Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Color Beige

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Adam Tod Brown (‘Unpopular Opinion’ podcast network) and comedian/podcaster Jeff May (‘Jeff Has Cool Friends’ podcast) for a look at why the color beige is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

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if you'd like episodes with none of this kind of stuff, head to SifPod.fun. Become someone who backs this show and gets a ton of benefits on top of that. So please consider doing that and making this podcast possible. And in the meantime, please enjoy a whole new episode. Beige. Known for being a color. Famous for being boring.

Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why beige is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. For the third time in as many colors, I am joined by two of my favorite people. Adam Todd Brown is the creator, host, proprietor, all-knowing, all-seeing leader of the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network. That is one of my favorite things for your ears, just period. And I'm particularly excited about their recent stuff on California in the pandemic.

And then Jeff May is a frequent guest and sometimes host on that network. Adam and Jeff co-host a great show called You Don't Even Like Sports, because I hear the two of them do not even like sports. That's what I hear. And since we last met, Jeff May has launched a whole new podcast of his own. It's called Jeff Has Cool Friends. It's great interviews with people in the comic books world and the pop culture world. And so there are many links in the show links for this episode because Adam and Jeff are people you should always be hearing and checking out. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca

to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Adam recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Jeff recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash and Fernandinho-Taraviam peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about beige. In the past, Adam and Jeff have joined me to cover the color gray, which is one of the least popular colors, and to cover the color blue, which might statistically be the most popular color.

This episode is about taking a background color, a default color, a color that maybe your walls are, even though you never think about it. We're trying to take that color and make you fascinated by it, help you see the ways it is amazing. We'll also touch on there being a racial valence to beige if you decide that the people who are considered white are also beige. I can see that there. We really don't focus on it. We focus on objects and things and a universe that are literally beige. So that's what we're talking about.

And I think it's an amazing episode. Let's let you hear it. Please sit back or reboot your beige 1990s PC, because its screen is doing a blue thing in a bad way. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Adam Todd Brown and Jeff May. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Test, test, test. Wow.

I think otherwise we're good. You guys just want to get into it? Yeah, I'll get into it. Oh, yeah. I got a lot of feelings on beige, pal. I sure do. Yeah. There was a person that- I've been fuming thinking about this episode.

We used to call a kid from our high school, we used to call him beige. Not to his face. But he was just the most boring. We were like, oh, I look forward to hearing a nice tale about khaki pants and plain unbuttered toast from this mother- You are raring to talk about beige

either of you can go first with how you feel about it i mean we're pretty close to being beige so that that's a that's a pretty that's a that kind of nails it you know yeah that makes yeah makes sense yeah i don't know i'm not a fan of the color like on clothing generally. Like I don't, I despise khaki pants. Really? I don't hate a pair of khakis, but I think that is almost exclusively the only purpose of beige anymore. I guess on a wall, it's fine if you don't like a white wall and you want a beige wall. But other than that, it feels like a color we could probably retire.

And I don't think anyone like it'd be like 15 years and we'd be like what happened to beige remember that yeah it would be like imagine if you were like a second grade teacher and you were doing icebreakers with the kids and you were asking everyone their favorite color and some kid goes beige you would immediately call like the school therapist and be like there's something going on with this kid agreed like we gotta we gotta we gotta do an early intervention because this mother said beige no it the the color it reminds me of like everything about like what it reminds me of is always like kind of bleak or i'm like you know beige like a desert yeah it it feels old to me it feels either old like one of the pictures you sent us was an old landline phone like that's what i

imagined beige and it also feels like if there were like six phones that you could buy and they were all different colors the beige one would be the one you get for free for signing a contract. And then everything else, they'd be like, no, you have to pay for the red one. Are you crazy? But you can have this beige monster. They were like perfect for sad offices. And also as a side note,

if you've ever gotten a little piss on you, khaki pants are a real betrayer. Oh. If you're done peeing and you do the shake and you get a little on, those khaki pants are just like, hey, everybody, guess what this guy just did? I can handle a khaki short in the summer.

You dork. I will say that a pair of khaki shorts, I will accept as like the, okay, fine. Yeah. Now, are they shorts or are they courts which are cargo shorts obviously uh you know i've i've pulled away from cargo shorts since i stopped being 21 no no no i'm i'm off board i think i think cargo shorts are wrongly demonized if i can't wear like if i can't carry a purse then I need that storage somewhere else.

That's fair. I just don't have enough stuff that I bring out. I have a phone, wallet, keys, and that covers it for me. Get more stuff. Get some beige stuff. Get a big croissant in my big fat cargo pocket. My other beige thing is when I was a zoo tour guide and the uniform was either a blue or a green like zoo uniform shirt and then everything else was beige like your shorts or pants needed

to be beige if you wore a hat it needed to be beige it was like here's the the uniform and you can go find whatever shorts pants hat fit your needs as long as it's one color it's a work color beige is the official color of a job yeah where you're you're like if you're gonna your phones at work are beige the walls at work are beige if you have an outfit it's probably beige with some sort of polo shirt that's like a different color of beige all it's all it is the official color of part-time jobs right once you get benefits everything turns black or silver somehow it's just like a wash like the wizard they bring you in yeah they bring you in they're like you can put on a you can wear some gray pants get that raiders jersey a nice silver and black raiders jersey

casual friday i'll stick to the khakis thank you and the ceo in the raiders stuff is like whatever you want chunk chunk chunk that's how they walk all the metal and everything the pants just gotta be chain mail yeah if you uh there's a store at Universal at the Universal City Walk, that's it's called like Raider Image, like a sharper image thing. There's just a Raiders store. And I'm just like sitting there and I'm like, this must like there must be riots here every week. Raider Image. I'm just thinking of sharper image Raiders stuff now. That's amazing

yeah like a knife that cleans the blood off of it self-cleaning man i one time when i was an uber driver i had a guy ask me if i liked football and i was like oh yeah i'm a patriots fan i'm from new england then he was a raiders fan and so he's like f you you effing cheater and i was like oh you must have misunderstood what i said i didn't play for the team and i i'm judging by your look that you didn't either so like please stop like he tried and like he literally like tried to fight me to the point where i'm like i think we probably should end this drive because i don't feel safe with a raiders fan in the car let let alone one that's angry at me.

Yeah, imagine that. Angry Raiders fan? No way. Yeah. Yeah, I can't believe it. That's like putting a hat on a hat. Yeah. Or a skull helmet on another skull helmet.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. I also, I feel like it's indicative of how beige works that we we started talking about black and silver pretty quickly. We were like any any other neutral color that's cooler, please. Are there? Yeah, that's like I remember like the Padres had beige uniforms for a while. And I was like, why would you make this worse for the people of San Diego? Yeah, they somehow went from the ugliest brown and yellow uniforms to like an even more disappointing color scheme like beige and navy and then they're like but on fun days we'll wear camo and we're like what the

is happening here yeah like the adrian gonzalez era they had those even worse beige unis wow yeah oh yeah yeah yeah the yeah the khalil green years i like to call i will say uh in albuquerque everything is beige also that is just a beige town all the houses none of the house because none of the houses are really painted they have like that it's like adobe kind of a vibe ad Adobe mud bricks or whatever they're building houses with. Albuquerque looks like you'd expect it to look. Yeah. Like if I told you picture Albuquerque, you're right. Yeah.

You nailed it. What if there was a New Mexico in the United States? Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think it would go a little something like this. Beige, beige, beige. It is.

All the houses are the same color in Albuquerque. It's crazy. They're off shades of white. People just go into Home Depot and then they pick whatever. There's only three palette swashes at the Home Depot paint section. Beige, off beige, or light or light beige yeah do you want beige or creme the same i was gonna ask as the last thing about the color if you guys see beige as a range of tans and pales because i feel like a lot of things are beiges if that makes sense yeah

they're all the same yeah it's all just the shade of an egg you get at a farmer's market yeah it is yeah it's for me i i recognize that there are like different shades of beige like i have two pairs of pants that are mildly different but they're both beige i think i actually nowadays probably call beige khaki more than anything because i just don't ever see it on anything but clothes anymore so i just kind of refer to it as khaki now even if it was a beige shirt i'd be like that's a khaki shirt like if someone called it beige i'd be like is this 1930 yeah are you crayola what are you doing thanks for the new word mildred never even heard beige before yeah beige is definitely one of those things where like if you start saying that name to me

and i'm not prepared i will be asleep by the time you finish the word you'll be like bay i'm like beignets like no beige i'm like oh you really you've shamaloned me on that one yeah bay are we going to talk about beyonce nope i'm out bay watch doesn't there's a bay watch channel on pluto tv fyi are there enough seasons for that there are a million episodes there's an american gladiators uh channel and an unsolved mysteries channel if you're ever looking to kill time with the old school tv uh vibe pluto tv is the way to go there's a whole like pluto tv is clearly like a tv channel uh like a network that's designed for people that just don't want to pay for cable. But like there's all these like there's a bunch of commercials for insurance for doctors or like banking for doctors.

And I'm like, I have a feeling doctors aren't watching on the Pluto channel. I don't think doctors are going for this. I feel like they can afford cable. They might use it in their offices. Yeah. Because cable in a commercial establishment is super fucking expensive. What if all the commercials started with, stop walking through your own waiting room, doctor? Just trying to lure the men for the moment they're walking the patient out.

Like, just rolling those dice. Hey, real quick, real quick. That would be funny. Hey, stop real quick. Do you need a bank? You have one? Okay, fine. Well, we have a bunch of stuff here about beige, and I think we can get into the first chunk of it because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of

fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called Moda to the Left if your scatterplots regressed, Mina to the Right if you're running a t- test. Samples to the front. Uh, uh, do rounding. Ha, si, ya. Stats time. Can I say something right now? My Spice Girls riff. Spice Up Your Life is one of my favorite songs of all time. Yeah, that is the best Spice Girls song by far. It might be one of the best girl group songs of all time, you know, when everybody like lumps them all together. Between that and Cruel girl group songs of all time. You know, when everybody like lumps them all together between that and Cruel Summer by Bananarama. You know, they're top of the game. Yeah.

Spice Up Your Life. I'm going to listen to that song like as soon as we're done recording. If you're having a good time. Colors of the World. Which is beige. Spice Up Your Life. Every boy and every girl. i love a song where you can hear the british accent when they're singing very rare yeah spice up your life not like eric

clapton's lion ass yeah just running around twice i would shot the sheriff man saying all that is not all british and racist but then you hear him singing a song. Would you know? It's like, shut up. That's not what you sound like. Yeah, you're racist. Anyway, beige. Well, yeah, you had stats, right? Guys, thank you so much for being so on board with that song. That was from at PD Thorne on Twitter.

Thank you, buddy. And we have a new name for this segment every week. Please submit to Sipod on Twitter or to Sipod at gmail.com. That was from Spice Up Your Life. I was nervous. I was not going to do it accurate enough. And you guys were like, I'm masters of this song. I know exactly what's coming. This is very good. You don't bring that to my yard and expect me not to mow it. Yeah. Yeah. And the first number here is 1874. That's a year, 1874. according to merriam-webster that's the first known english

use of the word beige as a color it's a loan word from french it was a french word for fabric made from undyed sheep's wool and then it made its way over to english in the 1800s it's just that's the color of dirty wool i was just gonna say it's normally white right that's gross that's a yeah that's a pretty that's a pretty fantastic uh endorsement of the color yeah it's the color of uh dirt dirty farm garbage because i think i'm thinking back to the the gray episode i think like relatively clean wool becomes gray clothing so i guess you get beige from like the worst wool where the sheep was not taking care of.

It's piss wool. Yeah. It's piss wool. Sheep pissing on other sheep. Jellyfish sting. Big shower party going on over there in the sheep town USA. So I also was thinking about ranges of beiges and I was like, okay, what is the dictionary

definition of this color? Because we can't show people a swatch on a podcast. But Merriam-Webster says the dictionary definition is a variable color averaging light grayish, yellowish brown. So even yellow got in there, right?

They are cowardly. Merriam-Webster is cowardly because they opened with variable yeah have a spine miriam webster this is why no one buys your books anymore commit to the bit also ranges of beiges would be a great band name or a good nickname for the gop can i say something real? I think it would be a very bad band name, actually. Who would pay money to see that? That's a funny name. Sure, it's funny, but everyone's just like, it makes me think of khaki shopping.

I'm not going to go there. Yeah. Next number here is another year. This is the 1960s. And the 1960s is when UNESCO relocated a beige Egyptian temple to New York City. There's a whole elaborate story here. That sounds elaborate. A whole temple?

Yeah, yeah. I don't think that. That wasn't necessary. Yeah, you can just rebuild that it turned like it turns out maybe it's kind of okay i don't know if they would rather just still have it in the country of egypt but this was the temple of dender which was more than 2 000 years old and it was kind of on the banks of the nile river and by the 1920s the course of the river had shifted and so the temple was flooding nine months out of the year and what that also meant is the water was removing any paint or any color from the walls

and so like the river sort of blasted the temple until it was beige just completely the color of the rock that's interesting because dender actually translates to piss wool. If you look it up. So that actually all tracks and makes perfect sense. So we just took like a broken temple and we're just like, throw it in New York City. We need more stuff. Yeah, more or less. Yeah. Is it in a museum?

Yeah. Like, did we just move the temple to like, where is it? Because New York City is not small. Like, just move the temple to... Where is it? New York City is not small. Is it just in some random corner in Queens? What happened is UNESCO, which is part of the UN, decided to take it piece by piece to the United States. And then it was up to Lyndon Johnson where it would go from there.

And he picked the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. And so you can go see it at the Met. You can see this like pieces of a beige Egyptian temple. They've also done an exhibit called Color the Temple where they use light projectors to like add the colors of the paint they think were there before the Nile made it beige. So this wasn't being used, right? No. Yeah.

It's like ancient Egyptian. Yeah. If like people were using it and they're like, Oh, we're going to move it to New York city. I mean, there's some Egyptians in New York. They could probably figure it out.

Um, which museum is it? Uh, the Met. Yeah. Okay. So it's in Manhattan. I was like the,

I think the East side of Manhattan. And for a second, I thought you said it was in the, the museum of modern art. And I was just like, Oh, it's in Manhattan. I think the east side of Manhattan. And for a second, I thought you said it was in the Museum of Modern Art. And I was just like, oh, that's not modern. I got like really confused for a split second. So I'm glad it's at the Met. Yeah. I also remember like there was certainly this pocket of time, like the late 1800s into like the mid 1900s where we had this like crazy obsession with Egypt.

Right. and people were like eating mummies and yeah yeah that's so that's so crazy to me that people were just like we'll just eat the mummy and they were like that's a damn good idea because it was like crazy in the late 1800s they were excavating the shit out of egypt yeah that's what that's why like that's why the karloff movie even exists uh was because like there was an obsession with mummies oh yeah i think the victorians right like victorian england was all about those dinners you talked about jeff where it's like a little piece of mummy with the plate a huge meat probably because it's the 1800s we'll do that yeah anybody want to get gout and and a curse in the same meal?

I love when they talk about mummies' curses and stuff. It's like, I don't know, man, a lot of motherfuckers ate mummies and they kind of came out of it fine. Right, like other mummies just looking at the guest list from a party, like, I have to do him, I have to do her, I have to do him. I'll hit her on the way back all right uh like some some john wick level like hit list where it's just this mummy missing a bunch of fingers wanting to go after some rich victorian a-holes that's how you remake

the mummy you don't do tom cruise or whatever let. Yeah. No. We need a shuffling mummy taking out Victorian cannibals. The last number here is eight times per year. Eight times per year. And that is how often the U.S. Federal Reserve publishes what it calls the Beige Book. And I found out about this from The Indicator from Planet Money. It's an amazing show they do about finance news and everything else. But there is something called the Beige Book that the Fed puts out. The Fed is the central bank of the United States. Have either of you read or seen the Beige Book? Really? Jeff borrowed mine and didn't give it back.

Look at me. Look at at behind me it's just all these comic books right here and you're like have you read the beige book yeah no yeah i got sequin curtains behind me forty dollars in my bank account you think i'm gonna be like what's going on in the world of finance like i gotta make sure i protect my yacht i had a friend in jail once who subscribed to the rob report i don't know if you've ever seen the rob report but it's a magazine about like yachts and airplanes and sixty thousand dollar cigars it's like you think someone's gonna put that on your books yeah that's somebody that's somebody that like is really trying to secret something that's not

gonna happen i had a friend that would do this he had he got the rob report and i was like why do you have this he's like you look at the things you want. I'm like, you want a helicopter? Why? You live in Arlington, Mass. So what is the Beige Book? It is. So the Beige Book is it's something that the Fed uses to make its decisions. So the Fed is a central bank of the US, they set monetary policy in particular interest rates. I know this all sounds very thrilling, but they have eight meetings a year where they decide if they'll change the interest rates and do other things. So the various banks that make up the Fed assemble a report of data and also

just anecdotes about how things are going economically. And then they compile and publish it in something they call the Beige Book. And it's a federal document. You can read it if you want to, to find out what's going on. Anecdotes seems like a really weird thing to put in there. It is. It's like the one-time accountants and economists are just grabbing anecdotes. It's like the one-time accountants and economists are just grabbing anecdotes.

It's a thing where these Fed banks call people to see if the numbers they have line up with what this business is experiencing. Yeah, it's like Reader's Digest for money. Yeah. And that just sounds awful. Basically. Yeah. The one way this is fun is that the book might be beige because they don't want us to read it. According to Time Magazine, the Fed started compiling this information in the 1970s,

and they would print it with a red cover. They called it the Red Book, but it was only for them to see. It was all secret. Like the magazine our moms got? Oh. Yeah. Right. Diane Lane was on the cover and yeah sure sure they should just well if yeah if they don't want us to read it keep it beige i was gonna say the best way to get us to read it like draw a little cartoon or something that'd be funny or like a far side cartoon oh yeah anything put a little far side cartoon on there you got me diving in yeah see what good old gary larson's been up to linda and what happened is in 1983 there's a guy named walter fontroy who was the district of

columbia delegate to the House of Representatives, like the non-voting delegate from DC, he successfully lobbied for the Fed to start publishing this information publicly. And the Fed agreed to do it, but also immediately changed the cover from red to beige. And so Time argues that's probably because they wanted to make it more secret, even though they had to release it. The Indicator by Planet Money, they do shows called the Beigey Awards, where they pick the most interesting story they feel from the Beige book. So they cover that. I think we can go from here into the first of three takeaways for the episode. Takeaway number one.

The average color of our part of the universe is beige. That's according to astronomers. That sounds about right. I'm going to need some more information, Alex. Because nuh-uh. It's a study from coming up on about 20 years ago now. We've got several sources here, NPR, BBC, Washington Post, and NASA. In 2001, there was a team of astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, and they collected detailed light measurements from more than 200,000 galaxies.

They got light measurements from all of them. And then as they were doing that, they said, Hey, our goal was to create what we call a cosmic spectrum of all the different colors galaxies can be. If we run like one equation, we can get an average of all the colors and then we'll have like a fun average color of the universe. Wouldn't that be a neat thing to do? No, I'm skeptical. It sounds like ancient alien theory, where they're like, no, brown people didn't do anything. It was white time travelers. Calm down. Oh, you think the globe's getting more diverse?

Check out this equation. Average color beige, baby. Just feels like a slippery slope to me. I don't know. I feel like it's such a weird thing to do. It leads to what happens here, where it's kind of sloppy. Because what happened is in January 2002, the astronomers ran the numbers and then nationally, globally announced that the universe averages out to turquoise. That's way cooler.

And then two months later, they did a new announcement where they said, we messed up the calculations. And the actual answer is the average is beige. Sorry about before. This is all just basically a goof. But the universe averages out to beige. That's like being told you're going to Disneyland, and then you get out and you're at the dentist. Yeah.

And also, how is it not turquoise? Like, the Earth is mostly water but i guess if they're taking the whole universe the whole thing man yeah i suppose yeah fine fine you win science you beat me this time nasa yeah i think it i think it's based on the different light coming together so i think it's just that a lot of light trends toward beige. It's a very vague idea they came up with. Yeah, that seems like cheating a little bit. They're like, you know, stars produce light and light's generally beige.

So, you know, beige. Yeah, right. It's like, well, that doesn't seem fair. And then the other thing about how they got their answer and then had to redo it, NPR says, quote, they had reached their initial conclusion using a piece of free software they had downloaded off the web. But the astronomers didn't realize the program used an unusual representation for white, end quote. Did they go on LimeWire to do science? It was 2002, so yeah, I think that's pretty much it's pretty much they were napstering science the whole time yeah so if this software existed did someone figure this out before them and they're like no

no no let us run that equation you'll see it'll be different what a fun thing to admit too so we illegally downloaded a program it's like aren't you the government can't you just get it yeah we don't you know it's it's red tape or beige tape as the case may be yeah john's johns hopkins is not some like cash strapped community college or something it's doing very well and they they were like yeah i think how do i steal some color software from the early Internet? That's what I'm going to do. It is very funny when they talk about how higher education is non-profit. It's like, let me see that endowment real quick before you tell me it's non-profit. Because that seems like you're just lying about what profits are.

And the other thing with these guys, it's two astronomers, their names are Ian Baldry and Professor Carl Glazebrook. But the other thing is they got this like color answer. And then they said, hey, what do we call it? And they went way out of their way to not call it beige. They were like, we got to do everything we can to come up with a name for this universal color that's not beige because beige is boring and so they reached out to colleagues did they just come up with the word starlight because that just seems like an easy answer that i got in three seconds that would have covered it yeah how about earth tone hey there we go planets yeah yeah right i had a guy at a job once tell me he didn't like me because i wore earth

tones and it was to this day is the most absurd thing i've ever heard and i wanted to fight him i still want to fight him i remember like i was on a game show and they were like they were like wear jewel tones and i went no i'm not gonna do that jewel tone what's it yeah they want you to wear what's a jewel tone jewel tones are like are like vibrant blues, greens, purples, things that pop on camera. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to dress like I'm at a dance in the 90s. On Jeopardy, they said not to wear olive.

They said no patterns and no olive. Those were the rules. Usually it's tight patterns. White and red are the ones that they try to avoid. In game shows that aren't the big one that you were on. You were on Jeopardy, and I was on America Says. I'm an idiot. Diet family feud ass show.

Weirdly, though, Jeff won way more money than you 255 000 yeah sorry game show network's got a big endowment they're the johns hopkins of networks yeah now jeff's buying his own color software i'm stealing it from limewire terrible that's how you have to do it. Just riddled with viruses. I wonder what would happen if you tried to open LimeWire on your computer right now. Just melt the computer. Catch on fire. Clippy shows up.

Hey, I hear you just woke up from a coma. Clippy. Mind if I help you reintegrate into society turns out stealing's wrong we didn't care well so so these astronomers baldry and glazebrook were like, we need a name for this beige color. But they reached out to colleagues, and in the message, they said, quote, suggestions for the name are welcome as long as it is not beige, exclamation point. They said very specifically, do not give us beige. These jerks, what they did is they got a bunch of suggestions from their friends. They held a poll among their friends, and then they just overrode the poll completely. So the winning pick was Cappuccino Cosmico, which I admit is weird.

That's fine. That is such a 2002-ass thing to do. Yeah. Like, that is the sole patch of names. How many coffee shops with that name popped up in the five years after this happened right right when so they they also overrode cosmic cream astronomer almonds and skivory which are all very silly as well skivory is so good skivory is so good whoever overrode skivory should go straight to hell yeah that's a fireable offense right there oh man that is a that's one of history's greatest ball drops right there

skivory oh put it in yeah i don't even remember what the other options were after you said skivory yeah nothing else nothing else matt has existed before. I don't know. We could maybe revisit astronomer almond. That, that to me, I'm like, what do you guys, how much do you guys think we care about you?

Yeah. It's not the 1700s anymore. They think they're like the bikers of, of, uh, scientists. They're putting on their little beige leather jackets. Yeah. Skyvery is so good. But so the name that these guys just overrode their friends to pick is another coffee when they went with Cosmic Latte.

And so now if you look it up on Astronomy Picture of the Day or other sites, the average color of our part of the universe is called cosmic latte, even though it's really beige and they were just trying to work around it. No, it's Skyvery. It's Skyvery. Yeah. Skyvery is really good. Yeah. Let science know.

They have been overridden. And also cosmic latte is somehow even worse than the cappuccino one for being dated. Yeah. Yeah. Like they might as well have called it like Tanfeld. And you're like, that's not. That doesn't work for like something like ridiculously like 2002. Space Mouth.

Nope, that's not. I don't know. I don't remember what happened in 2002 after 9-11 it was all a blur because I was on the run Spage would have been good too Spage would have been fantastic Spage

that's better Beige Watch Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway before that we're going to take a little break we'll be right back i'm jesse thorne i just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. the next bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more

is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, I think from here we got the second of three takeaways for the show.

Takeaway number two. Beige was the first modern military camouflage. And this is really going to lead us into talking about the origin of khaki. I'm glad we talked about khaki before as being in the family of the beiges. I guess that is another thing I associate beige with. Like whenever I see beige military uniforms, I'm like, oh, you fight in like the desert. Yeah. It's funny that you said the modern military because that

essentially means like once we started fighting for oil yep exactly just like once once we had to adapt to fighting for oil instead of fighting to prevent communism we had to make a shift yeah we're fighting for jungle oil to be yeah no no more jungle color so we gotta go straight to the we gotta do skivbury from now on. So it's odd because when I say modern, I mean like the mid-1800s, but it's because Britain was colonizing places

in or near places where we would get oil later. It's the same. It's just they wanted to colonize everything. That's why they started doing it. It doesn't sound like Britain. It's so much more embarrassing to get conquered by someone in a pith helmet right bro bro give me your country bro bro me's got wide britches bro my country now in it in it me's panama jack in it

roy if you guys can get those british people out of the room and get back on the mic, I would really like to continue the podcast. Those were perfect voices. I assume it's real British people. Me's from Birmingham. Hey, I'm back. Sorry. I like to watch foot. Get out of here, you British british bastard yeah go watch footy

or is that australians call it footy i think maybe yeah i we should invite those guys back in find out yeah uh hello there was somebody calling about something hey let me tell you we've done awful things as well don't forget us we're blimey rices that are you still british are you australian now that's australian cold australian i thank you very much that voice is reminding me that i think we had to wear like tan shorts for the zoo tour uniforms partly because of uh the crocodile hunter influencing it you know like yeah yeah that made a made a sharp turn around 06 yeah because he died on tv yeah beige is a stingray's favorite color he didn't know yeah they get well no it's their least favorite they get they get so angry about it

i forgot jeff's right i got it wrong they should call him sting beige what if he i've never seen him in scuba or wetsuit stuff but i hope it was exactly the same as his on land outfit just a water version scuba he was wearing scuba shorts yeah a little tight tight little tan scuba shorts yeah yeah tan snorkel and like yeah he was such a good dude yeah seems. RIP. But so our main source for the beige camouflage, it's a book called The Secret Lives of Color by Cassius St. Clair, cultural historian, design journalist. She helped with the other two color episodes as well. Yeah.

I was going to say, you've referenced this book a lot. Yeah. What's she paying you? Nothing. And I should pay her. She's great. Well, you are a fool are a fool sponsored podcast yeah given free copy yeah this book it's a good book i'm really pushing it yeah but this is this is where

the word khaki comes from the word khaki is borrowed from urdu and it's the urdu word for dusty because it was used to refer to cloth, usually for military clothing, that was first used in modern day Pakistan. This was the British Empire in the mid 1800s. Well, it's a move to take Urdu and use it to describe the color. Yeah. Like that's that's like that's like colonizing a word. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

The guy credited with using it in military uniforms is sir harry lumsden of the british army he organized a military unit in peshawar in modern-day pakistan and what he did is he bought up a bunch of yards of white cotton cloth and then ordered it to be soaked and rubbed with mud had a sheep piss all over it. Soaked in sheep's piss. Loyal army sheep just saluting and then beginning to urinate. Like, yes, sir. Like those old barnyard commandos toys that we had in the 80s. I have a feeling that I am directly in the middle of Alex not knowing what that is because he's too young and Adam not knowing what that is because he's too old.

It's accurate about me. Barnyard Commandos, anyone? Yeah, I don't really remember Barnyard Commandos. Literally just me? Cool, cool, cool. Sorry, man. You know what, though? That reference is only for a very specific pocket of your listenership

that is going to be very happy that I said it. I expect tweets about it. So they took the white cotton cloth and rubbed it in mud from the local river sir lumsden hope that it would quote make them invisible in a land of dust end quote smart this is the first time in organized military history that that a unit devised an official uniform that blended into the landscape that was the first time yeah well i mean before that we were all marching around with drummers and during war it's like you can't sneak up on someone with a flautist but here's the thing we're saying we but like that was very much like

the british and i think we could have handled them losing a few that would have been nice yeah yeah like like i'm not gonna be too stoked i'm like ah that's how the british took india yeah this is truly the the next step of the story is there's a major indian uprising in 1857 and 1858 and the british army in india just adopts this uniform because it worked real good to fight it like they this was immediately used to oppress india yeah it sure did yeah the jewel of the crown yep as they call it just queen victoria being glad she has it not good i dude i had um i had a i took an indian history specific course like that was just that when i was um when i was in college and like the the professor was like they called it the jewel of the crown because

britain is evil like it was just like this like kind of like hippie in maine that was just like they called it this because they are scum right and i was like i accept this description i'm glad you didn't have that other kind of american teacher where they're like and then the british took literal jewels from india because the indians really didn't want them you know like that kind of horrible teacher the size of a tangerine michael cain and khaki does not have a lot of good stories behind it we're starting to piece together like it's fascinating but in a war crimes kind of way yeah or like a boring astronomer kind of way because i do also associate it with nazis like there were there were lots of nazi uniforms

that were beige the other like step here is that for one thing there was basically no camouflage before at least not in a whole unit way like like probably individuals figured out here's a hiding spot i'll put moss over myself or whatever yeah like rambo uh yeah that kind of thing yeah he figured it out yeah he was actually the first it is funny it is funny in that regard that like it took them a while because they were like we'll have red coats so they can't see that we're bleeding and i was like that doesn't seem like a good strategy like i get why you came up with, but that's not like a what if you prevented the bleeding? What about that? Yeah, apparently, because before these khaki uniforms, most militaries wanted to have the opposite and have super bright, colorful unis.

It made it clear who was on your side, especially if the smoke from guns and cannons was everywhere. It also made your army look bigger from a distance if the unis were bright. There was also just like the encouragement of getting a cool uniform if you joined the military. So there were a bunch of reasons. Highlighter. Yeah. Like a highlighter with a musket. I can see the point of wanting the people on your side to stand out just because of the way we

were fighting wars back then like you were just kind of approaching and everyone's shooting at each other there is going to be a lot of smoke and whatnot yeah that's why you have scouts i think that's why they had scouts to be like those are the guys we have to shoot over there but then you're gonna those people then you're gonna you're gonna mix it up there's gonna be some melee right i mean i feel like especially like if you're invading india and you're england you can figure it out how about you and i build an army each right i don't hate that and then we will take them to the streets and see who's more successful taking it to the street folks you're gonna want to use code atb at checkout to join adam's army and then code jeff may gets you in jeff's army whichever one you

want to use but that's 15 off joining the army just to set that up yeah yeah i want you to die for no reason for me for a riff at a podcast, yeah. It's what's right. I don't know what you want me to say. It's the least people could do, I think, is the way to put it. Bare minimum. And so khaki here, like the British army in India starts using it in the 1860s, 70s especially. And then there's a last flip where the turn of the century, and then especially World War I, it's basically just armies are camouflaged forever now. Because at the turn of the 20th century, you get planes for reconnaissance, you also get smokeless guns. So at that point, you brutal war that everybody figured out the more khaki you wear and the less color you wear, the more likely you are to live.

It just ended brightly colored uniforms. Cassius Sinclair also says khaki was so new at the time that the Germans were surprised to see the British in it. They thought they would be in red uniforms or like fun feathers and bear skins and stuff like 1800s armies had so it was a really cutting-edge piece of technology in world war one what the hell is up with that boring army over there why is it so boring all of a sudden that's crazy they are here to apparently read books alone or something like i don't know why you show up dressed like that you look stupid and yeah and then khaki became shorthand for like being a soldier in world war one there were recruitment posters saying quote why aren't you in khaki

there were music hall songs referencing it and then also cassia st claire says that if there were young women who were see who seemed to be like way too into soldiers and crushing on soldiers too hard they were described as having khaki fever that was the term in world war one for like ladies being too into the troops i always um thought khaki was um not so much a color as much as it was a fabric for the longest time i thought khaki was like a style of clothing as opposed to a color so they'd be like oh that person's wearing like olive khakis yeah i agree with that hey when you were um when you were researching this how how tempted were you to talk about like the the 1990s swing revival to talk

about like all the gap khaki commercials right remember when khakis and white t-shirts were like the shit yeah well i i think i'll take us into the last takeaway of the main episode because the bonus is all 90s baby uh 90s and the the adjoining decades it's gonna be all 90s beige it's gonna be great i sure hope those of you listening subscribe to the Patreon so you can get that bonus content. Thank you. Here we go into takeaway number three. Beige teamed up with blue in George Washington's fashion show resume. And I'm sort of saying that a fun way.

But one more time. Beige teamed up with blue in George Washington's fashion show resume. And I'm sort of saying that a fun way, but one more time, beige teamed up with blue in George Washington's fashion show resume. He wore those two colors to get the job of running the Continental Army. That's how he did it. Just that's it. Nothing else to it. He just wore a little bit. There were not a lot of rules to become a general back then. Man, there were not a lot of rules to become a general back then. Well, yeah, there's a few sources here, especially the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, because they have useful paintings of Washington wearing this stuff. Before the American Revolution started, George Washington was not the automatic choice to command the army.

He was a leading candidate, but there were guys like John Hancock and Charles Lee who also wanted to do it. The things Washington had going for him was the Adamses both supported him. He had fought in the British army and he lived in Virginia. They wanted an experienced guy and also a guy who Virginians would be like, he's one of us, great. But the thing was Washington wanted to win the job. And in 1774, he organized a Virginia militia company called the Fairfax Independent Company of Volunteers. And as part of that, they came up with their own uniform. And there was like kind of a revolution coming. So they didn't want to do a British uni. And so they came up with a blue coat and a beige kind of everything else underneath it and that's how it looks in like i say you guys a painting of him wearing it it's just sort of

that deal you you sent us that painting and one of the things that i was very happy about was that the portrait seemed accurate because he has like kind of a gut yeah and i was like good for them because like i know like i think it was like was like Louis the 14th looks nothing like his paintings because they always painted him very fit, but not that. And so like with this Washington one, I'm like, man, if they put that gut in that painting, that means that they went whole hog for real realism in there. And I'm happy about that. He looks like a tall kind of fat guy. Yeah.

Like, like, like some, some power forwards, you know? Yeah. And I, I really really like that it was like an honest portrait i hate that technology has moved us away from that time like we're describing now where if you were planning a revolution you could be casual enough about it to like meet up about your uniforms and get those printed up first. Like imagine going to print uniforms for a revolution in the United States. Now the FBI would blow your car up with a rocket propelled grenade. I'm like,

that's how we got some of the people from the January insurrection was that they brought uniforms. Yeah, sure. That's a real thing because they were like remember they arrested a dude and he was wearing an i was there shirt that's right yeah wow see the days we're talking about are gone the days of colonialism were the days that you could have a pep rally about your coming insurrection and people were like, yeah, man, keep those, keep those Tories out of that pep

rally. I'll tell you that much. It was, it's also like just a fun time because like, like Washington personally wrote letters about choosing the stuff for this uniform. Like it's a lot of fashion stuff for, for a supposedly macho military dude to be doing, but it was different then it was like, yeah, it's very important. That's a reminder that the traditional roles of masculinity are not the way that we think of them back in the past. Yeah, exactly. Should also say, technically,

Washington referred to this color as buff, which is short for buffalo. It's sort of referring to like buffalo hide. Of course he did. But it was before beige was in English. Did he flex when he said it sky buff sky buff he's just like he's like you know we call this color buff and he just started flexing in front of everybody his biceps rip his shirt open shredded except for his painted gut

still got that stupid white hair he's all cut beady eyes what an idiot what an idiot cartoon man weird looking guy wasn't real so washington yeah you look at a face like that you'd be like that's a guy that that's a guy who will fight yeah you know like you never pick that's what they say you never pick a fight with an ugly guy he's got nothing to lose. That's a good point. And so Washington, he uses his money to get uniforms printed up in 1774. They're this blue and beige outfit that he called blue and buff. And then Cassius St. Clair says, quote, when representatives from the fledgling United States met at the second Continental Congress in the summer of 1775, Washington showed up to the meeting wearing his new military outfit, end quote.

It was a Bulls jersey. And that did it? This will be America later. He showed up wearing that and they were like, you're the guy. He did the work, man. Like, that's the thing. Like, he did some arts and crafts and that really paid off in the end. It's like when you're voting for people for, like, you know, for class president.

You're like, oh, those signs are good, man. Those are good signs. More or less, yeah. Yeah. I like to imagine he walked in and they just leaned over to each other like, f***, Washington wore a uniform? Are you kidding me? Yeah. And he me? Yeah.

And he's so buff. So buff. Wouldn't that be funny if the uniform was really stupid? Like it looked like a jester's uniform. And everyone's just like, what the is up with Washington? It's got like a lot of little bells or something. Like a jiggles when he walks. We'll defeat these red coats i love this tiny chapter of the revolution because this is a thing where

washington for one thing signals that he wants the job of running the army by showing up in uniform uh cassia sinclair also says that it helps the Continental Congress think through the fact that they would have an army to have a guy show up in a not British military uniform. It just helps you imagine it. Like an episode of Shark Tank. Yeah, like an episode of Shark Tank, essentially. Picture if you will. That's basically what he did with his own body.

Yeah. Be funny to try that at like a Best Buy or something. Going in for an interview there. Like, like, hello, blue polo, bruh. Got the khakis. Just need that name tag. You were a George Washington generals outfit to your interview. Can I start today?

Yes, I can. Obviously. I'm just back from lunch, actually. Yeah, I did before I even got here. I answered three questions. Totally wrong. One involved a racial slur. I'm fired.

Can I start right away? I conquered this Best Buy. I own it now. My army has seized it with our cannons. It's the new continental best buy. Linda, and then we have a letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail, quote, Colonel Washington appears at Congress in his uniform and by his great experience and abilities in military matters is of much service to us.

Oh, that I was a soldier! Exclamation point. Ooh, John Adams is trying to tell his wife some stuff they all had like boners for this they were really excited about it uh oh but were it socially acceptable for me to be a dandy you know like he was like really going for it in old timey words you know he was telling her he needs a break yeah i doth need time right to discover myself i doth pitched an army tent in my own way i went to so i went to i remember that reminds me i went to a uh i went to the doctor uh this was like right around when i was a fighter so i was in pretty good shape and i went to my like my childhood doctor he was like the town doctor

because we were from like a podunk town and i like so i like kind of like you know disrobed and everything and he was just like wow look at that body and i was just like i can't express enough how uncomfortable this makes me feel like this is not medical like this is he's like look at your back and your shoulder and i was just like this makes me i'm who let me tell I was just like, this makes me... Let me tell you. Let me tell you, this makes me feel weird. Not in a good weird. See in that Every Day I'm Hustling band? Remember them?

Girl, look at that body. Boy, look at that body. It's the spice world of the 2010s? I don't know probably 2000s 1770s actually it was washington's brand uh he really loved leading it but yeah and this uh washington's outfit it also becomes what he explicitly chooses for his personal guard as the war goes on and the army like organizes more and more they start to mainly wear blue and beige and then also the wig organizes more and more, they start to mainly wear blue and beige.

And then also the Whig Party in the United Kingdom, because they support American independence, they start wearing this. And then that dovetails with the stuff we talked about with Grey on the Grey episode about neutral tones becoming men's fashion because of the UK in the early 1800s. Just Tarantino'd it. All comes together. Right back to where we started. It's like Memento, but a podcast. And I know that's not a Tarantino movie. Relax.

It's a Mementarantino movie. I don't get it. I don't get it. Would Tarantinanto have been better? I don't know. I'm bad at everything. It's a Tarantino movie. Yeah, yeah, there we go

Hey, love, it's a bad thing Very nice, huh? Shut up in your face and me name a boy out, huh? Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Adam Todd Brown and Jeff May for diving deep on a shallow semen color. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com. right now. world's beige technology phase and America's beige home phase. Visit SIFpod.fun for that stacked bonus show, for a library of more than three dozen other stacked bonus shows,

and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring beige with us. Here is one more run through the big beige takeaways. Here is one more run through the big beige takeaways. Takeaway number one, the average color of our part of the universe is beige. Takeaway number two, beige was the first modern military camouflage. And takeaway number three, beige teamed up with blue in George Washington's fashion show resume. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. I feel like I talk often about the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network,

you know, how good it is and stuff. I want to talk about it again. It is so well-researched and so funny and just so loaded with shows you're going to like. Adam Todd Brown makes that happen. We'll have a link to the Patreon for you to support it, and a link for you to just check out many shows that they have. Please check out Jeff May on Unpopular Opinion as well. You can also find him co-hosting Tom and Jeff Watch Batman with friend of the show Tom Ryman on the Gamefully Unemployed Podcast Network. And big exciting news about Jeff May's new podcast. It's titled Jeff Has Cool Friends. Multiple episodes out now. Both these guys are counting on your direct support to make that stuff possible, so please do that if you possibly can. You get a bunch of cool stuff, too. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. There has been one source across the three

color-based episodes of this podcast. It's called The Secret Lives of Color. It's by Cassius St. Clair. And it's what it sounds like. It's amazing histories and origins of the colors that are all around us. Also going to link a fantastic podcast called The Indicator that is from Planet Money. Until very recently, a key host there was Cardiff Garcia. A current key host is from Planet Money. Until very recently, a key host there was Cardiff Garcia. A current key host is Stacey Vanek-Smith, but it's a big team, and they do wonderful work with the U.S. Federal Reserve's Beige Book eight times a year. And then a great piece from NPR's All Things Considered. That's one of several great sources we've got for the story of Cosmic Latte, which is secretly beige and not turquoise. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond

all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.