Colors: What is Color, Really? | Radiolab Podcast

From the Radiolab podcast: How does something so intangible as color pack such a visceral punch? In this episode, in the name of science and poetry, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich tear the rainbow to pieces.

To what extent is color a physical thing in the physical world, and to what extent is it created in our minds? We start with Sir Isaac Newton, who was so eager to solve this very mystery, he stuck a knife in his eye to pinpoint the answer. Then, we meet a sea creature — the mantis shrimp — that sees a rainbow way beyond anything humans can experience, and we track down a real-life tetrachromat, who we're pretty sure can see thousands (maybe even millions) more colors than the rest of us. And we end with an age-old question, that, it turns out, never even occurred to most humans until very recently: why is the sky blue?

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Episode Segments:
0:00 Intro
0:17 Rippin' the Rainbow a New One
18:26 The Perfect Yellow
44:16 Why Isn't the Sky Blue?

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Guests in this episode include James Gleick, Victoria Finlay, Jonah Lehrer, Mark Changizi, Thomas Cronin, Jay Neitz, Susan Hogan, Jason LaCroix, Ian Garrett, Guy Deutscher, and Jules Davidoff.

Special thanks to Michael Kershner and the Young New Yorkers Chorus; John McClay and the Grace Church Choral Society; and those folks from the Collegiate Choral and the Dessoff Choirs who joined us for the Choral Color Experiment. See behind-the-scenes footage of the recording session here:    • Radiolab Conducts the Choral Color Ex...  

Special thanks to all the musicians who were so generous to let us use their music and joined in on our covers of the rainbow project:
Reggie Watts with “Rainbow Connection,” Barbara Bennery with “Over the Rainbow,” Lonesome Organist with “Green Onions,” Nymph with “Brown Rice,” Yellow Ostrich with “Sound and Vision,” Rya Brass Band with “Paint It Black,” Nico Mulley with “Big Yellow Taxi,” Sherwater with “Black with the Color,” Eric Freelander with “Blue in Green,” Marcie Playground with “Whiter Shade of Pale,” The Heat with “Mellow Yellow,” Tao Win with “Blue.” Snow Blink you just heard with “Blue Moon.” Dan Deacon right here with “Colors.” Busmans Holiday, “Mr. Blue” and our very own Tim Howard, aka Soultero, performing “Green River.”

Photo by Dorothea OLDANI [https://unsplash.com/@dorographie]
Video by Michael Snyder and Kim Nowacki.