Endless Thread - A Beige New World

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

What's your favorite color? If you ask the algorithm, the answer is probably beige. The  internet loves neutrals. Aesthetic coffee shop videos feature white walls and minimalist decor. Influencers film from houses decked out with all the beige fixings. When you shop online, you'll be presented with products in a wide range of bland colors — from eggshell, to taupe, to... slightly darker taupe. So where did all the color go? Hayley DeRoche, a librarian and writer known as SadBeige on Tiktok, has been watching this unfold for a while. Hosts Ben and Amory talk with Hayley about the internet's love affair with beige and discuss her new book “Dress Your Baby In Sage and Taupe: A Handbook for the Sad Beige Parent.”  Show notes: SadBeige (TikTok) The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same (The Guardian) You read that white: Pantone's 2026 Color of the Year is 'Cloud Dancer' (NPR) Credits: This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena, and co-hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by Meg Cramer. Mix and sound design by Marquis Neal. Sponsor message: 🌏 EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/ENDLESS Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee 👍

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Welcome to Werner Herzog's new line of children's closing. Sad beige clothes for sad beige children. This is Werner Herzog. Okay, rather it's an impression of the German filmmaker Werner Herzog by Richmond, Virginia, Haley DeRosch. I am a librarian slash poet slash writer. Haley is also very online, where she spends a lot of time thinking and posting about color. If you could give Richmond, Virginia, a single color, what would it be? Ooh, that's a good question. I think right now it would have to be yellow green, like a, well, I guess, yeah, yellowish green for the pollen.

It's probably more accurate to say Haley spends a lot of time thinking about one specific color. The neutral, inoffensive, and frankly, a little boring, beige. Beige. Beige. Beige. Beage. Beage. Beage. Beage. Beage. Beage. Beage. Beage. Beage clothes. Beage clothes. On TikTok, Haley's known by the handle, sad beige. She makes videos, like the one we just heard, poking fun at children's clothing that leans aggressively neutral. I'm talking eggshell, Tope, slightly darker than tope. What are some other neutral colors, Ben? Oh, man.

Chestnut? Beach sand? Yeah. Now we're talking. Beach sand, driftwood. Anyway, what we're dancing around here, the big question is, where did all the colors that I can't name go? This question has been on.

on our minds, beyond sad beige clothing for kids. So who are the tastemakers and trendsetters when it comes to color more broadly? Some would say Pantone, the design company known for its proprietary color matching system. Each December, Pantone announces a color of the year. Past year's colors include Viva Magenta. Viva Lod Magenta! Living Coral. Marsala.

Radiant Orchia. The 2026 color of the year? Cloud Dancer. Hold me close to cloud dancer. That's the only reaction I had to that. Wait, I thought it was white. Yeah, that's where Cloud Dancer is, basically. Ding, ding, ding.

It's white? The color is white? It's like, well, no, they would say it's cloud dancer, but it's, It's basically white. Oh, God. So some people thought that this was a big joke, but Pantone was quite serious about the choice, describing Cloud Dancer as, quote, a lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection.

It is very hard not to react to the idea as lofty white being an influence in society. But I'm just going to let it keep going and say, woof, even if the colorless color of the year was a tongue-in-cheek trolling moment, which apparently it wasn't, this trend towards neutrals has been a long-time brewing, a long-time-neutraling, a long-time... Stirring, paint-mixing? Paint mixing? From minimalist coffee shops that remind me of Brooklyn all the time to the all-white kitchen trend.

To fast food chains that have started to look like. corporate office buildings. And yes, to kids' clothing all the way down to teeny tiny beige onesies. No, not the onesies. Although Cloud Dancer makes more sense when it's in relation to children. So, you know, we wanted to talk to sad beige Haley DeRosch, who's been watching this unfold for a while and who has a book inspired by her TikTok series called Dress Your Baby and Sage and Tope, a handbook. for the sad beige parent. So I started making jokes and thinking about beige

when I was actually just shopping online for a baby shower gift, and I came across these stacking cups, like those, you know, the ones that you give your baby in the bath or something like that. And they're usually a rainbow color with like every cup being a different color. And then the ones that were being marketed to me were all different shades of beige. So you had like fawn and chestnut, et crue. And it made me laugh, but the thing that really tipped it over the edge for me was the marketing imagery that went with it because it was these like very wise, sagely looking children, just kind of staring at the cups. And I think what they were trying to get across was like, your child will be like, you know, wise beyond their years if they play with these stacking cups.

What it kind of translated as on screen was just kind of sad. And from there, I just started seeing beige everywhere. and here I am. Is there any other way that you would describe sad beige to someone who doesn't know anything about what sad beige is? Like imagine a time traveler arrived who doesn't know what the internet is. What is sad beige the color for you? What does that aesthetic look like to you?

Sad beige is like if your whole world turned to oatmeal and khaki and camel and the feeling of just being in a monochrome environment where it's very clean, very sparse, and the overall mood is definitely supposed to be calm, but it's also lacking a certain amount of joy and whimsy and just difference. So it's very similar, it's very same, very cerebral. Did you have a band in middle school called Cacky Oatmeal Camel? No, I should have. I need to go back in time. Maybe I can swap places with the time traveler.

This is so weird to me, though. I mean, I grew up, so I was an 80s baby. Okay. And when I grew up, you know, bright colors were everywhere. In the 90s, it went kind of neon. I can still remember getting like getting the sunglasses from back to the future too as a goodie from Pizza Hut. And they had these like funky sunglasses that were very neon.

And that's the world I feel like I grew up in. But that's not the world that I feel like we exist in now when we walk into coffee shops or, you know, places to buy clothing that all ends up looking kind of the same. Can you talk about where this came from? And then I think we want to maybe get into the baby clothes bit and listen to some sounds. Yes. Yeah. I think part of it, it's kind of a multi-layered thing that I think is happening. And I say this as a comedian first, not a researcher and not an academic.

But what I see happening is kind of this meeting of internet culture being very flattened. You have influencers who want the products that they're shilling to pop on the screen and to do that, you need to have a background that isn't popping off the screen. So you need that contrast. So having a beige home is really good for selling things when your home is your studio. So you have that going on. But then you also have, of course, the Kardashians. And they have, you know, Kim Kardashian's line. It's very, very sleek, very beige.

You have places like the row with the Olson twins that's also very sleek, very modern, very beige for a lot of their stuff. And that's very, very high end. So I think you have this kind of meeting where you have the high. high-end trickling down to the middle class that's online and with influencers. So you have that. And then you also have the Montessori, which is telling parents, in order to be a good parent, you need to have the best toys for your children, the best clothing. And that's timeless to a certain extent.

And then when you add in like trad wife culture that's on the rise, which is very prairie in its aesthetic, I think that that's also a contributing factor as well. So there's really a lot going on in my opinion. I'm curious about the narrative behind the reason for the beige, though, because I'm hearing two things. One is that the beige is kind of, it's calming for your child, that this is a calming color palette. And the other is much more aesthetic, the aesthetic of the home, the idea that these toys, those stacking cups, if they're bright colors, that doesn't blend in with the rest of your home and it just looks tacky. or chaotic or something. So you're a parent, yes? Yes. Do you feel like there's any weight behind the beige color palette being calmer or a better experience for the child? I don't know that it's

a universal experience that a child who has like all beige toys is going to be a calm child. I think, and I kind of talk about this in my book too, that the child you get is the child you get And there is going to be a child who is very calm, who lives in a beige environment. And there's going to be a child who lives in a beige environment who is just bananas. And I think we as parents like to attribute our children's what we perceive to be good nature or good habits or good behavior as the result of our choices. Because that feels good. And parenting is hard. And you take the wins where you can, right?

as to whether or not there's any truth in that, it might be a little, but I think a lot of it comes down to us wanting our children to behave a certain way and when they do and that aligns with what we have done, then we can pat ourselves on the back. I don't think that, you know, being subjected to a bounce house that's red and green is really any different than a bounce house that's beige or opal. You have been playing with this on TikTok. You frequently review kids beige clothes in the voice of German director, beloved Werner Herzog. This one I call the velvet flare of despair, for she knows that sheep farming is a rough life, one that will bring many a callus to the hands on the heart. Solid, solid Werner impression. Yeah, he should hire me as a backup.

What about beige clothing summons the spirit of Werner Herzog for you? I just thought when I was baking this, who would be the worst possible person to be a spokesperson for a fake children's company? And he was just top of the list and that was off to the races. Werner-Hutzau does seem like an odd choice to be the face of a children's clothing line, but it actually also makes a weird amount of sense, right? Like at first blush, everything Verona says seems serious and weighty. But if you're familiar with this work, it's actually kind of ridiculous and funny even when it's not trying to be.

There is something serious about the beige aesthetic, though. Haley says that online, it's become a sort of class signal. So what I'm seeing online is it kind of the trickle down from the row and from Kim Kardashian, rather high-end brands, down to the peasants like myself. And so I think that when that happens, it just kind of becomes a natural signifier of class. And also, especially when it's tied to things like Montessori or Waldorf, you also are signaling that you buy into a certain, like, aesthetic for education. for your child and that you can afford it in a lot of cases. And so I think that there's just a lot of signaling going on with what you dress your baby in, what stroller you're using for your baby, what baby carrier if you're using wrapped, which wraps? There's a huge online market for

like very specific woven wraps and they'll have like limited additions and all of this stuff. And I mean, I fell into that myself when my kids were little. There was like a rap that I so desperately wanted and it was just impossible to find. And it became like my white whale. And it's like, did it matter in the end? No. But it felt good to like find something and want it and seek it and have some sort of purpose in the midst of the chaos of parenting, which isn't necessarily a class signifier. But I do understand why people kind of latch on to things that they can control and image is a big one.

In my mind, it also kind of, there's a crossover with minimalism, you know, not having a bunch of excess stuff. And so the idea, like the stacking cups in particular, the idea that toys would become beige is a way to help them sort of blend into the background so that visually there's less stuff, even if physically there isn't. Absolutely. Does that resonate or is it like is there actually a connection between like the like the minimalist lifestyle and the minimization of color diversity? I do think yes to a certain degree. I also wonder if there's some greenwashing going on there where if you have toys that are very natural colors, even if they're plastic, they're less likely to call attention to themselves as like plastic junk. Yeah, I confess, I am guilty of coveting the beige stacking cups. I am only apparent to a rabbit, a pet rabbit, who loves those little stacking cups.

And I have the brightly colored ones because I didn't know the more neutral-toned ones existed. And then when I saw the more neutral-toned ones, I was like, oh, that would look nicer. So I think I'm guilty of this, even though I am a fan of color, I promise. It's just, I don't know, I was shocked to hear that example and see a finger being slowly pointed at myself. Have you, now that you've wanted the sad beige stacking tups for your rabbit, have you considered what preschool you'll be sending them to? Because there may be six to seven year wait list and the tuition is going to be six times more than you thought. Noted. Thank you for opening my eyes to this. Coming up, Emery decides what preschool the send.

her rabbit to. Nope. But we do think more deeply about what our collective embrace of beige says about us. More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at. science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Morotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business. Ships move the vast majority of the world's goods, and it's cheaper and safer compared to trucks or planes. So the shipping was there. centuries and it will remain there in the future.

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deepen connections, and drive engagement. Turn your vision into a podcast. Visit wbUR.org slash creative studio. There comes a time in every beige-loving person's life when they have to ask themselves, do I actually love beige or do I want to be seen as the kind of person who loves beige. Who is that person anyway? Who am I?

Et cetera, et cetera. We asked Haley about a very particular beige-loving contingency online. I feel like you referenced trad wives earlier in the conversation. And I wonder what the connection is there between sort of like a whole lifestyle that you see represented for trad wives and this sad. beige trend? I think it kind of goes back to signaling, if not class, then a specific lifestyle. And especially when you're looking at a lot of influencers being the ones to really drive that, then they have an aesthetic that they have to have because that's really all you have going for you

online. Like images everything when you're an influencer and your main platform is image-based. So latching on to kind of the prairie, the simplicity, the homestead vibe is very beige, if not beige, adjacent, because it is kind of that same like homespun look. And so I think that there's that at play as well where like people want to look, whether it's eco-friendly or of a certain class or of a certain aesthetic that's tied to like a lifestyle. the image is really more important than how that item came to be, if that makes sense. Like, there are some beige clothing and toy companies that are very ethical and are doing things in a slow way. But there are just as many that are, you know, on Sheehan. You could easily get those for cheap and achieve the same look. And it's not always easy to tell which is which.

So Kyle Chaka, the staff writer at the New Yorker, He's written a lot about this. He makes this argument that there is a sameness to our culture because over time, algorithms have flattened our tastes and likes showing us the same stuff over and over again. Yeah. What are your thoughts are there? Yeah? You give that a plus 100?

I do. I do. And I think there's a sameness. Everyone's getting a lot of the same stuff fed them online. Whether, you know, you can be in like bucket one, bucket two, bucket. three, but they're all very similar products. You're all ultimately being fed kind of the same stuff. I talk a bit in my book in a comedic sense about algorithms as well. I actually have a couple pieces from the point of view of the algorithm as kind of an entity that's just insatiable

and hungry for your eyes and your attention and your money. And the flattening, I think, just comes from pushing the stuff out to as many people as possible. So, Being kind of same reaches a lot of people as opposed to being unique. And is it being driven by the internet or is the internet just like reflecting it like Uber reflecting it? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, it's almost chicken and egg, right? Yeah. We have we have become internet. And so is internet us? We are internet. We are internet. We are all internet now. Yes, we are all internet. Internet. Internet is us.

This is good for our robot synth band. Opemeal, camel, whatever it was. Oatmeal camel khaki. Oatmeal camel khaki. I love oatmeal. I think I might be guilty of loving some beige things, which I'll do some reflecting on after this conversation.

Well, no, beige, but that's the thing. That's the whole thing, Amory. It's like beige is this satisfying. It's like the color of, to me, it's the color of something. Maybe it means different things to different people. But to me, it is the color of something that is just slightly dirty in a good way. That's how I, that's, that's how I experience beige. I think sad beige is definitely a cut above like landlord gray or the millennial gray as I could call it.

But I think that's much more than landlord driven than millennial. Oh, man, don't get me started on millennial gray. I could write a whole book about that. I would read that book as long as it was very, very short because we've talked about book reading and how bad I am at it. But speaking of this, we asked Haley for a little peek into her book. Dress your baby in Sage and Tope, a handbook for the sad beige parent. Can you do a dramatic reading in your voice or Werner Herzog's voice from like the first page, the part about building a nursery? Sure.

Hold on. Let me pull it up here. Before your baby is born. No, that's more of Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's too Arnold. Yeah, you got to really, you got to feel it in your soul. Yeah. That can be your book, Ben, about raising a Terminator or something.

There's a deep sadness. Would you call that a termite? Termite. Termite, there you go. Nice. All right, let's go. We've got to get in the word. The Werner mindset.

You don't have to do it. You could do it in your own voice. I mean, this is you writing, right? Yes, it is. Yes, the book is in my point of view rather than word. Although I do, it's probably the only parenting book out there that does quote Werner-Hurtzog and Marcel Proust. But here is how to harness the cold embrace of the abyss when decorating your nursery. It is time.

The wind howls. Rain falls in sheets, silver daggers. Somewhere a screen door smacks against a solitary door frame. The signs and portents all point to the looming task drawing nigh. Yes, it is time to decorate your baby's nursery. This is the most magical time when you undertake the project of preparing a room for your little one's introduction to this world, in neutral beige tones, of course. beige is gentle and calming, so your baby is sure to be cool as a cucumber.

Here they will rock with you in the beige glider, cooing to your neutral lullabies. Here they will giggle neutrally and burp onto beige burcloths. Here they will refuse to drift off to Dreamland in their beige crib, choosing instead to scream like an inconsolable parade of fire trucks, blaring their sirens long into the night. Ah, what bliss this room shall see. So what are we to do with this beige phenomenon? on. Are, you know, is it, is this something that we should surrender to or is there value in pushing back against the beige? I think that you should lean into whatever brings you joy. So if beige truly is bringing you joy, then your child will probably find joy in it too, because you're raising them in a way that makes you happy. But likewise, if there comes a point where your

child is like, I want that horrible purple tutu or like my son fell in love with a clown doll at Spirit Halloween. And no amount of giving him like cute, snugly bunnies would solve it. He wanted that. And so sometimes you also just have to give in to whatever whimsical, weird thing happens in your parenting journey. Do you think that we will cycle back to a more colorful world? Is this something we're going to snap out of? Or has the algorithm just changed us all too much and disrupted the kind of cycles that we think of? You know, we have a lot of power. And, you know, I joke that we have become internet and internet is us. But it does mean that we are internet. So we can push back against that. But I don't think that we have to just surrender to the algorithm. In the end, we are the people who control our lives and our aesthetics. And all of the best things that I've found have come from like the local art market in my house rather than buying prints online. Although that can be nice. And so just being willing to explore and see what's out there and fall in love with stuff that you find that maybe your algorithm hasn't fed you.

Do you guys remember when Obama wore a beige suit? Oh, my God. Who does it remember? I thought they were in the internet lost. It's the greatest scandal to hit the American presidency in the last 40 years. There was a headline that said the audacity of top. And I think of that. Maybe once a week.

That's incredible. No, that's, that's, that's, wow. Whoever wrote that deserves a raise. I know, right? We're bringing that back for this episode. We're bringing it back. Oh, man, what a good book title that would have been. Oh.

Your next book. Your next book. If we stay in the beige, in the beige hellscape, that's your next book. Haley, thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure. And congrats on the book. Thank you.

What color is the cover going to be? I'll give you one guess. Okay, so a fun fact about Haley DeRosch. Right before we talked to her, we actually realized we've featured one of her videos on our show before. It just happened to be a video that had nothing to do with beige. It's true. It's kind of a genius TikTok that she made. And if you want to hear more about that, you should go to last year's Endless Thread episode

and listen to that one too. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxana and hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson. And me, Amory Sebertsin. It was edited by Meg Kramer, Mix and Sound Design by Marquise Neal. The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Chiosna, Bernadot, Emily Jenkowski, and our production manager, Paul Vikas, as well as our managing producer, Samata, Joe. She.

Endless thread is a show about the blurred lines between white and cloud dancer. Very blurry lines. If you have an unsolved mystery and untold history or another wild story from the internet, you can email us at Endless thread at WBUR.org. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast about the Morotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business. Follow is business broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Valerie Thomas, Professor of Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech, on whether the ocean freight shipping industry can reach net zero emissions by 2050. It's technically feasible.

That's a very simple question. Will we get there? Will it all be deployed? We're going to see. I just want to add in there that, yeah, we've talked a lot about the difficulties for shipping in getting to net zero, this is not the only thing that's going to be going on. Aviation is seeking to do the same thing, maybe even faster, and the other uses of petroleum are all transitioning. You may think, and in some ways that makes the problem even bigger, there are other ways that it

makes it easier. Some of the fuels that are used for shipping are very similar to those used for aviation. So as infrastructure gets built out, shipping can benefit. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken, wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more about the Morotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at IBMS.bS.bU.