Literature and the Process of Life

Welcome to the Rest of Science. I'm Hanne Frey. and I'm Michael Stevenens. Now today's episode, actually we're cheating a little bit. We're taking one of the listener questionions, which we lik so much that we are not putting it in an episode of Field Notes. We are expanding it out into a whole entire super duper long version of our podcast. The Point is, we love this question, A door. I think we should get right into reading it. Okay, here we go. It's from Kelsey, who asked, Hello, Hannah and Michael. My seven year old is a huge fan and just asked me a question which I can't answer Wh would win in a fight between black and white This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Here' something strange Your DNA contains more ancient viral fragments than jeans the genes that build our cells make up only two percent of our DNA. And for years, that is what scientists focused on. They treated the rest, the ancient viruses and stuff But now we know that that hidden majority, sometimes called the dark genome, influences how our biology works And how diseases like cancer behave? It's a reminder that progress rarely comes as a single breakthrough. It builds gradually. Cancer Research UK plays a central role in that progress, supporting decades of research into over two hundred types of cancer, work that's helped double survival in the UK over the past fifty years. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them Visit cancerResearchuK d. org forward slash the rest is science No one goes to Hanks for a spreadsheet They go for a darn good pizza Lately though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the one dollar slice. He asks Copopilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hanks has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Lear more at M three sixty five coopilot d. com slash work When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this showel will get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit at indndeed dot com slash podcast That's indeed d. com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. I mean, there's lots of different ways we can take this, isn't it? There are a lot of questions we get where we're like next, next. This one we were like N, Wait a second. That's not true at all, Michael. We adore every single question. thank you very much. That's true. I was just joking. We treasure them all and we'll answer them all. Yes, eventually, Eventually before as long as we live long enough. If you've asked us a question, we will answer it. just Do hold your breath about it Now I should say, Michael and I have not shared our answers with each other yet. No of u of what we think. Yeah, we both decided, look, How do you interpret this? What did you mean white and black? Do you mean color, radiation, good and evil. And we said stop. Let's just both come up with our own interpretations, figure out who wins each of them, and then we'll just come together and compare. and that's what's going to happen today. Do you w want tona go first Yeah, I'm going to go first because I think we can start with a I don't wantan to say simple interpretation, but what if this is just about color? What if this is just a popularity contest? Yeah. Well, thankfully, youGv has the answer. They've polled people across multiple dozens of countries. What's your favorite color White and black never make it into the cop spot. But but here's the deal Black wins the popularity contest against white pretty much everywhere. UK, Germany, U.S, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, But White actually is more popular than black in China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Okay A small selection, a small selection and I don't know why. and they didn't propose any hypothesis as to why. I will say this was interesting. The number one top favorite color in every country they surveyed was blue Even in places like China where red is this very auspicious color Blue is always the favorite. Every single count quite a bit actually. Every single country has blue is the favorite. Yeah. Now they did say that in China, the distinction between blue and green might be a bit different. It might not be the same as what it means to an American or a Brit. Basically, for the purposes of this episode Black ranks above everywhere except China, Malaysia, Indonesia. I do also sort of wonder whether I mean, look If it depends on how detailed a color you're allowing because I might say aubergine, you know, was my favorite. I know, and they didn't allow that. They just said of the traditional Were you allowed purple? Seven rainbow colors. You were allowed purple. Yes. So it's like the seven rainbow colors black and white. Okay were allowed. So there was no gray And there was no brown So I mean, look, we still need to do more research. You know what though, this marries actually with the thing that I found, which is that in fashion, in the clothes that people choose to wear, I mean black wins by an absolute country mile.. And not just at funerals instantly. Yeah everyross across the board. There's one industry study that found that black was two and a half times more popular than white. At least, I'm not surprised. No. I mean, white has a disadvantage. It's gonna stain more easily. Sure. J off the bat, that's gonna knock it down below black It'sess slimming as well. slimming. Sal your lumps and bumps a lot more on it. If it's snowy, no one will see you. count it night, no one will see you if you're wearing black. and that's good. Maybe that's an advantage. I think when it comes to what's your favorite color as well, I think Reasons I haven't really investigated maybe isn't even really considered a color to a lot of people. It's the blankness on which you then get to see your favorite color. but black is it's got an association with being, you know heavy metal and goth and it's like it's a whole style whereas white is like, what are you? you know, Gandalf the White? like grow up, you know? It's just a little more Nothingness. Nothingness. Even though in reality, when it comes to the colors, it's actually the other way around, right? Black is nothingness and white is all of the colors alt togetherher. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, who wears white? Like cult members? Yeah Um But who wears black cooler cult memers. There's the coolness factor there. And this is coming from a very specific Western perspective, But yet across countries, Ugv found that black was still usually more popular. only usually though. You know what though, actually, while we're on the topic of black clothing you know, there was a study to colour uniform that athletes wear and whether it changed how they played And they came up with the conclusion that players are much nausier and more aggressive when they're wearing black. Oh yeah. yeah. when it comes to American football, look at the Raiders S are the scariest looking team. because they're in black and silver and their fans are violent, famously and proudly violent. But I think if they were the Las Vegas tulips, That would not be their reputation. Yeah. So okay, so so far when it comes to popularity as a color in fashion, as a way to win as a sports team. Well, let me tell you the stats on this because it's my', I've got stats of course I have. Okay this is nineteen eighty eight. This is Mark Frank and Thomas Gilvut at Cornell They analyzed NFL and so football and hockey basically, American football and hockey. And they were looking at penalty records specifically. Oh, so as a measure of how aggressive M was right? In the idea being that if you got more penalties, then you you were playing a bit naughtier. O bit rougher, bit rougher around the edges. And the thing is this is like a natural experiment in a lot of ways, because there were a couple of occasions where teams changed the color of their shirts from one season to the next, from black to a different color. And they found kind across the board, the penalty average, right was much higher the number of minutes that you would get you know of penalties I don't know how these sports work. You' got to have to fill in. You're doing fine. Okay fine. the number of minutes that your team were in penalty for increased if you were wearing black. So there was one team in particular, Pittsburgh Penguins. they went the other way around. They went from light blue to black And they committed more penalies and they committed more penalacies. Oh whoa, whoa. We had to point out Did they commit more penalties or were they penalized more often? Great question. I've got the answer. Because in twenty twelve there was a follow up study and in this, they not only looked at you know tens of thousands of hockey games across. seasons, but they also then ran these controlled experiments in high school and college students so that they would like essentially run some teams would be in black and some teams would be wearing white and then they would see how it would work out over and over and over again to see if a made a difference. And they found both things were true. Reerees call more fouls on players who were wearing black. Okay but players in black were also behaving more aggressively So they like objectively rewatched these games or something. Right? Be I think that's it when you're wearing darker colors, you're like, hm maybe I can get away with this. Maybe I just sort of feel a little bit like Okay, so these researchers are pretty confident that it wasn't just that the referees themselves thought, ah, something happened. The player wearing the darker colors probably instigated it because I'm biased against that. They really studied this and found that it truly was the fault of the players wearing the darker. It was both things. So they were both being accused more often and also Oh, it was both. Yes, it was both. Wow. Okay. If you think that's a good thing, then black wins again. I've noticed that as I've gone through my interpretations, it depends on what you think is better. Yeah. like black and white have differences, but whichich difference you prefer determines which one wins. Look, I'll be honest with you, I think bllack wins every single time. I mean, there's the occasional one, this is in my analysis, right? There's the occasional time here and there where white sort of puts up a good fight. But almost always, I'm team Black In rugby, the all Backs A, New Zealand all blacks. Yeah Terrifying Have youve seen them do the hacker? Oh my God. Yeah, I was going to say and they're called the all blacks. They wear black And like silver. Yeah or white? Yeah, yeah. I guess we're not the two people who are gonna know the answer to that Maybe it's just all black. Maybe is all black. They're also really good. Yeah, they're amazing. They're women's team is actually really good right now. My stepfather in law. someomeone in your family. I feel like My mother in law's husband is really into rugby.. And he loves the women's team because they're like blowing it out of the water right now. That's cool. And he's inewZealand, by the way. Back when when Michael Jordan was playing basketball, he was so good The Detroit pistons had this idea of like, why don't we just really focus on stopping him from being able to do anything? Like, in fact, let's tire him out penalize him let's be mean to him and like break his will and force his other teammates to do it on their own And it was really negative. They called it Jordan rules. and In my memory, the Detroit pistons who had this whole like strategy wore black jerseys, but apparently they were more like blue, red and white However, in my mind, they are the like angry badies Looney tunes baddies. Yeah. And then you've got like Michael Jordan, this little guy who's like, I'm just a bug's bunny over here. I'm a good guy. But here I' flying. But this going this association between aggression and black colors and blamelessness in white runs very deep. It really does. So black wins in terms of roughness pularity fashion. but it loses chess. It does lose in chess. Fair or not though is I think maybe up for debate because when you look at Who wins chess games The person playing white or the person playing black White has an advantage. This is like a known thing. Yeah. You can even if you look at chess games and the history of chess games It wins, you know, four to ten percent more often. Yeah By the way, that chance of winning this is very complicated because there's two answers. It's like wins thirty seven percent of the time Oh because they' draws, of course. Because yes, that fifty five number is if you give them half a win for a draw. Right, I see.. Yes It took me a long time to understand this because they'd be like white scores fifty five percent. and I'm like scores. I had to go look at a chess glossary to figure out the difference. Across chess games, white tends to win fourcent to ten percent more. It's usually like thirty seven percent of the time, white is the decisive victor, twenty seven percent of the time black is. the rest of the time, it's a draw As the standard of play increases you get more and more draws, but also Whit's win percentage approaches one hundred percent Why? Because White gets to go first White has this advantage. I want to talk about rainbow chess, G. which is not a thing Daughter says she invented it. and I don't it's kind of like Bobby Fisher's chess three hundred and sixty, his like Fisher random chess inststead of randomizing the back row of pieces for each team You put all the pieces black and white into a bag is how she explained it to me And then you reach in and you pull out a piece and you put it where it should go on your side regardless of whether it's black or white Okay. so both players wind up with this randomized mix of black and white pieces, and yet you both still are either black or white So some of if you're black, some of your black pieces are already on the other side of the board. A sounds really fun. It sounds really fun and it means that there's a lot of like, okay, so first of all, you have to have the same arrangement of pieces. So if you've already drawn a queen en the next time you draw a queen, you have to put it back in Also a pawn does not become a queen when it reaches the other side of the board because some of them are just one step away from already being there. a bit of So there's like some tweaks that she had to make to make this sort of work I don't know if it's actually a good game. We have a lot of fun playing it though. I think that sounds amazing fun. Now White still gets to go first though, so it probably still mathematically will have an advantage. I'm not sure though, because I think that it would be, I think that the dominant thing would be the luck of where your pieces ended up You know, if you end up with the queen on their back rank then I mean, game over Or not. Okay, yeah, that's another rule Nither king can begin in check. Okay There There's a lot of rules that you have to make up because this doesn't work. But if you follow all the rules, then you get something that kind of works and is kind of fun, especially to play with a six year old. Yeah, that does. But I don't know There's something else like it? So let us know in the comments if you've heard of a variation of chess loo. When I was teaching my daughter's to play chess when she was about six years old We were like, o, and this one is the little horsey and then it jumps, it hops over here,. Anyway, she then started calling it pce, she started calling it the Galahop And I was like, o, that is This child's a genius. Yeah. It's absolutely adorable. What a great name. There's a huge fly Re reallyally fat fly. It was by my ear and it was like a helicopter loud. Anyway, I went around thinking that she was a genius for a few weeks. And then a couple of weeks later, we just happened to be watching an episode of Bluey In which they teach Bluey chess and she decides to call the horse the knight a Gallahop. Wait, so did she get it from that? Okay. She got it Gallahop is a pretty it's a cute word, but it also helps you remember that the knight can go over piececes. hop a Gallop and hop. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so in chess true, the white does have an advantage. I'll concede that. but in go which is play by a lot of people Black Mves first and it' the other way around. In fact, actually In Go There's so much of an advantage for black that there's some rule where you have to give away a certain number of points to white I didn't know that I don't know go very well, but bllack goes first and go. Black goes first and go and has the advantage. Wow All right, well we've done games. let's turn to people but after the break Everyone knows that unexplainable it factor, that smile that lights up a room, that wow. Well, it doesn't happen by itself. There's chemistry behind the charisma. Colgate Optic White Pro Series tooothpaste removes fifteen years of deep set stains when you brush twice daily for two weeks. How? The clinically proven formula is powered by Colgate's hydrogen peroxide complex. It works at the molecular level to gently dissolve stains deep within the enamel where your brush can't reach. It's proof that daily routine can be remarkable. That's the science of Wow Cal Gate Optic white Chronic migraine is fifteen or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox on Aachul linumoxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they start. It's not for those with fourteen or fewer headache days a month. It prevents, on average, eight to nine headache days a month versus six to seven for placebo Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection, site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. D'tceive Botox if there's a skin infection Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lgaric's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambberd Eat syndrome and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit Botoxpronicmigraine. com or call one eight hundred four four Botox to learn more Okay, welcome back. So now let's talk about bllack and white not as colors, but as names of people. Go on.'ve got black. It also Jack White of the White Stries. Let's make them fight. Let's make them fight. And so last night I did. And no, I didn't. But which surname do you think is more popular Inorrect. by a long shot White is more popular. It's the twenty fourth most popular surname in the United States. Okay. Black, notot even in the top one hundred. I had to go searching much deeper. It's the hundred forty ninth most popular surname. in the UK is the fifteenth most common surname. It's the ninth most common in Australia, twenty first in Canada There's only one hundred fifty six thousand people with the last name black in the US, but there's almost seven hundred thousand. the surname white. Wow Yeah, I'd much rather be called Hannah bllack than Hannah White Well You're not called either. I know. But I could be. I could change it my debo. You could change it. You know, have Hannah Black. Yeah, I mean, look, Hannah Black, again, why would you rather be called Hannah Back? 'causeuse it's cooler. It is cooler. S sure that my mother didn't allow me to wear black shoes as a kid? Wh? I thought that it was what like the violent kids wore? This was during the like moral panic of the nineties around like, oh, kids are sacrificing cats at night and doing all these things because of Satan What about school shoes though? What color were your school shoes? They were white and blue. Okay. They were always very bright colors pleasing saintly colors. And I'd go to the store and I'd be like, oh, I want these black sneakers and she'd be like, U o, do not even do not even Think about them. Blessed me Father because you're gonna go to hell if you wear shoes that are black like the devil's thumb. and so I own black shoes right. When did you get your first pair of black shoes? I think it was about thirty three. I got my first pair of black shoes. feel super n. I felt really naughty. I hid them in my closet, even though my mom lived a thousand miles away Have you worn black shoes in front of her I have now But also, as we've established, my mom has softened over time. She now allows me to say some bad words piss. Wha, yes, okay, yeah.. And I can also say the C word Craps And so of course I say it all the time around her. Adorable I had in terms of the surname thing, I have a very good friend actually who is a doctor. She's called Dror Black She was working in a doctor's surgery and there's another doctor therere called Dror White. And I think and I still think that the two of them should set up a surgery together and call it the Greay doctors. The Greay doctors. Yeah It's good joke. It's good joke. It's a good, good little It was hilarious. It's a hilarious joke Good and evil though, good and evil. there is there is those themes along those. Shall we kind of G through the tally up who's winning so far.ack's winning I think bllack is winning. Yeah. I think all that white has won is chess and surname Black has won popularity as a color. It's winning in fashion, what people wear We should look up car cols. Car colours are white winds in car colours and white winds actually in more than one way in car colours because not only are there more white cars, you're also significantly more likely to die in a black car. No. Yeah, I don't know. okay, how don't know how you tally these up? Is it ' I don't think they're each worth one point. No, we need to wait I'd rather have an unpopular color car than a car that I die in. So I don't know. You would look cool when you die though., you would. W, he died in a white car blite car Okay so here's some stats in twenty twenty five. White cars, there were thirty three percent of cars are white globally. Black is at twenty three percent. This is the second most popular However, if it's luxury cars the other way around. So in North America, twenty nine percent of luxury cars are black. and why is is second from Monash University Acent Research Center who were looking at crash between nineteen eighty seven and two thousand four. And they found white's the safest color, easier to see. Yeah, perhaps. Black cars are twelve percent more likely to be involved in a deadly crash. Yeah. I know I believe it. I actually talk to my insurance company about like, hey, we've got light colored cars. our Do you guys charge less for those? and they were like, no, But it is true that the lighter color your car is, the easier it is for others to see and you're in fewer accidents. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. it makes sense. I'm still going black here. I'm still going black nonetheless. This I think this is the reason why I just think black oness full stop, okay? Piano keys. Yeah. Oh, there are more white piano keys than black ones, but the only interesting music comes from the black ones. Well now that seemounds a bit subject. comeome on. twinkle, twinkle little stars, that all you got I don't know enough about music to I don't know enough about piano. toate you on this Bluntly, me neither, but that's not going to stop me being overly confident, okay? I think I think you are giving me fuel for my final Cclusion. Okay. All right. but so I'll just grant you The black keys are more interesting. interesting. They are much more interesting. But there are more white keys. There are more white keys, but who cares if they're boring? Well, I think that got we gott to give white a point for being the dominant color on a keyboard. And then we'll give black a point because it's cooler sounding. It's more fun. Going back to your idea about light. Yeah. So I was also thinking about if you shine a torch into a dark space, right, which winds there? Is it the brightness of the torch or is it the blackness of the of the space And I mean, in an enclosed space you know, on eararth, sure, the whiteness might win. But actually in the universe as a whole, the universe is very, very definitely black This is Olber's paradox, by the way. Yeah. You know about this? Yeah, this is the paradox that the sky is dark at night. And why should it be? Well, att first you would say, well, why shouldn't it be? But then when you point out that there are stars everywhere, even between stars that we can see. if you look with a telescope, you find more and more stars.. So there should be light coming from every direction. This should be a very well lit room essentially Yeah it isn' But it isn't, it's black, Black Wen's house. The reason incidentally, the reason It sort of essentially demonstrates that the universe had a beginning. The light hasn't been going forever and the universe is expanding, which is why blackness wins out. But blackness does nonetheless win out. It wins out Also, there's light extinction. There's the inverse square law of light can shine and be very bright, but the further away you get, the dimmer and dimmer it appears. Absolutely ultimately Bness wins out. Blackness wins. I mean, look, if you are also pitting the black versus whites against one another on a sort of cosmological basis White dwarfs, which are essentially what happens when a star dies, everything kind of blows off and you're just left with like the really solid bright core. Put one of them against a black hole. I mean there's no black h a black hole wins If we're going to be talking about electromagnetic radiation, here's something fascinating This morning I thought, oh yeah Obviously, here's a good thing to bring up The more and more darkness you have problem But The more and more light you have, the more and more electromagnetic radiation you have, the closer you get to darkness Go on So I've talked about this before, but I have an update. G. So there's this concept. It's a theoretical concept which states that, I mean, as we know, if you get too much matter in one place, black hole forms But what if you get a lot of energy A lot of light in one place, what happens should be the same thing as it turns out. And so a black hole can form if there's too much energy within one small area. And a black hole that forms not from matter but from light is known as a Kugelblitz Good name. A Kugelblitz. I know I love this. and in an episode many years ago, I turned it into this really cool way to flirt with someone. Like're not just ot You're a couglebz. There's so much you're just so hot cannot remain stable and it collapses in on itself, your hotness. Is there any evidence of that ever working on any human? I've never tried it on another human. If you and your partner met because of that line, let me know in the comments. You're welcome. Also, if that's how you guys met, I've got some bad news for you. Go on. A couple of years ago, Koogle Blitzes were studied. and again, it's a theoretical thing. We cannot make one. Okay, the amount of energy required to create one is fifty orders of magnitude higher than what we can currently achieve There was a paper that came out in twenty twenty four that had this great name No black holes from light That was the name And the paper talks about how when you have that much light, that much electromagnetic radiation in one place, you need to start worrying about things like vacuum polarization, which is a dissipative quantum effect. I'm not going to pretend to know what all of that means, but I do trust that these people know what they're talking about It's called the Schwinger effect. Swinger. Yeah. And this is where So we've got Kooglelitzes and now we've got Sringers. Swing effect. And this is the effect where I can only give you a very service explanation, but where photons can decompose into electrons and positrons. And this process limits the potential for a black hole to form Theoretically We don't know one way or the other, but there's definitely a school of thought now that says that a Kuleblitz isn't possible Be you could reach that critical amount of energy in one location, that energy density necessary for the collapse of a black hole, energy would be dissipated away So But then, but then but then but then. if you does that mean that if you have too much energy, too much light, it will stay light. It won't it won't become dark. That's one conclusion you could draw from this. And so maybe White doesn't lose to black here The idea being like too much black, not a problem. Too much white goes back to black, black wins in both cases. That may or may not be true. Jury is still out. It could be that more and more light You're just gonna continue to have a lot of light. More and more black, more black. It's a draw Yeah, but I mean, in the universe as a whole, once you kind of go to the heat death of everything Once you're kind of looking at entropy? and the fact that we are tending towards disorder over time I mean, everything's eventually going to die. I mean, there's no doubt You' that black blackness win. I didn't come in here to fight for any particular side. I did. You did. I did. And I'm not even really going to disagree with you. I think you're bringing up a lot of good points that ultimately darkness is all there will be It will be the one on the field of battle at the end still standing Absolutely Be you've got the heat death where eventually it's the same temperature everywhere and there isn't a useful energy differential to take advantage of to do any work. There is no light. There is no light. That's the ultimate fate of the universe. Absolutely, That's the direction we're all heading towards. Enjoy the light while it lasts, everybody. I mean I'm going gonna definitely say Light does some interesting things. Sure. Energy and work mean that stuff can happen. battling it out all the time. it wasn't a question that was being asked, there was it? It wasn't which one do you like more? It wasn't please tell me which of these does interesting things. It was which wins. which wins. Which wins. And yeah, you're right. I tell you what, if we're not going in quite so depressing a direction, if we're not going to the heat death of the universe, let's look at the battles, not the wars I think I still think darkness wins. I still think black wins. I found this absolutely amazing story about Chernobyl Okay, in twenty sixteen And researchers who were near where the damage reactor was were looking at the wildlife that that still manages to survive close to where everything happened And they found this really strange thing, which is that' right close to the reactor All the frogs are Right? Isn't that strange? And then you go a bit further out, some of them, you know they sort of tend to become a little bit lighter. and then if you go far enough out away, then they they are essentially back to normal frog Normal frog color. But the frogs all around are very, very dark, sometimes actually pitch black And they were Wh? It's amazing. So they worked out that what's going on here is that melanin, which is a pigment that you get in your skin, but also in the skin of frogs It's the thing that gives you a tan color, but it doesn't just absorb UV also dissipates ionizing radiation. Of course, right? So there's all this radiation that's floating around And so essentially what was happening is that it forced this survival pressure darker frogs. So the frogs who had much lighter skin, who had less of the dark pumment in their skin already, you know would die out much more easily. Only the darker frogs would remain. And then they reckon within about fifteen frog generations, the pigment had sort of sorted itself into the population and there was this natural selection for darkness kind of happening in real time. And so But I mean also, as a person who has no melanin in my skin,, you know this is one of the downsides of the MC one R mutation having red hair. There is no melanin. if If I go out in the sun, it goes red and then back to white. I have to say, darkness wins again, right? You put me outside O onn a sunny day and unless I've got a bottle of factactor fifty with me, I'm over. It's getting over for me. Yeah, you know I can put you in a radioactive fallout zone and you are going to be hurt more. I'm done, I'm done. Of course there are I mean, there are some creatures that are that have both black and white. Orcas, for example. I mean, they're pretty cool. Zebras, zebras zebras Zebahs pandas Pandas. They're less cool. L' Txedo cats The pand is, by the way, side note, pathetic creatures, pathetic. You know how much base they need to have? Um in order for them to agree to mate. too much. But also if you have this like gigantic land space where you're like, okay, Panda, chill out, all right? Have fun. And then somebody does like a little tiny track road through it that's not even taking up any space. they're like, no, no, no, no, no, you've enroached you've enroached, I'm not having babies anymore They are absolute. Drama queens. That's how I like my diary to be, by the way, when I'm writing. say I'm going into panda mode. Oh yeah yeah yeah. I need nothing encroaching Okay, it's one panda. seven square kilometers So the pair needs seven square kilometers. So I think that detailed field studies say that female giant pandas have about five square kilometers and males about seven square kilometers. And if you go anywhere near that then they're like, babies, thank you Really? Yeah. So they need Just the two of them within their little zones and then they can come together and as long as no one encroaches Yeah, but not even anyone in Croachia. It's like any evidence of any building or any track, nothing. It's got to be like completely untouched. It's a bit like, you know, they just really, really, really want privacy. They really want privacy. They really need the mood to be right or it's ruined. Exactly. They don't want anyone to find out they're playing Barry White in the jungle. Yeah I'm fair enough, but like it's a lot of work for us to accommodate. It is a lot of work. Barry White though, didn't think about him, did we? Barry Black. Barry Who is Varry very? Exactly. That's a win for white, I think.' the win for white. All right hereere's something interesting that is kind of related that I've just been wanting to share So it's kind of related. likeike, if if darkness, if blackness is is nothingness, like empty thenen we should talk about the words and not So on They both mean nothing, right Kots and crosses, the knot refers to an o, nothing People will call the two thousands the naughties because the year ends with the zeros, but ought AU GHT also means nothing. Give it in a sentence. In a sentence it might be something like Aught is learned Meaning if nothing is learned I would see these in books. I'd see ought meaning nothing and not meaning nothing. And I'm like, how it's kind of strange that ought and not bothoth mean zero Why are they different words? They didn't used to be different came first, meaning nothing for aught, notot for nothing. But there's this thing in linguistics called a faulty separation where people who are speaking to each other misinterpret what your word is and what the article is because they've been smashed together. So when someone said, I don't give an ought, it sounds a little bit like I don't give a not.ice. And so People started to think that ought means nothing, but there's also a thing called a not I don't give a not. I don't give an ought. They were just so similar that we wound up having not as well mean zero. The other one I've had is a npple Yes, there are a lot of these faulty separations napkin is one I think an Akin is what it was called before. P would be like, o, can I have an Akin And someone was like, o, a napkin? Sure, this must be called a napkin other words like that, I've got a whole list of them and I don't have them actually here on my page, but Apron, Umpire? What was a pr I think so. Oh, I like that. Now don't I mean look this up because I only have the list of these words. I don't know what they originally were, but they got smashed together because of the A in, the An article before them. Go what were the other ones? Okay, you ready?? Nickname name. Apron Orange Umpire Tumble pie It was Umble pie Ager But with auger, I'm like, wasas it a gur before? old did you give auger? Auger, like a thing that you a screw that you dig a hole with. Well, you don't dig enough holes. Evidently. Oh no enough words. Drill enough holes On the word thing, I tell you what I find out when I was rearching this, the word candidate Did youone know where that came from? Let me guess. G on And candidate I've given a bit of a clue given that it's related to this episode Now even more kid I was not thinking that way, but I should have been. Where does it come from Roman Uhuh It means the one wearing white Because if you were wearing a white togre then you were a political candidate Wh Yeah. Where does white in there? Can't can Ced Be I think it means shining Does it? Yeah, like Chandelier is another Oh, interesting candle candid Candle provides light candandescent incandescent. Oh yeah, Candela, a unit of light. Anyway, that's all white stuff. Yeah, it sure is. I tell you what we haven't touched on though, good and evil because because it feels like In stories, black and white do end up taking two different sides. It's kind of we've sort of touched on it a bit, but haven't really gotten there. Yeah. and in stories, good often wins, not all the time, but certainly more often than not, stories are instructing us that good will prevail Eil doesn't pay Right? These are cliches topic In my mind, it's like way too big to jump into when it's just supposed to be one little interpretation of a question in a podcast As you all know, I just finished reading The Lord of the Rings, and I also read the Earthseea tririlogy from Ursula Lguin, who by the way, I love this. She describes herself as a irreligious Puritan and a rational mystic. which talk about like opposites collided.. I lo that. But anyway Lord of the Rings and Tolkien is often criticized as being just like way too black and white You've got the like amazingly pure Gandalf and the Hobbits in like they don't even poop. And then you've got Sauron who is just evil incarnate. and it's just it couldn't be more obvious. I don't think that's entirely fair for example that If you really dive into like what's going on here, you see that elves kind of made their own bed. They were the ones who were like, yeah, I want rings. Give us three so that we can stop things from decaying. We don't want anything to change. We want everything to stay the way we want Well, Saruman even says, look, when you when you destroyed me You destroyed yourselves. And where are they all going at the end of the book They're going to the white lands, they're not going to the black lands. they have to all leave Middle Earth for gray Haven Somewhere in between the two. A new age begins, the age of man and magic is like gone I'm not a Tolken scholar But I just want to say it's a bit more complicated than that in Leguin's fantasy, it's very rich. So like in The Wizard of Earthe, the first book There isn't a battle of good and evil. There's a battle of a wizard against a shadow Seems like good and evil, right? How does he defeat the shadow? I won't I won't I won't spoil it but he has to embrace the shadow As in he's got to accept that darkness exists. Not only does he have to accept that it exists, he has to name it. H. And what does he name this shadow that's been terrorizing the world own name I think there's something quite deep in there. That took a very long time to explain to my daughter. Because she gets the like bad guys good guys. Right. But for the good guy to have to say, I am the bad guy You're just another part of me. because at the end of the day, the shadow only exists because of the arrogance of the wizard in the first place. And so if he runs from it and denies those bad parts of themselves, the shadow gets stronger, but as he hunts it and thinks about it and considers it It gets smaller And so by embracing it and understanding and being conscious and mindful of his darker side wins. know, that is so interesting because this is something that if you go through therapy, I think that this is something that happens a lot, right? is to accept that you have a shadow side that everybody has a darker side to themselves. And it's not like, oh, you have to try and repress it or imagine it's not there. It's like you have to really emmbrace it and almost love it, if that makes sense. You'll have have to really sort of have empathy for it because that's the only way that you can really exist as a whole complete person. That's exactly what the Wizard of Earth se is an allegory The other thing that I really noticed as you were talking then, when Gryness, right? The way that we sort of think about grayness is very flat, very boring. It's almost like black and white are two extremes. It's the way that it's a dichotomy that sort of an analogy for a dichotomy. But they're definitely not boring. Black and white, neither of them are boring. Greay, the combination of the two, the land in the middle is something that feels quite dead and flat And actually I think that there is something in this because I think we fall into this trap quite often of binary thinking when we shouldn't. where actually the reality is everything is a process, everything has good and bad in it. everything has good and evil in it. The acceptance that you have both of them isn't gray at all It's just actually a much richer version of reality. Well, yeah, exactly. And so again, this is something that Leguin investigates like almost in some of her stories too much. You're like, oh my gosh, like I get it You mentioned that white light. is all the colors, all the wavelength.es. whereereas darkness is nothing Now This is opposite of what Tolstoy told us in Anac Carennaa Go on. So the famous first line there, which I'm just gonna paraphrase, is that every happy family is happy in the same way, but every unhappy family is uniquely unhappy in their own way. This became the Anacrinina principle that Jared Diamond pushed a lot, saying, lookook, you've got systems in the world. and these systems have a lot of parts and every part has to work perfectly for everything to go well Okay, so goodness is this really fragile thing that can only happen in one way One little thing goes wrong or that little thing or these two or these three, there's so many permutations of things in which everything goes wrong There you go, unhappiness is very complex, but happiness is very simple. However In physics, that's not true. In physics, there's just and it's kind of just nothing requires everything Yeah, wow, that's such a nice way to think of it. And at the end of Leguin's dispossessed, can you tell what I've been reading a bunch of There's this Brilliant line. It's almost like a throwaway line where this guy goes, man. There's all these different planets and so many different kinds of intelligent beings live on them And the sunlights on all of these worlds are all different The stars have different chemistries, different temperatures, different sizes, different orbital distances to the planets. they're all different. and yet darkness. is the same everywhere. It absolutely is. There's only one way to be dark There's only one way There are so many ways to illuminate Yeah, all right, Wh can I have that one? I'll let it go. White could have that one I think that maybe they both take a double you here. Okay I think there's another side of this, the Taoist side, which is that we need both. And I'm not a scholar of Taoism, but that's what the Yin Yang is about. It's about you've got the white and the black and they are inside each other and they're both necessary, but they're not combined into a dle gray in the lathe of heaven Le Guin basically, a guy creates, he improves the world by solving all race relations, by having everyone just be the same color Battleship gray No, thanks. There isn't any judging people based on how they look, because they all look the same In changing the world that way, a lot of the really interesting characters have gone Be they were only interesting because they were biracial, bicultural, they became who they were, their boldness, their courage, their timidity, all these interesting things about them only existed because of that tension And by getting rid of it People left are the main character because he's so boring. He realizes I am just a lump of clay. And so I'm still here. But like, This woman I loved is gone. I mean, it's the same as what we werere talking about with entropy, you know? The universe is interesting because it has variation, because it has like differences. That's the thing is allows for energy, allows for matter, allows for light, allows for everything. You know, withithout it, if you strip out the variation, all you end up with is nothingness So you sort of need both of them. And this isn't just a Taoist thing. This is also you find this in Christianity when the lion lays down with the lamb That's an important scene, not because the lion becomes lamb like or the lamb becomes lion like, but because it's a lion and a lamb both bright and burning Some of you may have noticed I'm quoting K K Chesterton here all one and a half of you. It's a wonderful essay, Paradoxes of Christianity. and he mentions this very thing that you've got both of these powerful things together, not mixed into some undifferentiated middle That's very boring and orderly, but the complexity of the opposites together. Heaven and hell Yeah. and I think Lawin puts it really well in one of the Earthseea books. She She has the wizard mention Look In order to hear the word, you need silence on either side. You need darkness to see the stars. Yeah. So picking just black or just white What does it get us? I mean Sure Let's have both But also let's secretly know the Black Oins, okay? I let I go. I don't want to make this a podcast where Michael defends the Lord of the Rings and talks about every single book Ursa Lwin ever wrote It might become that Basically It is true that in the Lord of the Rings, you've got the good guys and the bad guys that' very stark. But at the same time, just like the Yin Yang, they they're never done One never beats out the other. The story continues forever. Here's my notes where I've written down quotes that I really like And u I'll save it At one point, Sam, Frodo's friend realizes Hey, he's the one with feet like yours, right? Well all the hobbits have feet like mine. But they realize that their journey is not like a unique part of history, that it's just a continuation of a story that's been told forever. Sam asks Do the great talales never end? Frodo responds no they never end as tales, but the people in them come and go when their parts ended Our part will end later or sooner. but U the point there is that They don't even anticipate actual victory, white over black, good over evil or anything, they just anticipate that there will always be both of them together. And in the hobbit, the most courageous brave thing Bilbo does isn't anything except to just be courageous enough to explore both. Tolkien himself says that Um, when when when Bilbo ks down the tunnel to see the dragon for the first time, which everyone's afraid to do, but he does anyway and going on That was the bravest thing Bilbo ever did The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in that tunnel alone before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait What's really celebrated In literature, not just in Tolkien, but everywhere is more the confrontation than it is the the in. I mean, the end is the Like there's nothing else to do. Yeah, it's everything is a process. Every is a process. Yeah, I think this is it, right? I do think that there is something about this that is really relevant to the way that people live their own lives Because so often, I mean, I've been guilty of this myself and often still am actually, frankly, of like, oh, I'll be happy when this happens. As soon as I get to this bit, then my life will be that will be the end. that will be the sort of the conclusion I will have decided white or black, right?? It's like, no, everything is a process. You don't get to cross a finish line You have to accept that there is everything in everything. There is goodness and darkness in everything. Yeah, there is no end that you're reaching where it'll be good or bad. There's just the means to an end. All we have are those means, those efforts to try This site. and The universe knows this too. What's the brightest thing in the universe ays are Okay, the brightest things in the universe are quasars. What are quasars? Oh, don't test me, G on. I get it. Well'm asking this I'm asking this rhetorically to everyone But what is a quasar? A quasar is a black hole. Matter falls into the black hole. It can't all cram in there together. It pushes against itself, the pressures increase, and enormous amounts of energies are released, and that's a quasar Just like the yin Yang symbol, in the universe, the brightest light comes from the darkest ats all light. They're all together, not separate, not mixed, but both bright and burning and dark and void. And definitely not gray. Definitely not gray. Yeah So there we go, that's what wins. Not greatay. Not greatay. I love that. I love that. That should be a t shirt Thank you for wearing a great t shirt today, just to Yeah, I'm wearing my if Uranus, the whole planet of Uranus was compressed into this shape, it would become a black hole. This is its swort child radius. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. we've come to a conclusion Noot gray, not gray So thanks for not being gray. And thanks for watching. And as always Keep sitting in questions because look what it does. We had so much fun with this, Kelsey, and we hope that your seven year old is suitably pleased that Michael and I have We're to tal about this for nearly an hour. That's right, Kelsey, you've got a bright seven year old or maybe a dark seven year old. Or maybe both Or maybe both. D deffinitely not gray. not gray. So stay not gray. And by the way, you can send questions to the rest of science at goohanger. comot That's it. Thankk you. and we'll see you next time. Bye bye