Rainbows with Lulu Miller

Well, he's probably riding around on a Mongolian pony all day, you know, you start thinking about infinity as you get bounced around on there. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the show where we are celebrating Pride Month with rainbows and Lulu Miller. Lulu, hello. You are a great legend of podcasts and a bisexual seagull right here with us. That is my bio. I held out a fry and he flapped right over. Exactly. You shown a French fry on the moon. And here I am because a couple of Prides ago, we did the very homosexual and bisexual seagulls. Which I had such a good time with and everyone should listen to. So I thought, yeah, I could bring you some more queer wares in the form of a rainbow. And, you know, I feel a little sheepish about rainbows because I'm like, I feel like part of what's so lovely about You're Wrong About is, you know, you get into these like dark, twisted corners and maybe everyone thinks rainbows are just going to be puffy, frivolous candy. But we're big fans of puff and candy. OK, but don't worry, because I would argue rainbows, much like rats, are malign. And misunderstood. Inevitably, you know? Yeah. Like, for example, I feel like I'm Larry King tonight. Rainbows. Do they really have a pot of gold at the end? Or is it all a bunch of hokum? Let's listen to Leon in Des Moines. So, well, first, first of all, what are your what are your associations with rainbows? Any any and all quick gut? I freaking love rainbows. And, you know, the other day and I don't think I even said this to you. I was driving to my mom's house and I saw a rainbow and then I realized it was a double rainbow and it was also storming. And there was a what's the noun for a piece of lightning, a bolt of lightning? Oh, my God, Sarah. And I saw a little lightning bolt next to the freaking rainbow. Lulu. Wow. That I mean, yeah, the power, the luck. It was really cool. It was like driving into a Led Zeppelin cover. The amount of. Atmospheric things. Yeah, that's great. That's great. OK, so for you, I don't know when when what do you I don't know what do you what do you think about with rainbows? Where do you usually you see them in the wild? What do they stir in you? Well, I guess I just think they're great. And I think they often create a feeling in me of like, what did it feel? Because I was raised by two parents who like to explain things to me and generally did a pretty good job. Mm hmm. So the rainbows, they're like, well, it's because the you know, there's like moisture in the air, and it acts as a prism and it makes this big rainbow. Mm hmm. And then you can have that demonstrated to you by the fact that like, you know, I mean, we didn't have this when I was a kid. But today, you know, you have the like shimmery window film that makes little rainbows or like a, you know, piece of nicely cut glass, you know, like a sun catcher or something, I guess. So it was like something that you could observe as a kid and be like, yes, I understand this is happening on different scales and having that information. available, as opposed to like, it always makes me think now of like, what was it like for people before we knew the science of like, you know, thunder and rainbows and stuff to sort of deal with these kind of weather events, especially when your ability to survive was so dependent on what the weather was doing generally. Absolutely. Well, that's a great, that's a great place to start. So maybe we'll go back to at least some of the cultural associations, the indigenous cultural associations, the legends about, yeah, rainbows before we had, you know, the sort of more modern physicists take. But I will say like, culturally, you know, I'm just realizing there's a rainbow on the You're Wrong About logo, isn't there? Yeah, no, there is. Yeah, exactly. It's the rainbow show. How did that get there? I don't know. It was something that Mike came up with back in the day. It was like, probably like 2019 or something. Because our previous logo, real ones will remember it was just like a stock image of like a hand giving the thumbs down on the background. And it was meant to emulate like, I didn't know Joaquin Phoenix and gladiator, I think, which I haven't seen. He's a little gay boy who wants to execute hot men or whatever. And we had the logo for a while. And at a certain point, we were like, we might be outgrowing. Yeah, this logo. Yeah, it looked more like it was. I don't know. I don't know. And so the I'm assuming as like feeling more expansive and optimistic, and that it's crucially going up, you know, this idea, I always interpreted it as like, you know, if you have more information, it's like a positive thing, because it helps you grow as opposed to being like, wrong, you know, right? Like, and you don't? Yeah, I love that. Okay, expansive, put a put a pin in that word will circle back. Oh, gosh, fun fact about rainbows. They're actually fully a circle. They're not just an arch. It's just the horizon gets in the way. You know, I've seen a couple where it's you're like, you can kind of see it. Have you seen that? I've never seen it. But I guess if you are in an airplane, you could see it or like on a mountain, you'd be able to see a little bit more. Yeah, I feel like I've seen a couple rainbows, maybe when I was at an elevation that are like, where you can kind of start to see that circle happening. Yeah, yeah. But like, I guess, I guess just culturally, I mean, they're often I think they have become, you know, unicorns, my little pony, you see them on a cereal box. They're a little like frivolous vibes. Well, and we also have the 20 teens when interestingly, we had the sort of like unicorns and rainbows coded sort of wave of I guess, aesthetics. And yeah, it's hard to even define in retrospect. It's kind of like we kind of said something it was a unicorn if it was just like magenta. Yeah, which is interesting. But like Lisa Frank trapper keeper. Yes. Yeah. The best section in Fantasia with the Pegasus is Oh, yeah. And everybody they had the like, rainbow falling in the water. And then it colored the different parts of the water different colors, and he could like dip them up, which was so cool. And very disappointing to not be able to do. Yeah, I think they're just they Yeah, they become like a part of cartoon aesthetic, too. And a little but a little I think a little frivolous, a little, you know, girlish, sugary saccharine. Yeah, well, anything associated with little girls is considered to be dumb in American culture. Because of our view, yes, of young women. Okay, so but rainbows, historically, were these things of huge power. So like, interestingly, in all kinds of cultures, you know, before they were created, you know, like, you know, the rainbow was often seen as some kind of bridge, it is shaped, it's bridge shaped, and it's, you know, kind of goes from sky to earth or looks like it does. And so in Norse mythology, rainbows were seen as like a literal bridge that you could, you know, bridge from the gods. You could, you could like walk the gods could walk down to earth or you could walk up to the gods. Like the to all of New Guinea side as a bridge to the dead, to the sort of myths, Iris, the messenger for the gods, maybe like a handmaiden to Hera would pass, usually messages, but usually warnings down the rainbow. Well, that Yeah, I mean, that's just practical. And I guess when you see a rainbow in the distance, like you do, because of course, when I was a kid, you know, my dad be like, Oh, Sarah, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And then he'd be like, Oh, my God, it looks like it's ending in our house. And then you'd be like, Yes. Yeah. And then you're like, Where'd it go? And he's like, I don't know, I guess it was in another house. And you're like, Oh, my God, it's ending in our house. And then you're like, Oh, my God, it's ending in our house. And you're like, Oh, my God, these rainbows. They're hard to track. Yeah, they're, they're pesky. They're right. The leprechaun, the pot of gold, like, though the leprechaun myth, I guess, sort of was originally back in the eighth century was like a Celtic tradition of a water spray. Wow. Yeah, that's a long timeline for leprechauns. But they're so small. They live longer. Yeah. And they I guess were originally much more like the horror movie leprechaun. They were like very sinister, like their origin was in trying to drown a king. Oh, but then they're in the 19th century there. Well, maybe he had it coming. You know, I don't know. Oh, I'm sure he did. I mean, a Celtic king in the 700s props. But then he like got more sort of softened in the 19th century, and his pranks became less deadly and more like, you stole the bacon. Or like, see, like an anti. Yeah, yeah, sure. Like a brownie helps around the house. And he does a little mischief around the house. He's like a little Irish poltergeist. Yes, totally. And but then there was this sort of, I guess the idea of the pot of gold really kind of blossomed, like, when sort of Irish Americans were facing poverty. And it was this idea that like, maybe you could get some luck like this, like need for a pot of gold. If you see the rainbow, you might have some gold. You're like, where's that fucking leprechaun? So it's the idea that when there's a rainbow, there's a leprechaun nearby, and you got to find him and get his pot of gold somehow. That's Yeah. All right. Is a pot the best way to carry gold? Because it feels like the pot is already a little heavy. That's a great question. Already pretty heavy. You know, he should have had he was originally he was a cobbler. So like he could have had a shoe bag. Right. Or a quilt. But sorry, that was my leprechaun digression. But the point is, like, yeah, that was good for a long time. You know, for cultures all over the world, a rainbow was like a very powerful thing. And it could mean, you know, storms ahead or some kind of divine intervention. It was often a bad omen. Yeah. Well, that makes sense, because I feel like it happens when like crazy weather is on the way a lot of the time. Yeah. And then another weird thing was like, again, in all in a lot of not connected indigenous cultures, there was this this idea that if you pointed at a rainbow, your finger could rot off. Oh, no. Yeah. And just this idea of like, I think the point is, like, it's a powerful, sacred thing. Be careful of how you interact with it. Right. And so I just I just loved. Finding that out. Maybe don't put it on all those stickers. Yeah, because we've totally like we've like drained that power out in a lot of ways and and like stopped thinking about how they actually occur in nature, which you're right, often is around a storm, a very powerful, often deadly thing. So, OK, so that's kind of this idea that they were like this powerful bridge between worlds. Yeah. Well, they really they are really. And also between the present moment and the next. And I imagine they also occur sometimes. OK, so meaning obviously is what you make out of it. That depends on your culture, your experience. But we are here. I want to move to the substance, the material of a rainbow, because regardless of what it means to you, there have been a lot of people, a lot of scientists, philosophers over the centuries trying to really pin down what it is. Yeah, which would be very difficult back in the day, I would imagine. Yeah, without a lot of tools. And and they are these weird things because they're not quite like a tree, but they're not like they're out there because you can both point at it. But like, but then they're a little like it's very hard to understand. Like, are they basically one of the debates was, are they out? Is it out there or is it in here? Like, is it a product of the mind? Oh, like a mirage or like a even like a dream? Or is it like a tree? But then it's not like a tree because you get like. It was like this pesky people just weren't sure. Right. Now that you ask that, I'm like, well, what is it actually? Because it is like light, which is a product of the sort of range in which we see. So, yeah, it's totally tricky. So that's I'm going to most of what I'm going to tell you today is going to kind of build us toward answering that. Great. Okay. What is it exactly? What's a freaking rainbow? What is a freaking rainbow? Okay. So one of our first earliest heavy hitters to weigh in on the matter was Aristotle. Of course. Hello, Aristotle. Yeah. And he was big team XO Estin. Greek for it's out there. Like it's out there. I think it's I think it is matter. The rainbow is out there. Was Aristotle Socrates a student? Does it go Plato, Socrates, Aristotle? Sarah, you're probably going to know that more than me. I do know that he was publishing on rainbows in like the mid 300 B.C. times. Good for him. That's great. I don't know. What was I doing back then? Practically nothing. Now I need to know. I don't know the order. I always. Okay. Yeah. Look it up for me. I got a cat here. Yeah, it was Socrates, then Plato, then Aristotle. Oh, wow. So Aristotle's the baby. So Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle. And then like, isn't one of them fake or something? But I don't know. Okay. I guess no. To quote real genius in the immortal last words of Socrates, I drank what? Insert a little rim shot there. Okay. Okay. So student of student Aristotle. Yeah. His basically his idea was like. Important Greek dude. Important Greek dude was like, okay, I think here's what a rainbow is. I think that this I think sunlight. Is a pure white substance. And that should it hit a patch of impurities in the air, like mist or dust or something, you know, an impurity of some sort. Yeah. That the light gets tinted or muddied into these colors. And so for him, basically the idea of like, you see a rainbow after rain because there's all this mist in the air. And so the pure white light gets muddied and like disguised and tinted. I mean, that seems basically accurate to my understanding. I think I'm on the same technical level as like a very smart person living over 2000 years ago. Yeah. So my relationship to science. It's a very good guess. And like, it's devil in the details of the way in which he's going to be off is like the difference between so much of our modern technology. So he is close. Right. Because it feels like there's like these concepts that recurrence in these kinds of, you know, periods of science. Where you're like, well, you're right about the outcome, but the logic by which you think that happened is a product of your time. So is that accurate for this? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's a stunning guess for the times. It's a totally great guess. Yeah. Like, I guess we read Little House on the Prairie and there's a part where everyone gets malaria. Yeah. And then someone is like, everyone who got malaria ate a watermelon. That's how this malaria spread. And it's like, well, yeah, no, but I mean, how? How are you going to know? But how are you going to know? I know. Yeah. Just take out the melon part. And maybe when you go to go eat watermelon, you get bitten by a mosquito, you know? Yeah. So that was his idea. It was like tinted, muddied, changed, dirtied, something like that. It's been adulterated. Adulterated. Adulterated light. And so then, you know, throughout that kind of that idea is going to stick for centuries, for a long time. It's pretty much the way. I don't get as much credit in the rainbow history as I think he should, who's a medieval Persian scholar, Nasir al-Dun al-Tusi. And this guy was like Da Vinci pre Da Vinci. Like he was an intellectual giant. And you could do a whole year wrong about him. I don't know a ton, but I just did kind of like a deep dive. Oh, I would love to do a math year wrong about. I would be so out of my depth. But this guy is like, okay, let me send you. Can I? Can I send you just what he looks like? Because he was. Yeah, he's cute too. On the 700th anniversary of his death, he got an Iranian stamp. And he just, yeah, well, let's just picture him because he's, okay, let me. He's so smart and so ahead of his time. And it's just, I just want to like consider him for a brief moment. Okay, so let's give him a face. And I'm kind of thinking about this guy for a totally different reason right now, which will be worth the digression, I hope. Oh, yeah. I'm always willing to try. Well, yeah, he looks like Michael Gambon. Or like, he looks like. Wait, who's the main Roy? Logan Roy. Roy Roy. Oh, yeah, he's got Logan Roy. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But maybe a little younger. He looks exactly like Logan. Oh, fabulous beard. Which, yes, is very hot to me. Yeah, everyone knows that Brian Cox. Would be sexy to go on a rubber boot hunting weekend with. We all know this. Yes. Okay. So have you seen him as Hannibal Lecter? It's like the most overtly gay portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, which I think is saying something. In my opinion. Okay. I will take other analyses. Okay, so I'll do Nasir al-Duna al-Tusi. So he was born in 1201. And like he. He is going to basically become the forefather of trigonometry. And then he's also going to be huge in astronomy. He publishes all these star charts, these astronomical atlases that will be used for hundreds of years. And he's like, also does all this stuff on ethics. So he's just. He's just inventing math right now. Yeah, he's just inventing math and he's doing it by watching the world. Like he figured out a lot of this stuff by watching stars and observing them. That's really cool. And you know what? I always kind of like. I always liked trigonometry. Did you like trigonometry at all? I think that's a fun one. I did. I was going to say I did. What did you like about it? Well, I guess that it's like an actual thing that I care about, which is triangles and how tall things are. Yeah. And it was like it felt like a secret code. It was like puzzle vibes. It was just like you do this, you do this and then it works. There's something satisfying. Whereas calc suddenly got so abstract that I that it kind of started to short circuit me. And I never got that far. Yeah. Yeah. That was when my school let you quit math. And I was like, thank you. Good night. Cool. Great. Love a hypotenuse. It's been fun. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so he's just this like incredible thinker and he's doing it at a time of incredible upheaval. So he's like for about a decade he's working in this place that sounds incredible. It's like an intellectual castle. It's like a library across the castle called Alamut. And there's all these visiting scholars and he's teaching. And then comes the Mongolian invasion. Yeah. And they smash it. They smash the castle. and it's at this point Genghis Khan's grandson who legu uh and anyway and but okay it's making me think about institutions getting absolutely smashed by like um yeah like right now yeah okay okay so like science getting like totally smashed so but so then instead of just like crying and bemoaning the state of the world this guy our guy I'll do I'll do an L2C our astronomer what does he do he joins Khan's army he like joins the army but then he ends up getting really close to him and convincing him to build an even fancier scientific observatory castle thing god how did he work that though how do you like sidle up and be like hey I mean I realize it would take a while is it like a dread pirate roberts type situation yeah and he yes and he like I guess stroked his ego enough to be like this will be such a good like you built anyway so then he built an even but so just instead of being like you hate science he was like I think you really love science and then he built this incredible observatory and that's where he observed all these planetary movements which helped him uh write this thing called the 2c couple which like talks about how a circle moves within a circle looks like a line I'm not quite sure but that helped him pave the way for the realization that the earth is not the center of the world and those observations many scholars believe made their way to a guy named Copernicus yeah okay so this is a man who is like not afraid to look at the scary like just like hard to understand stars things like that he's like listen Gagas Khan you can't stop science you can't none of us can yeah okay so but what are we talking about today rainbows so he also you know he's this like I'll think about anything stars cool trigonometry great math cool yeah colors let me take on colors and he basically starts like flirting with this idea that maybe there are actually infinite colors and because like infinity is this notoriously hard concept yeah I I don't know I feel terror when I think about it but so do a lot of people yeah you know what I've always thought about when I think about infinity is no tell me there's this quote from I think an Amy Tan book about one of her characters as like a sixth grader being terrified by the thought of infinity and also being equally terrified by the antithesis of it which she envisions is like the universe coming to an end like and the image is something like like a frayed tennis ball bouncing off a wall oh yeah right there's something really dreadful about that in a great way there is here's what I think about a lot and I might have mentioned it before on this show but I like really love 2001 a space odyssey I really love it when movies are boring um which to be clear I think it is trying to be on purpose god bless it um I really love the dawn of man stuff and I love the middle part which I think a lot I I for one did not really remember until I watched it more recently which is like this man traveling boringly um on a commercial flight to the you know airport just outside the moon the moon base and then traveling to the moon and the thing that he's dealing with is a secret project because they found this monolith on the moon which is the same one that we saw um in the first sequence which shows up and you know early man or you know Lucy figures out how to use weapons and it's like this big big moment as you would imagine and it's also like interesting on the subject of innovation because I feel like as you're talking about this like there's this very sort of like American history book way and also I'm sure you know very British way of teaching history that's like and then one man out of all the men one man who happened to be well-bred and well-educated thought of something and he thought by jinx and and that's how science works as opposed to like a lot of people in different places noticing things you know often somewhat simultaneously or you know innovation sort of layering on innovation in a way where like nothing is entirely one person's idea I think most if not all of the time but you know but this is how it works with eight with the apes yeah in the movie yeah what I like about the boringness of it all is well a I just think that it's kind of nice to be forced to sit and look at things for that long it's not that long but it feels longer and that also that the middle part is then we're going to the moon to see this monolith where these guys in space suits like stand in front of it and take cheesy pictures of this monolith they found and then this like high-pitched ringing starts and the premise of that apparently is that which I don't think you could necessarily figure out just by watching it um is like what if the monolith is like a baby gate that's been placed there on the moon to tell the aliens or some something somebody god question mark aliens god same diff as far as the movie is concerned that humans have like figured it out enough to get to the moon and that we're ready for the next thing um and I guess I don't know I guess I love that idea for some reason because it implies this sort of like I don't know this idea of this almost if if I keep calling it a baby gate it's because I'm envisioning it as like alien mommy out there being like look at you and like watching humanity grow like you think you've traveled so far right and we've just gotten to the bottom of the stairs and we're still at the bottom of the stairs and there's also something so nice about that because earth is really special and it's where all our stuff is and there aren't really other planets like it that we're ever going to be able to get to before we destroy this one you know and so I think I don't know I think it's just like we have there's a sort of maybe like spasming capitalist idea right now of like well we'll just get a new hotter younger planet you know it'll all be fine and it's like no we're little babies we barely understand the universe we're in like we're so we we we're at the baby gate and we need to really you know yeah I don't know I just think it's so nice that everything is so much bigger than us I'm I'm at a moment in my life where humanity is behaving so badly that I'm like it's so great that we're that we're so um that we know so little about the shape of things yeah so in that way does does the concept of infinity this this greatness of space and time and even knowledge like is it comforting or what's your you know what I think is that I think infinity is scary because it so eludes our perceptions and maybe at this moment I'm like it's so great that there is so much truth and reality out there that eludes our ability to perceive it because our perceptions as humans we're really having so much trouble yeah like our our intentions keep like returning us to the same messes if the universe were within our perceptions it would be really tiny yeah totally yeah yeah yeah yes or something I don't know it's just nice it's and it's it's humbling and I don't know anyway that's my digression everyone give 2001 a space odyssey a try it's also as my mom and my ninth grade English teacher would have you know a movie that can envision no role for women in the future aside from being stewardesses and that's also very true maybe some maybe that ape was a girl probably not but I can think so can I do one more digression in the digression in the digression yeah yes always okay so you talked about the tennis ball thing and the this is what's called the golden mean yeah okay so the the fear of the opposite infinity of infinity which is like the teensiest speck of everything maybe you could argue is that yeah and that that reminds me I just wanted to read a poem by Marie Howe yeah because she writes about this that that it's often called like the speck is often called the singularity which is just like before we were this infinite thing we were like everything pressed together and I just think it's a really beautiful reframe of that terrifying opposite of okay so I'm just gonna read it yes it's not very long okay so Marie Howe it's how it's called this it's called the singularity do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were so compact nobody needed a bed or food or money nobody hiding in the school bathroom or home alone pulling open the drawer where the pills are kept for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you remember there was no nature no them no tests to determine if the elephant grieves her calf or if the coral reef feels pain trashed oceans don't speak English or Farsi or French would that we could wake up to what we were when we were ocean and before that when earth was sky an animal was energy and rock was liquid and stars were space and space was not at all nothing before we came to believe humans were so important before this awful loneliness can molecules remember it what once was before anything happened can our molecules remember no I no we no one no was no verb no noun yet only a tiny tiny tiny tiny dot brimming with is is is is is all everything home i love that so much isn't that beautiful yes that's so beautiful yeah yeah and i i don't know i i feel that and like i don't what if because like there's all these things that kind of as you're telling the rainbow history that started off as folklore and then often you know and often too science is like no that's insane right right but often it's like as well there's but often as well there's there's you know some kind of finding where it's like yeah this thing that people always said and often that like indigenous people always said and that then you know colonizers were like no that's silly we're going to act in ways that will kill us and all of you too and that of course science then later supported as having you know as being proven by things that we didn't have the ability to conceive or analyze sarah don't steal my ending oh i won't i won't i won't i can't i'm backing away i recently touched an electrified fence without really thinking about it it was very low voltage it was around a bunny paddock but i was looking right at a sign that said do not touch electric and i was like i'm just gonna rest my hand i would not have lasted long in in the past um what did you feel very little okay you know but enough enough to jump back i was like oh shit and that's the feeling of i'm not supposed to be touching that okay but anyway but my thought hearing my thought hearing that poem and this is like me bearing my soul to you but that's what you know this show is about is um that like what if in some far-off scientific finding there's evidence that you know love is not just a pro-social impulse that we need to feel in order to raise young and etc and protect ourselves from predators and each other and also i think i was talking about coyotes i've thought about that a lot and really come to the the conclusion that like as much as we like to visualize ourselves as being alone we really thrive in packs and i think a lot of our trouble has come from not knowing what group we belong to or having any group that we belong to yeah and craving a group missing it yeah and then creating groups out of you know hate or whatever or whatever we can find and apparently you know mutual fear is like we'll put you together quickly but then you know but then the goals that you have will be destructive and and the sort of anyway that's a whole conversation wait but what were you saying love what if love wasn't about lions but what if love what if love is like not just all those sort of practical things that of course make sense but also this sort of like collective atomic memory of this time when we were all one thing you know that's so beautiful why the heck not it might be it might be and that feeling of reunification like those little molecules glimmering and welcome each other back i like it i like that i'm thinking a lot lately about just sort of like what it means to approach life as a universalist and to see all religions is like yeah you know because like i think that like the same way that we can't conceive of of the universe it's you know any kind of faith that isn't based on controlling other people i think is um you can see them all grasping at the same thing yeah that might be getting too much into my personal um spiritual journey but but we're talking about rainbows i mean it's inevitable probably that we get here no but i think that like i mean i personally have had in the last five years or so a massive like absolute change in what i think the job of a reporter is which was going into it i mean i now admittedly going into it i didn't have any journalistic training and i came into it through a weird side door of loving story so for a long time i was like the goal is to find a story find an amazing story find a story find the story make it and then like as i came to come up around incredible reporters and and people who really kind of did go to j school and do think about it in other ways i came to see how like story is often the the enemy because you know stories about like cutting off details and disfiguring reality to make a nice narrative and right that actually like i do think increasingly my job and i'm not good at it but what i'm at least trying to do now is to like capture more and more complexity and then just like present that in a digestible way so obviously there's but i do think and that is why i like to go back to you know just like what have religion said what have traditions said like science doesn't have a monopoly on truth to really do good science let's look at all kinds of different things and so i i do think you know people always talk about braiding indigenous wisdom and i think that's just such a profoundly amazing way to like get a deeper and more accurate understanding of of nature and science so so i i think you're you're you you're you you church dreams uh your universalist vibe is is all it's like it's not just good for spirituality but i think it's very good for science like very very good oh yeah nice okay but so okay but so you're but the concept of infinity is where we kind of left off so this idea of like a lot of people especially before we even had it well termed linguistically and mathematically like it was this idea that was that was frightening like you know aristotle i guess apparently like absolutely rejected the idea of an actual infinity he believed you could count forever like he was like okay maybe there are infinite numbers but i i think the universe is finite so he was like a strict as i understand a strict finitist and there's just this idea of like thinking about infinity has really broken a lot of people yeah and there's there's a very famous case of this scientist george cantor he made he like was obsessed with the a certain kind of infinities this idea of like infinite infinities and he basically glimpsed that truth he published on it but he it really broke him like he went mad this is like when he before acid had been synthesized and he had to just do it yourself over years of study yeah you just you just had to think about and there's it's sort of apocryphal that he took his life it looks like he he probably died of a heart attack but in an in an asylum well and also it's kind of the same thing like there's no point of no return if there's you know no real mental health availability but infinity doesn't help it doesn't and the george cantor thing like a why i actually couldn't find these notes but a while back i looked into him and i did i was like i'd watch this documentary called it was a bbc documentary called dangerous knowledge and it was about like knowledge that drove scientists mad so many people watched that thinking it would be about sex somehow and then it was a math documentary yeah no and not at all and that's that documentary kind of makes it a little bit too much look like it was a suicide and i think that was a misstep but then i looked into the stuff and it's like he was trying he was writing these letters like trying to he's like i want to stop thinking about this it is but i can't and so i think there was like the heart attack may have done him in but he really ended up in an asylum and thinking about infinity was really a torment but like an addiction so anyway my point is thinking about infinity is hard yeah aristotle didn't want to do it george cantor went mad but our guy back was just like bring it on i want to think about it well he's probably riding around on a mongolian pony all day you know you get you start thinking about infinity as you get bounced around on there you do and you look at the stars so he was i think really ahead of his time not only did he like predict the copernican shift or pave the way for that idea uh he uh also was like i think that there are in colors there are like infinite pathways of mixing them and he just was like more into this idea of sort of there might be infinite colors in the rainbow and but the idea it didn't really take off it didn't get traction aristotle with this idea of like this a more kind of rigid idea about light and and rainbows took hold for a long way but he was i don't know i just want to give him his due because he was kind of ahead of his time so okay so then we jump ahead we're going to get there we're we're we're coming to the end of our scientific story don't worry i'm look i'll go on whatever i'll go on like a an indiana jones itinerary of scientific story with you don't worry about it great all right well pull out your rope because we are swinging to 1665 england is uh a plague sweeps the land and everyone kind of had to go into lockdown i don't know if you remember anything about that you know we had we had a cable and stuff and i mentioned that they didn't they did not yeah and so a young a young man named isaac newton not yet a sir i knew newton was gonna turn up hello here he comes here he comes walking down the street just the busiest virgin that you ever did need hey it's isaac newton an apple didn't fall on his head here comes isaac newton don't try and jump in his bed i'm sorry to make so many jokes about him being a virgin i just don't know that much about his life i'm i'm feeling like he probably was at this time he's a young man he he's crashing for lockdown he goes home as as many a millennial did and he's like i'm gonna go home i'm gonna go home to live with his parents yeah in the english countryside it's hard to picture him without a wig it is hard i wonder if because we've only seen him in a big curly wig young isaac newton what did he look like he was very attractive i from what i remember of depictions of him quite the bro i wonder if the milkmaids were all over isaac newton and he was like let go of me he kind of looks like um you know more like kind of like kate winslet as a young as a young as a young um anyway but so he yeah okay so he's just like in the english countryside no yeah no cable no tiger king for him to watch so he just is like i don't know i picture him like tinkling the harpsichord and playing backgammon and one day he is just fumbling around with a prism i would imagine so no did you byop i did get a prism and wait i think uh not to name names because i didn't see which cat might have done this but i think verner probably knocked it off the table so wait let me look real quick Okay here it is this is like a classic triangular prism great yeah now can you i don't know if you have a window in your room yeah i'm right in front of i'm right in front of window it is a very cloudy day though okay so we might not get it but see if you can just just angle it for a second and see if you get any action or just describe what you see yeah well i get i'm not able to like bounce light through it right now but if i just sort of like look into it i can just sort of see little reflections of of details of my surroundings with little rainbows all over them oh great really you know what i mean good okay well not like rainbows all over them but like this sort of this cast of like rainbow color like i'm i'm looking into it and i can see the tree that's outside my window through it and there's like rainbow colors in the sky that i can see through the the leaves that's great okay you know faintly yeah it's very cool and i don't know if that's sort of you know historically accurate but that's okay well what when you say rainbow colors what what colors if you had to if you had to like name them what do you see well i've had a little practice in there and i would say descending from top to bottom red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet you know kind of subtly yeah some roigy bibbing around okay got it okay didn't we add or remove one or something though you have been you you are hallucinate you are you have been sold alive young young sarah marshall okay but we'll get to that so okay but but but okay so yeah myth busted myth about to be busted um but okay so isaac newton he was a very violent thing yeah he was he was doing that and um and he he saw those colors and then he eventually twisted it in such a way and it was a bright enough direct sunlight day that he also got those famous like just little rainbows on the wall you know like a little rainbow yep yeah i haven't been able to do that with this one but it was probably you know sunnier yeah at the time so okay so many people by the time isaac newton has done this many people have seen you know rainbows come out of prisms or chunks of glass and the theory again of why went back to aristotle this idea that the prism like the mist was tinting changing muddying what was your word adulterating yeah yeah adulterating dirtying pure sunlight um and so that the the rainbows on the wall they were evidence of change they were evidence of impurities of the light being changed or disguised and he thought okay well if that's true then if i take a second prism and i pass the rainbow parts through a second prism you'll get even more tinted light so maybe you'll get different colors or darker color i'm not sure what exactly but it will change it even more why does he have prisms do we know what are they for is like a household item or is it a school thing oh that's a great question i don't know i have no idea that's interesting all right we'll we'll return to that in a future show the listener can write in and tell us so yeah so he does so he takes a second one and again if aristotle's right it should get tinted even more but then what happens any guesses oh oh my god i don't know does it make a uh does it cancel it out yeah it did yeah it goes back inside the rainbow disappears interesting and so what he the first man in 1900 years to put two prisms next to each other yeah although i guess that glass making is a relatively recent thing anyway yeah so basically what he realized is look when i see the colors of the rainbow this is not evidence of impurities this is evidence of the light's ingredients these are the colors that make up a beam array of what what appears to be pure but for some reason isn't like when those all when those all smoothie together they make white light yeah god that's cool yeah it was a really great and that's like and that is a wild leap to make too totally totally and like the way that i've heard we he has not yet figured out that it's waves but just to jump ahead for a second like the way that i've heard it described is that like what a prism does or what a little raindrop does up in the sky which is how you get rainbows is that like the lights coming down it has all the light that's coming out of the prism and it's like all these different colors inside red is kind of these slower waves violet are these faster waves medium greens and stuff yellows and they're all kind of like a shopping cart is like the ray of light is like a shopping cart full of colors and when that shopping cart that's so cute hits a corner like hits a prism hits a curb all the ingredients just kind of the oranges and the red apple you know whatever they all toss out they just like wow they break out because the different speeds like spill out at slightly different angles that's wild that we can do that yeah you know who would think that you could use a piece of glass and disrupt a light wave to that extent and then put it back to put it back in yeah yeah and so he so he this like will eventually i mean this will pave the way for massive breakthroughs in technology development of lasers fiber optics even telescopes will get all kinds of things will get better but there's one last thing he needed to do which was count uh the colors in the rainbow which you already you did for us and so what he eventually he kind of at first was like maybe five no no i think it's seven and that's how we get roy g biv red orange yellow green blue indigo violet okay but the thing the little like my favorite part of this is like he didn't get there because he was like closely squinting through a magnifying glass or using rulers he just was like seven's a really pretty number because that is so him it's so classic newton vibes so he because there's how many notes in a traditional western classical scale oh do re mi fa so la ti do is that seven seven and at the time there were seven known planets and there were seven known metals gold silver mercury copper iron tin lead now there's over 90 but in newton's day there were how many days in a week seven oh my god how many continents were not like called at that time seven so he just seven how many c's at the time seven yeah and so it was like this science it was like this nature this mystically pure number like he he it just there's just this idea that there were like these accordances like things move in sevens and so he was basically like musical scale seven color seven that feels good that feels it's gotta be seven it's gotta be seven and that thing like was just pressed into textbook i mean like i was taught roy jimmy for sure oh yeah i don't know if i was taught it in school but it was like my parents taught it to me it's like basic human knowledge yeah and that it just is those are the seven colors that make up the rainbow that make up light case closed case not closed oh my god we gotta reopen the case so we did a we did a terrestrials about for kids about these concepts they weren't didn't go into all this stuff but we did alan my amazing collaborator and friend and musical genius made this little thing about roy g biv okay so i'm just gonna play you this okay so this is the moment of discovery and this is like the industrial lie getting printed into our minds all the colors of the rainbow all the colors of the rainbow red orange yellow green blue indigo violet red orange yellow green blue indigo violet are these all the colors of the rainbow red orange yellow green blue indigo violet red orange yellow green blue indigo violet red orange yellow green blue indigo violet red orange yellow green blue indigo violet are these all the colors of the rainbow all of them all of them are these all the colors of the rainbow red orange yellow green blue indigo violet red orange yellow green blue indigo violet blue? red orange yellow green blue indigo violet red orange yellow green blue indigo violet are these all the colors of the rainbow all the colors of the rainbow the point is it got like it was this handy way to remember colors in the rainbow that was maybe so handy it just like got sometimes things are too handy yeah yes because the truth is sometimes less catchy also i was never totally clear on the difference between indigo and violet if i'm being honest here same i think that's a big i think indigo is like a bit of a um emperor's new clothes like is that a thing um but but so so this goes on and it's kind of this idea that like light has been we have cracked the rainbow we have literally cracked it open seen its insides it's seven colors cool but then there were like a lot of painters and poets and like stoners all over the world who weren't fully convinced that this was accurate so keats very famously wrote this poem like being like how dare like like he basically accused newton of having killed the magic of the rainbow oh there's a line about how he like dared to quote unweave a rainbow um by like reducing it into these cold colors and then good like had all these kind of poetic theories about like well when i feel purpley the purple is different than the purple i see like no colors come from feelings and then turner the the storm painting guy like painted all these rainbows with all these tons of colors as kind of like a fu and just people being like how do we know my blue is your blue and are we so sure like contour like colors are concrete and like really how is my blue your blue these are worthwhile questions right for sure yeah and the only way we can determine is by describing our blues to each other probably a hundred percent um and so then along comes uh another bro a big bro of 10 kids in a british family he's a med student named thomas young another brit and he's like you know doing your classic he's dissecting the eyeball of an ox as you do and he's wondering about like how how eyes focus and process light for science or if you're salvador dali either one yeah exactly or no been been well who did the eyeball slicing maybe i don't know oh one of those dudes one of those yeah but wondering like what's the connection between of course a painter would wonder that what is the connection between the colors out there and what i perceive and this eye seems to be the medium you know through which the interface through which all those things happen it was both of them they both did the eyeball movie good talk and and so thomas young eventually devises an absolutely ingenious experiment that we are not going to go into because that is too complicated it's the double slit experiment which is a whole quantum mechanics realizing white that light is both a particle and a wave and it's like a total universe changer but along yeah come back and explain that one to me on another show because i would like to hear more about how light works and stuff yeah i would too but you might need somebody else because i have done like a whole piece about quantum mechanics and i still don't understand it but light is not just part that what you need to know is light is not just part of light behaves like a particle and like a wave like an ocean wave like a sound wave like a wow and that's the big insight there is that rainbows that the that the colors within a beam of light coming from the sun are oscillating at all these different waves and the way that our eyes process those waves and send information to the brain is that we like perceive those those wavelengths as different colors and so the low long slow waves we tend to see as red the middle kind of medium waves we see as greens and the really fast ones we see as violet um but also on on every rainbow on either side our way is light we cannot see ultraviolet infrared microwaves things like that that's just like um and where we divide it into colors like the waves are just like the ocean they're just like some big ones some medium ones where we divide it depends on the person where we draw the line and so the poets the painters nasir al-dun al-tusi our guy this idea that like the lines are subjective like there aren't seven concrete colors there are really right there are really infinite colors in the rainbow goddamn and so sort of like what colors we see where we divide the lines which ones appear strong which ones we happen to see maybe because of associations or moods like the little conclusion there is that you know the all those long ago traditions were right that like the rainbow sign it is a bridge it's out there and it's in here it's like a bridge between worlds it's a bridge between an inside and outside kind of being like a thing which i think is why they they are so like slippery and wonderful wow so that's the that's the story of the rainbow ah that was so good and once we figured it out that rainbow that the colors of light are that are waves and are these kind of infinite colors then we could like discover new elements based on what frequency of waves they were emitting or refracting so like helium thallium gallium cesium and we could discover new things in space because we figured out stars emitted radio waves that we couldn't see we could um invent like the radio techno passing information over radio waves technologies like lasik so like once we figured out that it's just been we you know it's like so much that we can do wow and i think in a real way like you know this rainbow again that we see is so frivolous was like the site of serious scientific contention that finally yeah like rumbled and built to insight that that truly like really really freaking transformed our world just by people wondering what that pretty thing was in the sky and this phenomenon that we kept being confronted with and trying to understand and that drove us toward all these other realizations maybe yeah yeah that's so cool yeah so that's my rainbow okay i have to end end i have a choose your own adventure of three options okay oh my gosh okay okay option one is like so this sat i don't know if you are experiencing this but in i got into radio because i hate like visual judgments i think it's a sacred thing to just be voices but increasingly they're like make videos post instagram reels and do things i will never find it necessary for people to see my face while i'm saying something yeah for them to listen to me say something you know okay but i've been like fighting fighting fighting that but then i finally on this piece i gave in to like um a music video about the concept of infinite color so i could show you that it's a minute long well that's a really good reason to give on into something yeah i was like you can't beat them let's really join them so there's that that's door number one door number two is um we could do a little pride coda just about the rainbow becoming the on the flag the rainbow being the the pride the gay private leg the queer private flag or we could do a butterfly coda of just that oh boy butterflies are shady as hell all right well i want to have um a link to the infinite color video and i think we have to end on the pride coda and then if we have time i i want just one little tiny butterfly fact on top please perhaps okay perfect okay okay okay so the the pride coda is like how did this how did this rainbow become a part of the queer pride flag uh become the queer pride flag so there have been you know different emblems of of queer pride throughout the the era there was you know a time where the the pink triangle which was on the nazi uniform was reclaimed as like a gay pride thing there was i guess oscar wilde had a whole green carnation situation there were other things but in 1978 um we're in the middle of a time when we're in the middle of a time when we're in san francisco and harvey milk asks his friend gilbert baker a gay activist and also someone who's very big into tailoring seamstressing what is a male seamstress a seam seamster i guess a seamster and then a female teamster is a team stress so there's gonna be a big gay pride parade it was called like the gay freedom day parade and he was like gilbert you love fabrics you're always making you're always sewing things for our drag queen friends like can you just make some kind of fun flag for a banner basically for the parade and i guess he'd made banners for harvey milk before that are just like you know whatever uh gay rights now just like that kind of thing and he was like but can you make us like a thing and so gilbert baker worked with this um woman who would call herself the tie-dye queen uh lynn sogerblum who was very good at like color and she was like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know and they came up with the idea of well let's use a rainbow and the reason why was yes it's beautiful and also it represents the diversity of sexuality and genders in the queer experience but mainly the fact that it was found in nature because queerness is natural and this idea that it's like this thing that encompasses the beauty the celebration and the diversity and naturalness of and so each color had its originally it had eight colors it now has six but it also used to have like this this great pinky magenta pink and a very cool uh turquoise which they then took out because of like it was hard to reproduce those with dyes or something but um each color had its own sim like its own symbolic thing for like something it expressed about the queer experience so pink was like for hot sex or just sex but you know hot sex uh and so it was like it was like a was about serenity, and they each-- I can do all the colors if you want or not, but they each had a different thing. That's beautiful. Yeah, and so with, like, Lynn Sogerblum, they like he felt very strongly he wanted all the dyes to be natural, organic dyes. And so they did this like extensive dyeing practice and they had something like 30 people working on those first few flags. And they stitched them all together. And Gilbert Baker was like, oh, I don't want to make this in my house. I want to go make it in this queer community center because it's like the day it will be born. And he didn't know it was going to catch on. There were other flags, other things, but it caught on. And I think really took on big power because there's only a few months later that Harvey Milk was assassinated. And like he had been the one to request, you know, let's have these flags, let's have a parade. So then it just it really took off. And then, you know, and I think some people are like, and rainbows tacky, I don't care. But and then it just continues to evolve. And in 2017 in Philly, they added for for a queer pride parade there. They added the black and brown stripes for for LGBTQ people of color who had like. Are sometimes left out of the experience. And then a year later, it became the progress pride flag, which you've probably seen, which has that like arrow, which also has white, blue, pink and black and brown stripes. Also for trans individuals, communities of color. And I'm sure it will continue to evolve. And it's still like, you know, again, we think of rainbows as like cheesy and happy, but it is this apparently Gilbert Baker when he made it, he had been noticed a couple of years before had been the American Bicentennial. It's been 1976. And so there were American flags everywhere. And he had been really thinking about flags and how they express like a peoplehood and a power. And I was just I don't know if you saw this news, but a year ago, like there was a ordinance that came down from the federal government to like paint over all rainbow roads and sidewalks. And the the big like rainbow road outside the Pulse nightclub, which had been this memorial. Got in the middle of the night, got painted over black. And I feel like it's just this it's still a symbol like the flag is evolving and I'm sure will continue to evolve and all kinds of people. I've heard people be like, oh, we need to redesign the rainbow flag. It's ugly or whatever. But I think it's like, I don't know, just the power, the the cruelty of that act. And then the sort of resistance of people kind of gorilla painting the rainbow back in Orlando is is a beautiful thing. And yeah, that's the. Rainbow. Yeah. Yeah. And it is. I mean, you know, and of course, I think for a lot of people and, you know, maybe more Biden administration years, there was this feeling of like, yes, it's so great that we're painting pride flags on things in a way to avoid, you know, making real infrastructural change. But then I think like when those got taken away. Yeah, right. The rainbow washing. Yeah. Yeah. It was like. You know, right. Don't stop doing that. Yeah. It's not walking back even farther. That was my feeling. I would take rainbow washing over rainbow blackening out. Right. Painting over. And I and I feel like kind of a I don't know, a common and I and, you know, I don't decide coming from many different motives, but I feel like people have also complained like, oh, if you put like so much on the flag that at a certain point, like, isn't it just sort of I don't know, this this kind of. Gripe that I feel like I've seen of like, at what point is there too much inclusivity? I don't think that people are really saying that out loud, but sort of I don't know, acting as if there's a little bit of absurdity to it. And I think what you're saying is making me realize that that's exactly the point is to, like, have a flag that is trying to have so much stuff on it and an acronym that, you know, as I don't know, again, like, I feel like people have been making this joke since the 90s. The like LGBTQ. Too many letters. Right. It's like, but that's the point is that it's too many letters. Yeah. Is that there's too many letters to say. And that's a good thing to be attempting to say too many letters, you know, and that like a lot of the resistance to the change in the flag is like, oh, but it wasn't that way. It's just change, change. We don't like change. Right. We keep finding more colors. I even had a little of that reaction. I was like, oh, the rainbow. It was so simple. So but then, like, if you really. Well, yeah, because everybody gets attached to things they remember and that's OK. But yeah. But then if you. If you really look at it, it's just like I do like how it's like this air, like it gives it a little arrowhead. It gives it some like, like, yes, the beauty of nature, but also like we got to fight. Yeah. And the work is not done. Yeah. But and I guess it's like if your symbols are getting busier, then that means that you're trying to embrace more, you know, and that's to I don't know, to. I think that like the American left is like a complicated thing to be a part of because there's a lot of young people coming from pretty fundamentalist backgrounds. Who have yet to get out of the mindset of purity and punishment. And you can see, you know, and Portland is famously a place where if you want to have one of the worst experiences of your life, like live with a community organizer is the joke. And it's you know, I think there's a lot of truth to it. And like, right. Like, there's a lot of like lefty communities that I have lived in and experienced the gossip of. And yet I would like I would always pretty much choose them over any alternative, you know, because I think that the kind of. Like, there's a lot of toxicity that emerges inevitably just in human relationships between people who have been through a lot. And yet if you have sort of a basic social goal of like ultimately coming back to wanting to be more expansive and wanting to embrace more and wanting to challenge yourself and wanting to build community rather than find ways to police it and who gets to have one, then like, I don't know, I think it's OK for people, especially who have. Changed their minds about a lot of things in life, which is difficult work to do to, like, struggle with how to live those values. Like, it's inevitable that people are going to struggle with that. And yet it's it's better to struggle to live good values than to just embrace horrible ones. No one's ever going to convince me of that. I have been a proud resident of Portland, Madison and West Philly. All right. I'm irretrievable. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. And like, I do think. But I do think. I think inclusivity, which was the original rainbow and which we have now learned is inherent in the rainbow, infinite ways, infinite colors. And is the move in the progress pride flag like it or not aesthetically like it is just about showing, making sure all the colors are are shown and represented. And so maybe really what the flag needs, if we really were to respect the rainbow, maybe it just needs to be a sequence. And it's like reflecting all the infinite colors of the light. Ah, QED. Beautiful. Lulu, you're so great. I love you. I love you. You're so great. Thank you. What are you up to and where can people find you? And what kind of stuff are you making for the folks? Well, definitely come check out Terrestrials, which is the podcast I make for kids and families. You don't have to be a kid or have a kid to listen as long as you don't mind me occasionally singing. And it's all about nature. We did do a rainbow. We did a rainbow episode that's called The Bridge. But another one the queers might like is one we just put out called The Forest Fairy that stars a certain indigo girl named Amy Ray talking about aphids. Very cool. That one's really cool. She she was incredible. And it leads us to like all the kind of secret harmony. It leads us to something about it leads us to the fact that plants are talking, which is incredible. And yeah, so I do that podcast about nature. And then I also am on Radiolab where we are doing science stories. And I'm working slowly chugging away at a second adult book that's all about biomimicry. That's so exciting. Which may be finished someday or may not. But either way, you know, I don't know. I think that the work you do reminds me and so many people so often just kind of like what kind of a world we're living in in the best way possible. You know, when I asked you for a little butterfly fact, may I have one? Oh, yes. OK, let me decide. Or I take an aphid. Aphid fact as well, actually, now that those are so cool. Oh, OK, I'll give you OK, I'll give you an aphid fact. That is great. So you know how we're often taught that you need a male and a female to have a baby? Mm hmm. They're trying to legislate that one, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Aphids can can reproduce without males. They can make all female societies where they reproduce. And that is called pathogenesis, where the females in a pinch or just like for most. Of the year, they just they can just reproduce without males. They basically like shoot out clones of themselves and become these big, wonderful communities of daughters and sisters and cousins and grandmas and hang out. And some of them dance. The ones we're talking about, woolly aphids are also called boogie woogie aphids. And I just think what I love about that is like nature is it's what you were saying with infinity. It's so much wilder than we think. It's like, yeah, in many species you do need a male or female, but like you don't have to. And we've seen that. In the California condor and we've seen it in certain snakes, like in a pinch, there is a pathway to create new life like that is I think more people need to be talking about parthenogenesis, like the fact that that can happen. Yeah, that alone is amazing. Like the pathway is there evolutionarily. Yes. In bugs. Yes. Even invertebrates in invertebrates in birds and in reptiles. And so I just think like that is so wild. And like, I just why is ever not just like. walking around every morning, like, "Parthenogenesis can happen." so that's your aphid fact i mean i know some people who are doing parthenogenesis you just have to pay a doctor a bunch of money to give you some hormones and harvest your eggs and stuff but it's you know it's it's so it's we're getting there and i'm just um i'm just so excited for everything that you're doing and i love being on this planet with you i love being on this planet with you thank you i can't wait to hear whatever is coming from here next that isn't me okay bye and that was our episode the original music you heard in this episode was brought to you by magpie cinema club featuring brendan liu we have a new bonus episode coming soon also on patreon and apple plus where chelsea weber smith and i are gonna read your doll mail email to your doll mail and i'll see you in the next episode sent us about the things you've made dolls out of to be clear not mail from dolls although i cannot be certain that any of those emails were not sent by dolls now that i think about it thank you to the people who helped make this show miranda zickler is our producer and editor nicole ortiz is our administrative assistant thank you to our amazing guest lulu miller please check out all of her work wherever you can find it and especially on terrestrials you can find her website and more information about her books in the show notes and most of all thank you for listening we'll see you in two weeks you