459. Three Reasons This Radiolab Episode Hooks You Hard

0:03 Good morning podcasting morning chat. Today is Monday, February 22nd, 2026, and today is our obsession worthy podcast show. We're going to be listening to Colors by Radiolab and Jonathan Howard is going to lead us in a great discussion about what makes this obsession worthy and what can we all learn from it. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it how the Clubhouse lets you. If you want to join us live on the video, go to podcastingmorningchat.com/join us. And if you're catching us in US video podcast, YouTube or LinkedIn, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things going. Thank you so much for being here today.

1:22 Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us on the podcasting morning chat. And joining me here on stage is producer Ashley. We've got Jonathan Howard, Dr. Face, Sid Meadows, Janae and Nikki, we're so glad you're here to join us today. So today we're doing Obsession Worthy podcast. We're going to be talking about one from Radiolab. And I have to be honest with you, I had never heard of Radiolab before. I mean, I heard of them, but I've never listened to one of their shows before. And I'll tell you what, it was quite an adventure. So I'm going to get rolling here right away. Again, if you want to join us and see us live our pretty faces BC Jonathan and I are here on Riverside, you can go to podcastingmorningchat.com/joinus.

2:04 But without further ado, let me turn it over to Jonathan. Jonathan, the floor is yours, my friend. All right, well, thank you very much. And just before we jump into this, we do obsession worthy podcast to really highlight thing different things that other podcasts are doing that we could do in our own. We can, you know, take a little bit from it and make it our own. So we have something unique for that. And I am going to jump in today to this obsession worthy podcast, which is Radiolab and their episode colors, which is a few years old, but it's still lots of interesting things that they do here. Really the concept of this show is is what Hey, stop. What if the red you see this particular episode is what if the red you see is not the same red eye see, and what else is in the world is a shared hallucination. So this particular episode explores how perception works and it quietly just stabilizes your confidence in reality. Like, wait, is this not the way it's supposed to be? Because The thing is, do we actually see all colors the same?

3:08 Is your red, Ralph my red? And that's what we're going to discover. So if you haven't listened to this episode, the a major difference in this podcast is that it's not character first. It's a narrative podcast, but it's sensation first. So you're feeling things and you're listening to kind of a, an abstract topic. It's not people that you're feeling first. So you're going to get the sensation first with this. Hold on. I want to key on what you just said. So what you're saying is when I've said to somebody, what color is the sky in your world, what you're really saying is there could be a difference. Yep. Wow, that's very cool.

3:49 But knowing that this episode is slightly different from any of the others reviewed, let's actually start with the first clip. I want you to pay close attention to the sound engineering and the multiple narrators throughout all these clips because that is something that's very unique about this podcast, as well as some of the things that we'll talk about right after this clip. I'm. Going to talk about Isaac Newton, but more specifically colors. All right, Isaac Newton. He's 23 years old. 1665. And he's he's home for the holidays. No, there's no holiday. He's home for the plague. There was actually a plague. They sent everybody home from school. In any case, he's in his room famously solving all these mysteries of the world. And one of the questions that he thinks about during this break is. What are colors?

4:30 Where do they come from? Like when I see the color red, is that red? Is it inside my head or is it something that exists sort of out there? In the world, is the light without, or is the light within? So he pokes a knife into his eye. What? Do you mean here's what Newton wrote in his notebook. I took a bodkin, put it betwixt my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could, and pressing my eye with the end of it, it appeared several white, dark and colored circles. Did that lead him to some conclusion about where the spots live, whether they're outside or inside?

5:13 No, this didn't get him very far. So he pokes a knife into his eye. That's actually a really key line in that particular in that particular clip, because it actually brings us all into what's going on in the episode. This is a very abstract episode about color and whether color is the same for all of us. If it's inside the light, outside the light, all of those things. We're not. We don't really get that, but we need something to drag us into the story. So poking a knife into the eye does a lot. It's the fastest way to make an abstract topic feel like a real story. It snaps the listener into the scene and makes it go from boring, scientific blah to actually something, wait a minute, this is happening and it creates instant curiosity gap, what's going on and what's going to happen next.

6:05 So it really sets the tone for the episode and it's so great one liner that we can actually use if we want to use it. Something like this in our podcast, which I'll talk about in a second, but I want to throw it out to everybody, see if there's anybody that has anything they want to say about that particular clip. It certainly gets your attention from the start, Jonathan. I think that's one of the cool things they use here because like I said, I had never listened to Radiolab before and it was a fascinating, the way it was put together was amazing. And yeah, that just called me like, did I just hear that? Because I got to be honest with you, I was kind of working at the same time, tax season for me. So I've always got stuff to do. And when I heard it, did I just hear that right? Like it took a double take and it made me go, all right, I'm going to pause what I'm doing right now and I'm going to listen a little deeper because I want to see what's going to happen with that. Well, I'm going to just give you a quick rundown of how you can use to do this for yourself.

6:55 So you can do use this formula. Simple, Start with a moment that breaks the norm, whatever that moment is, something that breaks the norm, and then immediately tie back to what it means for the listener. And then you promise to pay off and there you go. The more unhinged, the normal, the norm breaking moment is though, the tighter you got to tie it back to what it means to the listener. So just keep that in mind when you're breaking, when you're breaking something like that, you want to tie it back to you. You know, something then something that means something that means something for the listener. So again, with the sound engineering, the first clip, I definitely wanted you guys to kind of listen to some of that, but mostly in this clip because the sound engineering here is about to jump to another level and it's using the sound actually to tell a story in this clip so we can hit that second clip. Man of shrimps are are mostly pretty small, about the size of a finger.

7:50 Some get to be as big as your forearm. Big, big animals. I'm actually looking this up right here. Oh my God, they're so colorful. No, they are colorful though. Here, look at this. Oh my God, they're just like a It's like they're electric colored. Yeah, they're like turquoise or something. Iridescent. And their eyes are like little cartoon eyes. They're gigantic. Yeah, they have two really big eyes right on the front. And you said the dogs have two cones, We have 3. How much does the butterfly have again? Butterfly has five depends on the butterfly. Managed firms have 16160 my. Well, if you have 16. 16 kinds of receptors What? Would the rainbow look like to them?

8:30 I mean, could they even see it? Manship would see the rainbow fine because they live in very shallow water and so the water is pretty clear, almost like air. They would start the rainbow way, way, way inside where we see Violet. They would see extraordinarily deep ultraviolet and then they would go on through several kinds of ultraviolet that probably 5 or six kinds of ultraviolet. And then they would get to Violet, which which is now they're reaching our colors and go through Violet and Violet, blue and blue and blue-green. Where they have those green, green, blue, blue, Blues as well. Yep, and then they would go out and do the Reds, so they would be about about as red as us when they got to the red end. But only in the Reds.

9:11 Yeah, what a rainbow that must be. So what's happening in this clip is they're describing and they're using the choir to actually be an example of the depth of vision that these like 'cause with the mantis shrimp has 16 color cones, whereas we have 3. So all the colors we see are based on those 3 cones. Some humans, we'll get to that later, have 4. Butterflies have 5 and the mantis shrimp has 16. So they're using the choir. Since we can't see this color on it, a podcast, we can't see really what this is.

9:56 They're using this as a tool to bring people in and highlight the complexity of what this might be by using the choir to kind of exhibit that and highlighting that. So again, really interesting way of putting this podcast together, really creative connections. So I'm going to, I don't see the clubhouse room, so I'm leaving that up to you, Ralph. I do want to bring up something that Dr. put in here, Jonathan, that I think we could talk about. Dr. said her mic's not working, but what's the difference between the way that we're that we're using this method as a Stinger? So I thought that was a really good question. So, Jonathan, what do you think about that? Is she talking about the first clip poking a knife in his eye?

10:36 Yes, I agree. Yes, that was, I was a little bit delayed in getting that to you. Yeah, I think that's that is a great way to bring people into into the topic. They did not use it as the Stinger per SE, because they didn't really have, they didn't really have a Stinger. They kind of jumped right into the episode, but it was early on and it did grab attention. So in that first two minutes, I think they mentioned poking a knife into his eye. So that's, I mean, anything using this method to grab people's attention on anything is going to work. And it can work, absolutely as a Stinger. That's what her question. It definitely grabs your attention for for lack of a better term. And the thing I really liked about the second clip, Jonathan, and I know this is one of the things you're going to talk about, and I don't want to steal your Thunder, but the use of the music in that was really amazing because they're talking about this.

11:26 I can't remember what it was the some particular animal could see. Sixty. Yeah. See 16 blends of color. And I said, man, I feel so inadequate in that. But what I thought was really amazing was they used that choir, I guess you would call behind them and it really build up your attention. Again, I'm working and I look when I'm like, did I just hear a choir come in here? Like I thought somebody turned on music. And then office next to me, I was like, what's going on here? You want to talk a little bit about that, Jonathan? I want to actually talk a little bit why the choir works storytelling wise 1st and then we'll talk a little bit about, you know, what, what it does. And I'm, I'm glad you mentioned that. Well, I'm not glad you mentioned that you felt inadequate, but they. Keep it nice now, Jonathan. Now. But I know I'm just being funny with you guys.

12:09 The whole thing, it is meant to make us all feel like, wait a minute, we don't have the best vision in the world. We don't have, you know, what a mantis shrimp has in that sense, and we may not. They see the world in a very different way than we do. Just like dogs only sleep blue and yellow, you know, that's very different than what we see with one more cone. So there's definitely a little bit of, you know, oh, I feel inadequate now. My world doesn't feel the same now is what they were going for. So, but this particular, the use of the choir, what it does is it keeps the pace alive. It keeps it moving because it's an abstract idea that could be hard to understand.

12:54 And if they needed to explain in words what the choir did just by being there as kind of backup, they would have, it would have been 15 minutes of boringness. It wouldn't have been as impactful if here's it would have been like here's what happens with the dog with two. This is kind of what you would feel like. So using the choir was actually really interesting for that. And the other thing is it helps the clip really pay off because when you're going through it and we didn't listen to all of them, but it starts to build this escalation and you're feeling this concept through the choir. And then when the mantis shrimp hits, it's much more than everyone else. So it really delivers that point. So that was definitely something I thought was really, really interesting and part of the sound development in this podcast, which is phenomenal when you really listen to all the different parts.

13:48 There's a lot of really creative ways that they put the podcast together, their audios really interesting. And this is kind of what you were talking about when, you know, we felt inadequate. We're suddenly realizing through this clip that we experienced the world filtered by our brain and our senses, which is limited. And humans are not the most special of all creatures on Earth. Others can perceive things differently than we can. So that was definitely one of the, you know, shots fired moments in this clip. You're like, OK, wait, we are not just special. And Jonathan, I, I want to mention that because you've got your dog there and people who aren't watching this live, Jonathan's little dog is, is definitely wanting to get in the shot. But I know they mentioned the dogs only seen in a couple colors.

14:35 And I felt so bad for my German Shepherd. I was like, that's interesting. They don't see as much as we can see. Again, that's one of the cool things about this particular podcast. It was like, I learned a ton of stuff from that. It was really amazing. I learned a ton from it too, and and I forgot the dogs saw only blue and yellow, which is why there's certain toys that they automatically go to. I totally forgot that everything else is Gray. All right, this next clip is about discovering a mythical mutant female. Because vision cones are on X chromosomes, females obviously can get double the vision cones in some and some get a yellow cone that makes it able to see more colors. And they were on on the lookout for one of these mutant mythical mutant females and they found her. So that is where we start with this next clip. This is clip #3 right Jonathan?

15:30 Yes, it is. OK, here we go. That's the trick, Jay said. If you show them to a real tetrachromat, they're going to be able to see these subtle differences that, you know, you and I can't see. And back to Pittsburgh. So how about we head over toward that trees that that look? Like take my shoes off. Oh yeah, it'll be much more fun for. Me. We ended up doing the test in a nearby park. We're going to do a bunch of these. If you don't mind. In the first trial, I took out three of the swatches, 2 that were exactly the same and one that was supposedly different. And when you took it out, could you see the difference? No, no. So I go behind the tree and I whisper into the mic #3 is different #3 I hope you couldn't hear me, no. Thank.

16:17 You, I'll let you take a look. She steps back from the swatches, gives it a look for a moment, and then she says. #3. 3rd 1 is different. Looks more neutral, less red than one and two on the left. One for one luck. So I went behind the tree right on 2nd, changed up the swatches so that now the middle Swatch was the odd one out and same same deal. Ready. Set. Go. Easy. Which number looks different? The middle one. #2 You are right. Really. Wow. OK then I figured I got to make it harder.

16:59 I switched it up and I made it so all three are different and I didn't tell her all three are different. All three different I green, red, less red. Knocking it out of the park BC. Did you want to make a comment? Yeah, I'm wondering if anyone hasn't hasn't heard this before, you know, if if this plays into why color blindness with yellow, green color blindness moves between fathers and daughters. And then if the daughter has a son, it'll pass on it. It moves that way. Color blindness is. I wonder if this is speaking to that without directly mentioning it. Because the vision cones are on the X chromosome. Females have two, males have one. So that's why males are much off more often color blind, and that's why it skips when there's a female. They're still carrying the one chromosome that has the color blindness, and that's why females can have this, and I forgot what it's called, but four cones, a little bit better vision.

18:02 And that's kind of what we're talking about here. And it's not necessarily better vision, it's just different vision. They can see more colors. And Jonathan, the brilliant part of this though, and I'm, I'm assured this is what you're going to talk about was man, it's like a game show all of a sudden. And I'm feeling like, oh, I got to hear how this plays out. And like, I hear the guy whisper and I'm like, oh, this is really again, it's engaging me back to and that's the thing I will say about this particular podcast. Almost every few minutes there was a re engagement. There was another re engagement and another re engagement. And this one just did because I'm waiting to see. I'm like, is this lady going to figure this out? Is it is the, is there some kind of scam going on here? And he says, I'm going to whisper this hoping she couldn't hear me.

18:43 So I thought that was really effective, Jonathan. Yeah. So this is the third kind of tool that they're using to bring some humanity to this topic, which is a very abstract topic. Right at the beginning. They use the the narration and, you know, sticking the thing in his eye. So that was that was the first tool that they used to really bring humanness into it. Next, they use the choir and this one, they're using a human to actually tell a story about something that's very abstract again. So they're really diving into that and talking about what why, you know, it's important for this person. It may it brings it home for us. It's like, OK, now there's a human before we've got stories that kind of involved humans, but now we're really saying this impacts a human. So we use the human storytelling to really land on the point. But they have, you know, a bit of tension happening particularly.

19:36 And then before we go through the full story, let's actually listen to the 4th, 4th clip because it's a continuation, because they ran into a little bit of a problem with this test. Well, it actually might not have totally worked. Wait, what? Did she start to fail? There, there's one little thing I didn't mention what I brought along a friend. I'm Jason Lacroix, painter, landscape still life. Thought I'd try them out as a control. Oh, 'cause you were thinking, let's get someone who likes color but is a boy and can't be a tetrachroma. Right. And when we tried the exact same test with him, I mean these three, they look the same, don't they? To you? No.

20:16 I see different. He was amazing every time. The first one on the left, you jumped out immediately. Number one. They all three look different to me. Was he just as good as Susan? Yeah. I was a little bit disappointed I got to. Say, and there was nowhere where he couldn't do it and she could. No, but I mean, I only had pieces of brown cloth, you know? So it doesn't prove anything. I guess she still might be a tetrachromat, right? For. All I know, and there was this one moment I'd know it doesn't prove anything, but I asked her. I asked her about the sky, and the sky was just that. Quintessential sky blue. And she was, I was like, what do you see? And she's like I.

20:58 See, do you see some of the pink in the blue? See, I see a lot of pink. Like among the blue, there's red in that blue. Section. She was looking up at a blue sky and seeing red. Yeah, yeah. Do you see that? No. Oh, I see so much red like up it and it's. It's kind of a cop out, but it's just kind of that perfect sky blue. OK, that's that's a good. It's just mixed in there. That's cool. One thing I don't see is any green in that blue. I just see Reds right? Especially around like white clouded section. And at that moment, I felt like my sky is boring.

21:39 I'm so sorry for you. For us, I'm sorry for us. I. Mean up until this point, they were really explaining perception like a concept. But the moment that she steps in is the moment it becomes like observable in real life. She's living evidence that color isn't a fixed external thing because she's seeing color different than we're seeing color. So it's a relationship between light and your brain. The word you were looking for earlier is tetrachromacy, and if a woman has it, she's a tetrachromat. Thank you. Yes, Tetrachromat, I appreciate that. Does anybody else? Before I continue, we could. All right, So whoops.

22:23 That's way too far ahead. Clicking on the wrong thing. All right, so the shrimp is awe, the choir is clever, but she's the part that makes you feel like you have lost something, makes you feel something. Well, there's envy or wonder or grief or a different perspective. But this line about the sky not being entirely blue is pretty much the show saying you're not seeing the world as it is, you're seeing the version you're equipped to notice. And that's kind of a, that's a breaking of reality kind of moment for a lot of people. You're the world, You're not seeing it as it is. It's something different. You're just perceiving it based on your tools, your eyes, your, you know, your brain, what it's seeing and all those different things. So you're not seeing the world as it is, you're seeing a version you're equipped to notice. Janae had a comment.

23:18 Go ahead, Janae. Absolutely. So this is really cool and explains the theory behind light, right? Light is a series of each color is composed of different wavelengths. And for the longest time they were not able to create other color lights because of the different wavelengths they create. So for a long time we didn't have the stop lights that we have green, red, yellow, and even in some places you'll see of different yellows, some some sometimes brighter yellow, darker yellow. And that's because of the wavelengths of what light produces. And having different cones in the eyes explains why some people might see different added tangent and the colors. And it's really cool how explains and I'm sure you're going to get there eventually, but this is awesome. Thanks.

24:10 Thank you Jenny does great comment. And I kind of wanted to mention a little bit this woman's seeing red in the sky. And when you imagine that you're thinking what the sky is blue, how am I, how are they seeing red? Think about at sunset or sunrise, you see red in the sky at that point because the way that the light is being refracted, it's going to give you a different color. So it is possible that she's seeing a different color at this time. She's her eyes are different than ours. She's perceiving the world in a different way. So it is possible that she is actually seeing that red because that red is present. So it's not totally not there. It's present because the light light light contains all the colors, hence the prism. So I'm wondering, and I forget if this goes into it, but if she's already seeing on, you know what, it sounds like kind of a midday moment here, she's already seeing longer wavelengths of color, then what do the actual evenings sunrise look for her when the lights actually coming in from that more perpendicular angle?

25:11 They don't discuss it. They were just mentioning that she saw red and I wanted to make sure that people kind of understood that the red was there. We just can't all necessarily see it. They didn't go into that and it would be interesting to see. When we see a sunset, we see amazing colors as it is, and she's got an extra way of seeing colors, so I'm sure it's quite impressive. And Jonathan, I don't know if you've got one of these clips ready and then we'll go to Ashley real quick. But I know you in the in the show, it talked about some of the philosophers and poets and all those sort of things. They saw different colors maybe than we did. But and I just wanted to plant that seed. But Ashley, go ahead. You had a comment. I just wanted to say how cool it was that this lady just so happened to be.

25:53 I think they said she was interior decorator. What a cool advantage to have with this unique ability she has. Yeah. And one of the things that they said about that unique ability and and people would, you know, some people wouldn't notice it because they don't use it. So if you're not an interior designer or an artist or something where you're looking at all these different colors, you may not actually develop to notice different colors. If you do have this condition, you know, she being an interior designer happened to be able to spot it and notice the different color shades and all that. So she kind of developed that as she went.

26:34 And Ralph, the thing what you were mentioning, I don't have any clips from there, but we can talk a little bit about that because that was a really interesting section. Where in ancient Greek times did they didn't see blue? And also, blue is always the last color that we name, as in every single language. Blue is the last color that we name, interestingly enough, because there's very few natural blue things. Now, the sky is blue. Wouldn't that break the whole thing? Sort of. But is the sky really blue? Is what we're seeing in the sky necessarily blue, or is it just name blue, which happened after and as we get language?

27:21 So one thing that they were talking about is whether the language comes. When the language comes, it's because they need to name something. So when they finally come across something that they need to name as blue, which is other than the sky, that's when they came up with the name for blue. And in a lot of situations they didn't have a name for blue, so it was anything but. They describe all sorts of different colors but blue. And that's really interesting because what they go into in the episode, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jonathan, but philosophers and poets and things like that were when they were using language, didn't use these other colors. And it was an interesting discussion they had because I never really considered that before.

28:04 And I said, well, that's fascinating. Maybe they couldn't see those colors. So this is going to get real metaphysical here, But have we adapted as a race to where all of a sudden now we can see colors that people couldn't see before? I mean, it kind of it kind of jars your mind a little bit like, wait a second, you know, have we have we evolved or whatever that term is? We can get into a whole political discussion about that. I'm not going there. But have we gotten to a point where we're seeing more colors? It's just a fascinating thing. Yeah. And their argument was that we may not be seeing more colors, but naming the color allows it to fit into a box. So giving it a name allows our brain to go, OK, this is blue. So I'm going to put all the other blue things in that in that category. When they did this really interesting experiment with people that didn't have a name for blue in their language and they showed them a whole bunch of greens with a blue 1 blue box that to us looks completely different from the green boxes. To them it looked like another green, just a different shade of green for them.

29:09 Which is cool. So what you're really saying it, it came down to the language didn't have a quote word to use for this color. And that's really fascinating too, because now we've got what, a million different colors? I mean, you look one of these color wheels. The person designed my website. Like what color would you like? I said, oh, I don't know, isn't there 10 or 12? And he's like, no, there's like 15,000,000. I'm like, wow, like where do you even start with that? But that's one of the cool things about this episode. Like I like I said, this wouldn't have been in the ones I would have picked, man. But I walk away from this is like, I've really learned something here and it's that was a cool thing. And I really, I thought that was an interesting thing too. I did skip over it because it does get very metaphysical and the clips needed to be much longer for us to kind of really understand it.

29:51 So I did skip over it for this one. But yeah, it's definitely a lot of interesting topics there. Let's talk about that for a second, Jonathan. Do you feel in their episode that it got a little too deep? Do you think it got a little bit because I, that was my take away at some point, like I was engaged in this, the, the, the theater of the mind was playing. But at some point I almost felt like this has gotten over my head. This has gotten to a point of discussion where I'm like, I'm not sure I can keep up anymore. And I looked away, started doing some other work like a lot of people do when they listen to podcast. I think this is something you do when you're doing something else. And so Jonathan, do you think it got a little long? Do you think it got a little too deep? I would say after, really after she came in and we kind of discovered that she sees the sky differently than we do.

30:38 Then there was a lot of conversation about the language and how you know, and it was interesting to me, but it was not as well put together as the first. I would say half, maybe 3/4 of the show. I thought the first 3/4 of the show was phenomenal. And then it did kind of, it dragged a little bit until it got to the end. But I thought, you know, because it was a little, it was deeper conversation. I got that, you know, it wasn't everybody's cup of tea. Well, let me ask you a question about that, Jonathan. Do you think that was because they had an arbitrary time that they had to fill? Was there like, because I, isn't this public radio sort of focused or something like that? Because at some point it's almost like, did they have a certain container they had to fill with content And like, we've got to make sure our episode is excellent because I, I see a lot of podcasters do that.

31:28 And I think that's not necessarily a smart thing to do if you got a particular show that you want to be a certain length, if you don't have really compelling or remarkable content for the sake of just making it longer, I'm gonna let you speak, Jonathan. But I just felt like if that's why they're doing it. And I hadn't listened to any other other episodes, so I don't have any basis to compare. But I just think that's a take away for all of us. If you've got this arbitrary stopwatch going of I got to talk for at least a certain number of minutes, I think you got to be careful of that because Jonathan, like you said, it wasn't as well put together. It wasn't as, as you know, contemplative, whatever that word is. What I would say is I'm not sure if they had a specific time that they needed to fill for this, but in future episodes, because this was an earlier episode, in future episodes, their length is down to 30 to 40 minutes now. So it looks like they probably found a, a good format that's going to work for them and it's about 30 to 40 minutes long. And that's kind of what they're living within right now. And I think one of the things that I always say, people ask me, how long does it have to be?

32:33 How long do I need to, you know, anything I do on social media, it needs to be as long as it needs to be to get your point across. And I think that's something that we should all keep in mind. So I think they got their point across. There was a couple things that were interesting in the in the last couple sections, but they really got their point across in the first 3 sections with that with the three different devices they use to tell the story. PC did you want to make a comment? Yeah, I just want to say any, any new podcasters out there who do like say you, you rent out a studio time and you have an hour to fill, but you feel like your conversation quote UN quote over after 40 minutes. You can give your kind of official closer. Keep the recording going though, because a lot of times just kind of shooting the breeze post facto officially brings up a lot of fun points that you didn't realize to bring into the initial conversation.

33:21 And you can post, take that post ending conversation and implement that somewhere into the meat of your episode to give it a bit more juice. So just a real caveat there. NBCI tend to agree with you because I I listen to James Credlin and Sam Sethi do the podcasting weekly review and one of the things they do at the end is they have like this banter back and forth. And I think that's really effective. But it's really effective at the end of the show because those are the people that wanted to listen all the way through. That was the people that wanted to be there. And, and I agree with you. And sometimes I think that you can go back and edit this. I mean, that's the benefit of what we do here, right? You know, we can go back and add clips, we can put things into different places. And you're right, you might have something amazing at the end. I just, my point though, was just don't have this arbitrary stopwatch of like, I've got to fill this many minutes. Because I think when you do that and, and I think you're, I don't think you're disagreeing with your BC. I just think we have to be careful of that because I see a lot of people say like, like Jonathan said, you know, how long does it need to be?

34:20 Well, it needs to be long enough, but not too long. You know, we all, we all have only so many minutes in our lives. And if you're just just filling up with filibuster, you know, that can be dangerous too, 100. Percent. Let's head into that fifth clip and I'm just going to I'll preface it by saying the sky being blue is the loss of innocence, and that's all I'll say. You know, it's kind of, it's now that I've heard this, I'm a little, I'm a little ruining the, the moment when Alma decided the sky was blue. Let her have whatever color she wants it to be. Doesn't have to be blue. Weirdly, then, color is a loss of innocence. Yeah, it's like.

35:01 Having something fixed that for a while is just between you and your frenzied harsh, you know, just. And the sky has many colors. Truthfully. On the other hand, though, I'm disagreeing with myself. Now, if we all agree the sky is blue, then that's something we can share. That she can share. And then she's in conversation. And then eventually she'll understand, you know, this kind of blue. So innocence is before you learn to label the sky blue because before that this guy is just this guy. And they were talking about that as one of the hosts was didn't tell her his daughter that the sky was blue and just, you know, it wasn't blue to her until she finally kind of got the multiple people saying the sky was blue. She didn't label that as blue even though she knew the color blue.

35:53 So it was interesting that, you know, once it's labeled blue, then our brain kind of starts to compress and categorize and label it. OK, blue. Got it. Next, you know, the Sky's blue. OK. So it was an interesting, it was definitely an interesting thing 'cause I, I was surprised that the, the daughter didn't recognize the sky is blue. She knew the color blue, but she didn't recognize the sky as blue. Jonathan, let me ask you a question, because I think where you went was kind of metaphysical again, because are you saying that language is the limiting factor to our minds? I mean, because I as what I hear you saying and, and, but, but, and maybe that's the truth is like we feel things as a human being, We feel emotions, we see things, we, they're all of our senses, But we're, we're, we're trapped in this on inability to say them because there isn't a word for that. You know, you think about when we're doing a live show or something like that, we always say, Oh, I can't think of that word.

36:50 BC grabbed that one from earlier. But what if there is no word? What if there is no word to explain the shade that you see or the feeling that you have? Because we're limited by the words in our language. And are they really? Is there a word for that? Go, go ahead BC. Well, I think it goes back to the statement from earlier where we said that our perceptions limited. So I think that natural draw to take some that for a long time operates beyond definition and therefore giving it one is something that we need to be able to continue to process the world. But unfortunately, once that definition is a fixed, that thing loses a lot of its, I don't know if versatility is the right word, but a lot of it's ambiguity is lost.

37:40 So it stops being so wondrous. It stops, it starts to become something that we've now brought into that box. It's almost like we'd be better off going around grunting at each other because maybe we'd be able to express ourselves in a better way. And Tim put something in the chat, he says Visual artist. This is fascinating and I agree with it was fascinating to me and it really didn't hit me till about two minutes ago. And that is really what this is saying is language is limiting our ability to express what we're experiencing. I know that sounds very metaphysical. This is they're going to tune into the show and they're going to say, boy, this got really metaphysical in the podcast in the morning chat today. But but the cool thing is this episode, this particular color, it made us think and listen. If you want to have obsession worthy podcast, have your listener walk away thinking about what you just said to them.

38:32 Because now, honestly, I want to go back and listen to it again because I want to go see I probably missed some of that. Yeah. And so here's the thing that, you know, you're we're talking about, like labeling something flattens the reality of it. It makes it fit into a category. But when we all agree that sky is blue, it becomes something that's stable and we can share and that helps us build connection and community. So when we can share something. So the trade off is, you know, the sky has many colors really, but we can talk about the sky in a way that we can all agree upon by having the sky be blue. So you're you're kind of trading one thing for the other. And that's where language and languages is what's doing that for us because we need to, we need to describe, you know, the sky.

39:22 Well, my sky is not blue right now, but you know, my sky is white right now. I want to go to Janae because Janae had a comment. Jonathan. This is fascinating for sure. And you're right. When you assign a word to a character or color, you are essentially compressing and generalizing. Oh, that thing is black, but how many shades of black can you even have? It's pretty amazing. I have a black device here, another black device, but there's two different shades. And that comes down to, you know, how deep and descriptive do you want to be when you're creating a story, when you're telling a story, when you're staring a narrative? I've been listening to this new podcast called the Y Files, and I had just discovered it randomly because it talks about random unsolved mysteries.

40:14 And the way he describes each, every little aspect of what is going on, it's again. If you want to be descriptive, you have to use a lot more words. And when you have just one word describing the color blue, well, there you have it. You can have so many different shades of blue. And that's why I think I haven't listened to this episode. And I would love to because you guys said it goes really deep. And I think that's what bringing depth into any conversation, you know, expresses is what it is that anybody is seeing. A little bit of a lint, a hint of red, a hint of pink and the blue.

40:55 And if you try to focus it, maybe you might see it, maybe you might not. But I think that's the beauty of, you know, doing what we're doing. I think that's brilliant, Janae, and it makes me want to go buy a thesaurus. And before I do my shows next time, go find extra words that are nuanced. No, I'm serious nuanced ways to say other things because, you know, I, I think as humans, we kind of lock ourselves into a vernacular, A vocabulary that we usually use. And maybe one of the key takeaways today is to go find words that are more expressive and, you know, maybe you teach, you know, you can share words that you found. I found this word I never forget when I was in in high school or college marching band. I went to University of Nebraska and we got done one of our halftime performances and we got off the field and the band director set up and said that was abysmal. And I said abysmal.

41:46 I got, I had no idea what he's called. I'm in college. I had no idea what that word meant. But from that point on, abysmal became part of my vocabulary. And I think that one of the one of the takeaways for me today is this is a way for us to build our vocabularies and really be more expressive because you know that we're so locked into the words we normally use. Johnson, I don't want to steal your Thunder, but it's just one of the things that that one of the takeaways I had from it. And I love that. I'm just going to remind you 5th grade reading level no higher because then people don't understand what you're saying, which is the problem sometimes. But they actually in this podcast, they obviously went deeper and there was a little bit more than fifth grade level in in the words that they use. I do want to go through some of the things that make it obsession worthy and some of the things that kind of fit into other podcasts that we've talked about. But unless there's anybody else that has anything they want to add.

42:41 I just want to comment on what Tim just mentioned in the and the comments below. It says Western world. We base our perception of color on the Greeks and the colors they saw. But due to their proximity to the equator, it influenced their perception. If you think about it, depending on where you are from, how far you are from the equator, the color is going to be different. Like the closer you are to the equator, you're going to see a lot more colors because brighter sunlight, brighter flower colors like things change because the proximity of where you are from the equator. And if you think about Newton, where was he in the proximity from the equator?

43:22 So that again, you know, links back to that first thing. Why did he poke in his eyes? Because he can see many colors. Well, there's not a lot of colors outside where he was living. So thanks. This is awesome. There's definitely. I mean, I remember when I went to Hawaii the first time in 3rd grade and I looked up and I go, wow, these colors are incredible. So yes, the closer the equator you are and, and the more colors you'll see. All right. So a couple of things that make this obsession worthy #1 is it has that emotional driver, that universal emotion that I always talk about. And that particular emotion is it's not fear, it's not inspiration, it's actually uncertainty. When they introduce this topic, it we've never seen it this way.

44:05 How wait, is this real? And then we can't Unsee it. So that is definitely the universal emotion that they're pulling out of this that allows us to really dive into it and connect with it because wait a minute, it's like that brain itch, that thing that you just can't Unsee. So that emotion also creates the universal doorway, which is how we experience this episode. And that is, do we experience the same world? Like, are we experiencing the same exact world as some as the person next to us, or is it different? And we learned through this episode, we're experiencing a different world based on our perceptions, based on our, you know what?

44:51 We have our tools. We're like, oh, OK, this is different. So it creates that universal doorway that we're all kind of viewing this podcast through. And I see BC has a hand up. Yeah, I want to answer that question real quick with my own experience. We definitely don't. And I'm going to say that is the only person in my household of five who doesn't have some kind of visual impairment, who down here in the South, by the way, North Carolina, we have these things called water bugs. Everyone else calls them American cockroaches. I'm the only one in the house, because of my 2020 vision, who finds the bugs. Everyone else can be like 3 inches away from it. They see nothing. I will clock it 3 rooms down the hallway in the corner of the ceiling. Not the same experience.

45:35 That's my trauma for the day. Yeah, and we don't see this the world in the same way. It's very, it's very interesting and we kind of know it because we do have experiences like that. But when you look at it from the sense of, you know, like even just color, how everybody's going to see color differently. So couple other things that make it obsession worthy. It turns ideas like these moments into scenes, Newton in the dark room, the choir that singing the perceptions and a person staring at the sky and seeing it red where we don't see any red. So it turns these ideas into full scenes that really are engaging and connect with the audience make it very human.

46:17 It also uses receipts based storytelling. A lot of the podcast do that this one does. It doesn't just explain it, it demonstrates through experiments, sound design and other experiences so that you see what's really happening and then it lands on something that's meaningful. You know, if they didn't go, OK, here's how wavelengths work and here's why, you know, the specific in science of what you're seeing because that's kind of boring. It really ended on perception is fragile and shared language might be the glue that holds it all together. So, you know, we, we see things differently, but this shared language is what allows us to kind of bring this all together and, and operate as a society and connect with other people. So those were a few of the things that make it obsession worthy.

47:07 It also uses a really magical storytelling formula. And I don't know if Nick's here, but he's always looking for the storytelling formulas. They start out with destabilizing belief, then they prove it that the destabilized belief is true, and then they expand it to include other people in it and they personalize it. So overall, that's kind of a great way that you take it an idea and you prove it wrong, you know, and then you give details as to why it's wrong and then you make it personal. And that's what they did with this podcast. I have a few things to steal but I want to open it up to see if anybody has anything else that made it obsession worthy for them. Jonathan, I just had one question and that is having not heard of Radiolab until I listen to this, is that a pretty big production company like a, do they have a lot of money? Do they have a lot of resources?

47:58 Because my take away from it was man, they had a lot of resources in this because it was a first rate Class A production. And I just thought, man, there's a lot of resources in this. Is that really the case, Jonathan? Yeah, they've, they've got, I can't remember the name of who's produces it now. GR probably knows, but I can't remember the name who produces it now. But yes, they have quite the production and they've got some, you know, support behind them as well. So I think they signed a scientific something supports them, but they got some grants and stuff. So they've got money to do a production that's impressive inside and out. Yeah, that was my take away.

48:39 It was very impressive. I see Ashley wants to make a comment. I think they're produced by PR and could be wrong, but that's what my guts telling me because our local NPR plays Radiolab and I think what they play at the beginning is PRN. But the other thing I wanted to say that was so cool about this show and this again leans more to they must have some sort of big support because just to license the copy written music that's in this episode would take that. For example, they had Procol harems whiter shade of pale. They had Donovan's Mellow Yellow. There was copy. Written music in this episode and I really love how they use that to tell the story. And Dr. commented she put natural sciences. I guess that's maybe who is promoting it but BC had a comment.

49:26 It looks like the website says they're produced by WNYC Studios. I don't know if they're if that would be owned by something else, but that seems to be the direct producer. I think it's local NPR station actually. So Jonathan, I know you had some key takeaways before we wrap up because we've only got a couple more minutes, so you wanted to do some takeaways. So, Jonathan, go ahead and do that. Yeah, Just a couple of quick ones here. Something that you can do, you know, something you can steal for your own podcast is steal. Start with a belief that your audience assumes is is always correct. You know, something that they're assuming is right. Like everybody sees the world the same way and break that, break that and really show them why it's not the case.

50:08 And that's something that's going to bring people into your podcast and get them interested and hold them throughout the episode. The other thing that they did that I think we can steal is they used a proof device. So it used the prisms and the choir to kind of prove that something was the way that they said it was. But you can use screenshots or DMS and client audio and you know, like a live breakdown of things or mini experiments that you do yourself to actually highlight and show people, not just tell people what is happening here. And then you always want to make the listener feel the shift. Don't just teach the idea, but get them to realize something like my sky is boring. What is your my sky is boring moment that's going to really bring people in and and punch them a little bit upside the head with what they're expecting. And then finally, this is my big take away from everything when it comes to this podcast.

51:08 And that is certainty is boring. When you deliver uncertainty, it's much more entertaining and it's much more noteworthy. And that, you know, is definitely something we felt in this episode. I love that, Jonathan. So what you're saying is go find something sort of unusual to say, go find something that's sort of is counter intuitive and build off of that. And, and I think we all can learn from that because I think it's easy, especially as a business guy, it's easy to get stuck in what we know. It's easy to get stuck in the the routine and the mundane, but have a different angle. And, and honestly, that's one of the cool things about AI, you know, we're talking about AI, but that's one of the cool things I've used AI for recently is I've given an idea and say, give me a different angle on this, Give me a different thought on this.

51:56 So if you're thinking about, OK, well, my stuff's kind of vanilla, no use AI, say, hey, AI, what's a different take on this? And I, I don't think they use this, but because this was, this was done way back. But if you're, if you're wondering about what Jonathan just said, I just think that's a really good way to perhaps to do it. Yeah, I love that. And the other thing that I tell a lot of my clients to do, because one of the things that I love is when you just take something from the news. It's news jacking. You take something from the news and you put your own spin based on your niche. Like what this means for this. Like I did the storytelling in the Super Bowl halftime show. Like I pulled out the clips from the Super Bowl halftime show and what stories were being told. That's not what anybody else is going to look at the, you know, halftime show and do.

52:39 But because I help people tell stories, it's what I was doing. So, you know, news jacking and making it work for you is another great way to do that and pull out some uncertainty in it. News jacking. But we could have a whole discussion about news jacking. Do you want to define that for a second? That could be on the wheel of jargon a little bit. So news jacking, which is different than news hacking. News jacking is when you actually take something that's in the news and you use it in your own niche in a certain way, whether it's, you know, I've done I Super Bowl halftime shows are easy. Award shows are easy things that you can pull out of them to kind of describe something in your own niche.

53:19 I Taylor Swift is an easy one for me. I do how her lyrics mean something, how her, you know, she can teach you a lesson in business, all that sort of stuff. So you just pull a headline and you make it work for your own your own niche. And that has the built in actual headline energy that's going to help you get seen more. Yeah, and I think we all can learn from that because then you ride on the coattails of information that's already out there. And I'll tell you what, I've seen it become very effective for people, especially in social media. It is really a really a great thing to do. Well, Jonathan, I just want to thank you. What a great episode. What a great choice for obsession worthy. You do a fantastic job with these, Jonathan. So thanks for joining us today.

54:02 And whatever you do today, make it a great day, everybody. We'll see you again tomorrow.