Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Color Yellow

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Alex Schmidt and special guests David Bell and Tom Reimann explore why the color yellow is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode. Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5 Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show.

The color yellow, known for being sunny. Thymus for being cartoony. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the color yellow is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Ciphalopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name's Alex Schmidt. I'm not alone. As you know, Katie is out. And when she has news to share, share it when she's back on the show. My guests today are wonderful returning guests. You know them from their wonderful shows on Gamefully Unemployed, such as Fox Muller as Maniac, and also writing and producing things all over the place. Please welcome back David Bell and Tom Ryman. Hey, guys. Hi. Hi. Thanks, man. Yeah. Thanks for the intro. Is one of us the co-host? Like, do you?

I think you and I together is like a Voltron. Okay. I think it's the only fair way to do it. We have we have to master blaster this or else. So we just say things at the same time, or do we switch off? No, I think the viewer, I mean the viewer, the listener just needs to picture us riding atop each other's shoulders. Whoever, it doesn't matter. Okay. Whichever, yeah, whichever is more fun.

Just a single entity. Yeah. This isn't coming out right away, but I just saw pictures of Olympians doing doubles luge. So, you know. Oh, rad. Yeah. What is that? It's luge where two people are staying.

backed up on the one little luge. Is that better for them or worse? Why do they do it that way? It sounds better. Yeah. It seems like it's just a thing people tried and then it became an Olympic sport. Right. Because the single is cool already.

You realize that describes every Olympic event. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a thing people tried. And then it became an Olympic sport. Yeah. Like they did the luge. They were like, wow.

And then we did that for a while. And then what if we stood one dude on top of the other? wow yeah like the high dive is just wow and then they clap and then we'll have

two divers they'll get two sprinters anything it's fine we do doubles diving well and thank you so much for being here

Eds we have a wonderful topic suggested by a bunch of listeners because we've done lots of siffs about various colors before and either of you can start but what is your relationship to or opinion of the color yellow i am neither pro nor anti-yellow i i like it i like the like the yellow-brown 70s aesthetic i wouldn't live in it but like that's that's my like favorite version of yellow is like you know the kind of yellow

that's on the wall of like a school that's like hasn't been updated in a while you know yeah I'd vouch for yellow to get a job. Like if I was working someplace and the manager was like, hey, yellow wants to work here and they let's use a reference, I'd be like, yeah, they're all right. Yeah. Right. Like, it's not my favorite, but like, yeah, it's fine. Yellow's fine. I have one yellow shirt.

To get a job. Yeah. You know, it's, I like bananas. Yeah. I like warmth general, like sunlight and the concept of being warm on this planet. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I know like in film school you taught that like yellow isn't actually a very like in lighting white is the hottest in terms of like color temperature. Like we think of yellow as like yellow sun. There was that weird thing where people were like talking about how they remember the sun being more yellow as a kid or something that was like happened on social media briefly. And it's like, I think you just drew a yellow sun as a kid. It's fine.

Right. Christ Almighty. Oh, sorry. And the whole first chunk of the episode is about like how we perceive yellow and how it works. So that's very relevant. Yeah. Oh, okay. Because it is, every color is something we've decided exists based on our biology and on how light is refracted and bounced. So yeah, like yellow could feel more or less yellow over time. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. How does yellow rank in terms of, because I,

I remember hearing about like blue is a color that surprisingly like people like our ancestors and stuff didn't necessarily experience right away. It was like, it didn't experience. Yeah, it was like one of the last because you look at the sky and you're like, it's not really blue in the sky. It's a lot of things. Oh, right. Yeah.

When would you encounter it? Berries. But berries are tend to be more purple. And it's like the ocean can the ocean I think is pretty blue. But if you're not near the ocean. Yeah. So, like, I don't know where yellow ranks is my point in, like, when did we figure out yellow? A lot of birds.

A lot of birds and fruits really grew up with yellow. Yeah. The Simpsons. I wrote in the email, I think the Simpsons blood should be yellow. I feel very strongly about that. Is it not? No, it's red. You see it a lot.

All right. Sorry. I have to disagree, actually, Tom. I disagree, because if their blood was yellow, they'd never. It's like, it's our, our blood. blood isn't the color of our skin. And that's so we know, oh my God, I'm bleeding. Right? Like, so like if their blood was yellow, it would be hard for them to survive as a species. I'm not talking about us. I'm talking about the Simpsons. That's fair. They just look like they're full of that little

stuff. So if I want to bite into them, it should come, that little stuff should come out. That's true. It should be yellow. Yeah. It should be that yellow stuff. Yeah. I also, I have heard the Simpsons described as being jaundiced, which is the real thing people have. And that's, that's because of Billy Rubin, which is a waste product of breaking down old red blood cells. So if you have like too much Billy Rubin, you look a little yellow in real life. So I guess that's an implied situation they're all in. They're all suffering from liver disease. Yeah.

It's a harrowing drama. The Simpsons. The weird part is that Bart's hair is yellow. Yeah, and grandpas too. Right. But it blends perfectly in. That'll really confound you, Grandpa's head. Yeah, it implies like fleshy lumps as opposed to actual hair.

Yes, well, Grandpa specifically, because like Bart's hair will be like combed and stuff, but Grandpa on flashbacks has hair. Right. So when he's an old man, the little fin on his head is just like a dinosaur's sail or so. I guess it's like to help him trap sunlight and regulate his body temperature since we were talking about sunlight. It's horns. You're horns, yeah, for mating displays. Yeah.

Is this all dinosaur stuff? This is all dinosaurs stuff, right? Cold-blooded reptiles of the past. Do you think the Simpsons is a universe? I didn't anticipate it. I didn't intend for it to be that way. Well, do you think it's a universe like the Super Mario Brothers movie where it's like dinosaurs evolved into people?

And that's what the Simpsons are? The dinosaurs television show. Yes. Evolved. You're extremely right about that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a long ago, like, bonus stuff about the Super Mario Bros. That's the actual canon.

We talk about it with Dave. All this is pretty relevant to the show. So I think we're going to do our numbers and statistics. Yeah, The Simpsons and perception and everything. And this week our numbers and stats are in a segment called In the stats where I was born, bum, bu, boom, lived a math who counts the sea. And he told us of his stats. in the math of SIF Marines.

Beautiful. Nice. Nicely done. That name was submitted by Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them the silly and wacking bat as possible. Submit through Discord or to siftpod.com.

There's also a past episode where somebody suggested a song based on yellow by Coldplay. So that has also happened before. A lot of yellow out there. But with perception especially, our first number is the year, 1972, starting surprisingly modern, 1972. Is that when we invented yellow? Because that would be, that would be wild.

That would be wild. That's a year yellow came out. It's when professional tennis changed the color of the ball, so the ball could show up better on TV. What was it before? Apparently it was white in basically all contexts until 1972, a white tennis ball. I actually did know that.

That little piece of trivia. Not the specific date, but I did remember that the tennis ball was changed to yellow, specifically so that it could be seen on television. Yeah, exactly. Also, apparently, this was with the popularization of color TVs. Also, one of the first TV executives to suggest it was the future Sir David Attenborough. Huh. Already a famous nature presenter for the BBC.

They made him an executive. and in the late 1960s he like walked over to the sports division and said nobody can see the tennis ball you guys got to do something right because you take a white object you fling it it's gonna it's gonna blend in I guess yeah it was years of him getting pissed

off at so many white birds yeah I can't see it this is nonsense just so many angry outtakes it's furious these white birds I took puffin, I guess. Can we keep tweaking the tennis ball?

Like, are we allowed? You mean adding to it? Like, can we add racing stripes, you mean? Anything to make it more visible, I think is technically fine. Here's my pitch. We've done visibility. Let's do, like, being able to hear it better. I want to, because we have the technology,

let's put a little device in the tennis ball that makes the sound of screaming at all times. It can be enjoyable screaming, like it's having a good time. Like it's like, woo, just getting hit back and forth. Oh. I think that would be cool. There's also like this human nature to be like, I'm not doing that. Like, just simply, I feel like I've done that in my life.

No, it's dumb. Where it's just like, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it that way. I have to think about that. I have to do a different thing. No, we're good. Yeah, like, what if they told us tomorrow? Everybody's car has to be painted yellow now for better visibility on the road.

It increases traffic safety by like, 10,000. It was like some irrefutable statistics that we just had to do it. Yeah, I'm not doing that. Yeah, I'd be kind of like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I do that. I do get that. I do get, because I can imagine, you know, TV is seen as like, when was this the 70s? So TV is like the new budding slop, I'm sure where people are like, ah, that tell. I mean, I know it's been around for a while, but like, you know what I mean where it's like, that idea of being like the television viewers need to see the ball better. I'd be like, ah, forget them. Like, that's, it's not about TV ratings.

It's about the sport, man. So, like, I can see being stubborn. Yeah, 100%. That's, like, exactly what people said. Yeah. They just got worn down eventually to use balls that are in a color that is technically called optic yellow. That is, to this day, the color of tennis balls.

The least, oh, that's the most boring name for a type of color. Like, optic yellow. It's like yellow. Yeah. It's like visible yellow. Yellow you can see. Yeah. That's a good quality.

Optic is a good quality for a color to have. Yeah. I know. Maybe I'm the only one. This story shocked me because my entire life I had thought tennis balls are green. Nope. They are officially yellow. Now that you say that.

I'm like, oh, yeah. But I mean, you know, like sometimes I'll make like those neon green and pink ones and stuff like that. But I see, yeah, like I know exactly what you mean. Some, like the ones we would use in P.E. at school or like something that came out of, got combed out of Oscar the Grouch's back or something. You're right. I love how gross that is. It's awesome. Yeah, so apparently there's an ongoing divide among people about whether they see tennis balls as green or yellow. And officially they are yellow, but also that will link a interview.

with an expert here who is Dr. Mark Fairchild, graduate director of the color science program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He says that, quote, the color of tennis balls falls on a border between colors that we would almost all agree are yellow and those that we would agree are green. So this is like the dress. Yeah, because I just I just straight up searched the word tennis ball and hit images. And I'm like, that's a green ball. And I'm like, I thought they were straight up green forever. Yeah. And it turns out they're either one. It's kind of up to you as a person.

It's a great SB Nation interview by James Dater. He like presses this expert Dr. Fairchild about like, but what color are they? And he said everyone's right. I refuse to pick. No, no. Coward. You can't be a doctor of color at the Rochester Institute of Technology and not have a firm stance on the color of tennis balls. It's not like asking someone what love is, you know, where it's like, no, there's an answer here.

What color is that? Yeah. Yeah. No, but that's interesting. So you're saying you guys, like when you would think of a, like, just a default tennis ball. Oh, it's green. It's just a green ball. Like, no question in your mind.

Yeah. That's what I have always thought. I've never perceived them as yellow in my whole life. They've always been yellow for me. Wow. Yeah. And we're both right. Yeah.

No. I don't, I'm not sure. where I got that. Like, it must have been seeing them in cartoons because they're always drawn as yellow in cartoons. And also this SB Nation writer, he tried just putting pictures of tennis balls in Photoshop. And the program said these are in the green range if you like pick a pixel of it. But the real reason it's so hard to define as two aspects of how we see yellow, it turns out that it's a pretty narrow part of the light spectrum and the cones in our eyes have to kind of gang up and combined to see yellow.

Huh. Cone gang. I like it. So, like, if you need to exercise your eye cones, do you look at yellow? A lot of big bird, a lot of big bird center folds. Yeah. Because he's tall, right? Yeah, because he's tall.

With the cones, so our eyes have three types of cones, and they contain rods and cones for vision. Cones are the main structure if you're seeing color. the three kinds of cones see red and see green and see blue. And so in order to see something as yellow, the thing has to activate our red cones and our green codes in a relatively equal way. So only a pretty specific part of the light spectrum is that way. And I'll link Michigan State University chemistry professor William Royce. He says light at a wavelength between 570 nanometers and 585 nanometers comes across as yellow. So just that set of 15 different lengths.

And then if you look up an actual light spectrum, it's really narrow that part. Like other colors like red and blue are a lot more of the spectrum. Overtake it. Yeah. Yeah. Because we have cones specific to those, but yellow is a little bit of adding up of things. It's a transitional color. It's like the.

Yeah. Like it's it just got in there, kind of. So there are a lot of yellow things, but we often, see something as more green or more orange and red if it's a little bit longer or shorter of a wavelength. Like with monitors and stuff, right, we just got the three. We got RGB. Yeah. Yeah. And we're like, yeah, we can make yellow out of that. It doesn't get its own letter. Yeah. And we'll talk later about CMIK printing where it does get its own letter. But yeah, the RGB that our eyes are doing and then we've built into technology, yellow always has to be added up of those things.

It's like the Pluto of colors, kind of, right? Where it's like, it feels that way to me at least, where it's like kind of a color. It keeps losing its color status. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like one day we might go like, that yellow is not a color anymore. Or it's like, what is their primary and secondary? Is that how colors people telling me about? It's in like grade schools they teach that it is a primary color, red, yellow and blue.

Oh, it's red yellow and blue. That's right because green is blue and yellow, right? Yeah, yellow has a very. prominent but middling status in the world of color. It's weird. Trying to remember my color wheel. I wish I'd saved it. I'm going to Google it. I'm going to Google a lot of colors today. It's really fun.

Your computer's going to be worried about you. What is red? Dave, what's happened? And also, yellow is partly a color we see well because so much of our eye is involved. and that's led it to be across all sorts of pop culture and products and media and stuff. And one big number there is 1896, the year 1896. What we do? That is when the two biggest newspapers in the United States both began making their own versions of a comic strip character called the Yellow Kid. Huh.

Oh, boy. I'm real nervous. If you look up comics history, the yellow kid is just a hideous homunculus of a character. It's truly astonishing this was ever popular. It's supposed to be a slum dwelling poor child in a giant yellow night shirt. And he was bald because a lot of times when poor kids got lice, they needed their head shaved. It's a really objectionable character to me. Just the vibes are not great.

If you told me this was like the earliest version of Charlie Brown, though, I would have been like, oh, okay. Like, it started this way and then it's slowly over time. Yeah. I've seen this. Yeah. I've seen this character. I've never seen this.

In the corner of my room every time I lie. He's tall. In some of these, he's terrifyingly tall. Unnaturally so, you might say. Yeah, there's some of these that look like, it just looks like a horror movie character. Along with Charlie Brown, just because of yellow shirts and bald, the only other reference I could think of is the Skibbitty toilet thing, where you're like, why is something so visually disturbing, massively popular? It's like a skibbity toilet Charlie Brown. Yeah.

This might be one of those things where they're like, oh, my God, future historians are going to think we're maniacs for this. Maybe they just know that the yellow kid is just like purposefully upsetting to look at it. Yeah, this is, this puzzle, this is worse than the Hellraiser's puzzle box. Like, I would be more frightened of finding this, like, on a pedestal than some billionaires' panic room. Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking of. Than the lament configuration.

Yeah, and so, like, this character was so popular, two newspapers made their own versions at the same time, like, duplicating the labor. Well, obviously. You got when you get such a hot property like that like such a hot ticket, it's the yellow kid. Yeah, yeah. You're going to have people fighting over it. Yeah, because what happened is there were a few horrible 1890s trends all at once in U.S. journalism. And in particular, it started in 1893 when a guy named Joseph Pulitzer bought the New York World, a newspaper in New York, the New York World. And he immediately ordered the staff to write as sensational and fun.

as possible of stories as they could, and also got one of the first color printing presses, so especially the Sunday comic section could be in color. He was like, we'll do lies and bright colors. That'll sell the paper. It's a formula they have stuck to to this day because it's literally never failed them. It has continued, yeah. Because the 1890s, what happens is Pulitzer buys the New York world. Hearst has his own rival paper in New York, and the two of them do a subscription battle.

They're both now doing these terrible ideas of lies and color printing. And the nickname for this becomes yellow journalism because of the color and the famous cartoon character. Oh. I never knew it was connected to that character. And then that basically single-handedly causes the U.S. to invade Spanish colonies and colonize millions of people partly to this day. Wow. But also the cartoonist who drew the yellow kid wanted to leave Pulitzer's paper.

Apparently, the cartoonist Richard Outcultz created the Yellow Kid, but it was work for hire. He had an offer from the rival paper, and so he went to the U.S. Copyright Office and asked them whether he owned the Yellow Kid. What'd they say? And the Copyright Office told him he could draw the Yellow Kid anywhere he wanted, and Pulitzer's newspaper could hire U.S. newspaper could hire U.S. other people to draw it if he left. Hmm. Okay. And so he leaves, he draws it for Hearst's paper,

scabs draw it for Pulitzer's paper, and there are just completely separate yellow kid stories in both of the biggest papers in New York City. It's like, never say never again. Yeah, it is. I'll like it, folks, it's a James Bond movie. Yeah, they just did the story of Thunderball, but separately because they could, yeah.

By way of arguing and loss. suits just like, well, I'm going to make my own James Bond movie. Because modern comics, one guy draws one comic and then it's syndicated nationally, or one lady, I shouldn't have said a guy. But back then, comic sections weren't quite invented yet, and a paper would hire an artist to only do it for them. And the one thing that was across both these papers was this terrible yellow kid character. And then that also was at least one reason the rest of cartooning and comics adopted yellow as a prominent color because it catches the eye and it seems fun and different.

It checks out. Okay. They tried to revive the yellow kid, you know, in 2020. Don't do that. The writer died. Like, not the writer of the original, obviously. The guy who was trying to revive it died. And so it never happened.

It's like a cursed character. Yeah, I was going to say that's a sign that was meant to stay buried in the 18. Apparently, he cameoed in a Ziggy in 1990. That seems like something that would happen in a Ziggy comic. Yeah. And apparently, he was in a Marvel comic written by Shaw Sweeten. So that also was a thing that happened. So yeah, cursed character.

Yeah, and also kind of like a nerd reference. I feel like you're not pleasing the audience by bringing him in. You're just saying how smart you are, you know? Yeah, like, what is that? Yeah. Like it's like when every cartoonist invented it every comic book cartoonist invented a character that was modeled after Jack Kirby

in like the 80s 70s and 80s it's really embarrassing if you go back Okay guys Settle down Like in the Ninja Turtles Donatello meets a guy named King Kirby Whose drawings come to life It's like come on

And yeah we keep seeing yellow either directly or indirectly from this character across the rest of comics and printing. One number there's the year, 1963. It's the main origin story for the yellow smiley face. Apparently, a graphic designer named Harvey Ball in Worcester, Massachusetts. I can tell you, he met a guy who was running across country named Torres Gump. We know this. We all know this. He knows the story. It was dramatized.

I apologize. Go on. Did you say Worcester, by the way? Yeah, yeah, I thought you were, but I legit, because Alex just said Worcester, mass, I thought you were legit about to be like, no, I know the story here. I also thought that. Alex was like, oh, okay, man, he must know this. Everybody in Worcester is like, gather around kids. We let's tell the story of Harvey Ball. No, I just know the fake one from Forest Cup. From Forest Go on, sorry.

Yeah, Harvey Ball was a local graphic designer in Worcester. and that was the home base of state mutual life insurance company, which was basically a new insurance company formed by a bunch of mergers, and employee morale was low because it was chaotic. And so they hired him to just draw something fun to put on posters and publications in the office. And he did the simple yellow smiley face that took over the world after that. That's really interesting because I didn't know it was Worcester. So my grandparents' house had like a closet room that was close.

Clearly all my grandpa's, like, quote-unquote guy stuff that had been slowly pushed over the span of 40 years into a single room. Yeah. And there was, like, figurines and stuff. Like, you know, the kind of crap that I now live amongst. But he had a bunch of smiley face stuff. I remember. Oh. I think he had a poster to.

And I didn't think anything of it. And I don't think he was like a big fan, but I wonder like, oh, I wonder if that was like some of the first smiley face stuff that existed. I don't know. It could have been. And this origins debate, like, apparently there were a few other drawings that were a little like it. It's debated, but there's the main origin story people seem to agree on, yeah. So it makes sense.

It's, I assume the smiley face was one of those things that, like, no one really invented because it's a smiley face. It's like, I can see a caveman making that thing, you know? It just seems so like. But, like, the specific yellow face. Yeah. Right, it's like so eye-catching and so neutral all at once somehow. And the yellow seems like the big part of it, because otherwise it's just the shape.

Other quick number with cartoon yellows is 1987, because from their premiere on the Tracy Elman show, the Simpsons characters were drawn yellow. Apparently Matt Graney's first sketches were black and white line drawings. And then either he or an animator suggested coloring the skin yellow. And he's told interviewers he hoped, as people flip channels, they would kind of stop and surprise at the yellow skin. characters. Good idea. Because it was so brand new and not promoted as a big thing, new channel called Fox. So they hoped Yellow would draw people in and it seemed to.

It's also, I mean, I know it's associated with a lot of things now, but the name Fox for a channel is a great name for a channel. Like, ooh, Fox. Like, it's, yeah, it's cool. Yeah. It's a cool thing to call your channel. As I was put ABC, it's like, ugh. A-B-Nerds.

That's the Square Network. Yeah. It's for like learning and stuff. Fox is for skateboarding and sunglasses. Yeah. 1987 is also the year, I think, the Ninja Turtles cartoon premiered, which featured April O'Neill's yellow news jumps. Oh, yeah.

Also very eye-catching. And other ones, apparently the Beatles, I looked it up because of the song, they gave varying explanations of the submarine being yellow in their 1966 song, the darkest explanation might be that they were popping pills in a yellow color that were a fun drug.

But the most child-friendly is that rubber ducks and other toys are yellow. And it makes clear this is not a military submarine. Yeah. It comes across in the illustration. Yeah. But it's not a wartime vessel. And the other children's stuff number is 2015.

2015 is when the Pantone Company defined a new color as a movie marketing stunt. They announced a new color of Minion Yellow. Like, Pantone partnered with the Minions to promote the Minions movie. Oh, when was this? 2015. Okay. So I heard an older date and I was like, wait, did they know?

How did they know? Okay. You're right. The minions are now the new, they've taken up new, like, yellow character, aren't they? They're just, they're like advanced. They're like if a smiley face fell into toxic. a minion would come out. Like, that's what they are.

Yeah. Yeah. They're kind of like the new Garfield, right? Yeah, sure. You remember how Garfield was like the star of every office poster, every cubicle meme, every, all the hang in,

plushies hanging in car windows and. Yeah. Cubicle memes have moved to Facebook memes, right? And every Facebook meme is a minion meme. You know? Like, don't talk to me until I've had my coffee. It was a Garfield thing. Now that's like Stuart the Minion.

And like we've perfected it where it's like we don't even need to be a cat. It just can be a blob with a face. With a blob with a face. Yeah, right. That's all we need. Which is basically all the minions are, little blobs with faces. And denim. Denim's important.

Yes. Right. And the yellow pops on the denim blue overalls. Yeah. And their language is mostly unintelligible and based on the phonetics of some European languages. But one word they say a lot is banana because it's yellow. Like yellow is a lot of the character. Oh, yeah.

Mm-hmm. So it's pretty fun. Yeah. We watch a lot of minions in this house. Oh, I'm sure. You've seen a lot of minions. I really like that minions movie. It's straight up good and fun.

It's a good movie. It's a straight up good movie. I haven't seen a single minions movie. Like, we watched the minions movie. Like, the Despicable Me movies are just, I was kind of like fine with. We watched the minions movie for the little one of them. And both my wife and are like, this is, we're all right with these minions. I like these minions.

Yeah. Like these are my guys. It's great. Yeah. Is despicable me like the clerks to the minions, Jay and Silent Bob strike back? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, that's pirate. Okay. Almost exactly right. Yeah. My movie theater is Universal Studio City Walk. Like, that's my closest movie theater. And I see a movie once a week.

And when you drive in, there's a giant minion that, like, stares at you as you doing. So like my Tony Soprano. What does it make you feel? I don't know. I just figure like my soprano's opening sequence of me driving would include the minion like looming over me, you know? Up this morning.

And it's hard to like lock down any shade of a color like the minions have. And the last number in the section this week is almost two years. Almost two years is how long General Mills, the food company, spent in court pushing to try to get trademark on the yellow of Cheerios cereal boxes. They tried to trademark Cheerios yellow and failed. Oh, wow. Wow. That's, yeah, that's tough.

You can't do that. Yeah, like, I kind of get it where they're like, you look at a yellow box and you think Cheerios and like they're right. Yeah. But like, that's on them where it's like, eh, yeah, you just can't. Sorry. That is kind of on you, yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. And apparently they, you know, are working off of. the example of other companies who've succeeded at this kind of thing. Because like Coca-Cola red, Home Depot orange, John Deere Green, those are all some of the trademarked colors in U.S. business. Wow. If folks listen to the past sift about magenta, we talk about T-Mobile, basically making

their entire company out of magenta. Yeah, really staking it on a color. And so General Mills from 2015 to 2017 had their lawyers draft endless vision. very official documents about why Cheerios should own that yellow. They had to describe the product as, quote, toroidal-shaped, oat-based breakfast cereal. You know, it had to be extremely technical. Right. But they mainly lost because too many other cereals use yellow. Yeah. Kellogg's Corn Pops, post-honeycomb, Nature's Path, Honey, Corn Flakes. And to me, the least legitimate because it's a knockoff. Traitor Joe's, Joe's O's, toasted whole grain oats, uses yellow. Oh, they don't count.

Yeah. But that's because Cheerios did first. So like, sure. Yeah, they're doing a parody. Captain Crunch. Yeah. There's just too much yellow in the cereal aisle and they were too late in 2015 when they started. I love how the cereal aisle is like a microcosm for like marketing in general where they're like everything we learn about is like bright colors, cartoon characters, put them at kids level. It's all, you go through it. It's like just being shouted out at different brands

when you go into the cereal aisle. Yeah, it's the loudest aisle. It's just very funny that cereal was the one that was like, we got to do this, where it's like, you don't see that in like the baked beans aisle.

Like the baked beans aisle isn't like trying to like scream at you. It's only the cereal aisle. It's the only aisle that's like, hey, hey over here. Hey, you can be a sports hero. Like I want that on my bean. too. Why not? I think they realize that like breakfast is the meal where parents are going to be the most

flexible because they're tired in a hurry, et cetera. Yeah. So you can directly market to children an entire meal right there. It's all, you know, they also advertise McDonald's and stuff so fiercely. But yeah. Right. That kind of packaging where it can be so bright yellow for so many products, it gets us into another major element of yellow in our lives. Because takeaway number one, The yellow in CMYK printing is used such specific ways it can give away your identity and solve national security leaks. Oh, no. This is a story from 2017 and also the whole story of CMYK printing. There was a NSA leaker in 2017 who got caught because of yellow in the documents that the way it printed.

Wait, like they could figure out, what did they determine from the yellow? We'll start with that, and key sources are reporting for Ars Technica by writer Sean Gallagher and reporting from Mashable.com by writer Brett Williams. This was a important leak in May of 2017. There was an Air Force veteran named Reality Winner, who was a contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency. And in 2017, the recent election winner and new president, Donald Trump, had benefited from some Russian intelligence services promoting his candidacy. And we're not here to like figure out whether the Russians changed the election. There's just some evidence of some effort. And a lot of that information was still classified partly because allegedly the Trump administration didn't want it to get out.

So reality winner was an NSA contractor and she leaked two reports outlining Russian interference to a media outlet called The Intercepts. And then the intercept did a correct thing where they showed the documents to the NSA in an effort to verify. them. But because of how printers do sort of a visual version of metadata, the NSA was able to figure out what machine reality winner printed them on and then track her down. Like specific machine based off reading, like looking at a picture? Sorry, this is haunting. I know. Yeah. It doesn't matter for 99% of us, but most printers apparently do some kind of small dots and often using the color yellow because it's the most subtle in the range of cyan magenta yellow and then key means black but that's what cmy k stands for cyan magenta yellow

black uh they found tiny yellow dots on the papers which are specific to the output of a xerox docicolor printing machine then they narrowed down who had used that printer in the building to just a few people and when they asked the few people reality winner confess that she leaked the documents. Okay, that actually makes me feel a little better because I thought it was like they could literally go like that machine over there in the world makes. And I was like, that's, I don't, that's magic. No, okay.

So it's like the type of machine and then they boiled it. Yeah, that's like something you see in CSI. I'm okay with that. They had a lot of detective work to do still. It didn't just say on the bottom. It's a little less sinister, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That feels more like tracing a bullet to a gun.

I'm all right. that. Yeah. Right, where it's like that that makes sense that like they're not rat, my printer isn't ratting me out. Well, it is. But it doesn't mean to. Also, I don't have a color printer.

I have a black and white brother printer that was left for me by a one Alex Schmidt that is still after it might be 10 years, fully functional, even though my 21 pound cat now regularly sits on it with no regard for its health. Great printer. It's weird to plug a printer, but great printer has never ratted me out. I think the cat's repairing the printer, too. I think it's helping it or benefiting it some way. The purring is just positive for the gizmos. Aw, I love that. Yeah, modern printing, they can put a lot of little information or other data into it.

because, again, CMIK, it stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key. Key is technical shorthand for black. This was invented in the 1890s. The inventor was a German immigrant to the U.S. named William Kurtz, who figured out sort of a different version of red, green, blue. He figured out that cyan, magenta, and yellow you can make any color. When he did that, he struggled as an illustrator and then made his money sort of selling and promoting the system of printing stuff.

He also almost died in a shipwreck in the Falkland Islands, almost died fighting for the union in the civil war. Wow. So those near misses almost delayed the invention of this. I mean, when was this? What year? The invention was 1893, but in the 1850s, he almost died. In the 1860s, he almost died. Yeah, everybody almost died back then, right?

Yeah. You got through the day in 1850s, and just as you got into bed that night, you were like, man, I almost died today. Yeah. It's the 1850s. Yeah, yeah. And because these three colors, Siam magenta yellow, are so crucial than how now basically all products

and things are printed, you can basically find a patch of yellow on everything. Because especially product packaging, it'll often have a small strip of colored squares or dots. They're called color control patches. And that helps businesses make sure the printer's working okay because you just match the dots to what they should look like. So there's like a yellow dot on almost everything we make.

And then because yellow is a little fainter than cyan and magenta, it tends to be the like visual color metadata from your printer on some documents. So there's yellow kind of everywhere in all of our lives. It's all over us. We're just crawling with it. Man, green lantern shouldn't be able to do anything. Yeah. I forgot about him.

You just step outside and scream. Yeah, our planet hates him. Wow. Seriously, you just get out. They need to rethink this whole lantern core thing. It's a big oversight. And folks, that's a ton of numbers and stories and a big takeaway. We're going to take quick break, then return with a few more yellow takeaways across history.

We're back, and we have more yellow takeaways for you, starting with takeaway number two. humans have made yellow pigments for thousands of years, and one of those pigments helped prove that the universe is made of atoms. Huh. Hmm. I mean, I get that we make yellow pigments. We have to, everybody pees. So, like, we've been making yellow pigments for a while.

And the yellow color is also Billy Rubin. I think we talked about Billy Rubin before, right? Yeah, waste products in our bodies. You keep saying Billy Rubin. Yeah, I went to school with him. Is that the end? Yeah, is that the Inven's cube, you know. Just a gross cube. I don't want this one, actually.

Yeah, it's also why Poo has a brownish color, Billy Rubin. Huh. It's the yellow component combining my other stuff. He's relentless. Now that I'm looking at it because it's one word, it seems like a clothing store at the mall that you'd be like, I've never heard of this place. Like one of those stores at the mall. Like Benetton.

Yeah. You're like, Philly Reuben, what is this? Dilla Rubin. All lowercase. Yeah. It's the yellow kid of mall brands. Nobody wants it. Nobody. But yeah, this is the story about pigments.

It ends with the 1926 Nobel Prize in physics. A sample of one pigment helped people see something called Brownie in Motion, which is one form of evidence that the universe is made of Adam. Wow. Huh. So pretty cool. Yellow. It came through.

Yellow paint. Wow. Thanks, yellow. But yeah, and the key source here, it's an amazing book that has informed most of the SIFs about colors. It's called The Secret Lives of Color by cultural historian and design journalist Cassia St. Clair. She says that yellow might have been the second color in our history of making pigments

that are a specific color, like not gray or white or black or brown. red was definitely first and then people turned like brownish clay or yellowish clay into shades of yellow the name for that is ochre so you can get a lot of shades of yellow out of just clay mixed with the right amount of water that checks out yeah so there's a lot of yellows and golds and those kind of tones and cave art yeah because i've played with clay before and like when you crack open clay it'll be like reddish to like gets to be like yellow So, yeah, clay's cool. Yeah, I'm all right with clay.

Yeah. I got nothing as clay. And then in ancient civilization, people made more pigments. The Egyptians loved one that is an arsenic sulfide. So it's not super good for you. But it was called Orpiment is the name. And then they also had access to lead-based yellows and antimony-based yellows. You don't need to know the chemistry.

The point is people have turned minerals. to a bunch of yellows for thousands of years. And another reason people developed lots of kinds of yellow paints is that almost all of them have flaws as paints. It really took until the 1900s to make like a great yellow paint, but we made a lot of okay yellow paints before then. Apparently one example is a paint called chrome yellow that Vincent Van Gogh loved in particular.

He loved yellow in general. He painted with yellow chrome as much as he could. That's awesome. And then the bright yellow he got out of that for stuff like his sunflowers, it turns brown very quickly compared to other paints. Yellow chrome in my mind is like the color of bumblebee, the transformer. So I'm just in my mind, Van Gogh is really into transformers. Yeah. You're seeing Transformers?

He would be. Crazy. The big robots telling him to be less sad. It'd be less sad. Come on. Starry, star scream. So, yeah, so, like, there's a long history of that. And also, yellow clothing dyes are more than 2,000 years old.

In the 100s BC, there's written records of Chinese folks making a plant that's called Ramania glutinosa, common name Chinese foxglove. If you laboriously mash and turn that into paste, you get yellow dye. And that was the color of rulers, according to written records. Wow. I love how bored we used to be as a. species. Like how we like a lot of

like it feels like that's why you invent color right? Yeah. And you're just sitting around and you're like I'm going to pick this. I don't know. I'm going to mash it for a few hours. See what happens. Yeah. Might be nothing. Might be something. Let's find out.

What if what if this was that color? Yeah. Why? I don't know. I'm just kind of like tired of everything looking like the same. Yeah. I have nothing to do. Let's smash some of this fruit on that thing. Maybe it'll look rad. Yeah. I'm looking up this plant and I'm like, this isn't a yellow plant.

Yeah, that's so surprising about it. Yeah, Trinise Foxglove is the common name. It just looks different. At least the pictures I'm getting is pink. Yeah, and someone mashed it enough to make it yellow. That's weird. And apparently it was a really tedious process. You need a lot of plant to get a little dye.

And we'll talk in the next takeaway about yellow being the imperial royal color. in China and because it was like hard to make this but they loved it and so that's how you get a luxury good like that isn't purple the same whereas we think of it as being like a royal color because it was just like a really expensive color yeah especially in the mediterranean yeah it was so hard to make but they could make it's probably most things throughout history right we ascribe value to it because it's rare or it's hard to get right because we made so many kinds of yellow dye and yellow paints that ended up interesting other people as the science of chemistry develops. And one yellow pigment helped a French scientist demonstrate brownie in motion

because it's a pigment named Gambage. Gamboge is like a French mangling of the name of Cambodia. Yet another way to make yellow paint was to harvest sap from a specific tree species in East Asia and Southeast Asia. And French colonizers got it in Cambodia, so they called it Gambosh. Kind of sounds like Michael Gambin, like, pretending to be a secret agent. Yeah, yeah. Michael Gambit's saying as a name as a cold. Sean Cotterrey is seeing him about a restaurant.

Michael Gamborche. And so they made this paints, and then in the 1800s pharmacists said, hey, maybe this paint is medicine, right? Like, why not? Yeah. Again, people are trying stuff, man. Yeah. Yes.

They discovered it has one medical use, which is that our bodies hated. If you have too much of it, it's poisonous and you die. So if you have a little bit, you, like, poop and throw up a lot. And that was a medical use, I guess. So they were like, maybe this is medicine. Answer, kind of. You know, and you've got to clean yourself out. Yeah.

Yeah, the fancy name was a purgative, but it's really just, Your body hates it. Gimbush. I believe poison. It poisoned yourself slightly. Yeah. It's microdosing arsenic, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And so then in the 1900s, chemists and physicists said, hey, this medicine that's a paint, is this anything for us? And in 1908, French physicist Jean-Baptiste Peret observed Brownian motion in a tiny sample of gambage. Brownian motion is the random movement. of particles when suspended in a gas or liquid. It's one characteristic of matter with an atomic structure. It helps prove that matter is made of atoms. It's named after a different Scottish

physicist who theorized it. Other physicists like Albert Einstein had either theorized it or claimed to observe it, but apparently Peret's work in 1908 was the newest and best evidence of it. And it was so influential he won the 1926 Physics Nobel Prize because he helped prove that that the universe is made of atoms. Right. Well, that is like... That's crazy. It's got to have been a hard sell to be like,

hey, everybody, you see everything around you. It's made up a little thing, little guys. Like, it's just weird. Even his proof, like, if I'm understood it's random motion, right? So even his proof is like gathering everybody around this paint and being like, okay, watch. Everybody watch.

It's going to happen. Right. Like, it just seems, I don't mean to dump on astronomy. But like, if someone goes like, you see that thing in the sky, I think that's like a thing. I think that's like an object up there, like a big, like a big sphere. I'd be like, oh, I can see that. Like, I can kind of see that. Like, I think there's more stuff up there.

But when you're like, I think, like, look at your flesh, I think it's made up of little guys that are just like buzzing around down there. Like, I would, I would need more proof. And even that where they're like, okay, look really closely at this thing. You see? You see? It's like moving. I'd be like, I don't, I still don't get it. No, trust me.

Trust me. It's the theory of a bunch of little dudes. We're all made up of a bunch of little dudes. Yeah. Do they have cars down there? Yes, they have cars down there. How else would they get around? It's all in the theory of little dudes.

Right, because if I'm solid, but it's all moving around, that doesn't make any sense. But it doesn't make sense somehow. Right. The barest of nothing about any of this, but it's so wild. Yeah, there's just so much science you could find it yellow somehow. And moving on to something more cultural with yellow dye, takeaway number three. Yellow is a beloved royal color in East Asia, and being too casual about yellow helped end imperial rule in China. Yeah.

You cannot be too casual about yellow. Yeah, the key issue is that one of the last rulers of Imperial China, the Dowager Empress, gave away a yellow jacket to a commoner. And this was seen as, like, disgraceful and disrespectful toward the long thousands of years of yellow being the imperial color and only for emperors. Hmm. And helped destabilize her whole reign and everything. She's an emperor. Bad man.

She can do that. You'd think. Boy, that's a serious consequence of shoot. Yeah. It's like when Britney Spears got caught drinking Coke. Right. I'm trying to put in perspective. It's like if the president just like randomly saw a person on the street and they're like,

you want to be president for a day? And then it's like, wait, you can do that? Well, we should all be president for the day. Is that what it's like? If it was like, she's like, you know what? Yellow doesn't actually matter. And they're like, well, nothing matters then. Like your position doesn't matter.

It is kind of like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it was on the tail of a few other events like that too. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and the key source here is another book that helped the episode. It's called Yellow, the History of a Color.

That is by Michelle Pesterot, Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne. And he also wrote books about blue and about red that have helped past episodes. Oh, man. Sweet. For thousands of years, Yellow's been a symbol of Chinese emperors, and also there's a semi-mythical first-ever emperor who's just called the Yellow Emperor. He's associated with the color. Also, it might have influenced other royal traditions in the region. The imperial seal of Japanese emperors is a big yellow image of a chrysanthemum,

even though yellow is not big in the rest of the iconography for them. And then depending on whether you see saffron as yellow or orange, that saffron shade is a big national color in places like India. And then yellow is royal by coincidence in modern day Thailand. Yeah. Because Thailand has a monarchy currently. And yellow's not super specific to it, but there's also a culture of personal flags for each royal person in the Thai royal family. And then they've tended to match their flags to the color that is assigned to each of the seven days of the week in Thai day of the week traditions.

And the current king and the previous king were both born on a Monday. Monday is the yellow day of the week. Oh. Yeah, because colors are cheap now. Like we don't have to give, we can just choose a color. You know what I mean? Like if someone from this old era came like came to the future and they're like, oh my God, you have yellow? I'd be like, yeah, you want yellow?

I can get you yellow in five minutes. Come with me. We'll go get yellow. Wait here. Yeah. I can get you yellow. Come with me. Yeah.

Yeah. Give me $5. I'll get you yellow. And so. Yeah. It comes from a yellow company called Amazon. It's really easy. Yeah.

And so like, yeah, now it's just like, what? whatever we associate, we're just like, I don't know, that seems cool. Seems cool to have, what, you said Mondays are yellow? Yeah, there's a different color for each day of the week. Monday is yellow. Yeah. They're right. And so because two kings in a row had it, yellow is currently almost just the royal

color in general, but it's a coincidence. It's just because both those guys were born on a Monday. But probably most dominant is the yellow culture of rulers in China. And one of the final imperial rulers was a dowager. queen called Sushi. The anglicized spelling is C-I-X-I, Sushi. And she jockeyed for power and mostly held it from the 1860s into the start of the 1900s. And apparently right before her rule, emperors had begun to relax the rules about yellow stuff only being for emperors. The first change was yellow uniforms for their bodyguards. But then it really started just being yellow stuff

as gifts for favored nobles, you know. And then when Sishi was ruling, she caused a national incident by giving a yellow jacket to the commoner who drove one of her carriages, basically a taxi driver. It's, I mean, I get being like, guys, let's all calm down about yellow. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's all just pomp and nonsense. Right.

It's just like, we don't, we don't have to, we don't have to take yellow. So seriously. It doesn't matter. Yeah, that comparison of what would a president be like, it's almost like if the president said, I just let other people work at the resolute desk most days. It's cool. It's not important as a desk. It's whatever. It's a symbol. Right, of course. Yeah, yeah. It's very, very old symbol. It's like a president knocking down the East Wing. Yeah, pretty much. It's like, oh, this never mattered. I see. And the Yellow Jacket incident is just one of many things in the, like,

politics and power struggles of Sashis rule. But she was succeeded by one final empress of the country who then abdicated. And that was the end of emperors and empresses in China. So, you know, toward the tail end, that was a big scandal. It was like, this institution is dying and giving a yellow jacket to a random guy as part of why. Right. Like, it didn't cause it, but it's like a symptom where it's like, ah, yeah. Yeah.

I don't care anymore. Yeah, especially an emperor. you want to have the mandate of heaven or some other sort of spiritual rule like that and symbols are huge for that. You can't mess that up. Right. Yeah. And again, at the time, I guess colors meant more because you actually have to spend time on making them. Get it, sort of. And with colors being easier to make, we have one last thing in the main show, takeaway number four. Taxi cabs are yellow and school buses are yellow for totally separate reasons. Cabs and buses.

That's interesting because they are both things that you drive other people around driven by surly people often. Yeah, yeah. Often the same person. Yeah. Exactly. I was so surprised by this. I thought it's just yellow for transporting others.

Because it's visible. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Public transportation, yellow. You can see. You want to flag it down and a school bus is very visible. Yeah, you can flag down school buses too if you need a ride real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you give them like 20 bucks, they'll give you a ride. Or a gun, that works too. It's like 20 bucks. It's the gun version of 20 bucks. So this is, it's two completely separate stories. And starting with school buses, the key source here is Smithsonian Magazine, a piece by Brian Green. And also buses and cabs are different colors in other countries. but in the U.S., they both tend to be yellow.

And that started in the U.S. with buses for school in the 1930s. Apparently, there was an education advocate named Frank Sear, who personally ran a national survey of how kids in the 1930s got to school, like what they rode in or traveled in. And he found trucks, buses, horse-drawn wagons, just any kind of system was going on locally all over the country. Right. And there was no consistent visual identification, which means, among other things, kids might just get in the wrong vehicle.

And then I don't know what happens, you know? Yeah, I guess, yeah, if you're, it makes sense. I could see a society where we never did this, but it makes sense where it's like, listen, at the same time every day, everybody's bringing their kid to the same place in these big vehicles. We should probably mark the vehicles and make them very like, because like no one. wants to hit a school bus, right? Like no one, it's just like, no one wants, and again, yeah, kids getting in a wrong thing where it's like, it's good to just be like, hey, everybody, this is the one with all our kids in it.

That's the one with the kids in it. Right. Exactly. Let's all be cool around the one with our kids in it. Everybody calm down. If you're doing a crime, stop doing the crime real quick. Here comes the one with all our kids in it. Wait for the kids bus to go by.

Yeah. Wait for the one with all the kids in it. to pass. My friend, this is kind of a dark story. My friend has a memory of being in a school bus and them going past a crime scene with a dead body. And I always think about that from the cop's point of view of being like, we should probably cover this body before. Oh, there goes, there goes the school bus. That's like the worst case, right? It's like as that thing, it's driving to the Simpsons, it's like a Simpsons game. Yeah. It's like, well, the policeman's mistake is so obvious.

to him. Yeah. Because I really know I'm best again. Yeah. It's immediately confronted with the most severe outcome of that mistake. Yeah. It's the worst consequence. Oh, here it is.

Immediately. Yep, there it is. There goes. But these really were the reasons he wanted to standardize it. He wanted motorists to be nicer to the vehicle, kids to know what they're getting in, and then also, if they're all one-color manufacturers, could do a standard school transportation vehicle.

And at a 1939 conference at Columbia University, Frank Sear ran a meeting where they debated more than 50 colors for school buses. It was not clear what color they would be. What was like the top five? They basically picked yellow because it's visible, but the close runner up was red and white and blue altogether, completely for patriotism reasons. No other function or form or anything. Wow. So wait, a red, white, and blue bus or separately red buses, white buses, blue buses?

All three on the bus, yeah. That would have been ghastly to look at in traffic. Like American flag buses, yeah, yeah. They should have had the kids, though, right? It would have been flames on the side. It would have been cool. It would have been a cool looking design. I know that.

Oh, but what if the kids are like yellow kid fans? It's just yellow kid printed. It's horrible to see. It depends on what decade you ask the kids. Yeah, you have to keep updating it or something. So we have a skibbitty bus now. We get skibbitty bus now. So yeah, the 1930s is where we get yellow school buses.

And we start to get yellow taxis in the 1500s in Europe, at least the idea. What happened is there was a minor noble family, German speakers. And they rose to become princes in a thing called the Holy Roman Empire, which is just a thing. from the 1400s around that. You don't need to know what it is. Sure. But these nobles basically found a role organizing a postal system across the Holy Roman Empire, which then they expanded to a lot of the rest of Europe.

And then they said, hey, we're already transporting mail. Why don't we transport people? They came up with a horse-drawn ancestor of what's essentially taxi cabs. And the family's name was Thern and Taxis. Thurne and Taxis. Taxes? Like taxis? Spelled exactly like taxis. Yeah. Okay.

And so that name and also the bright, rich yellow of the heraldry of this noble family became associated with hiring a ride. And there's like black cabs and other cad colors that went on to be a thing, but this helped make yellow one of the big colors associated with a vehicle you can hail. Huh. Okay. And the name taxi. That's where it's from. Name taxi. I would not, that would have been like a gag I would have made.

Like the taxi was invented by Joseph's taxi. Right, it's that thing. Right, right. Make that joke. And then randomly you'll learn that something was that. You know what I mean? Where it's like some things will have technical names and then it'll be like, actually, it was George microphone who invented the microphone. You're like, wait, what?

You know, it's like something stupid like that. In a lot of situations, I'm learning that you kind of have better than zero odds in most situations. That's weird Because a lot of even like the most brilliant scientists Are often as blunt as like Albert Einsteinium Or you know they just name whatever it is after themselves You discovered it Yeah

The guy who named Brownie in motion He was like that's kind of like my last name The Brown Like that's what happened I just kept picturing a brownie flying through the air Yeah More obliquely Kevin Pollock being carried by a bird and willow Jerry

See, because he is a type of erasive creature called a brownie day Right, right Let's all go watch Willow. Great episode. We did it. We could. We can't because it was deleted.

Well, the show was deleted. That's right. You can still watch the movie, though. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. And I want to say thanks again to David Bell and Tom Reimann. Again, they make Gamefully Unemployed.

That is a set of podcasts and live streams and shows that is just fantastic and could use your support on Patreon if you're into it. Also, Dave is the head writer for Some More News. Tom also writes all over the internet. I'll link about that. Really, really glad my old buddies could make time to do this episode with me as we, you know, approach family time for me and continue family time for Katie. And you are in the outro of this episode. It's got fun features for you, such as Help Remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the yellow in CMYK printing is used in such specific ways.

Tiny yellow dots helped solve a national security leak. Takeaway number two, humans have made yellow pigments for thousands of years, and one specific pigment helped prove the universe is made of atoms, a pigment called gamboge. Takeaway number three, yellow is a beloved royal color in East Asia, and being too casual about yellow helped end imperial rule in China. Takeaway number four, U.S. taxi cabs are yellow and U.S. school buses are yellow for totally separate reasons. And then we had an enormous numbers section this week.

It started with me being totally shocked about tennis balls, and then we got into how yellow is perceived, how the yellow kid changed journalism and comics, how lots of other yellow iconography got into our culture and more. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. Members are the reason our podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode.

This week's bonus topic is how early Christian artists damaged the reputation of yellow by assigning it to Judas Iscariot. Visit sifpod.fod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 23 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things.

Check out our research sources on this episode's page at Maximumfund.org. Key sources this week include two very helpful and well-research books. One is called Yellow, the History of a Color, that's written by Michelle Pestero, Professor Emeritus at the Practical School of Advanced Studies of the Sorbonne. The other is The Secret Lives of Color by cultural historian and design journalist Cassia St. Clair. Amazing reads, if you like this kind of episode. We also leaned on a lot of amazing digital writing, especially a feature for TDM.com by Ernie Smith, reporting for Artis Technica by Sean Gallagher, reporting for Mashable.com by Brett Williams. scientific resources from popular mechanics, Arizona State University, Michigan State University, and that SB Nation piece I mentioned by sports writer James Daytor. He interviews Dr. Mark Fairchild, graduate director of the color science program at the Rochester Institute of Technology,

about the possibly surprising information that tennis balls are officially yellow, but they're yellow or green. It's up to you. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie-Lanape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoq people, and others. Also, Dave recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino Or Tongva and Kich and Chumash peoples. Tom recorded this on the traditional land of the Cheraw, Kiyawi, Kataba, and Okunichi peoples.

And I want to acknowledge that in our locations and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people in life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord.

We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 49, that's about the topic of postal codes.

And one fun fact there that also ties into our first episode about U.S. post offices, there is a boat on the Detroit River in Michigan that has its very own entire zip code. So I recommend those episodes. I always recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshavened by the Budoz band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. 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. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists' own shows.

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