Blue | SciShow Tangents Podcast

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From trustworthy to calming, sad to steadfast, and, of course, jeans - the color blue means a lot of things to a lot of people. Join Team Tangents as we delve into this deceptively complicated primary color!
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Sources:
[Trivia Question]
YInMn blue unnamed element
chemistry.oreg...
chemistry.oreg...
www.smithsonia...
www.nytimes.co...
colourlex.com/...
[Fact Off]
Blue dye blocking ATP for spinal cord injuries
www.urmc.roche...
www.wired.com/...
www.sciencenew...
www.popsci.com...
Vivianite blue found on bones, shells, and other remains
www.atlasobscu...
pubmed.ncbi.nl...
www.kristineba...
www.uaf.edu/mu...
www.sciencedir...
onlinelibrary....
[Ask the Science Couch]
Color psychology: blue and marketing/logos
today.yougov.c...
www.newyorker....
www.joehallock...
link.springer....
www.jstor.org/...
www.emerald.co...
[Butt One More Thing]
Evidence of blue cheese in Austrian paleofeces
www.eurekalert...
www.cell.com/c...
www.theguardia...

[@RockelLin]

Sam's song somehow turned I'm Blue into an Owl City song and I'm enjoying it immensely.

[@hchen-gb1tw]

I can’t unhear it now that you’ve said it HELP

[@AllTheArtsy]

It's definitely giving "you would not believe your eyes if ten million fireflies"

[@THarSul]

this is so correct i cant even

[@skinwalker3953]

That opening songpoem was lit !!

[@preston0]

Listening to it nonstop honestly

[@SecondFinale]

Go Tuna Metesh!

[@tobistein9831]

Came here from my podcast app just to make sure the song was getting the love it deserved 😂

[@ashleelarsen5002]

4:20 no don't do it

[@theojam2]

Yaaaaas🎉😂🎉😂❤❤❤

[@Jenny-fk3ke]

I love the science poem way too much. “There’s also blueberry pie” made my day.

[@SamLugo]

My dog, Blue, was very excited that you made an episode about him. Or he may have been excited because I kept saying his name. But I like to think it was the podcast episode.

[@memeju1ce]

it was totally the name of the episode

[@morgagnomic]

OMG Sam! The song remix OMG. Ok, that's it, this song, and Ceri's Shanty, and Hank's Sleep song are just *chef's kiss* and need to be collected into an album! I love you folx so much!

[@jebus456]

yes! they're slowing building a full length record!!

[@sheilathepotter6636]

I'm a potter, and I make porcelain tableware in a variety of colours. My most popular items are always the blue ones. I make and sell double the amount of blue compared to other colours (red, yellow, green, etc). Green is my second most popular. Orange is by far the least popular colour. I frequently ask people their favourite colours and it is almost always blue or green. My favourite colour is yellow though. 💛

[@disky01]

Cap'n Crunch, DRY?! Hank, you maniac. Sam's poem is the best, most correct and only possible choice for this episode, deserving of the highest honors in science and the arts.

[@Trethan3266]

So I used to live in Japan, and Japanese is one of the languages that did not have separate words for blue and green for a long time. Midori (緑) is their word for green but it is fairly new, popularized only in the last century. Before that they mostly used Ao (青) for both blues and greens This has caused a couple interesting quirks in the language. The literal translation for a green traffic light is still blue light, even though the actual light color looks no different from other stoplights around the world. A common last name is Aoyama, which translated literally means Blue Mountain. While this might seem strange to us now, this probably just means that these people lived by a lush GREEN mountain when they got their last name.

[@HotelPapa100]

Language/culture also definitely has an influence on where people place the limit between colors such as yellow and green, or green and blue. Speaker of germanic languages may also be surprised that Italian and slavic languages make a similar distinction between blue and sky blue as English does between pink and red. they would never call a baby blue item just "blue".

[@Somebodyherefornow]

did you know that, when you ask people for a stereotypical “ao” color, they will choose blue or green, not a green-blue hybrid, very fun

[@UnicornsPoopRainbows]

Korean calls green traffic lights blue too. I’m not sure if it is a vocab issue since they do have a word for green and used often. It might have been that the original traffic lights here may have had more of a blue hue and it just stuck even though modern traffic lights are definitely green

[@mixiekins]

that explains the confusion I have with yellow traffic lights in English occasionally being referred to as amber lights. The turn signal, as well, is technically deemed amber, but automotive manufacturers often make them either orange or yellow. I could be mistaken, but I heard it harkens back to train traffic lights, and the need for high visibility at a distance because trains take so long to stop.

[@MrARock001]

That blue dye #1 fact was wild! I immediately imagined an episode of House where a patient comes in with a broken spine and House goes to the hospital break room and grabs a vial of blue food coloring and then just squirts it into the saline bag.

[@benjamincruz6633]

Why would a hospital break room have food dye?

[@Avendesora]

@@benjamincruz6633Im glad that's the part of this scenario you found unbelievable lol

[@Savrillo]

​@@benjamincruz6633in House, why not

[@ponyote]

Ceri represents the Scooby-Doo fandom so well. Thank you!

[@andyanderson2143]

Ive got to pause to say, Sam, that blue song will be sung with tears shed and smiles spread at my funeral, and I'll ascend on gossamer threads of the purest aquamarine. Thank you.

[@mariafranceschini7662]

Sam! Your Blue, remix song is *chefs kiss* Sam thinks, "I've done all the poems I can think of." "Time to take it up a notch!" "But, with great power comes great responsibility." - Spiderman "You are not in control of the notches." - John Green

[@spudd86]

I thought there was a study that showed people that have different words for colours can remember them better, like if you don't have different words for green and blue showing something green or blue and then asking them to pick the same colour out of a lineup later was harder than for people who have separate words for them, but it didn't affect how well people could tell colours apart for samples they could compare directly.

[@SuperNerdKid]

The opening song science poem scene made me glad I switched from just listening to the pod to watching it.

[@chloelynndancer]

"blue when you say goodbye" and "there's also blueberry pie" have been repeating in my head since I first listened to the podcast, I'm obsessed

[@alycsandrianah]

To Sam!!! Subs, sandwiches, tacos, pitas, calzones, ETC. all KEEP QUALITY when wrapped with a paper towel or napkin ( around the food itself ) before being stored in original wrap and being put in the fridge. YOURE WELCOME INTERNET.

[@Darkflowerchyld718]

Blue is in fact my favorite color. Cerulean to be exact. Just looking at the color is enough to get my feel good chemicals moving. This episode was fantastic. Sam your Blue remix was top tier *chef's kiss*

[@annasfischer]

Blue is literally the opposite of my favorite color. My favorite color is orange, and it's a loan word, that comes, through a series of borrowings from a Southern Indian Dravidian langage (the specific one is unknown). It passed through Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Spanish, and French before it got to English in the 1400s, where it originally just meant the fruit, before the English went, actually, this is a pretty good name for the color yellowish red, too. Also the French were famous before the wide spread use in Europe of Indian indigo, for their blue dye derived from French woad, which is also an indigo bearing plant. This was an expensive and important trade good which might explain why the color name changed at the time of the Norman Conquest.

[@Nylak-Otter]

Orange gang!

[@jennrodriguezdaluz]

hell yes orange!

[@L0rdOfThePies]

Orange is my favourite colour too! In combo with red and yellow 😊 they just speak warmth to me

[@Somebodyherefornow]

orange second favorite, red best

[@sylvy16]

sams blue cover was so good. also i’ve had that thing where i just found out the name of the song recently and see it everywhere now. can someone remind me what that phenomenon is called.

[@raeperonneau4941]

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?

[@Quintesca]

I literally heard this song for the first time in ages today in the car. Fuckin baadee-meinhoff

[@lpeters82]

I used to collect sponsorships for youth sports teams. When I included a place for the sponsor to write in their preferred shirt color, more often than not, they choose blue.

[@alan-xg7pv]

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

[@jennrodriguezdaluz]

thank you for standing up for orange, ceri!

[@dianewallace6064]

Great song and production, Sam.

[@LadyCynthiana]

I guessed 8, woo! I just knew a lot of pigments were oxides from studying art and working with art supplies.

[@nitsanbly7297]

Sam you have a beautiful voice I have a new ringtone

[@hchen-gb1tw]

As a veterinarian who has treated lots of spinal injuries in dogs and cats…the blue no 1 fact is WILD

[@stephonthemoon]

Did Sam’s song just cure my seasonal depression?! No, but it sure lifted my mood! Seriously though, I’m so glad I found this podcast.

[@Justmichael1995]

That opening was perfection!

[@l.u.c.a.s.]

We need a full release of the blue song!!!

[@maxrbmc]

I already listened to podcast but had to come back to see how the opening song/poem was done in video

[@hannahbrown2728]

Hank really just said... "Welcome to the Salty Spitoon, how tough are ya?" "I eat Captain Crunch." "Heh, yeah so?" "Without any milk..." "Oh right this way sir."

[@GreenPoint_one]

Mine is green but I love a combo of yellow and blue too, looks elegant~

[@Shatterpath]

You guys were on fire today! And I need a mini-vid of your song remix Sam, stat.

[@Srelde]

Ceri's 100% right. Some of my fondest memories are of me and some friends going to this one sandwich shop and ordering a 3 foot long sub, getting it sliced, and sharing it. Also that sandwich length and width aren't important, but height cannot be too high.

[@charlotteb6450]

literally only just up to sam's song but had to like JUST for that what a momenttt

[@hchen-gb1tw]

Ceri’s cat in a DEEPLY invested grooming session at 36:37 is, for some reason, absolutely hilarious

[@Dee-jp7ek]

When Sam's voice autotuned my soul left my body. Also, Hank, you'd need geomancy for fossils silly u_u

[@MicrowaveOvenVideo]

I have already listened to this on Spotify, but I had to come see Sam's performance on KZbin!

[@ethan-loves]

BEST SCIENCE POEM EVER

[@janeteholmes]

My favourite colour is, and always has been, purple.

[@mark.fedorov]

The song and the visuals were wonderful!

[@mixiekins]

this is my first Tangent, coming here after enjoying Sam on Microcosmos, and man, the song did not disappoint.

[@jangschoen1019]

Please release a video consisting solely of Sam's song.

[@empichel5690]

I want a ten hour loop fan edit haha

[@georgewachsmuth9201]

The Dresden Files book series by Jim Butcher does have a zombie Tyrannosaurus Rex (Yes, named Sue, by the way) that really kicks ass. This is in reference to the “necromancy in the museum” comment. By the way….I am not really a podcast fan but I love SciShow Tangents. It may be that I really like all the participants and I have the same twisted sense of humor and science as all of them. Thanks for keeping this going!

[@theojam2]

I like the example of snow. I believe Joshua Weissman visited iceland and a local had so many words for ice. My mind was blown. I only know ice. But it means so many different things to the locals.

[@pantitapalittapongarnpim1581]

Strangely enough, older Thai people also refer to blue things as green, and this have led to a lot a hilarious stories online about intergenerational misunderstandings. Even my mom who's about 60 still does it, and it's doubly confusing with her because I don't know if she's code-switched to modern use of green or slipped back to old meaning of green out of habit.

[@patriciaspry2680]

Your show is my happy place to listen to when I'm out walking. I love you guys and I love science❤

[@Epinardscaramel]

Tom Scott's language files has a nice episode about the names for colors in different languages

[@Centfla60]

NEVER miss a chance!

[@Tabbasco2012]

Best poem ever

[@LoveTrueMusic1]

I literally named that tune just from that opening noise.

[@jesseannenorton6972]

I'm gonna need that song remastered and available for download

[@jesarablack1661]

The language thing, is believed to be responsible for a large portion of the male/female color perception differences as well. Men, in general, tend to be able to name and recognize a couple dozen colors (light blue, cyan blue, dark blue, aqua, etc) while Women, in general, tend to be able to name and recognize 2-10x that amount. This leads to what has become a trope, in that men will see two similar colors as "the same" that women see not only as distinct and different, but could even identify a third color in between. Obviously exceptions exist, those who have color based jobs and hobbies (artists, interior designers, etc) tend to develop the language and perception for even more colors for example.

[@yellowflowerorangeflower5706]

My new favorite song, 4:24

[@kylekane5727]

I love Sam lol.. I also love the sandwich convo,

[@mscreation101]

I love Blue!

[@dunnejos8423]

Nu uh! Light blue is my favorite color, thank you very much!

[@Nylak-Otter]

Same colour, different value. So your favorite color is still blue. 😂

[@Somebodyherefornow]

@@Nylak-Otternope! psychologically, its a grey area, sometimes different color, sometimes same (just like pink and broun{?})

[@CodyKillebrew]

So weird seeing a bacteria that I work with a lot on here. Fun fact! If you waft a plate of P. aeriginosa you will likely smell either a grape like odor, or (like me) corn chip odor

[@davesatxify]

great song sam!

[@Trethan3266]

Good episode! The three truths in a row threw me for a loop. I’m still voting for you guys to do an episode on NAVIGATION! I even have a really good fact for truth or fail or fact off too, but I’m not sure how to share it without spoiling it

[@kariikosmos3005]

The inuit can have anywhere from a dozen to 93 words for snow, depending on the tribe

[@Rolandais]

Green is my favorite color (Turqoise, specifically)

[@loveableheathen7441]

My favorite color is Teal or Turqoise does that count???

[@ashleelarsen5002]

20:08 yes darlin! You are deep, like the ocean Mahalo

[@devin-wyldeheart1233]

Same for me actually!

[@kaitlynoddie9649]

this might be my fav ceri hair colour

[@spoookley]

i was just passing by and i’d like to inform you that blue is in fact my Least favorite color. my favorite color is orange, and i go out of my way to avoid blue like 70% of the time

[@resourceress7]

In the US at least, maybe another Western countries, we drill preschoolers like crazy to learn their color words and ask them tell us the color names of things. A). That primes us to do this more quickly than someone whose culture does not have that sort of task / practice with that task. B). We explicitly teach kids that there is a core set of colors that map to a core set of color words, not just in preschool but in compulsory schooling. Plus, boxes of markers and crayons show consistent exemplars that are labeled in words. Probably not true or valued across all cultures.

[@UnicornsPoopRainbows]

I think blue is just easy on the eyes and that’s why so many sites use it. Blue and dark themes are easier on your eyes so you stay on those websites more

[@magsgraff486]

What Sam said about the ancient Greeks not being able to see blue-yup that’s not true. The myth comes from epics-they didn’t have a word for blue, and didn’t distinguish blues from purples. So when Homer described the sea as “wine-colored” it confused people and led to the theory they couldn’t see the difference between those colors. I learned this fun fact from an old vox KZbin video I think

[@markedis5902]

In some European countries they have subdivided blue into two colours, blue and aquamarine.

[@Sembazuru]

I remember hearing a hypothesis that a word for blue didn't enter any particular society's language until blue pigments were able to be created in that society. I don't remember all the details, nor how well the hypothesis held up under scrutiny.

[@unicornep1818]

Wow a whole Inky episode, Best Episode Ever (Is there a fan club). Luv and Hugs.

[@Lairzina]

That blue song was hilarious once the filter went on Sam’s voice. Blue is quite prominent in my dolls’ life. Their clothes made from my old blue shirts. A doll named Ocean naturally has a blue room and affinity for magical seafaring adventures. Kristof’s blue hair holds powerful water magic while his body cannot cast a spell on its own. A potion with his hair created a giant rainstorm of Dreamland blue seawater. Even their dining table is the blue lid from the Ken box. Blue oceans are cool because I love marine biology. Blue skies annoy me a bit, for they are too plain, lacking texture and variation a cloud brings, and the sunlight unhindered to blind me. My favorite color is orange like my pumpkin hair followed by blue because I love Kristof. I look forward to possible future color themed episodes.

[@EayuProuxm]

Not enough people are reacting to Hank eating Captain Crunch dry. Even Chuck Norris would balk at that.

[@ivytarablair]

Had flashbacks to the Cap'n Crunch scene in Cryptonomicon 😂😂😂

[@laratheplanespotter]

Cobalt blue is my favourite colour. You got me here planning my wedding bridesmaid dresses for my Titanic themed wedding 😂

[@IceMetalPunk]

Sorry, Hank, but the D&D rules for the Speak With Dead spell do specify that the animated corpse will only know the languages it knew in life, so casting it on a dinosaur wouldn't let it understand your questions... unless you learn dino-speak and ask it in its natural language, I guess 😁 (I guess it's also kind of specist of me to assume all dinosaurs spoke one language, considering how many different bird songs there are... but in D&D all dragons speak the same Draconic, so whatever!)

[@Mithrandir39]

Not to mention that the background for this show is BLUE! *LOL*

[@aeroscorpian]

Great news, my YT algorithm has figured out to just start running SciShow and SciShow Tangents when I let it go for hours without me choosing videos... Like when I start napping with the TV on. 😆🤷‍♀️ I'll start getting some of the other channels in the family integrated into that. 😉

[@livvielov]

this was great 😌

[@thespazdragon]

Thought: We can detect infrared with our skin. We feel it as heat. Maybe C. Elegans can 'feel' blue in a similar fasion.

[@Sgt-Gravy]

Red & pink. Is like Blue & azul; the sky is azulo.

[@MrMotchel]

You really have to know how to re-prepare & or reheat your sandwich (& all other leftovers), and you’re a powerful force of efficiency and also pleasing the mouth. I’m a professional chef, and also professional reheater. 👍👌

[@Sembazuru]

I think Ceri mispoke when talking about the frequency of blue light. She said between "620 and 670 Hz"... The visible spectrum frequency is in the Terahertz range (THz), so I assume she meant to say between "620 and 670 THz". But what's a factor of trillion between friends? 🤓

[@janusatthegate6201]

They feel the blue.

[@Bungo71]

Harking back toi the etymology of Blue from Middle French meaning dark or golden/shiny...In colloquial Australian, Blue is what you call some one with red/golden hair.

[@Somebodyherefornow]

7:55 BBC is wrong there, but i think reaction time tests are very common to test if and how fast people can distinguish stuff, right?

[@88marome]

My favorite colors are green and brown. Apparently brown is just a dark version of orange, red, yellow or other colors.

[@zachreads]

We need an episode about brown because technicly it doesn't exist

[@morgagnomic]

@Hank: you gotta go read Dead Beat by Jim Butcher for you Necromancy + Dinosaurs fix ;) of course, it's book 7 in the series, so you'll be a little lost... lol

[@F00Lsmack]

The iris color effects color perception. So that alone means we don't all see colors the same

[@tomsanderson1515]

10:29 hahaha isn't hank's sons name Orin? It's practically Orange 😂😂😂

[@silliepixie]

RIP Dandelion Yellow

[@SciShowTangents]

right? That seems like an important color!

[@sylvy16]

also blue is my favourite colour

[@Beanedict_C]

Hot damn Sam that was so good

[@dustybowlz8166]

What a day to be named Vivian

[@kassandrasolon1633]

SAM'S SONG 🔥

[@raeperonneau4941]

Sam, that was awesome! It’s very interesting that the 2014 yougov survey didn’t interview anyone in African countries. Wonder why?

[@Bastian227]

The lost productivity I have at work because of all these blue icons: Edge, Outlook, Word, Zoom, Teams, PowerShell. I keep trying to switch apps, and I hit the wrong icon

[@soniashapiro4827]

I did buy my vivianite on Etsy!

[@CorbiniteVids]

I'm gonna be honest I don't really put a lot of weight on the market research about blue as a color or all those claims about its psychological associations. Ever since that Pepsi logo leak I tend to assume that market researchers are just as confused and prone to overthinking as the rest of us. My hypothesis for why blue works so well in socmed UIs is because it's just a very easy color to use from a purely design perspective. If you're designing a website you want something with a nice balance between unobtrusiveness and vibrance. Too vibrant and it just gets distracting and off-putting and will clash with photos or other elements, but if you just use shades of grey it looks sterile and boring. Of the spectral colors, blue has the lowest luminance and is perceived as darker than the other colors when viewed at technically the same value, and so it's generally easier to use blue for designs that are based around a simple monochromatic gradient. You can use it to replace grey in a black and white design and it still carries a lot of the same neutrality that the black and white design would, but without looking dull and lifeless. And this extends past social media, you also see this on other websites, and in many video game UIs. Blue is just a really easy color to use for that kind of thing

[@LiveWire937]

if you increase the frequency of ultraviolet light by compressing spacetime, is it still blue shifted even though blue light has lower frequency?

[@barbararowley6077]

I’m pretty sure the idea that Ancient Greeks couldn’t see blue was disproved. Blue dyes were highly valued by them, after all, as they were all through the ancient world. Homer calling the sky bronze really isn’t any sort of proof as not only was that poetry but the sky is often not blue.