Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Color Works

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

Science doesn't have a good explanation for why we sense color, yet it is everywhere and affecting us all the time. But why should minutely different wavelengths of light have such an impact on our moods and motivations? Explore these questions and more with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So, there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Entertainment and Lifestyle Reporter Tommy Diderio. On my new show, I've never said this before. I'll be talking to different artists and the stars of your favorite movies and shows and getting the full story. And of course, as the title suggests, I'll also be asking all of my guests to tell me at least one thing that they've never said before. Listen to, I've never said this before, with Tommy Diderio on the iHeartRadio app Apple

podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, this is Chuck here, Happy Saturday. Hope you're doing well. Do you want to know how color works? There's a lot to it. And you can learn it all right now. This one is from May 21st, 2015. Hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And it's Stuff You Should Know, color and technicolor. Yeah. Which is really something to see And Technicolor. Yeah. Which is really something to see. Technicolor? Yeah.

Imagine what it was like back then. Oh man. Oh, debut. Just melted people's eyes. I hope that probably did. You're like, wow. How you doing? I'm great.

I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, how are you? I'm good, I'm tired, but I'm good. Yeah? I got a pretty elite in study. Oh yeah? I had to get up early to make the cheese. What?

No, you know, it's just saying, gotta make the cheese. Wait, wait, who's saying? Yeah, make the cheese, make the sausage, make the doughnut. I've heard make the doughnuts. You never heard make the sausage? See how the sausage is. I've heard you don't want to see how the sausages make. Yeah, just pick anything.

Make the cheese. I don't think so. Milk and cow. People get up early for that, so I guess there's that association. Have you ever milked a cow? No, have you? No, I was talking to Emily about that the other day, because we went horse riding and I'd never ridden a horse before.

Oh, yeah, it's pretty neat, huh? It's my new favorite thing. Yeah. It was amazing how awesome it was. Did you jump over anything on the horse? No, but we like, you know, trotted up a hill. Did you shoot a bow and arrow? No, I almost fell off though. Did you?

Yeah, when he trotted up the hill, I got kind of loose in the saddle, as they say. I was like, whoa, okay. Well, that's exactly what you should have said as well. Well, no, he was going uphill. So I had to just keep on trucking. Really? Yeah, I didn't want to stop him.

Good for you, man. He was carrying a load. I felt bad for the horse. I'm sure he was fine. Yeah, he was all right. Yeah. What was his name? Oh, man.

Now I'm kicking myself. Like a horse. Because I called this horse by his name the whole day. And now I can't remember. Calvin? I thought we'd bonded. I guess I was just pretending. What?

That's cool. The horse probably can't remember your name either. And he took a big dump. They do that. Right, and then just stopped. And I was like, what are you stopping for? And I was like, oh. Oh, you look even stopped. Sometimes they just walk and do that. Right, and then just stopped, and I was like, what are you stopping for? And I was like, oh, oh, you look even stopped. Sometimes they just walk and do that.

Oh, really? All of the ones on our little ride stopped to poop, which I thought was, maybe I'm confusing them with another animal. Humans? Yeah. I guess walking poop at the same time. Anyway, it was my favorite new thing.

I loved it. That's cool, man. I felt very at home. What color was the horse? One of the spotted ones which I love. I was hoping you were gonna say like blue or red or something easy. Did you smash the table? Let's go with blue. Okay blue. It was a blue horse. So Allow me to explain why your horse appeared blue. Okay as Newton figured out

That horse was not inherently blue, there's nothing inherently blue about that horse. Yeah. It's all in our perception. Yeah, it's because color technically doesn't exist. It exists in our minds. Well, yeah, the perception of color does. Exactly. But like an apple isn't just... there's nothing in the apple that's red. Exactly. Chuck, and there's nothing in your horse that made it blue. Now, what happens is that color is basically our perception of a specific wavelength of visible light.

That's right. And visible light is just part of the electromagnetic spectrum that includes everything from microwaves to radio waves to gamma rays to ocean waves. Not quite, but visible light is part of that. Wave pools? No. No, just those things that I said.

Okay. So, along that spectrum is this very narrow little slice that's visible light. And in visible light, which we see as like white light, sunlight, yeah, it is the presence of the rainbow, which are called the spectral colors. That's right. On one end, you have the short wavelength, which is blue. On the other end, you have the long wavelengths, which is red, and it really is. Technically, it's violet on the other side.

Well, red has a bunch of different names. When you start reading in the color. Well, no blue on the blue side. It starts at violet, but we don't perceive it very well. Oh, well, I'm talking about what humans can see. Right. Yeah. And then everything else is in between.

Right. And what's really in the middle, like yellow, maybe? Seems like yellow's kind in the middle, like yellow maybe? It seems like yellow is kind of in the middle. Yeah. When you think, you tell me. Well on the other end, beyond violet, you've got ultraviolet. Yeah. And beyond red, you've got infrared.

Yeah, these are things we can't see. No, we can't. Some animals can remember, they think monarch butterflies are able to migrate all the way to Mexico using ultraviolet, detecting ultraviolet. Remember that? Oh, yeah. And that was a good episode. Very amazing.

So, this band of light, this visible spectrum contains the spectral colors which we perceive, right? That's right. And for a very long time, everybody just thought, well, that apple's red, or that horse's blue, that's just how it's born. There's nothing they can be done about it. And then like we said, along came Newton and Newton said, no, something weird's going on here.

Like you said, color doesn't really exist. It's in the eye of the beholder almost literally. Yeah. Right? And the reason why an apple seems red or your horse seems blue are because of natural chemicals found in, say, the skin of the apple or the hide of the horse that are called pigments. So in an apple specifically, it's anthrocyanins that make it red.

In the case of a carrot, it's keratinnoids. In the case of grass, it's chlorophyll. And these pigments have the capability of absorbing some wavelengths of light and reflecting others back. And the wavelength that it reflects back are the colors that we perceive. That's right. And that's if it's an object that is opaque. Well, yeah, that's a big one right there.

Apples are pretty opaque. Yeah, I would say so. That's your Superman, maybe. Yeah, he's are pretty opaque. Yeah, I would say so. That's your Superman maybe. Yeah, he's invisible. See through apples. You can see right through. Oh, yeah, he can, candy. I get your joke now. So, yeah, within opaque objects where light doesn't pass all the way through, some lights reflect it back. So, in the case of anthracianion, this pigment absorbs all the other wavelengths of light, except red, and it reflects red back. That's right.

And so red is reflected back. So what you see when you look at this apple with all the red light reflecting back at you is a red apple. That's right. That's how we perceive color in the world around us naturally. Yeah, and if it's transparent, it's not reflecting that light, but transmitting it. So it depends on the color of light that's passing through it instead of reflecting back to you. Yes.

And again, it's that chemical makeup. It operates in sort of the same way. Right. It's just not like in an apple skin, let's say. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it all comes down to basically pigments or whatever natural chemical or mineral

that either absorbs or reflects certain wavelengths of light. That's right. So here's the thing though, Chuck. Like that can happen all day long. And as long as there's not a human, or a monkey, or a dolphin, or a dog, because dogs are not colorblind. That's right.

They see different colors than we do, but they're not colorblind. I always wonder how they do this test. Animal. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I'm sure it's pretty easy to find out, but I just didn't have time to look into it. I'm with you.

Yeah, this is like a massive black hole of information. Like you could just keep going and going and going Like in massive black hole of information, like you could just keep going and going and going with colors, such a huge expansive topic that we could just do nothing but color episodes for the next several months if we wanted to. Do you want to? Kill me. I may not make it through today's.

So you're doing great. This is fine. This is great, Chuck. It is a very like big subject Yes, it is man. We're just we're providing a Brief overview of it. That's right. So like I was saying things can reflect color all the time But as long as there's not something there to perceive it is there any is there really any color there? Well, that's philosophical question, but there's an answer to it and the answer's no.

If a tree falls in the woods and known's around to hear, does it make a noise? No. Actually, my opinion on that one is yes. Okay. But with color, yeah, it doesn't exist without being perceived, I think. Yeah.

Sound to me is different than color. It's a bit of a brain-melter, but I see what you're saying. Okay. So that leads you to the question of how do we see color? And that wasn't figured out until the 18th century, and it wasn't proven, I think, until the 60s. And there were a pair of guys who were a dynamic duo of five ever heard of one before. And more of their names? Well, Thomas Young, I thought he was kind of the main guy. I had never heard of the other guy. Herman von Helmholtz. Yeah, Thomas Young, what I read was that he was the first

to propose the trichromatic theory basically that we see everything through red, green, and blue channels, because that's how our eyes pick up on color. Yeah, because we have specialized cells in our eyes called cones, right? Yeah. I think we have something like a hundred million or some ridiculous amount of rods. And rods are the things that we see in like fine detail, black and white, typically.

Yeah. Cones are color-perceiving cells, and each cell is specialized to either attune to wavelengths at red, green, or blue. Yeah, you have way more rods than cones, about 120 million rods in each eye, and only, only about 6 million cones in each eye. And those cones are concentrated mostly in the front of your retina. Yeah, in the middle. Right, which is why you don't see color peripherally

quite as well. That's right. So these cells are attuned to different wavelengths, right? The long wavelengths are red. Medium is green and short is blue. I thought you said medium was yellow. Maybe that's in the middle. Oh, okay.

So medium is not in the middle? Well, as far as our RGB goes. Okay, got you. Okay. Yeah. And so with these cells, Chuck, if you're looking at your blue horse, what was the name Calvin, the blue horse? Yeah. That was good.

So if you're looking at Calvin, the blue horse, you're getting a lot of information from short wavelength light. Not so much at the long or medium wavelengths, right? And so there's probably a little bit. It's not a true blue horse, right? Which would mean that it was a totally saturated blue, which is only that blue wavelength, true blue wavelength coming to your eyes. There's probably a little bit of green,

a little bit of red. And so all the cones in your eyes are getting all of this information at once. And they're reporting to your brain, the electrical impulses, about the quality of the wavelengths of light that they're getting. That's right.

And so your brain takes it and basically it becomes a color mixer and creates the color blue that you're seeing. That's right. And so your brain takes it and basically becomes like color mixer and creates the color blue that you're seeing Calvin as. Yeah. That's how we detect color. And from the R and the G and the B, you can put together, supposedly, the commission on illumination, a European commission on illumination back in nineteen thirty one determined that humans can see something like two point three eight million

collars oh i'd set up a hundred million now is it because i've seen all over the place in this the nineteen thirty one c i e findings of the ones that people say this has the best science behind it or really yeah yeah so a hundred million no i'm sorry ten million

okay okay the the other thing about the c i is that people say well this was only under Yeah, yeah, so 100 million. No, I'm sorry 10 million. Okay. Okay. The other thing about the CIE is that people say, well, this was only under certain types of illumination. I think three different types of illumination. Right. So it is entirely possible if you change the intensity or whatever, you're going to have brand new colors. So 10 million reasonable. Okay. That's a lot of colors that we can see all from the red, the green, and the blue cones coming together and your brain adjusting them and seeing, oh well that's burnt sienna. You're going to say that. Did you? Yeah, this sort of the go-to joke color, right? It is. It's a pretty joky color. It's a good one. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. 10 million colors. Or let's say it's 2 million. If you're going by the 1931 model.

Yeah, you know. The CIE naming convention. Should we talk about some of the characteristics of color? Yeah, but let's take a break first. This is getting heavy. All right. Okay. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town?

From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science. History is riddled with unexplained events. We've spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization and beyond. Each week we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories, and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

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sometimes I'll get it right. I'm so happy it's good, because man, if it wasn't, I'd be like, you know, everybody not my mom. Either way, we will have a blast. You'll have access to every recipe so you can cook and bake alongside me as I talk to artists, musicians, and chefs

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the lightness or the darkness. It's, you know, it's the greenness or the redness or the blueness. That's the hue. Yeah, it's what you can interchange that word with color. Yeah, exactly. I like how they refer to it as the identity of a color. Yeah, it sounds kind of personal. The intensity is how pure it is. So like we said, most colors are mixes. You know, they bleed one way or the other on the wavelength, but in its purist form, a single wavelength, which is really rare, that would be the purity or the intensity of the color.

Right. You're not gonna see that very often though. No, and I was wondering, like that's pretty cool. There's some physics lab somewhere that can produce pure saturated green, like unadultrated green or unadultrated blue. There is, are you just saying I'm sure there's got to be. There has to be.

Yeah, that probably is. That has got to be really something to see. To know you're looking at green, like nothing but green, I would like to see that sometime. Yeah, and I have, I'm not colorblind, but I have a more difficult time picking out other hues in a color, whereas Emily's really good when picking out paint colors. That gray has this and this and this in it. And I'm like, really?

I see gray. Well, supposedly a lot of people have color deficiency. I might have a slight color deficiency. And a lot of people without a color deficiency. I might have a slight color deficiency. And a lot of people don't realize it. Well, yeah, a lot of people don't realize that they think that this color just looks like this and thinks everybody sees it that way and that's not the case. And then it comes from a conversation where they're like, well, wait a minute. What do you mean you see a distinction between those?

Well, but yeah, but in my case, it's Hughes. It's not like I see a completely different color or black or everything just looks gray. Yeah. I did a brain stuff on color blindness. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I went to research that one time for a show and it would just like bent my mind so much.

I quietly filed it away. So I'm sure you'll pick it next week. Color blindness? Yeah. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. So I'm sure you'll pick it next week. Color of Linus? Yeah. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color, and that's basically has to do with light, the energy of the light that makes it up. Yeah, and the value is...

So, he was really just kind of a finite, very finite number of colors of hew's, right? Yeah. And you think of like primary colors, hues, right? Yeah. And you think of like primary colors, which we'll talk about soon. But when you adjust something, when you adjust the value of it, yeah, that just creates a whole new range of colors.

So if you add a little black to a color, what you're doing is shading it. Yeah. If you add white, you are creating a tint. Yeah. And then if you add black and white, a gray, you're toning it. Yeah. Right. And I think people will interchange those words without understanding what they mean. Yeah, but they are definite, distinct things. Yes. And we should probably say there's a lot of really neat sites on the internet. Pantone is a really good one. Where you can go look at color wheels and things like that and see the distinction between

these things and be like, oh, you mean pastels. That's another word for a tone. Yeah, and it's a lot of people get really get into it because it's the basis of printing and art and photography and like every sort of art form, well not every art form, but many art forms boil down the color. So if you go to art school you're going to study color pretty deeply. Yeah, you know. Yeah, and one of the things you're going to study is color theory. And color theory is based on the idea that certain colors contrast one

another, certain colors complement one another, certain colors should never be used together. And not that it's just, you know, your instructor Serge saying, no, these colors don't go together. It's not just Serge's opinion, right? These are objective facts as far as color theory goes. Sure. And it's all based on the idea that all colors fall into one of two categories. You have additive colors and subtractive colors. Yeah, and there's a couple of, I mean, there's two distinct applications for both of these. If you're talking about a computer screen or a television that's using light, so it's

additive. If you're talking about paint or photography, that's subtractive. Right, so you can think of it this way. With additive colors, you're starting with black and you're adding light to it. And ultimately, when you add all these additive colors together, you're going to have white. With subtractive colors, you start with white, and when you add all these colors together, you're ultimately going to have black, and they subtract by absorbing one another's colors. Yeah, that's a bit of a... That's a bit of a...

... another color. ...mind-bender too, because with subtractive color, you're still adding colors, but it's not additive. Right, but there's... You sort of have to wrap your head around that. Yeah, but they're subtracting wavelengths by combining colors and absorbing them, right? Yeah, it takes a hue out.

So a really good example of subtractive colors is if you take cyan, cyan absorbs orange red, right? Right. So if you take cyan and you mix it with yellow, you produce green. And the reason that cyan and yellow produce green is because the cyan absorbs the red light and the yellow light, the yellow absorbs blue violet. And so the only color that's not subtracted or absorbed is green. That's right. So green is produced from these other pigments absorbing all the other wavelengths.

And with it additive coloring, additive pigments, it's quite the opposite. You have light combining to form new colors rather than absorbing. You're adding to it. Yeah, and like the Apple is an example like like we said earlier, of a subtractive color system. And again, like a TV screen would be additive. Yeah. I think we got that. Yeah.

I mean, it is mind-bending. A little bit. Some of this stuff, you know, I have to read like 10 times and then it sinks in. But the reason that all colors can be turned into either additive primaries or subtractive primaries is that these are the six colors of these, they're the six spectral colors, they're the rainbow colors, right? So additive primaries are what, red, green and blue? They're correct? YeahGB. Yeah. And then the subtractive colors are cyan, yellow, and magenta. Yeah.

I was going to say magenta. They're almost like bizarro colors. They're the bizarro world primary colors. When you think of primary colors, you think of like the, what? Red, yellow, and blue blue is what most people think of yeah red yellow and blue were the traditional primaries and they still are but when it comes to like painting and printing they've been replaced with cyan magenta yellow and black right CMYK yeah yeah when you go to your clubhouse

printer yeah that's what you're going to be seeing. CMYK, or you can select RGB as well. Red, green and blue. So, crossbeastills, Nash and Young, Right. Right. Or, crossbeastills, and Nash. Yeah.

Okay, that's the difference. That's a good rule of thumb, man. All right, so we mentioned primary colors just a second ago, and then we have our secondary colors, green, orange and purple hues, which you get from mixing the primary colors. Right. And then you have something called tertiary colors, which is just furthering the color hues by mixing primary colors with secondary colors.

Right. So the six tertiary colors and the two sets of primary colors are the six secondary colors, I think and the two sets of primary colors form the color wheelers, twelve colors in the color wheel. Yeah and tertiary colors are the ones that you'll hear like blue green or red violet. Yeah. It's like literally named the two colors. And color naming is another rabbit hole that you can go down.

There's a site, man, I wish I'd written it down. But it's, if you type in like who names colors or color naming or something like that in Google, like one of the, one of the first page entries is the site that you go through and it shows you different colors and you write what you would name that color. Oh, interesting.

Butter yellow or something like that, right? Right. And the whole, well that was as far as I got. I'm like, well, I would call this butter yellow and you got hungry. Had other things to do. But you can go through and just, I think it's like 10 or 20 different shades

that they show you colors that they show you. And the whole purpose of all this is to find 10 or 20 different shades that they show you colors that they show you and The whole purpose of all this is to find some sort of commonality to create universal Universal naming convention for colors. Yeah, it makes sense Because you know there is a lot of distinction among languages for naming colors, but at least one study that I found decided that all colors universally for societies that do recognize individual colors rather than these are just warm colors

and these are cool colors, which is universal. The more primary the color, the shorter and easier to remember the name of it is, like across cultures. So not all cultures will call it blue, but a culture is gonna have like another like short, monosyllabic name for that color, for the same thing that we would call blue. Oh, that's pretty interesting.

Yeah, just cause it's easier to understand. It's just, it's basic. Like colors appear to be basic universally. All right, I think we should take another break. Okay. And maybe come back and talk a little bit about how colors can complement each other and live in harmony.

And what that all means to us, okay. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government power hover ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization

and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What's up fam? I'm Brian Ford, Artisan Vaker, and host of the new podcast, Flaky Biscuit. On this podcast, I'm going to get to know my guests by cooking up their favorite nostalgic meal. It could be anything from Twinkies to mom's Thanksgiving dressing.

Sometimes I might get it wrong, sometimes I'll get it right. I'm so happy it's good because if it wasn't, I'd be like, you know, everybody not my mom. Either way, we will have a blast. You'll have access to every recipe so you can cook and bake alongside me as I talk to artists, musicians, and chefs about how this meal guided them to success. And these nostalgic meals, fam,

they inspire one of a kind conversations. When I bake this recipe, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Does this podcast come with a therapist? Listen to Flaky Biscuit every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola hola, it's your girl cheekies and I'm back with brand new episodes of my podcasts, cheekies, and chill, and dear cheekies. Last season, I shared so many intimate stories with you guys and had conversations with some of my favorite people.

This season, we're picking up right where we left off. We'll talk about everything from spirituality, relationships, women's health, and so much more. And guess what? Dear cheekies is also back. y la realidad de la gente, la verdad, y mucho más. Y por qué? ¿Deja que los chiquis son más grandes? Seguiré contestando todas las preguntas. Me voy a preguntar más de tus preguntas. Y, ¿qué puedo hacer? Así que no te pierdas.

Un momento, los chiquis y los chiquis y los chiquis, como parte de la mi cultura podcast Network, avaliando el ápio de Radio App, Apple Podcasts, o, por lo que, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do the different primary color, secondary, and tertiary. And there's also something called complementary colors, which are basically contrasting colors that make a neutral color when put together. And they are really far apart in hue. As far apart as they can be, and if you look at the color

wheel, they're on the complete opposite side from one another. And when you place them next to each other, then their hue is like, I guess it's just more robust looking. Yeah. Because they complement one another. Right.

Yeah, complementary doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, they look great together under all circumstances. Right. So, some complementary colors, like red and green, If you place them next to each other in the same intensity and the same size, it's another one. You are going to have what's called an eye sore. I have a shirt like that.

It's just too much equal amounts of bright red and bright green. Trying to think of that shirt. It's just a Christmas shirt. Oh, is it retired? Yeah, well it's for the holidays. Yeah, it's a Christmas shirt. Oh, is it retired? Yeah, well, it's for the holidays. Yeah, it's a holiday shirt but the the the whole point of having Colors and using colors together isn't just like well these two are opposite the color wheels

So I'm gonna use them in equal amounts and equal intensity and everything will be great Yeah, you have to achieve what's called color harmony and in doing that you want to choose different color harmony. And in doing that, you want to choose different shades or different tones or different tents and also different amounts at once. So like you're going to use a bunch of red and a little bit of green as an accent. That would be much more harmonious than equal amounts of intense red and green next to each other. Yeah, and again, this is when we say it's not a matter of taste, that's like picking something out as a matter of taste, but again, these are like scientific rules. Right.

You can't just throw two colors together and say that looks great. Yeah. Or that they're harmonious. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could, but you'd be wrong. You would, Serge would be like, you're wrong. This is objective stuff.

And then with complementary colors, getting back to that, there's this really cool thing that they bring up called retinal fatigue. So you can do a little experiment at home that's kind of blows your mind, but it really illustrates how color works pretty well. If you look at a bright red spot for about a minute, your retinas are going to soak in all that red, all those cones are. And then when you go immediately and look at a white surface, you're going to see green

briefly, not forever. Right. And the reason why is because your red cells have just been basically overstimulated, and they're going to respond weekly to the information that they're getting from that white, right? Yeah. And your blue and green cells are going to be functioning just fine, so they're going to easily overwhelm your red cells. And so what you'll see is this ghost image of a cyan square.

Yeah, which is why, and the reason why is because red is the complement of green, it'll always be that opposite. Right. It doesn't just randomly pick out a color. I know. And if you start adding all this stuff together, that there are objectively complimentary colors that you see when you see too much of the opposite one, doesn't it all seem to fit so cleanly together

that you're almost like, what is going on here? Like, what is color? Why do we see color? Yeah. It's a really good question in evolutionary biologists have not been able to explain it fully. Yeah, I guess I really never thought about that because there's... Well, I mean, there's probably some evolutionary benefit, right? Sure.

Like, green things are generally good to eat. Yeah, but green is also the kind of a universal color for disgust or sickness or illness. Oh, like you're green because you're sick. Green around the gills or something like that. Yeah, that's true. Green is often like the color of rot. Gross.

But it's true, I mean, it's both. So how do we evolve to understand the nuance? And I mean, clearly, if we didn't evolve too sea in color so that we could do this, we have as a byproduct of it, but we can very easily tick off whether something is healthy for us, dangerous. We get a lot of information about an object in our environment's quality and desirability based on its color. It's almost like a shorthand that our brains pick up. Yeah, and part of that is because we're conditioned after years of using green for go and green for safe passage.

Right. And like red or orange for hazard signs and stop signs. Yeah. So part of that's conditioning. But as far as like going back many, many years before we made stop signs. I have no idea. Yeah, you know It really makes you wonder and even like the idea that pink is for girls and blue is for boys That's a fairly recent development prior to I think the early 20th century. It was the opposite Did we ever do that as a show or did it? No, it was too short. I think we did like a video on it or something Maybe I seem to remember that but But it was the opposite until the 1900s. Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Totally, that's why you rock your pink shirts. Well, yeah. Right? That's exactly why. That in fashion. So getting back to harmonious colors, if they are side by, I mean, this is if you're picking out colors in your house or whatever,

if you're not very good at it, there are a few hard and fast rules. Colors that are, and get your little color wheel out, it's really handy. If they're side by side, they're going to harmonize well. And like we mentioned, colors directly across from one another, complement ones also go well in the right proportions because like you said the size of it makes a big difference. They point out in the article, I don't know if you've ever seen someone who's like painted their room red like in college, you know, some stupid room paint would do that. It's an assault on your senses because you're not used to seeing that

much red. But maybe an accent wall and a shade of red matched with a complimentary color, you wouldn't want a red and green room though. I guess green is complimented or red. No, but you could conceivably say, use the complimentary color for the trim or something like that. Yeah, exactly.

And then tents and shades and tones of the same color are always okay together. It's never gonna clash, but you just gonna have to mess around with like how much of one compared to the other. And what pleases your eye? Right. Yes.

So there is a can't clash though. No, and so again, surge is saying like no, there is objective truth as to complimentary colors and harmonious colors, but there is also personal preference. Oh, sure. And this is kind of like the thorn in the side of the whole idea of color psychology,

that people use colors to manipulate other people into like buying a product or whatever. Study after study keeps finding that color preference and color symbolism is extremely personal. It's based on past experience on your upbringing, on your culture. Like for example here in the West, we wear black for morning. In the East, white is the color for morning. Right. So there's a lot of culturally bound ideas about color too, which keeps it from being like universally symbolic or whatever.

But that being said, there are some that just from being exposed to it time and time again, like a red stoplight that you come to identify symbolically with other stuff. Yeah. And colors will also affect everyone differently mood-wise, but there are some general that you come to identify symbolically with other stuff. Yeah, and colors will also affect everyone differently mood-wise, but there are some generalities there too. Like blue is generally a soothing color that will calm you down. Too much though could actually have the opposite effect, like too much blue on some people.

Or it can really depress you what blue can yeah I wonder if that's why they say you're blue. Yeah, yeah, I mean think about we describe our world like that green with envy Blue means you're down in the dumps red means your angry. Yeah red faced. Yeah, or red neck. Yeah, that's different It's a little different Warm colors reds and yellows can also lift the spirits if you're less excitable. And they say that most people want to just strike a balance though

between the cool and the warm. Right, and that's when it comes to like personal preference. Yeah, but the idea behind this is that a lot of people don't realize this is going on, that they're being affected by color Even though they are that it's on a very unconscious level Yeah, and it also depends a lot on light like how much light a room has coming into it because You're gonna because sunlight is different than artificial light your shirt's gonna look a different color outside in the sun as it might

And I remember when we did the TV show. There was a lot of side in the sun is it might. And I remember when we did the TV show, there was a lot of, with colors and stuff, things would look different outside than they would under studio lights. Right, what's neat though is we humans have developed this trick called color constancy, where if you look at something,

even if it's in the shadow or in the sunlight, it should conceivably look like different colored things because of the illumination. shadow or in the sunlight, it should conceivably look like different colored things because of the illumination. But to us, we're still like, no, that's still green, just because there's shadow blocking it now. I still see it as green. It doesn't make any sense.

And it's kind of perplexed, I guess, biologists for a while, trying to figure out what this is, or neurologists. And they figured out that, yes yes it is in the brain and there was this one guy who had some sort of brain damage I think from an electric shock and he also went for all intents of purposes blind but he could still see color. But he didn't have color constancy so they figured out that this guy was detecting wavelengths of light color even though he couldn't see anything He could see colors still

But color constancy wasn't there. So they figured out well that means that it's a trick of the brain Huh very neat. It's very cool They also bring up in the in the House of Works article something. I think it's pretty interesting how certain Because of conditioning certain colors can just appear to be wrong. Like if you were to pull up and see a green stop sign, it would freak you out. Or the example they used in here is if you cracked an egg and there was a green egg yolk, that would be really freaky too because you're just so used to that yellow.

You'd think, well, this is disease or something. Or Dr. Seussed. Right. You know, you'd think, well, this is disease or something. Yeah, or Dr. Seussed. Right. You know. What else you got? Did you look at that thing on pigment? I did. There's some wacky ways people have made pigments. Yeah, I mean pigment, as far as making paint and things, now they're synthetic, you know,

like they're synthesized in laboratories, which makes sense. But throughout all of history up until they started doing that, they were actual real things in the ground and on the earth that they would grind up into powder. In the case of blue, there was a semi-precious stone called, or there still is, called Lapis Lazuli that was found all over the place in Afghanistan, and that's how they made blue. Azure, or Azureite is a blue mineral of copper. So all of them, most of them have a few different ways they can make it. Red, I think we've talked about Cinebar before, the mineral, is where you get vermilion red and car mine.

Car mine is bright red and that comes from aluminum salt of carmetic acid. So it's just crazy that they found all these things in the world to make. And I know blue is the toughest one because you don't see blue very much in nature. I think blue is the one you will see least in the primary colors as far as nature goes. Right. Like some insects, but like there's no blue food. Yeah, that's true. Blue horses, no. Well, what about mine? My favorite was India yellow where they would feed cows, nothing but mango leaves, and then collect their urine urine and then boil it down, then filter out the concentrated muck and then make balls out of it and there was the basis of your

pigment. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty cool stuff. So those are just a few. If you really get into pigments and you can go crazy trying to figure out where they all came from. Definitely. And I mean, again, this is like really just the surface of color.

There's so much to it. And I strongly advise you to go out and learn more about it. Color, it's everywhere. How about the one last factoid? Why is the sky blue? Oh, it's a good one. Sky's not really blue. No, it shouldn't really have any color.

Yeah. But the angle of the sun coming down on the upper atmosphere encounters things like water vapor and other tiny particles. And they tend to scatter blue wavelength light more than the other colors, right? That's it. So that's just bouncing around at all points, which is why the sky is blue, it's like noon time. But while the sky's blue at noon time over here, it's say sunrise or sunset to the east or the west. And since all that blue light is getting scattered over you where it's noon time,

in the east or the west, those reds and yellows and pinks are making it all the way there. And the blue is not, which is why sunrise and sunset tends to appear reddish, whereas midday appears blue. Yeah, which is, it makes total sense. And when your kids ask you, why is the sky blue? You can tell them, you can tell them like the real reason. You can be like, color does not actually exist.

Yeah. It's all a lie. Good luck with that. I'm going to sleep. If you want to know more about color, just type that word in your favorite search engine or howstuffworks.com and it. If you want to know more about color just type that word in your favorite search engine or howstuffworks.com and it will take you on a wild ride. And since I said wild ride, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this something I've never heard of before, Prokoshis Puberty. You ever heard of that? Yes, we talked about it. Did we? Early puberty. Okay. Did we talk about that? Yeah, we said. I guess this is in girls, so maybe that's why. Gotcha.

Surprise me. I'm a long time listener and thanks for helping me in my commute every day. Really enjoyed and giggled my way through the episode of MailPuberty. Thanks so much for mentioning ProCotiousPuberty. Well, there you have it. I was diagnosed at age two after my mom came to wake me before school one day, before I had a full beard. Now before preschool, this is a lady.

And she had started her period at two years old. Wow. And as you can imagine, my mom was terrified. It took a long time to get a correct diagnosis, since it is pretty rare. My treatment started out as daily shots that my mom gave me at home that then went to weekly, monthly, and annually as a year's progress. I also had intermittent stays in the hospital for testing.

Oh, poor kid. I know. Treatment was stopped when I reached 12 years old, essentially pressing play on my puberty that had been on pause for almost 10 years. Let's see, that's a cool treatment. Yeah, I mean it's amazing that they figured out how to stall puberty. Yeah, they're like, stay. Stay. Okay, go. I have only hazy memories of this, of course, as I was a child, but I do remember that missing shots cause quite a bit of pain since my body was growing out of control, essentially. I've never been able to find out what the long-term effects might be, but I've had a pretty

decent health into my adult life and I'm now 31 years old. Awesome. So, thanks a lot. And that is from Lauren in California. Well, thanks a lot. Lauren, appreciate that. We love hearing from people with real life experiences of stuff we just talk about. That's right.

You know? If you want to let us know about your real life experience, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast.com. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffy should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.house.org. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyshadow.com. Stuffy should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app.

Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like, does the U.S. government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events.

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