even made it to the prison, but he was able to like separate. Yeah, man, pick Floyd. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then like he was like he also like determined like how like things refract from like so like why a blue thing is blue or why a green thing is green.

And then because the way it absorbs certain rays of light and gives off the, you know, the green ones, that that's what makes it green, you know. And like he had so much like controversy, like people like during that time, like there was a lot more like scientific because like they were just they were discovering huge things, you know, kind of like climate change. But we were talking last week, you know, that's like a modern, a modern equivalent, you know, another thing he did.

There's so much things he did. Yeah, he hated how there was like this chromatic aberration in lenses in telescope lenses. So that's like a like a ring of color. So he switched to using mirrors in telescopes, which is like what all the big telescopes use now is and they're called Newtonian telescopes. Galileo made like the first telescope, essentially. He like improved upon that.

So that's awesome. Yeah. So like some of the controversy is getting to there's this guy, Robert Hook. Like he's also like an optic guy, you know, is a master in optics. I was going to say that name sounds familiar. Yeah, like he's I mean, he's he's a big scientist, you know, like they constantly were fighting, like almost all of Newton's life. And like it caused him to like go into like isolation for like three years at one point.

No, sorry. No, it caused him to go into isolation for six years at one point. And like, yeah, like it. But I mean, his mom just died like right before then. Like he just, I don't know. Like there is yeah, he kind of became a like a recluse for a little while. And he but he did like he kind of dabbled in alchemy and stuff during that time. So like, I don't know.

Like he kind of always did. But he didn't like he was trying to like extract knowledge from that. It wasn't like he's like, I'm going to turn lead in the gold or whatever, you know. But like he was trying to like deal with like nature, the ethereal. Like he's like gravity, if you think about it, is kind of like voodoo. You know, it's like this a force that attracts things, you know, like that's what he ended up discovering. You know, it's like that's what gravity is.

Is there there's a like everything has gravity and the bigger a mass is, you know, the more gravity it has, like it's yeah. He got an argument about gravity with Hook eventually, you know, like about how a ball, like you dropped a ball, how it would drop if you could go through the earth and all that. That was like that kind of caused him to like come out and be like, all right, I'm showing you guys what these things are, you know. So he came out with the three laws of motion, the Newtonian laws of motion,

which is the number one is a body remains at rest until it is compelled to change by a force and pressed upon it. So, I mean, that doesn't seem like much, but yeah, it makes sense, right? Like something's going to stay still until you do something to it, right? Number two, the change of motion is proportional to the force and press. So that, you know, if you hit something really hard, it's going to move more. If you hit it less, it's going to move less, right? And then the big one that, well, the one that people, everybody always hears

because it's kind of almost like a motto to things, you know, is to every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, right? Yeah. Yeah. I always feel like that's one of those things that because it's applicable to people's emotions or reactions, they've used it. Exactly. Time again in a completely science, illiterate fashion. Yeah, but I mean, it is a good, like, no, absolutely.

I'm not saying it doesn't fit the, the, the role that it's used. I'm just saying, like realistically, that is not what that man is talking about at all. And I'm not saying I'm not guilty of using that exact phrase and that exact circumstance I was talking about. So yeah, it's just. But you can still have fun with it. Like, you know, like tonight, I was telling my daughter about it and we were, you know, have, we had a bunch of pillows and I was showing her that, you know,

if I bumped her with the pillows, she would go flying into the bunch of other pillows. So it was pretty cool. But yeah, so like these, these laws of motion perfectly fit into all the other like previous work about the orbital motion of planets. And like from this, from the observations of tides and the orbits of comets, he formed the laws of gravitation, the law of universal gravitation. And that is, it states that every particle in them, in the universe attracts each every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product

of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. So what that is saying is that how massive something is and how far away it is affects what the gravity is. What I was kind of saying, the inverse square law is about, you know, if it's, you know, if it's closer, it's going to be more attractive to it. If it's farther, it's going to be less attractive to it. If it's more massive, it's going to have more gravity.

If it's less massive, it's going to have less. It's essentially right. So things that we were talking about before we were, I think it was episode five when we were talking about proto earth and things like that of when exactly did this, the tiny formulated particles start to gather in mass enough to have a gravitational pull, right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Like I was saying, everything has gravity, but like to where it creates that like planet, there's like, there is a certain, you know, mass, I'm sure. Right. I think I even said that. But yeah, he did. Yeah. So yeah, the Principia book was published around that time. And that like, that's when it became a star was when the Principia and like

from that, like he, he left a lot of his academic work like shortly after that. And he had another nervous breakdown when his friend died, which is understandable. It's understandable, you know, but he had a job being the warden of the Mint in London. And that's what he pretty much did for the rest of his life. And like he like, he was not like just like, you know, some rich guy that was going to like just sit there and collect money. No, he went after like counterfeiters and everything, like improved like the processes of everything because he's Newton.

I mean, obviously, you know, this guy's like not going to sit around do nothing. Yeah. So when did he get knighted and became Sir Isaac Newton? Is that when he was doing that? Yes, I was good. Yep, I was just going to get that. So like, so before that in 1703, he became the president of the Royal Society, which is like, essentially, the head scientist of England.

If you think about it, you're like, yeah. But yeah. And then in 1705, that was when he was knighted by Queen Anne. And that was, he was actually the first scientist to be knighted. So that's, you know, pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Yeah. He published his, his work, his work on like calculus and all that in 1704.

But this guy got free to will him libnits from, from Germany. I probably said that wrong. He like a dispute again, another guy saying, ah, plagiarism, you know, but Newton had like plenty of stuff and going way back to the 60s. Like, you know, 1660s show on that. Now I've been working on this. Also, like they independently discovered it though. It's, it's crazy because a lot of the stuff that that's what happened.

A lot of like people independently discovered these things around that time. And like, there just came together like that. He had a deal with that, like, you know, not much happened. And like his later years of life, you know, I mean, you know, not notably, but like he dealt with that plagiarism, like crap for the rest of his life, which he, he just kind of died peacefully in 1727 and into sleep, you know, which is the way I hope everybody goes. He's just an interesting guy, man.

He was really interesting. That is actually really interesting, man. Like I, you know, and it's funny too, because I think when anybody hears the name Isaac Newton, they might not even say, sir, Isaac Newton, but then to get to the point of like, well, why do you know that name? People would probably say gravity, the Apple story, etc. Yes, then they hear like, no, this guy was able to revolutionize the telescope, develop calculus.

It establish a level of scientific formulas and understanding for gravitational poles of planets. And like it's insane in the 1600s. Right. Exactly. Like it's a guy who's kind of sold short, to be perfectly honest. Like, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy, man.

That was a really, really good pick for your first, for your very first spotlight, you know, well, yeah, I'm glad you liked it, man. I don't know. I think he's a really cool guy. I want other people to know about him. Yeah. No, I do. I do too. Yeah, that's dope.

Yeah. With that, man. I mean, uh, Frog, he's out on his adventure. So, uh, that'll be it for today. But Kyle, you want to lead us out? And with that, everyone, we would love to thank you for joining us here at the Brain Soda Podcast. Find us on Patreon, follow us on TikTok, find us on Facebook and join us here every

weekend for yet another episode of the Brain Soda Podcast for Brad, for Frog. I'm Kyle and we will see you again here soon. See ya. Blamity blam. Brain soda.