Chapter 1: What is the significance of rainbows in human culture?
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've shown a French fry on the moon. And here I am because a couple of prides ago we did the we did the very homosexual and bisexual seagulls.
Mm hmm. Okay. It's such a good time where that 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 maligned 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 and Des Moines.
So, well, first of all, what are your associations with rainbows? 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.
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Chapter 2: How do rainbows relate to LGBTQ+ pride?
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. Mm.
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 okay 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. 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.
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.
Um, 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. Um, 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? Yeah.
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 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.
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Chapter 3: What scientific insights have been gained about rainbows?
It was like probably like 2019 or something. Because our previous logo, Real Ones Will Remember, was just like a stock image of like a hand giving the thumbs down on like a salmon background. And it was meant to emulate like Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, I think, which I haven't seen. Oh my God. Where 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 this logo. Yeah. Yeah, it looked more like it was. I don't know. I don't know. And so the rainbow is like this.
I think this idea that we both kind of intuitively recognize, I'm assuming, as like feeling more expansive and optimistic and that it's crucially going up, you know, and 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 it wrong.
Yeah.
You know, right.
Like, yeah, I love that. OK, expansive. Put a put a pin in that word. We'll 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 of rainbows maybe when I was at an elevation that are like where you can kind of start to see that circle happening.
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Chapter 4: How did historical figures contribute to our understanding of rainbows?
But like, 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 this 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 little girl aesthetic and a big part of stickers, of course, as well. Stickers. What else? Of course, the best section in Fantasia with the Pegasuses. Oh, yeah. And everybody. They had the rainbow falling in the water and then it colored the different parts of the water different colors and you could dip them up, which was so cool. And very disappointing to not be able to do it.
Yeah, I think they're just, yeah, they've 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.
OK, so but rainbows historically were these things of huge power. So like, interestingly, in all kinds of cultures, you know, before they were connected, a rainbow was often seen as some kind of bridge. It is bridge 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 the gods could walk down to earth or you could walk up to the gods.
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Chapter 5: What role does infinity play in our perception of rainbows?
Like the Tawala of New Guinea side as a bridge to the dead. Right. To the sort of afterlife in Greek myths, Iris, the messenger for the gods, maybe like a handmaiden to Hera would pass usually messages, but usually warnings down the rainbow.
Well, 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 I'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, ah, these rainbows, they're hard to track.
Yeah, they're pesky. Right, of course, the leprechaun, the pot of gold. Though the leprechaun myth, I guess, sort of was originally back in the 8th century. It was like a Celtic tradition of a water sprite.
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. But then they're in the 19th century. 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? Probs.
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...
Is he like an anti?
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Chapter 6: How did Isaac Newton's experiments change our view of light and rainbows?
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 money. 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. Yeah. 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.
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Chapter 7: What are the different colors in a rainbow and their meanings?
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 okay 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 before weather events where people die so you know mm-hmm
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. Yeah.
Which would be very difficult back in the day, I would imagine.
Yeah, without a lot of tools. 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.
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Chapter 8: How has the symbolism of rainbows evolved over time?
People just weren't sure.
Right. Yeah. 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, I mean, 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. OK, 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 Eston 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. 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. What was I doing back then? Practically nothing.
Now I need to know. I don't know the order.
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