Good Job, Brain! - 31: Color Me Bad!

Episode Date: October 1, 2012

Roses are red / violets are blue / we can't talk about color / without mentioning poo. We dive into the world of color: weird color names, chameleons, the legitimacy of purple, cheddar cheese vs. flamingos, color character name quiz, Crayola crayon controversy, heterochromia, and why we'd want to take Monet to a rave party. ALSO: animal collective nouns, wine quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, Posse of possibly Pogoing Possums. This is good job. Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Today's show is Episode 31. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And don't panic. We are your panoram.

panel of pandas and pangolins with panache and pantone pants. Awesome. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. And let's jump into our random trivia pursuit card segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have a card.

And here we go. Get your barnyard buzzers ready. Blue wedge for geography. What part of the car does a British person call the bonnet? The hood Correct the hood Pink Wedge for pop culture In the karate kid

The boys who beat up Daniel Belonged to what dojo The Cobra Kai Dojo Cobra Kai 2 or die Yes I say Yellow Wedge What narcotic substance Caused a series of wars

Between England and China In the 19th century Oh, Dana. Opium. Correct. Collin got excited. I thought the question was over. Purple Wedge.

What French-born sculptor created the immense Maman spider? Hmm. Seen pictures of that before. Rodin. Incorrect. Mame spider. Mement? Mame.

Like mom. Like mommy spider. Oh. It's like the big spider out in the plaza. Huh. It is. Louise bourgeois Oh

Now you know I have to look that up later Green Wedge for Science What is both a shade of blue And a type of bean Chris Navy Navy, Navy,

Correct Navy beans and navy blue Orange Wedge last question What event did Lance Armstrong Describe as the hardest Physical thing he'd ever done Winning the Tour de France Incorrect.

Oh, I know. It seemed like a trip. Beating cancer. American gladiators. No, it is the New York City Marathon. Oh, right. Yeah, he did a lot of marathons and triathlons, too. All right.

Wow, that's kind of weird that we had that question about the color blue and beans, because that is our topic for this week, which is Beans. Okay. Walking along, minding my business. When love came and hit me in the eye. Flash! Bam, Al-A-Zam, out of an orange-colored sky. That would be a good show, actually.

So I want to start off our color talk with, what's your favorite color, or what's your favorite color name? My favorite color name, just because it's fun to say, is vermilion. Vermilion. Vermilion, which is that really awesome shade of red, it's kind of orange. It's called like China Red. Like that really classic Chinese red. Oh, okay.

That's Vermillion. And it comes from minerals. It comes from cinnabar. But it's just fun to say vermilion. Sinabar. Like a cinnabar. My favorite color and color name is Chartreuse. That's a good one.

And it's a green, yellow. It's kind of like the color of olive oil, I guess you'd describe it. And Chartruth is named after the liquor, Chartruse, which I also enjoy. It's very herbie. Like, supposedly it's made out of like 130 different herbs fermented in secret ways or whatnot. In French ski resorts, they actually have a special beverage that they serve. People like hot chocolate, they actually put some chartreuse in it, and they call it the green showed, which is the hot green. And it's hot chocolate with a bit of chartreuse, so it warms you up and it gives it that extra kick.

This isn't my favorite color, but the story is really great. gross, and I feel like sharing it with you guys. Oh, good. Yeah. Puse, which is like a purplish brown color, is named for the French word flea. Oh, like flea market is La Marshae de Puce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the reason why it's a purply brown color is because it's named for the blood stains or the, like, fecal flea stains on sheets and bed linens. The droppings of fleas.

Pretty gross. It is pretty gross. Yeah. So, you know, if you have fleas or. bedbugs because your sheets have those marks on it. Ew. It's funny because for me, like, for me, like,

Puse, it just, it seems like it's such high-class connotations, I don't know, but... Flea poop. Well, you know, over the course of researching this episode, I actually became very interested in the story of the color, or the pigment, rather, Prussian blue. Which is a really interesting, like,

historically important color, which, and I will get to that later. Whoa, what a tease. Stay tuned. Well, let me ask you guys a question. Let me pose a question for you. What do you? cheddar cheese and flamingos have in common.

I've seen this on a laffy-taffy. They're delicious. Yeah, aside from being delicious. Both of them. I guess, are they, are they both neon? They are, you're sort of on the right track. They're not really that color? They are not really that color is the closest to what I'm looking at.

There are two things that are so known for being a, cheddar cheese is just orange. Yeah. And flamingos, they're just, they're pink. They're so identified with their color, but Dana's, you know, on the right track. Neither one of them is naturally the color. that we associate. Okay.

No. Well, I eat a lot of cheddar cheese and it's white. So, off white. So, yeah, naturally cheddar cheese is anywhere from white to kind of yellowish white. Yeah. Like most cheeses are. It sort of varies over the course of the year. Like, depending on how much beta carotene basically is in the cow's diet, in the cheese.

So cows that are eating fresher greens and fresher grasses in the summer and spring, milk produced then will be a little bit yeller, a little bit more. more orangey, but it's not like the neon orange that we associate with cheddar cheese. No one's exactly sure exactly why cheesemakers started adding more and more pigment. The most common theory seems to be that it was just so they could have a consistent color throughout the year. I think so. But it became sort of this cycle of consumers started expecting orange in cheddar cheese,

so the cheesemaker started adding more orange, and so it's sort of gotten this feedback loose. More orange means it's better. More orange means it's more authentic. And there is nothing in the process. of making cheddar cheese that really makes it orange the way that we have it yeah so uh these is you are rocking my socks on hold on so first off the natural yellowyness of the cheese is from the diet right it's from the diet of the cows and it's like the butter fat basically how much beta carotene

which is the stuff that makes carrots orange for example how much of that those kind of substances okay so if i had a cow and i force fed it only carrots uh-huh so that the milk and the cheese would be really, really orange. You're telling me that, you would have a higher level, that's right. Assuming the cow stays alive during all-dress? Yeah, on the all-carat diet. What if you fed it skittles? Would it be like rainbow cheese?

It would be rainbow cheese. Actually, every teat on the udder would produce a different color of milk. That sounds good. That's like a Willy Wonka cat. That's a total Willy Wonka cheese, exactly. Like Neapolitan cheese. So after that, then dairy people are adding orange color to the cheese. And it just sort of more.

And I mean, you know, throughout the 1800s, it really, by that time, it had just become a thing that cheddar cheese, by and large, was orange. And people knew it was artificial. It wasn't like they thought that it was somehow native to the process. But eventually, that knowledge was lost. Because as people become more and more disconnected from the food that they eat, you don't really think about the process anymore. Right, right, right.

So you start to think, oh, yeah, it's orange. Well, there must be some reason why it's orange. So like you say, yeah, you go and buy the white cheddar. That's actually, you know, more natural. more normal, but it's not some new process of making cheddar cheese. They just don't put in the orange coloring, which... Good branding. It is. It's what customers come to expect. That's right.

And now you're going to blow our minds about flamingos. So flamingos, you know, they eat a lot of cheddar cheese. So flamingos, no. A circle of life. It's sponsored by craft. Flamingos get their pink color from their diet. And when you go see

flamingos at the zoo, they give them a special diet that's loaded with the ingredients that caused them to turn pink and basically what it is is again it's like beta carotene it's a keratinoid that they get from the shrimp so flamingos eat shrimp and the shrimp the keratinoids when they dissolve in the flamingo's body fat and then make their way out into the feathers in their face it turns pink and you can see the same phenomenon like when you're cooking shrimp this is what's happening this is why shrimp turned pinkish orange when you cook them is the the keratinoids are dissolving and changing color and so if you and so they found

that if you don't give them, like, the right diet that's rich in these keratinoids, they'll get kind of dull and really kind of pale-colored feathers. Shrimps get all up in your body. Shrimp get up in their grill. Oh, my God. I'm scandalized. And not only flamingos, but salmon as well. They keep farm-raised salmon on a special diet to keep them that pinkish-orange hue,

because otherwise consumers just expected. Like, you saw, like, if you saw, like, grayish, kind of whitish salmon, you're like, oh, that's all salmon. Right. Something's wrong with salmon. So it's to sort of replicate the color they have in nature. They have to give farm salmon and flamingos in zoos. They have to supplement their diet to make sure they keep the color that people expect them when they come to see them. Oh, man.

So cheddar cheese to flamingos, circle of life. When we're researching about colors, I was like, oh, it's such a broad topic. And the number one burning question I had when you talk about colors is chameleons. It's synonymous with, oh, changing colors. It's true. Like, chameleons do, and several other animals do have the ability to change color. But my question is, how does it do it? Yeah, how does it know?

What is the science behind it? So there are three reasons. Chameleon is a large family. They're different subspecies and living in different conditions. So they all change colors for different reasons and into different colors. It's not every chameleon can turn into super green or super red. But mostly, there are three reasons why they do change colors. Number one is they're socially or emotionally signaling something, right?

If they're into a lady chameleon or, you know, if you're a lady chameleon trying to flirt with a male chameleon, you'd want to pretty up yourself. So that's like one of the examples. Or, you know, if they're being territorial and be like, hey, this is my tree, get away. They do a lot of these social cues that kind of emit how they're feeling. Like different colors map to different things you mean. So not all chameleons can change into the same colors, but mostly if it's like the redish shoes. They're really excited. So the second reason why they also would need to change color is for camouflage reasons.

We see that a lot from grain, and if they're on a stick or a bark, they turn into brown. And the third reason is for thermal regulations. A lot of chameleons live in the desert. And so in the morning, when it's really cold, they turn black or dark colors to absorb more of the heat. Ah, that's interesting. This is how it works. So the skin of the chameleon is transatlore. translucent. It is transparent.

Okay. So the skin. Underneath the skin, there are layers of different cells, and they're called chromatophores, which contains pigments. Certain species have different makeup, but this is kind of the general basic chameleon. So the first upper layer beneath the transparent skin has yellow and red pigment cells, and the layer beneath it are usually blues and whites. and then the layer underneath that, the most inner one, contains pigments that are darks or browns or blacks.

And so what happens is whenever the brain triggers their skin for whatever reason, whether if it's thermal regulation or if they're excited or if they want to mate, these cells would contract or expand. And so the combination of these different layers will show the color. It's like putting different color gels in front of a light. Exactly.

And it's to have a really highly pigmented color. color, it's just all of these cells are expanded to the max. They're red, just only the red, and all the other layers are contracted. Right. And so it's kind of the play of all these different layers. Of course, they're more special species of chameleons that have different shapes of these cells. So, you know, maybe this color is more predominant and whatnot. But yeah, usually that's how it works.

And you got your HD chameleons, which have a lot more pixels per inch. Yeah, the 1080 chameleons. The funny thing is scientists haven't really figured. it out yet whether or not chameleons are aware that's my question is yeah are they know if they're aware that they're changing colors that they're controlling it in a way or if something just says you know go into fear mode now hide mode and it automatically changes color just based on what they're sitting again so now tell me Karen is it true that camellions do run on karma or is that just a rumor that oh you know I believe some species

good all right all right in the while yeah karma camellians yes yes yes So nerdy. We're so sorry. We're so sorry. You are. Okay, so I have a feeling this might be a lightning round type quiz. Oh, you got a quiz for us? I have a quiz for you.

It's about characters who have colors in their names. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. So the fictional boy detective from Donald J. Sobel's series of children's books. Karen. Encyclopedia Brown. Yeah.

The frightening wife killer. from Charles Perrault's classic fairy tale. Oh, uh, uh, Bluebeard. Yes. Oh. Steve Buscemi's character from Reservoir Dogs. Chris. Mr. Pink.

Yes. Willie Wonka Golden Ticket winner. Oh. Oh. Violet Beauregard. I thought it was a Charlie Bucket. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wait, no, it's a color.

Bucket's a color. The antagonist from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island Blackbeard No No Long John Silver Yes Oh silver

Cato's crime fighting partner Green Hornet Not lantern Hornet I was getting those confused I had to double triple check that one The subject of Christoburg's 1986 pop hit

Krista Berg Kristaberg Oh my gosh The Lady in Red Yes She's dancing with me Cheek to cheek The music hating invaders of Pepperland

In the Yellow Submarine The Blue Minis Yes Baroness Amushka Orski's Classic Play and Inventure novel Red Blue Sounded out.

Any hints? It's a kind of red in the name. The Scarlet Pimpernel? Yes. Oh. Yes. And then this was Daffy Ducks' character in a parody of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Oh, geez. Scarlet Pumpernickel. Yes. The Scarlet Pumpernacle. I just put it out of my butt. Good job. Because this sounds like the brand. Without buzzing him.

Oh, sorry. I know. Sorry. I was so excited. Good job, you guys. That's better. So I started thinking about colors and sat down with a graphic designer friend and started just talking about colors in general.

She's just like, well, you know, what happens when you layer, you know, red and blue and green lights on top of each other, right? I'm like, ah. They become white. Yeah, right. Because white is every color, right? The spectral color. which are the colors that come out of one particular wavelength of light.

And this, of course, the mnemonic is Roy G. Biv, one of the most famous nemes. For the rainbow, right. For the rainbow. For the rainbow. For the rainbow, but that is the spectrum of visible colors. We think of things like purple as being a color, but it's not that the color in English is described as violet. Right? The color violet is described on the spectral color.

And in color theory, the purples are combinations of spectrums. colors. It's like a range. Right. Purple is a range of colors. Do you want to say what Roy G. Bev is in case... Oh, yeah, just to throw that out there. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Now, in later... Now, that was actually Sir Isaac Newton, who first put all those down. Now, again, it's kind of arbitrary. Because the spectrum of light is continuous, you could demarcate them anywhere.

Right. But they went ahead and picked out those colors as points on the line. Yeah. And then this got me thinking... about the fact that purple is into color. Now, of course, you might also say purple is a color, you know, because who is the authority is saying it's not, yeah, but on the spectral color line, purple is not defined as one of the colors that is only produced by one wavelength. Spectro color theory, the purples are defined as any color that is a mix of violet and red, I think, on the other end, and anything in between those are the purples.

Another interesting thing is the use of, like, our computer monitors are red, green, blue, right? Every pixel is just a red light, a green light, and a blue light in varying intensities to produce every color in the rainbow. Those three colors can be used and they can be used to produce, you know, black. But in printing, that's not the case, right? In printing, it's... C-M-Y-K. Right, which is cyan, magenta, yellow, and K means black.

Or key. Right, K or, yeah, key, or... The reason those colors are used is because you can print them on top of each other, right? So you can produce basically any color. You know, when I was a kid, and this is before my graphic designer profession, when I was a kid, you know, on top of like cereal boxes or juice boxes, you'd see the print marks, and you're like, what is the secret code? It's like, there's a pink and there's a black and there's yellow and there's like blue. And you're like, what is this? Until I was older, I was like, oh, those are the colors they used to print.

To make sure that their colors were coming out correctly. And they have that little white circle with the black plus in the middle of it, and that's the registration mark, isn't it? the train to line up the prints, so it won't be off. Printing just fascinates me, because when you look at, like, when I was looking at C-M-Y-K prints, and it's like, you know, okay, well, here's the magenta, here's the yellow, here's cyan, and then here's the black, and then here's what they all look like together, and it's this like full, vivid color photo, you know, but then you see the separations, and it's only these four colors coming together to make that.

It's like, it really, it really messes with your head. It's like, how is this possible? It's magic. Magic. All right, we're going to take our, quick break from colors, and we have a quick segment, and this is a pretty popular pub quiz thing. I'm pretty happy that we're doing this, and kind of inspired by our sponsor Bonobos, and

I'm going to call this segment a bunch of Bonobos. We here love collective nouns of animals. Love them. Because they're so weird. Some are maybe too good to be true. I think a lot of them are very tongue-in-cheek when they were created. Poetic, too. They're so fun.

We've shared before in previous episodes. A group of cats is actually a clouter of cats. And also a unicorn is a blessing of unicorn, though that is a little controversial. I still think that one's dumb. I think the better, you know, or like a lot of people love, like, a murder of crows is a great one that a lot of people like. So we all picked a few of our favorites. I try to look up for bonobos, and there actually was not a collective now for bonobos. So I think the bonobo scientist should decide on one.

It's a sex cave. Well, yeah. An orgy of bonobos. That's what it is. It's a colligula of bonobos. So the three I picked are. Rattlesnakes, jellyfish, and lobsters. Oh.

A group of rattlesnakes is called a Roomba. A Roomba of R-R-N-Sakes. Wait, like the vacuum? Like the dance. Oh, a rhomba. A rumba. A rumba. R-H-U-M-B-A.

A-R-B-A. Because they are legally. Yeah, they're a dancing. It's true. Yeah. They're very sensual animal. Yes, they are, Colin. Sure thing.

Why are you backing away, Dana? Yes, snakes are a central animal And a group of jellyfish is called a smack A smack of jellyfish I kind of just imagine like a jellyfish in my face Smacking a view Yeah, and a lobster, a group of lobster is called a risk A risk of lobsters

You risk your hand when you put it in a risk of lobsters Could be, maybe you have some risky bisque Oh, I like that We should make a soup company And the story we call risky business No, no one won't buy that It's like, is it contaminated? Who knows?

And some risky biscuits Well, I did some birds I have an all bird run down here Birds, they have the best names And Eagles, you guys know what a collection of Eagles is is a... Patriot A convocation

Oh, I can imagine It's so regal It is very regal A convocation of Eagles and the eagles, like, in a room. Yeah, just so proud and just upright somehow. Fessence is a bouquet of pheasants. Ew.

I just imagine, like, a bunch of dead birds, like, tied together. With the cellophane wrapping around them. And a ribbon. You better get these in some water right away. But this was my favorite, though, for owls. A parliament of owls. Yes, I have heard of it. I love that.

It's so appropriate. Because they're wise. Yeah. You just see them kind of sitting there in judgment of you. I have some cutesy ones, too. A group of leopards is a leap. A leap of leopards. A group of porcupines is a prickle.

A prickle? That sounds too good to be true. It's cool. You can call it whatever you want. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then spiders, a group of spiders. Do you know what that is?

A spackle of spiders. A spasm of spiders. It's a clutter of spiders. Oh. But it makes sense, like, if you're cleaning out your garage and you have all that clutter, you move it, and then you find a bunch of spiders, you're like, it's a clutter of spiders. You know, these names are not, by and large, there's no scientific basis for these names. They're written by poets, you know, they're flowery language that have just sort of come into common acceptance. Bores is a singular of Bors.

What? That seems fairly oxymoronic. You'd think. Apparently what some people think it comes from is the French word for Bore is songnier. Oh. Yep. I thought that was a really beautiful poem. Like, boys don't travel, you know, with others.

It's a singular boy. It's so sad. An obstinacy of Buffalo. Which, again, I think, is like, if you see a group of Buffalo, you're probably not going to be able to get them to do anything. Right. That was named by somebody who has become familiar with Buffalo. A surfet of skunks.

Surfet. Surfet, which is a surplus. Because even one is too many. Exactly. Yes. No, I mean, I think that's what it is. Wow, lots of great. Potential T-shirt ideas there.

Parliament of Owls. There are really many reasons to listen to our podcast, Big Picture Science. It's kind of a challenge to summarize them all, Molly. Okay, here's a reason to listen to our show, Big Picture Science, because you love to be surprised by science news. We love to be surprised by science news. So, for instance, I learned on our own show that I had been driving around with precious metals in my truck before it was stolen.

That was brought up in our show about precious metals and also rare metals like most of the things in your catalytic converter. I was surprised to learn that we may begin naming heat waves like we do hurricanes. You know, prepare yourself for heat wave lucifer. I don't think I can prepare myself for that. Look, we like surprising our listeners. We like surprising ourselves by reporting new developments in science. And while asking the big picture questions about why they matter and how they will affect our lives today and in the future.

Well, we can't affect lives in the past, right? No, I guess that's a point. So the podcast is called Big Picture Science, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. We are the host. Seth is a scientist. I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us.

We hope you'll take a listen. When Johann Rawl received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was was a warning, delivered to the Heshen Colonel, letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces.

The next day, when Rawl lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pockets. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh well, this is the constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, I was going to research about colorblindness, but I kind of got sidetrack because I found out about heterochromia, which is very, very also interesting.

So I kind of gave up on colorblindness and decided to read up on this instead. So heterochromia is what happens when you. your eyes are two different colors. Oh. And it's not that rare because this trait is actually a dominant trait. Eye color, meaning the iris, the color of the iris. And it's usually determined by the amount in concentration of melanin, which is kind of the pigment, either an excessive amount of melanin or not enough melanin.

So that's why it causes different colors. I have here a list of famous people who have different colors. who have different colored eyes. This kind of blew my mind. I'm do a quick quiz. I'm going to name what they're known for. Okay. And you tell me the celebrity name.

You tell me their eye colors. This is hard. I don't know. I don't know. All right. Elwood Blues. Dan Aykroyd. Correct.

Dan Aykroyd has brown and hazel eyes. Another weird. mutant thing about Dan Aykroyd. He was born with webtoes. And it's called syndactally. So he's a man. Syndactolili. Oh, okay.

So sin as in like synthesis. And dact as in digits? Yeah. That's for another show. Yeah. But I read a lot of other celebrities have webtoes. Very common. Lord of the dance.

Michael Flatley. Correct. Michael Flatley. Lord of the dance has one green and one blue. I Aristotle's famous Macedonian student Chris again Socrates?

No Macedonian student Plato Alexander the Great Correct Alexander the Great Is rumored to have a Hazel eye and a green eye And also there are rumors that he also

Try to look for a horse that had Different eye colors too I don't know how that went Record producer Bruce Dickinson, who puts on pants just like you, one pant leg at a time. But when he wears his pants, he makes gold records. Jesus. Is that from Wayne's World? What is that from?

He also loves his cowbell. Oh. Christopher Walken. Correct. Christopher Walken has the blue and hazel eye combo. Oh. Okay, this one's easy. Jack Bauer.

Kiefer Sutherland. Correct. Kiefer Sutherland has blue and green eyes as well. Ukrainian actress who voices Meg Griffin. Colin? Milakunis. Yes. Milakunis has one green eye and one brown eye. Now I'm starting to wonder, like, do I have two different colored eyes? Because I haven't really checked for that, you know?

No, they're the same color. Sugar. Like one might be slightly different shade than the other. Okay. The most recent Montgomery, Scotty. Scott oh it's um it was uh Simon Pegg correct Simon Pegg his eyes are a blue gray with brown areas huh uh what about David Bowie when's David Bowie happening we're waiting we know he's on this list somewhere so it is true David Bowie when you

look at him he does have one blue eye and one brownish eye but actually unlike these other celebrities, he wasn't born with it. He was actually born with two blue eyes. When he was younger, he was in an accident where someone punched him. The fingernail kind of sliced it grew and scarred, and so basically his eye looks

different, not because he was born with two different color eyes, but because of an accident, unfortunately. So there you go. That is a heterochromia, different colored eyes. Lots of people have it. So keep your eyes open. Well, you were talking about eyes and vision,

and I want to talk to you guys a little bit about one of my favorite painters. I'm a big fan of Monet and the Impressionists in general. He was really one of the founders of Impressionism. In fact, Impressionism was named after one of his paintings. He had a painting called Impression Sunrise, which is where the term came from. Did they know that? Yeah. So a little side bonus trivia there.

Oh, yeah, thank you. But I think it's important just to note that, like, Impressionism was really all about the subjectivity of vision, like, and light. They were really concerned with, like, how do we see light? And, you know, I'm not painting things that exist in the world. I'm painting my perception of these things. And, you know, they're pretty scientific in that way. And so it was all about how different colors and different times a day could make things look different and how you'd experience them. So he's painting the way things look to him. I think he needed glasses. Like, they look blurry. Well, it's funny. I mean, that was one of the criticisms of Impressionism, is that

Why is it all blurry? And, you know, their answer was, well, it's the job of the camera to capture things looking perfect and sharp. You know, photography was really starting to come onto the scene. Very handy argument. And they said, yeah. It's we're capturing impressions. As Monet got older, he started developing cataracts, and his vision was getting worse and

cloudier and cloudier. And one thing that cataracts does is it kind of pushes your vision toward red. It kind of makes things look a little bit redder and more orange because it filters out wavelengths of light, as Chris was alluding to earlier. If you look at his paintings in the period as he's building up with his cataracts, you can see that he's painting things a lot more reddish and more orange and more yellowy. Finally, well, here's where it gets really interesting. So when he was 82, he finally decided to have surgery and they removed the lens on his left eye to basically eliminate the lens. And you can function perfectly well without a lens on your eye.

There's a condition for it actually called a fakia, and people can be born without the lens. And one of the things that this does is it doesn't filter out UV light anymore. So if you have a fakia or have your lens removed the way Monet did, you can see ultraviolet light. No! So you can become like a butterfly or a honeybee or any animal that can see ultraviolet light and things fluoresce. What was really cool is to see his paintings after he had the lens. removed he's now sensitive to colors that people with normal vision can't see so he would start painting the water lilies in sort of this bluish almost glowing blue hue because that's how he

saw them even though you know in normal you know quote normal life they're a lot more white and we don't see those blues and so he had some really interesting paintings where he's kind of mixing one eye is seeing reddish yellowish cataract and one eye is seeing the unfiltered UV light oh we should have took him to a rave yeah it would have blown his eight or two years your old mind. Because going back to what we're talking about before, like humans generally see light in three colors at a time. Right, right.

Humans and a lot of mammals we see in the same perceptual set. And so he was opened up now to see things kind of the way insects could see. Wow. And it is really fascinating. You know, if you go online, you can find some examples of his paintings in his later life where you can really see, wow, this is him experiencing the world in a different way.

And he was aware of this. But again, you know, so going back to how I sort of led into this, His whole goal with impressionism is this is how I'm viewing the world, and it almost like underscored his whole point of that these aren't colors that are out there in nature for us to capture. This is experiential, like us seeing happens in our eyes and in our brains. Well, I wanted to talk you about another old master, obviously. So let me ask you guys this question. What medium, what artistic medium? His name is derived from the French words for chalk and oil.

Crayola. Yes. Crayon. Crayola, originally released in 1903, cost a nickel for a box of eight colors. Wow. Would you guys working together like to come up with the eight original Crayola colors? Oh. Red, yellow.

We have red, yellow. Blue, green, violet. Yep. Brown. Yes. Black. White? No.

No white? So recap, what do we have? All right now, you've got red, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, and black. Orange. Yes. orange. Not white. There was no white. It's like Roy G. Biv plus black. Exactly.

And brown. So, and can you guys name? So there are now about like 130 or so Crayola Cranes that you can buy typical Crayola Cran colors. And they cycle through some colors, right? Not counting the crazy ones, like the ones that are like metallic color or things like that. Like the standard

you know, pigmented crayolacranes about 130 roughly. Can you name? All 100.000. Go. Can you name a color that has been retired? Because 13 of them so far have been taken out. I know one that's been retired.

Flesh. No. No. The color, flesh, is still available. It's just called peach now. Oh. I thought that's what you're asking was color names. No, I'm saying a color.

Oh. Like you can't use the actual pigment color anymore. Just name one. I can tell you all of them, but, you know. Burt Sienna? Is that still there? Burt Sienna. It's still in there.

Raw umber. Raw umber. Raw umber is one. The name is gone and the, the color is not. What color is the color anymore? It's a brand. It was a really kind of rich dark brown.

Yeah. Um, maize. There used to be maize crans. Oh. Is that like a light blue? No, no, no. It's like a golden, like a golden rod. Yeah.

It's a super dark yellow. They retired these. The first time they ever retired colors was in 1990. When they took eight original Crayola colors out of rotation. and actually people formed the raw umber and maize preservation society or rumps to write in protest wait are you is it a joke no seriously no that's true i thought that was a crisp calling joke nope that was a group of people um yeah rumps so in 1990 maize raw umber lemon yellow blue gray orange yellow orange red green blue and violet blue a lot of combinations and halfway colors were we're taken they're like ah you can do it yourself um so krayola has

renamed some of the crans. There are three crans that had been renamed for cultural sensitivity reasons or cultural reasons. So we've already covered one of them. Flash? Yes. Can you name another one that was named for that? Oriental red or something like that.

You know, actually, you're zeroing in on it. There was a color called Indian Red, which had nothing to do with Native Americans. It was based on a type of pigment that was located in India. That's Vermillion. The color I was talking about the top of the show, cinnabar vermilion, I believe, is that color.

That could very well be the case. Yep, but they've actually renamed it to chestnut. Kids were coloring Native Americans with that color and say, oh, well, I'm using Indian red because they're Indians. And it's just like, no, that's not actually what that means, but okay. Does anybody want to take a stab at possibly the third one that was changed? Because it referred, in this case, to an outdated geopolitical area. Prussian blue?

It is Prussian blue. It's now called Midnight Blue. Prussia, of course, modern day, Berlin, Berlin is located in what used to be Prussia. Blue, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around the idea that we didn't used to just be able to have anything in any color like we do now. Colors, pigments, dyes, the process for making those things used to be just extraordinarily difficult. And blue was just this really hard color to get. Now, apparently the Egyptians had figured out a way to synthesize a relatively low cost, relatively permanent, And that's the important thing.

When it's exposed to sunlight, it doesn't disappear. Or if you wash it or something. Right. Egyptians had figured out a relatively permanent blue dye. Egyptian blue is calcium copper silicate. The Egyptians did not know that, but, you know, but they figured that if you, like, heat up grains of sand with other materials at really high temperatures, it would come out blue

and you'd be able to pigment things with that. The knowledge of how to make that was lost, along with the vast Egyptian kingdoms. Right? And so for a while, for a good long while, nobody really knew how to make blue pigmentation that would actually look really good. And Prussian blue is so historically important because it was the first time that they had synthesized something else, which is actually a C-18, F-E-7, N-18. Oh, of course. Right, yeah, yeah, totally. So, mixtures of carbon, iron, and nitrogen, and that is essentially how they were finally able to create a pigment.

and this was in the 1700s that they were able to get something that would actually last set up to the sun. Do you know, this is the woodblock print from Japan that's so famous. Everybody has seen this. It's The Great Wave. Oh, Hoku-Sai's the Great Wave. That was only made possible by the very, very, very recent importation of Prussian Blue into Japan. Right, right. Prior to the making of that print, he would not have been able to make that print just a few years before,

Because in Japan, they called it Berlin Blue. Whoa. And only the fact that they were able to start importing that so cheaply, he was able to use that for prints. And one of the first things that he did, that was one of the first major, like, you know, works of art that was done with this amazing blue dye that's, you know, held up to this day because they were able to put it all together. Wow. Man, I wish they would change the name back to Prussian Blue, because it's so important. Yeah, me too. I totally agree with you.

After reading about Prussian Blue, it's like, it should. be the color. It should be the name of the color. It is. It is. It's not, yeah, yeah. It's not that kids don't know what Prussia is. You don't need to know what Prussia is. You know, when you start reading about it, it's a milestone. It is. It's a milestone in human history. The new BMO, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card. And then some. Get your ticket to more the new bemo v i porter master card and get up to twenty four hundred dollars in value in your first thirteen months terms and conditions apply visit bemo dot com slash v i porter to learn more and dana

you have a last quiz segment for us i do i have a quiz for you guys and this actually comes up in trivia occasionally for us we have to know about wines so i think you guys are going to do well i think chris will do very well because he's a wine person Why I know? The resident on a file. I have no palette for it. But here we go. Let's see.

Okay. So I want you to tell me if it's red or white. And so you have tokens. That's why I think you could do all right. 50-50. 50-50. Yeah, everybody has a white token and a red token. So I'll say the name.

I've been practicing saying the names. So you can hear that pronunciation. And then you tell me if you think it's red or white and we'll loosely keep score. Okay. Well, I'll start out easy. and then get into a slightly more obscure. Chardonnay. Karen says white.

Colin says white. Chris says white. Yes. Cabernet Sauvignon. Red, red, red, yep. Merlo. Everybody says red, yes. I'm going to start hiding my token.

Oh, yeah, right. Malbeck. Everybody says red. Yes, it's red. Muscat. They all say white. Yes, white, white, white. I only know this because there is a candy called muscat,

And it's the white grape gummer. Yeah, it's like a dessert wine. It's one of those really sweet white wines, yeah. My favorite. Muscat gummy. Super juicy. Shabli. Three whites, yes.

Man, you guys are drinking more wine than you think. We're knowledgeable about wine. Tempranillo. Red, red, red, red. Yes, it's a black grape that makes red wine, yes. Mmm. Vionnier. Vionnier.

Vionnier. Okay, well, maybe I can reason this out. It looks like, it's spelled V, I, I-O-G-N-I-E-R. Oh, what now? Okay, we have a white, a red, and a white. It's a white. Govert Straminer.

Whoa. White, white, white, yes, it's a white. Seymion. It's spelled S-E-M-I-L-O-N. Karen's holding up both her token. Okay, so Colin says white. Karen says red. C-M-A-on?

Chris says red. It's a red. Yeah. I thought it was going to be a true. That's right. I was like, maybe it's a rosé. Right. Zinfandel. So, Colin says white, Karen says white.

Chris says red. It's a red. Oh, so you're thinking of white Zendendal. And that's a pink. That's a rosé. Oh, okay. Well, I figured that if you went for rosé, that would count as a white. And one last one.

Dolcetto. Okay, that means sweet. Colin says white. Karen says red. Chris says red. It's a red. Yeah. Italian red.

Good job, you guys. All right, perfect score. All right. As predicted. As predicted. You guys did really well, too. Okay, well, I mean, I know you've all been waiting for this, but we, of course, have an update. Where's our music quiz?

The status of our missing quiz. Listeners, you may not know this, but two weeks ago, two episodes ago, we had a music quiz that was actually stolen. Perloined. Perloined. Shanged by the clearly satirical and in no way related to who. you're thinking about. Yeah. International thief, Carmen San Mateo.

Oh, man. Originally, Carmen San Mateo had run away to Tokyo, Japan, where listeners tracked her down. And then we ended up getting a clue there from an informant who let us know that one of the crooks in Carmen San Mateo's gang, the singer-slash-natural food additives officinato, Mama Castorium, had stolen off and gave us a clue as to how to find her. and we can now reveal the answer to that. And the question was, of course, that Mama Castorium had left us a sandwich by which we meant. We needed to find the meat of a particular farm animal,

and then we needed to find a word for the noises that another farm animal makes. And if we put word one right into the middle of word two, like a word sandwich. Well, word sandwich, we would know the country to which Mama Castorium had escaped. As it turns out, Bah Hamas Bahamas So the Bahamas

We take the word Ham and put it into the middle of the word Baws which are the noises that sheep make We get Bahamas We of course Immediately jet it off to the Bahamas Sparing no expense Thanks Kickstarter

And where Mama Castorium was performing We busted in on her show And this was what ensued We made sure to record it for you Ladies and gentlemen, for one night only, Miss Mama Castorri. That tangy taste of berry secreted while it's marking its territory. I can't help it.

I dream of an old beaver juice. Ah, we have special guests. Yes, Brainiacs, you've caught me. Take me away. But I am sorry to say, I am not in possession of your quiz. Tell me, have you ever sat dreaming up at the night sky, gazing at Orion or Cassiopeia? You know, sailors used to navigate by the North Star, but do you know detectives what stars have guided hungry travelers for nearly a century?

Carmen is in the country where those stars were first observed. Thank you, and good night. Yeah, it was a little awkward busting in on a live performance like that. But we got it. We got to find out this quiz. But Mama Castorium is safely in custody. However, she did not have our quiz. So what did she say? Hungry Travelers.

What stars have been guiding hungry travelers? Look, I'm sure it's something, and I'm sure our listeners can help us figure this out, because I've done enough thinking for today, quite frankly. You can email us at jb.podcast at gmail.com if you think you have the solution, if you think you know what country Carmen San Mateo has absconded to again with this quiz that we can never seem to get back. And Karen, you've put up a special web page at good jobbrain.com. Yep, you can see there's a link of Carmen San Mateo on the right side, and you can click on it.

Right, and pay absolutely no attention to any resemblance that Carmen San Mateo may or may not possess to any other fictional thieves. Not infringing anything, guys. I hope she goes somewhere cool. I want to go on another vacation. Vacation time. All right. And that's our show.

Thank you guys for joining me. and thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you guys learned a lot about colors, animals, and more. And you can find us on Zoom Marketplace, on iTunes, on Stitcher, and also on our website, which is goodjobbrain.com. And check out our sponsor at bonobos.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye!

What does Sputnik have to do with student loans? How did a set of trembling hands end the Soviet Union? How did inflation kill moon bases? And how did a former president decide to run for a second non-consecutive term? These are among the topics we deal with on the My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast. We tell stories of history that relate to today's news of news. events. Give a listen. My history can beat up your politics wherever you get podcasts.