This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Tim Ashman, Johnny Hernandez, High Tech Oki. On this episode of DTNS, the essential info on Intel's new round of desktop chips, real wireless power comes to toothbrushes and what all those Apple rumors actually mean right now. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, October 16th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and coming from all of our nation's capital, your boy Chris Ashley. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Chris Ashley, thank you for coming in and kicking off the week with us, man. Perfect way to start my week. I'm not turning that down. Likewise, Netflix has expanded its cloud gaming beta test from Canada in the UK to now include US Netflix subscribers. Let's see what else is in the quick hits. Last year, Coding Help Platform Stack Overflow doubled its employee base up to around 500. But it happened right as a bunch of those AI generated code assistance tools from places like Open AI and Microsoft began appearing. And the company thought it instituted a ban on users posting answers that was using code made by generative models. And Monday, we hear that Stack Overflow has laid off 28 percent of its staff, reducing the size of its go to market organization. Correlation is not causation, of course, but it seems like coding assistance tools hit at a very bad time for Stack Overflow. Meanwhile, it's also worth noting that LinkedIn, which also is incorporating a lot of AI tools, announced a further cut of 668 jobs there, bringing its total layoffs this year to 1400. However, LinkedIn's layoffs are in R&D, so not as directly related to AI as Stack Overflows. Yeah, you never like to see it. But if there's one that makes sense, probably that one. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Bethesda's Pete Hines announced he will retire after 24 years with the company and begin an exciting new chapter. According to a post on X, the chapter will include exploring interests and passions, donating my time where I can and taking more time to enjoy life. The announcement comes after the launch of Starfield and Bethesda is also working on titles like The Elder Scrolls 6 and the upcoming Indiana Jones game from Machine Games. I believe I might call that cashing out. That sounds a hundred percent like that. No, and no shame, no shame at all. No hate at all. Yeah, well done, well earned. Head of Myang Studios, Helen Shang, announced during a live stream event that Minecraft has now sold more than 300 million copies. It was already the best selling video game of all time. It is very much still the best selling video game of all time. Number two is Grand Theft Auto 5 Distant Second Place with a hundred eighty five million reported sales. Minecraft has been stacking up those 300 million sales since it was released on May 17th, 2009. If there's ever a proven track record that Microsoft is willing to let games continue in other platforms, boom, there it is. They built it. AMD has removed its AMD adrenaline edition graphics driver after anti lag reduction methods triggered counter strikes to anti cheat system, the feature bypass CS2's engine that DLL functions, which is considered tampering with CS code and result in a ban. Users who updated to the AMD adrenaline edition, twenty three dot ten dot one update are advised to turn off anti lag with the alt L command before starting a game. There are some reports of similar issues with modern warfare two and apex legends. Valve is working with AMD to ship an update that doesn't trigger a ban and will then work on identifying affected users and unbanning them. This is a rough one right here. Yeah, it is. Especially if it happens to you, right? Yeah. Cheating is really bad in the games. Wall Street Journal reports that sources tell it Goldman Sachs is discussing internally the idea of selling off its consumer business, which among the other things operates credit cards for General Motors and its big client, Apple. Goldman has held talks with American Express about possibly buying the business, though. American Express has been critical of how Apple runs the credit card operation. Another option under consideration would be to let Apple take over more of the partnership. Apple has been acquiring smaller financial specialty companies indicating that maybe it would be preparing for something like that. It's kind of like, is that a good thing? I mean, yeah, they've done it before with other things, right? Like buying chip companies and eventually making their own chips. This is a different industry for them to be in. All right, Intel is the big news of Monday and launching its 14th January Raptor Lake refresh of desktop processors this week. And the attention is on the fact that the flagship Core i9-14900K can boost clock speeds to six gigahertz out of the box. Now, it's not the first time an Intel chip could do that. The special edition 13900KS broke the six gig barrier last year, but that was a special edition. It didn't ship in large numbers. The flagship Core i9-14th gen is going to ship in large numbers. So that's a bigger deal. The flagship gets a new AI assist baked into the extreme tuning utility or XTU, which determines the ideal core voltages, power settings and, you know, safer overclocking. And the Aurora R16 from Dell's Alienware can overclock it to 6.1 gigahertz. So you're going to be squeezing out some speed here. We got a few other notable things about the Raptor Lake, a.k.a. 14th gen Intel processors. Chris, what are they? Well, the Core i7-14700K gets an increase in efficiency cores from 8 to 12 for 20 total cores. Now, that should help with multi-threading, specifically good for some games and creative applications. They work on Intel 600 and 700 series motherboards since Intel is still using the LG A1700 socket support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 and refresh the 790 boards support DDR5, 5600 and DDR4, 3200 memory speeds. And finally, the flagship Core i9 also gets the APO, a.k.a. application optimization utility program that optimizes the CPU for particular games. Yeah, Intel says the i9-14900K can reach more than 100 frames per second in Total War Warhammer 3 while playing, streaming and recording in 1080p with ultra graphics settings. Now, keep in mind that game obviously optimized for Raptor Lake. You're not going to get that from every game, but still, that's a big old number. 14th gen desktop chips launch from retailers and system builders Tuesday, October 17th. And the pricing is generally in line with the 13th gen. We're not seeing a big price increase here. That's amazing. It's it's it's really fascinating because it's it's a refresh, right? It's not a new technology bundle or a set of technologies that they integrated. It's essentially taking the 13th gen and optimizing a lot of the the layout as well as some of the chip, chip internals. It really looks like they're going and focusing mostly on enthusiast slash gamers with this. There's a modest but you look at 13 around 13 plus percent increase in performance, but that I don't know if that's enough for someone to upgrade who already has a 13th gen or even a 12th gen core processor. What's what's fascinating is that they integrated the A.I. assist into the extreme tuning utility and having a separate separate utility application, the APO to optimize the CPU for games. It's not unlike what NVIDIA and AMD have been doing with certain GPU driver updates. So they're like the one that that triggered the anti chief earlier. But yeah, it's they're they're really focusing, at least from the from from the stuff that they've released, the details really on the enthusiast and gamer section of the market. It is smart, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, because they're going to be the early adopters. They're going to win that that they're going to be your champions. Yes. Yeah, they'll be their champions. You know, online streaming of game, gameplay, walkthroughs. They're you know, they're booming. These guys are doing really good with their content creation. And so if they're going to and a lot of them take time to make videos about the equipment they're using, I'm starting to see a lot more of those videos like here's exactly what I'm using. Here's why you know, here's where I got it and all of these things. So it would make sense for them to even take that leap and incorporate these guys. The sense I get, Roger, is that this is doing nothing to the AMD Intel race.   It's definitely if you're already in a set camp, you're probably going to stay in that in that lane. But I can definitely see an effect if someone wants to do because one of the benchmarks that Intel released was one of you can game, but they showed the performance of gaming while also full live streaming that game out. Well, so the frame for second thing. Yeah. And the idea, of course, is, hey, it's not just about gaming. It's about making money from a pastime you enjoy because they understand what you are saying, Chris. It's the creators that are driving this.  This is like, yeah, I'll go with what they have because it obviously works for them. Yeah. The one aspect that I find certainly amazing about this is how this is still a topic that people get excited about. I even heard a little excitement in Roger's voice when he was talking about this stuff, you know, because certainly, like things like cell phones have definitely taken a dip as far as new announcers are concerned. But this still seems to have that little little excitement there. Yeah, if you're at the gamer and creator end, you still need more power, right? You don't need more, a whole lot more power in your phone. You might need a better camera, you know, I mean, better battery life. But power is not a thing. You hear people who are using phones talk about too often, although creators are still doing a lot more on phones these days. So there is a little bit of talk about that. But it's desktops that where you're like pushing it to the max in a professional or even an influencer slash creator or video game setting where you need you need this that extra power. Makes sense. Speaking of power, Wired's Simon Hill has been testing true wireless power from a company called Y Charge. This is one of the companies we've talked about before on DTNS. And in the fine tradition of wireless power, it's in beta and it's being tested on toothbrushes. Likely the first experience with wireless charging you've ever had was with an electric toothbrush, right? There's the oral B ones and the other ones that that sit on a charging pad. You don't need to plug it in. You just sit it on the charging panel and it wirelessly charges just like phones wirelessly charged now. The new system from Y Charge works similarly in that you place your toothbrush on the pad to charge. In fact, I think the one that Simon Hill is using in his test is an oral B. But the pad doesn't need to be plugged in to the wall outlet. You just need to make sure that the photovoltaic cell on the pad. It's like a little solar cell can see the power transmitter. But that's where it gets interesting, right, Chris? Yeah, and that's the downside because you need line of sight. You install the power transmitter in the ceiling. So you need to cut a hole in your bathroom ceiling to install it. And you'll probably need an electrician to. Y Charge delivers two to three watts of power by infrared with a 30 foot range. This only makes sense if you have more than one device to charge. He'll use it with two toothbrushes. He also found he also he also found the system used more power than just plugging them in directly would have. Y Charge is also testing it system with all Fred smart locks. Yeah, I look at this and it's not something that's ready. Now it's a little bit of a chicken and egg, right?   So I feel like and Simon Hill mentioned this in his article, I feel like you need somebody to figure out whether it's Y Charge or somebody else to be able to how to put this in a light socket in an existing light socket. So you can just screw it into the light bulb and and then the install is easy. You can just use whatever is already in your seat. Yeah, and I'd want to be careful not to poo poo this too much because I actually like the idea of this because I'm a guy who has like I found this cool little outlet that you plug in and it has a shelf on top of it. So it expands your bathroom outlet next to your sink, but it also has a shelf so you can put stuff on top of it. And I can't tell you how many times I've hit the power cord and sent everything flying. So less cords is certainly appealing to me, but that not at the expense of new holes and I'm pretty handy. I could probably install it myself, but I don't want to. Yeah, right. That's what it's about. It's not can, but will. I actually saw this device at the last CES we were at, which I guess is 20, 20. And I was talking to the guy about it and it was a very interesting set because their setup was a model train.  And two to three watts doesn't give you a term. You're not powering up, you know, a TV with this, although it'd be kind of cool.  This would be a great way to take care of that. Also, if you wanted to do something where you needed to charge some relatively low power devices, whether it's like a non-smart phone or phone, like a door lock, or a video doorbell, maybe something like that. You could get away with not having to wire that yourself into your home, right? If you could just like light a side door lock season, I'm done, right? That would simplify so much of that. Or having to worry about changing out batteries and stuff. Because yeah, I'm a big proponent of smart locks. Just swapped out the one I had at the front door, but still, you know, that one downside is powered by batteries, you know? The doorbell is pretty easy. If you can run the current doorbell wire in there, but the smart locks are a bit different story. Yeah, two to three watts is not going to charge your smartphone either. So I'm not worried about putting this in the smartphone, but I could absolutely see this charge a battery powered wireless charger, right? So it's constantly over time making sure that wireless charger is charged. So when I do put my phone down on it, then it charges up. I mean, it's not ideal. You kind of just wanted to charge everything wirelessly without having to put it on a pad. But that might be worth it because then that frees you up to put that charging pad in places where you don't have to worry about running a cord and all that. I see once you get past the chicken, the egg problem, how this can catch on with a lot of the examples that Roger and you are talking about. It's just a matter of how you how you get people to start using it, how you get over that hump. I think you need to put these either like in a hotel or like maybe an airport setting where people is like, whoa, that's amazing. They they're powering this, you know, you do and people are doing this trying to break the beam to see what turns off. But like once you see things like that, like having having having a faucet or whatever or not faucet, anything set up in a hotel bathroom where it's powered that way, that would be like. Oh, yeah, the automatic faucet. So that's a good one. Yeah. You know what? Interesting. Poor genius five in our chat room says, you know, those ink price tags in stores, they sound like a perfect pair. Those are using a system like this already because they don't need to have batteries. Then you just send the power to them to change the price because their ink, once the power goes away, that the ink stays there. Yeah, exactly. The big downside is what you mentioned, Chris. These use more power than being plugged in directly uses. They are inefficient. So if you've got solar power or some other kind of cheap power, then maybe that's not as big of a concern for you. But that's going to be a problem for people as well as they either for sustainability or cost reasons, they're not going to want to increase the power usage. Yeah, definitely some people. But, you know, folks like us, I think would choose convenience. I mean, for sustainability, if you're ditching batteries that are toxic and sin, that's true, too. That's another part of it. Yeah, it might be a good point part of the equation. Well, folks, if you want to help us decide what to talk about on the show, we look at a lot of different sources to figure out like, OK, what are the things that are worth talking about on the show today? And one of them is our subreddit, where you can have a direct effect by submitting a story and voting on the stories that other listeners have submitted. So head on over there to dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We generally don't report on Apple weeks unless they are surprising or come from reliable sources. But we have so many today, some which fit the bill and some that don't that we thought we'd run through and help you navigate which ones we trust, which ones we don't and what some of them actually seem to indicate. Yeah, there's loads of rumors about an October iPad launch. That's the normal pattern, right? We have an iPhone in September and then an iPad launch in October and maybe a few other things at each one of those announcements. However, notoriously reliable reporter Mark Gurman and notoriously reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo both have said they think it's unlikely that there will be changes in the iPad lineup this year. So the question becomes, why is Mac Otakura claiming select media personnel have been briefed for an iPad announcement on October 17th? It could be minor updates like processor changes or storage options. But you don't usually need to brief media personnel on something like that. One of the rumors floating out there, which Mac Otakura and a few others have mentioned, is there might be an updated Apple pencil with a replaceable magnetic tip and USB-C. You might brief media on something like that, especially if there's some other whiz bang elements there. And you might brief media, especially if you're not going to do a streamed announcement, you're just going to release it. So I don't know, Chris, that that's my best bet as to why we're seeing those rumors flying around. And that kind of makes sense. It's kind of odd to me that you would have your you know, your iPhone release in September and then turn around and start talking about the iPads in October, even though, you know, you said that that's their pattern. I would think they would like to ride that out a little bit more. But maybe, you know, it's just about keeping the name out there. Yeah, it could be. And Willie Scott points out in the chat that the last iPad Pro, they just dropped a blog post. They didn't have a full-on event about that. And there were some media briefings in advance of that. So so people could get a heads up about it. So could it could be a new minor refresh or something? But that's where I go back to German and Quo saying like, now we don't think there's going to be a change there. So that's why I think the pencil is probably the better bet. Well, to be and to be fair, in the past, I'd have been like pencil. Who cares? But I gave my daughter my bigger iPad because she loves to doodle and draw and use that. She actually uses the pencil pretty heavily on her iPad. And she's actually, you know, pretty artistic, especially compared to me and barely draw stick figures. So so now it would be interesting to see that I'll pay. I'll just say I'll pay more attention to these announcements because if they come up with something that I think she could utilize by all means, I will grab her a new pencil so and let her run with it and see what she does with it. Yeah, I would I would guess whether it's Tuesday, October 17th. A lot of you will know whether that was true or not by by the time you listen to this or not. An apple pencil with, you know, with with USBC, maybe a removable magnetic tip, maybe maybe some other built in features to get people like your daughter to be jealous and want to upgrade. Yeah, I can absolutely see that. However, we keep mentioning Mark German. What does German say is in the pipeline? Well, he says new 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros with new M3 Pro and M3 Max chips have reached the design validation testing stage of development and 13 and 15 inch MacBook errors with M3 chips have reached the engineering verification testing stage, which is the stage before design validation. This puts us on track for what I would consider an entirely unsurprising announcement of new MacBook Pros with new chips in them in spring 2024 or maybe summer at WWDC. German also said his sources indicate the less expensive Apple Vision Pro will run on an iPhone chip, not a Mac chip, but still not be super cheap, 1500 to $2,500. And there's one more revelation you may find intriguing. Tell us about it, Chris. Yeah, so Germans sources say Apple has developed pad like device to update iPhone operating systems in Apple stores without opening the box. That way, you don't have to go through the inevitable long always update during setup. Employees would place the sealed boxes on the iPad. The pad would then wirelessly turn on the iPhone, updated software and then turn it off. He expects the system to roll out before the end of the year. Yeah, so this this would save you time. Even if you get set up done in the store, I know a lot of us probably if we get an iPhone, we just get a chip to us and we do the setup at home. Right. But but if you do the setup in the store, a lot of times, a big part of your appointment time is taken up waiting for the OS update. They wouldn't do it then. They could do it in the stock room. Right.  So this is interesting from multiple standpoints. For as far as I'm concerned, one is there is nothing worse than getting your phone and have to download an Ion update. It is annoying. But you from my perspective, Apple has the luster of going into the store and getting that legendary Apple support in the store is kind of worn off a little bit.  You know, it gives an additional chance for some suggestive selling. So if you could now tout this experience, well, you know, you get your phone, it's already up to date.  I think it actually makes a lot of sense to kind of a put that, you know, bring that some of that shine back on their legendary service, be given more opportunity to sell more knickknacks and stuff like that. And see, make people happy with the, you know, a better experience right out of the gate. So if this is true, this is very, very interesting to me. It does make me want to investigate how Apple makes sure that only Apple can do this. Right. And not anybody else. Right. And I'm sure there are methods in place. But the idea that a phone sealed in a box could have its software altered is both very convenient if it's done by Apple to upgrade your operating system and very frightening if it was someone else figuring out how to take advantage of that. Because if Apple can do it, it's possible somebody else could do it. That's always true of every method of operating software. But, you know, if anybody knows, I mean, this this is all German sources saying they're going to do it so we don't have any details. But if anybody's like, oh, I know how they would make sure that this isn't misused, how they mitigate that feedback in Daily Tech News Show dot com. But because there is the first thing that occurred to me is like, well, if Apple can do it, well, it's sealed in the box. What could I do? What could I put on there? Right. Yeah, I have a guess. And my guess is that they'll start shipping these devices in a different state, like a one time state where they can get an update and then once it's done, and then that's it. That's it. That could be that would be easy to put a flag on it. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mail bag. We've got an email here from Nick in Australia for the main show today. I got a notification in my one password that I was logging into a site that supported past keys and I immediately thought, great. That thing Tom has been talking about for years is finally here. Time to enable it. It was super easy. Click on a couple of buttons and now you have a pass key for the site you're visiting. I then went down a very short rabbit hole and found a couple of lists of sites that have already implemented past key support. Two things I noted about the experience that I found unusual. First, PayPal will not let you create a pass key on anything but a phone using Chrome or Safari. Pass keys are meant to be universal, so that's a head scratcher to me. Short interlude for me. Certain browsers have to support pass key to certainly PayPal could support it on not phones, but it's probably just they want to limit their support costs and their development costs. So they're they're limiting it to the browsers. They know already supported on a platform like that. It's probably why just a guess back to Nick. The other thing of note and this is a good thing is that Nintendo has past key support in the past. Nintendo security practices have been shockingly bad. Those are Nick's words like requiring web or open Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet long after WPA was nearly universal and the dangers of not using WPA encryption were well known. So good on Nintendo for being an early adopter of pass keys. If you're listening to this and your device has past key support, go and start enabling it says Nick in Australia. Yeah, this is definitely pretty slick and I'm impressed with the one password since I've been using it for the most better part of this year. I actually hit a site just a couple of days ago and it actually gave me the option to use past key as well, which I thought was really cool. Microsoft is pretty big on it with the authenticator. And I do love the fact that one password has two factor authentication built into the actual password that it stores, which I think is stellar. So good on them for expanding this. Yeah, and it's going to be bumpy. There's going to be weird things like what PayPal is doing that Nick described. I I've definitely run into situations where it says, would you like to use your past key to log in? And I say, yes.  And I'm like, well, why did you ask me that? But when it works, it's it's wonderful, right? Because you're just like, do you want to log in? Are you you? And I'm like, yes, I'm me. I want to log in done. I love it. Right. Yeah. Especially with the the date, the time, the location, the, you know, and the confirmation number. I love everything about it. Yeah. And then real quickly, Prof Metcalf wrote in and said, said a lot of things about making sure that I knew that this was not an angry email, but says, I'm sending this email is that Tom recently said repeatedly that he thinks the only reason Apple didn't do something to get rid of the red bubble, blue bubble is they love the lock in his words, not mine. My words, not his, I should say. Anyway, back to Prof Metcalf. I was kind of surprised, mostly because Tom usually tries to see both sides of a thing without assuming a company is evil. And in this case, he seemed not to and didn't seem to indicate he thought about it and X is why that's wrong. It seems like there's an alternative take that you are free to think about or ignore. Here it is. Over the years, Apple has made it ridiculously clear that they won't support any optional thing they don't have control over. Things like Bluetooth and Ethernet they have obviously have to support. I guess I don't see this as any different than their normal response, which I don't think is typically about lock in. It doesn't matter what the tech is, if they can't control the experience, they're not going to devote resources on it that they could deploy somewhere else. It's certainly possible I'm missing something major, but I didn't understand why this instance was different than the others. Hopefully this is read as genuinely surprised and curious, not as a polarized. You don't believe me. You're so wrong. Thank you for making that clear. And yes, I probably did gloss over my thinking because I've talked about this in a lot of different places. And so I didn't make sure to say like I used to think there might be a reason other than lock in, but I don't anymore. And the reason I don't is because Apple has said publicly, Tim Cook has said, well, then you should buy an iPhone. Even more importantly, the emails that were revealed internally, the internal emails that were revealed in the Epic versus Apple case showed executives arguing like we could do more interoperation, but we would lose the advantage of the lock in. So it's clearly something they've they've considered. And RCS is a standard just like SMS. So if you're going to support SMS, it makes sense to continue to support it. It would be a little like supporting Bluetooth 5, but not wanting to do 5.4. Yes, there are other reasons besides lock in, which involve the cost of development and everything, but I imagine it's the advantage of lock in that make them decide not to spend the money on the development. That's where I'm at. I just looking at this, I would probably argue that lock in is probably thought of first in any in any or most features. Why just from my experience, you know, I've managed software for 20 years now and any feature that I've added, I definitely tried to find ways to make them sticky so that the pain of removing my product is greater than whatever reason you have to think about removing it. Right. Because I want you to be so engrossed in how awesome my product is and how, how it's benefiting you that you're like, well, if I take it out and want to go with a competitor or something like this, it becomes a learning curve or we don't have these features. So I would argue that they're probably thinking about that first. Yeah. And so, so yes, I should have said like, look, there might be other reasons, but I don't think any of those wash the longer I've thought about it. And the more information we've gotten about it, the more it seems like this is a case where they're like, yeah, we could, but we don't want to. Chris, Ashley, we did want to have you on the show and we're glad we did. What do you got going on to tell folks about? I've folks, come check us out on barbecue and tech. We are definitely having some blast talking about some awesome barbecue. We just recently did an experiment with some pork belly. That was and now I'm trying to invent a little reinvent the smoke chicken and waffle. There we go, man.   What are we doing in the extended show, Chris? Well, the European Commission, Commissioner, excuse me, Thierry Breaton is keeping busy. And last week, he sent four letters that we know of, at least to X, Meta, YouTube and Tiktok. Ask them don't spoil too much yet. We got to we got to wait till we get we get there, but we're going to talk. We're going to talk more about that. So OK, yeah, folks, you got to check this one out, because this is super interesting. So if you're not checking out GDI, you got to do it. This is this is a very interesting phenomenon that's going on. Yes, stick around. Chris and I are going to talk about all those letters and what they mean. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern twenty hundred UTC. Find out more daily tech news show dot com slash live. We'll be back tomorrow talking about alternative internet options during disasters with Patrick Morton. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. Time in the club helps you have enjoyed this program.


Welcome to Nursing School Explained and this assessment video demonstration of the focus neurologic assessment. Remember that as always with the assessment we follow in a methodical head-to-toe approach but this time we'll specifically focus on the neurologic system. And that consists of two parts really which is number one the cranial nerves and number two the peripheral neurologic assessment. Now you can incorporate the neurologic assessment as you're working your way in the head-to-toe fashion or you can just complete the neural assessment first and then go back and assess the patient's heart, lungs, belly and all those other things that we always assess for. Just keep in mind that always stick with one way of doing it so that you don't miss anything when you're actually performing the assessment. And then for the neurologic assessment we need a little bit more tools than usual so we will always need our set of scope. In addition we'll need something that the patient can smell in this case here I have some toothpaste and then we'll also need a reflex hammer but if you don't have one of those you can always take the side of your stethoscope as a reflex hammer that's another option. And then something that'll allow you to have the patient tell you if they're feeling sharp or dull and in this case I'm going to use a q-tip a cotton tipped applicator that has a sharp edge which is the wooden end and then a the other end the soft edge which is the cotton tipped applicator. So let's go ahead and take a look at this focused neurologic assessment right here. Hi my name is Petra how are you today? I'm all right. I'm going to be doing your assessment but first let me ask you a few questions. What's your name please? Steve Jones. Okay what year is it? 2022. Excellent and where are we at right now? What facility is this? The hospital. Okay and what brings you in? I'm having headaches. Okay so let's take a look at you here. Let me wash my hands and put on some gloves. So first we're going to assess your sense of smell. Can you please close your eyes and look occlude your right nostril with one of your fingers and let me know what you smell. To the face. Okay keep the eyes closed occlude the left nostril and what do you smell here? To the face. Okay excellent. So then next I'm going to check your eyes. Please look straight at the top of my nose right here bright light come in and then the other side. Okay good and now please look at the pen right here and then focus on the corner of the room and the wall right there. One more time look at the pen look at the corner and one more time at the pen and at the corner.  Okay okay great and now keep looking straight ahead and I'm going to put the pen right here with just your eyes follow the pen please. Okay very good and then I'm going to touch your face now with this cotton tipped applicator so it's just a q-tip and one end of it is going to be soft just so you know what that feels like and the other one is going to be sharp do you feel the difference? Okay so close your eyes please and I'm going to be touching your face in different parts let me know if you feel sharp or dull. Okay very good okay and so then next smile for me raise your eyebrows make your eyes close shut your eyes real tight and don't let me open them okay puff out your cheeks and don't let me push them in okay let go of that okay next I'm going to whisper some words in your ear and please let me know what you hear one two three a b c okay very good and then next I'm going to take a look inside your mouth so just look straight ahead please open up stick out your tongue and say ah okay excellent and then shrug your shoulders on both sides against my hand good turn your hand to your head towards your left and towards the right good and now stick out your tongue again and move it left and right okay very good so we are done with the cranial nerve part and now we're going to move to other to your extremities I'm going to ask you to hold your arms out like this in front of you close your eyes and count out loud to ten one two three okay excellent don't let me press them down very good okay relax your arms now with your the index finger of your right hand touch my finger touch your nose touch my finger again touch your nose and my finger again good other side index finger of the left hand my finger your nose my finger your nose and you can keep looking at the finger and there you go very good one more time okay squeeze my finger as hard as you can okay great do a bicep curl turn the palms upside down push against me okay very good now let me check your pulses good and your circulation here good and the same thing that we just did on the face I'm going to have use the q-tip and ask you if you feel sharp or dull so close your eyes please sharp or dull sharp sharp or dull sharp sharp or dull dull sharp or dull dull sharp or dull sharp sharp or dull okay excellent now place the palms of your hands up with the palms facing up on your thighs and turn them up and down as fast as you can keep going okay very good so that is the rapid alternating movement and then we're going to move on to the lower extremities but before I do that I'm going to listen to your heart and lungs here while you're sitting up so I'm just going to lower your gown here for a moment and listen just breathe nice and normally okay good next I'm going to be listening to your lungs so every time I touch my stethoscope to your skin take a nice deep breath in and out nice deep breath in and out please and actually let me lower this down here okay deep breath again okay now the same thing on the back I'll just sit beside here for a moment nice deep breath okay very good next we'll put this back up and we'll take a look at your stomach here actually are you able to just hold it up here good I'm going to just be listening here for a moment when was the last time you had a bowel movement this morning okay any pain when I press no good I'm gonna press a little harder any pain there no okay good you can let go of the gown so next we're going to move on to your lower extremities and I'm going to check your strength first please kick your legs out against me and then pull back good push down like on a gas pedal and pull your toes to your nose excellent let me check your circulation okay and then the same thing we did before with the sharpened doll on the upper extremities we're going to do this on the lower extremities now so close your eyes please and let me know if you feel sharp or dull okay very good and then next for your coordination I'd like for you to run the heel of the right foot up and down the shin on the left side and from all the way down to up to the knee very good and do that three times nice and slow and now switch sides please okay very good you can relax your legs I'm going to take your reflexes here with your patella reflexes close your eyes please there we are good other side okay excellent so those are nice and equal and now we'll do a couple of specialized tests here close your eyes please I'm going to place an object in your hand and I'd like for you to tell me what that is okay very good now keep your eyes closed please I'm going to be writing a letter or a number in your hand and the palm of your hand and let me know what what that is okay and now let's check the other side okay excellent so this concludes our neurologic focus neurologic assessment please also check out the other videos about the specifics for cranial nerves as well as a peripheral neural assessment where I go into more options of how to assess certain things of the periphery thanks for watching nursing school explains see you soon


The results of the study suggest that measuring both IPTH and 1-84 pth levels can help identify hyperparathyroidism secondary to chronic kidney disease, CKD. However, based on the lower cost and comparable effectiveness of IPTH measurement, it may be comparable to 1-84 pth to predict this outcome. This article was authored by Aria Janabi, Moseded Jabari, and Hossain Zaye.


Welcome to this online event with the British Library from wherever you're watching in the world. My name is Farron Gibson and I'll be in conversations art historian James Fox about his brand new book, the world according to color a cultural history, a brilliant and often surprising exploration of something so central to the way we live in a huge part of all cultures. James will shortly give an illustrated talk about the themes of the book, filmed especially for this event. And after that will be joining me for a live conversation and taking the questions. If you'd like to send in a question at any point please go to the forum just below the video screen. We'll get through as many as we can later on. In the event, if you're inspired to buy the book, and you should, please go to the books tab at the top of the screen where you'll find a link to the British Library bookshop. Also at the top of the screen you'll see links that will enable you to get feedback about this event, or support the work of the library. Finally, a little more about back down about our speaker. The library spots is an art historian, broadcaster and fellow of God Bill and Keith College Cambridge. There's many fascinating and widely inflamed BBC television documentaries which many of you may have seen include programs on the history of Cornish art, British Renaissance, and the culture and politics of Vienna in 1908 Paris in 1928 in New York in 1951. Now, please enjoy this wonderful video by James. Thank you Farron and thank you very much, all of you for listening to me talk about my latest book, The World According to Colour. Now this really has been a labour of love for me. I first conceived it back in 2012, thinking it would be a really quick and simple project. As I began researching, many of that research done in the British Library in fact, the subject got bigger and bigger and the research went on and on. And in the end, I think I spent about eight years working on this book. And as I've been working on it since I was a child. I know that's a strange thing to say but I first truly fell in love with colour at the age of six and I remember very vividly what happened it was a hot day I was sitting in my parents kitchen was drinking some orange juice. When this huge fly came in through the window and rattled around the room for several minutes and when eventually it landed on the table my mum rolled up a magazine and crushed it beneath the magazine. And as the child would do I lent in to examine the carcass which was spasming in a pool of body fluid. And of course my initial response was disgust. But then I started to look at it closely. And I noticed the colours of that fly were just exceptional. The abdomen was a sapphire blue and emerald green the eyes were burgundy the wings were like little rainbows. And I remember so vividly thinking well look if something as insignificant and small and ugly as a fly is actually this beautiful and this full of colour close up I really start should start looking more closely at everything else. And that is exactly what I did I over the following weeks over the following months over the following years I scrutinised the colours of pretty much everything that I encountered so I remember counting the reds in the rose petals I counted the grays in the clouds. And I even discovered a few years later that if I in the middle of the night when it was pitch black, if I close my eyes and jab my eyelids extremely hard, I could summon these extraordinary colours and patterns. Out of the darkness we call them phosphines in fact and I highly recommend people doing it themselves it's quite an extraordinary experience. So we can see colour and light in the darkness. But the more I looked the, the more questions I guess I had, you know, why, for instance, was the sea blue, but seawater colourless, why did cooked beef turn red and cooked chicken turn white.  And I think it was that curiosity about colour that ultimately led me to become an art historian. And even today you know every time I look at the blues of Islamic architecture or the incredible myriad blacks of Chinese and Japanese ink wash painting, or the dazzling reds of Henri Matisse, I do feel like I am indulging a childhood addiction. But anyway, before I get started, I think we really must answer a pretty fundamental question and that that question is what is colour. Well in some ways I'm reminded here of the US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who back in the 1960s he had to decide whether something was pornography or not. And he concluded really quite famously by saying well, I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it. And, you know, I think that the very same thing is true of colour. We all see colour all the time. We all know what it is. We know the difference between red and blue and yellow and green. But as soon as we have to define it, we run into trouble. And that is because despite its ubiquity, despite its ever presence, colour is actually a really mysterious entity that raises all kinds of difficult philosophical questions. And I think the main debate, I suppose, is whether colour exists out in the world, in light and in things, or whether it exists inside us in our brains, in other words whether colour is objective or subjective. Now of course common sense tells us that colour is objective, that objects this cup that I'm drinking, this has a kind of colour in it that is there whether we look at it or not. But actually that's very often not the case. I've got here a little prop. This is one of my prized possessions. This is a Ulysses butterfly from Australasia. It's one of the most famous and very rare blue creatures in the world. But when scientists actually ground down and examined the wings, they discovered there wasn't a single piece of blue pigment in it. It was all an optical illusion designed to make us think it is blue. And of course what's more than that? We all see colours differently. Many men are colour blind so they see fewer colours than other people. There are some women who by virtue of a sort of rare chromosomal condition might be able to see hundreds if not millions of more colours than anyone else. And even if those of us with normal colour vision see things differently, I'm sure many of you will remember a few years ago when that photograph of a dress went surfaced online and it became a huge viral thing. Although I probably shouldn't use the word viral in the same way anymore, but it became a huge viral sensation. And the reason was because the world people couldn't agree whether that dress in that photograph was blue and black or white and gold. And I think in doing so it became a perfect example of how much of colour resides in the eyes of the beholder. How much of it is about the way that our retinas and our brains make sense of the waves of light, the photons that vibrate and bounce and rattle around us on this planet. And colour isn't only a visual phenomenon. Colours affect our minds and our bodies in all kinds of ways. They help us understand when to go to sleep and when to wake up, what to eat, what to buy, who to find attractive, what emotions to feel. So they're constantly shaping our moods and our behaviours all the time, even though we're not always aware of them doing so. So red for instance is a good example. Red has been found to raise heart rates, to increase electrical activity in the brain, to contribute to sexual arousal, to improve the body's strength, speed and reaction time. We even know from a number of studies that sports teams or athletes wearing red strips are at an advantage by virtue of wearing red. And blue by contrast is being found to reduce heart rates and blood pressure, to promote relaxation, to reduce crime, to reduce levels of suicide. And so it's a fascinating myriad amorphous protein entity colour but my book tells the story of human culture, all of human culture in some ways through colour. So it begins with the origins of the universe 13.8 billion years ago and it runs all the way through to the environmental crisis we currently face. And it covers societies on every different continent. Now I focus on seven major colours, black, red, yellow, blue, white, purple and green. And I use each of them to tap into a particular phase or theme in human history, because our culture has been intimately connected with colour from the very beginning. We have used it as a symbol, as a metaphor, as a language I suppose, to communicate the most important ideas we have. And what I thought I'd do over the next 20 minutes or so is essentially to try and do, I know it sounds pretty ambitious in 20 minutes, but to try and do a potted history of humanity through some of these colours. So let's begin at the beginning because in many respects the first really salient colour in human culture was red. Now maybe this shouldn't surprise us because of course after all, beneath the surface, all of us are made from red meat and red blood. And it's a colour that we have always associated with ourselves. And you only need to think back on early creation myths, you know, stories that talk about the first creations of humans. And there are many different stories from all over the world, all with different narratives, but many of them, many of them stipulate that the first humans had been moulded out of red materials, was red clay or red sand or red dust. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the first human of the Old Testament was called Adam, because Adam in Hebrew means red, as well as earth and blood, the materials from which he was made. And I think what's so fascinating for me about this is that this isn't simply a matter of myth. Archeologists who are studying some of the earliest human societies in Stone Age Africa have consistently found something remarkable. Everywhere they look, every site they go to, they find huge amounts of red pigments. So a few years ago in South Africa, for instance, archaeologists found an astonishing site. They found what they believed to be 100,000 year old pigment workshop, three times as old as the cave paintings where pigments were being manufactured. Red ochre was being brought from a quarry and processed and turned into paint. And they even discovered on this piece of red ochre, one of the very first abstract designs ever made by humans. Now by the time of the Upper Paleolithic, when the famous cave paintings were being made in Europe, red pigments were being used in figurative artworks. One of the really interesting things about that is that these figures were themselves in some ways color coded. So in Chauvet cave, for instance, which was discovered by accident by some explorers in the 1990s. What we find is that animals are typically depicted in black charcoal and humans in the form of these palm prints and hand stencils are typically depicted in red pigments. So this is a particularly interesting image.  And then on top of that, or just within that, we can see the human presence marked out with red. So clearly there was some color coding with our species. So what did red mean? You know, why did we go to all these lengths to gain it? What were we doing with it? I mean, the truth is, we don't really know. I mean, it's so long ago, we don't have many records, but most anthropologists think that red was a symbol of blood, and that like blood it symbolized life and death. They think it was smeared over women's bodies to symbolize fertility. We know for sure that it was buried with the dead, probably to bring them back to life, and that it would also have been applied to places and objects to invest them with a life force associated with blood. So it's entirely possible that red was humanity's very first symbol representing that most important process of life and death. And we know that in many Indigenous communities around the world, even today, red pigments are still being applied to bodies and objects because of their spiritual power, because of their life force. Now it's, I think, important to say that in prehistoric times, we didn't have that many colors to choose from. We mostly had blacks and whites and yellows and browns and reds, the so-called earth colors, because they could be easily extracted from the earth. But in later centuries, in the Neolithic period especially, we devised a whole new range of pigments and dyes, and those colors became extremely important, commodities, luxuries and status symbols. And perhaps the most luxurious of them all, and the one that most people will have heard of, is Tyrian purple. Now this dye was made around 1500 BC onwards in the Near East, and it was made from shellfish. And what would happen is you would catch the shellfish, you would take their glands out, you would extract the mucus, then you could boil that mucus in salt water for several weeks. Apparently it was the most unbearable stench that the process emitted. And it was highly labor intensive. You needed somewhere in the region of 10,000 mollusks to produce just a gram of dye, and this made it extremely expensive. So I found, for instance, in the process of my research, a fourth century Roman price list, the price list of Diocletian, which listed all the prices of all the commodities in fourth century Rome. And what I discovered was that a pound of Tyrian purple silk was more than twice as expensive as gold by weight, and five times the price of a male slave. That's how expensive it was. And in fact, as I trolled through this text, I found that there was only one item on this list that was as expensive as a pound of Tyrian silk. And that was a male lion lion that had to be captured and imported from Africa. So this dye obviously naturally became a status symbol and it was very quickly became associated really only with imperial rulers and under theodosius the second, for instance, anyone found buying or making or wearing or even owning this extraordinary purple color without permission could be charged with treason, which was a crime punishable by death. Now different cultures prize different colors for different reasons. So in China, for instance, red became established as the most celebrated color, in part because Chinese philosophers had given it these bold bright and very auspicious connotations. And those associations remain absolutely with us today. Chinese people string up red lanterns to celebrate a new year they decorate their front doors with red paper to ward off bad luck they give newborn babies red clothes. You see the Chinese restaurants often have red signs Chinese products chili oils for instance often have red labels because it's a color of good luck and the meanings of red are so positive in China. And the Chinese stock market shows rising stocks in red, rather than black, which is the opposite of almost every other country. In South Asia, by contrast, it was yellow really that emerged as the most desirable color and in India, for instance, yellow colorants, and they have many but yellow colorants including saffron and turmeric. So in many parts of India, you will splash turmeric over the bride and groom over their clothes over the wedding invitations over the guests over the food, or to bring about good luck for the for the wedding in the future. And in Islamic cultures the Middle East. And I think it was the color that rained supreme. It was said to be Mohammed's favorite color. The hadith tells us that he wore green a lot he talked about green vegetation a lot. The Quran tells us quite explicitly that paradise itself was green that it was filled with green plants with green cushions that people who lived their war green clothes. And in fact, not many people know that the shortest verse in the whole of the Quran is just one word long. And that word is green. It's a specific kind of deep dark rich green that exists only on the trees in paradise itself. So, what of Europe then? Well, I mean, I think unlike the people of Asia, Europeans didn't particularly like yellow. Since antiquity and certainly throughout the Middle Ages, they linked it to all kinds of outcasts. Now, we often see artists painting Judas the the apostle who obviously portrayed Christ in yellow garments and officials meanwhile, often made prostitutes, debtors, heretics, and of course most famously Jews, where yellow garments or symbols to mark them out as other and of course this is something the Nazis revived in the early 1940s that insisting that Jews in particular wear these yellow badges. The color that emerged, I suppose with with most credit in medieval Europe was blue. Now blue is a really funny one because blue is now the most popular color in the world. In every single color country survey after survey shows that blue is by far the most popular color by a huge margin 30 or 40% of people rate blue as their favorite color. I mean, the very marginal role in earlier societies. It was one of the last basic colors to be named in every human language for much of history people didn't even have a word for it. So it's well known for instance that Homer of Iliad and Odyssey fame, never once used the word blue he called the blue Mediterranean he called it wine dark instead. And we see a similar absence in in art and culture as well. You know the thing about blue is that though blue is everywhere in some ways we have blue skies and blue seas and blue horizons. There are actually very few tangible blue things in nature. There are very few blue plants or blue minerals blue animals and so because of that it became very very difficult to manufacture really good blue colors. By the Middle Ages there were some blue dyes there was indigo and wode for instance there was some blue pigments as a right and cobalt but none of them were quite right. I think it was probably in the second half of the Middle Ages, when Europeans I think discovered this new blue pigment that surpassed even Tyrion purple for splendor. And I think everyone knows what I'm talking about I'm talking about this product called lapis lazuli this was an extremely rare stone, but for much of its history could only be found in one mountain in Afghanistan and you know lapis lazuli does look when you look at it raw as it comes out of the quarry. It really looks like a fragment of the sky it's got this beautiful deep blue celestial color. It's got these white calcite clouds these golden pyrite stars so it really does look like a fragment of the firmament and Europeans were convinced that this this celestial stone had miraculous properties so they they used it almost always unsuccessfully it to heal warts and ulcers to manage menstruation and urinary tract infections to treat fevers and cataracts and depression. And of course it was also the sole source of this exceptional blue pigment, although extracting that pigment from this very impure stone was extremely difficult so around 1200 this new recipe emerges that involves grinding the stone into a powder mixing it with resin and gum and linseed oil and wax to form a dough needing the dough for several days then submerging it in a live solution and trying desperately to get only the blue bits out of the solution but when they did that after days and days of work. The results were extraordinary and the product when finished was given what is probably the most, I suppose a vocative name in the history of color. It was called Azzurra ultramarino, ultramarine as we know which in Italian meant overseas because the raw material that came from a long way away in Afghanistan. And like other exotic products like Tyrion purple, it did not come cheap it you know it cost up to 100 times more than other pigments on the market. In fact, I did some more digging to try to work out the prices and I found that in 1515 the Florentine artist Andrea del Sarto paid five florins for an ounce of ultramarine. And I did some calculations and I worked out that that equated just for one ounce of ultramarine that equated to five years rent for a laborer living outside the city so that gives you an impression of how out of reach some of the most exotic pigments once were for ordinary people. Now the most famous use of ultramarine in history is probably this barnstorming painting in the National Gallery, Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, and it captures the explosive moment when Bacchus leading this rag bag of revelers first sets eyes on a heart broken Ariadne. She has just been abandoned by Theseus, who on the left of the picture sails off across the horizon without her. Bacchus falls instantly in love with her, he marries her on the spot, he transforms her into a deity like himself. So it's an exuberant and romantic picture, but I think it's popularity, it's enduring popularity, is above all owed to color. But Titian was given a huge amount of money by his patron to paint this picture, so he spent it on the most expensive pigments that money could buy in 16th century Venice so we have them all here on on the canvas so the trees are made from a very expensive green called malachite green. There's a little yellow cloth in the foreground, it's made from the very highest best lead tin yellow. The oranges are made from realgar and opament, these beautiful exotic expensive but quite toxic oranges from China. The finest crimson is used on Bacchus' cloak, the finest vermilion is used on Ariadne's sash and of course the king of colors in this picture is ultramarine, which covers what almost a third of the canvas, the blue sky. And it is actually, as far as scholars have worked out, it's one of the purest examples of the pigment ever discovered in the history of art. So the cost alone would have been astronomical, and it must have been so exciting for Titian to be able to take this elusive color of the sky and the sea, and this extraordinarily luxurious expensive product and then to use it with such abundance in his art. In some ways, despite the obvious delights of color, some Europeans of Titian's generation had already started to, I suppose, turn their backs on color by this stage. Many of them had been inspired by the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman statutes. Now, Greek and Roman statutes, as we all know now, were originally brightly colored, but over the years they lost those colors and when they were rediscovered in the Renaissance and in the subsequent centuries, most of them were back to their plain unadorned pale marble. And I think because of this, a number of artists, and Michelangelo is a famous example, started to advance this aesthetic of whiteness, that plain whitish things were the best things to make.  But in Europe, really from the 16th century onwards and growing in the 17th and 18th centuries, it also became associated with good text. So, you know, many philosophers, many theorists repeatedly argued that bright colors were childish, feminine, primitive, while simple white things were really noble and sophisticated. Now it was a completely ludicrous assertion, but I think in some ways it does remain with us because, you know, I think we still do harbour a view that a minimalist white interior or an austere abstraction or a colorless white device or appliance is somehow, is somehow classier than one that comes in gaudy and garish colors. We still I think believe ultimately with regards to color at least that less is more. But of course it's important to say that, you know, the European taste for whiteness didn't only have aesthetic consequences, it had huge social and political ramifications as well, particularly with regard to race, maybe that's something we can discuss later on. Now if Europeans went through a period of what some have called chromophobia, this fear of color, this resistance to color through the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, really by the 19th century, they very much emphatically come out of it. Now, there've only been I think a few real, how can I put it, quantum leaps in the history of color. So one might have come in ancient Egypt, perhaps in Medieval China, perhaps in Renaissance Venice. But perhaps the most fundamental leap of all took place actually in 1850s Europe and probably to be more specific 1850s London, because that was when the modern chemists and the, the sort of canny businessmen of the Industrial Revolution work together to completely transform the range of colors available to us. And I think that breakthrough moment is often believed to have come in the spring of 1856 when an 18 year old amateur chemist called William Henry Perkin conducted was conducting some experiments and his parents spare room in the chadwell when he by mistake invented this extraordinarily bright purple synthetic dye. Now he originally named it Tyrion purple, as you would. But by the beginning of 1858 he was mass producing the product under the name Moeve. Now Moeve became a sensation, you know, Queen Victoria started wearing it, Empress usually started wearing it then the aristocracy started wearing them the middle classes. By 1859 it was everywhere it was being likened to a contagious disease punch magazine was writing about Moeve mania, you know it was being used in morning suits and store uniforms and, and wallpapers and leather bound books and sweets and confectionary even billions of postage stamps were being printed in Moeve. And I think it's interesting because for so long purple like blue to some extent had been this rare luxurious color a color that was really hard to produce. But in the 1860s, all kinds of purples or purpley synthetic dyes appeared from Moeve to magenta to Regina purple to violet. And you know something we, we often think that the past is less colorful than the present, partly because I think we're so used to seeing it in black and white photographs. But I think the inventions of the 1850s and 60s, give the lie to such assumptions they remind us that the 19th century was saturated with color. Particularly purple. And by the end of the 19th century purple, which was once an ancient imperial color with all those connotations of Tyrion purple had become a symbol, really important symbol I think of the industrial revolution itself for good and for bad so you know on the one hand it captured the brilliance and ingenuity of modern science and manufacturing but on the other hand, it epitomized a world of capitalistic extravagance and toxic chemicals and so that is why in the years around 1900, you start to see people really initiating purple with pollution, with toxicity. And there's one book I discuss in my book, remarkable novel called the purple cloud written by a very strange man called MP shield I think in 1901. It describes this huge purple cloud that spreads across the world and kills pretty much the entire human population so there's a real sense of purple being toxic by the end of the 19th century and being a form of pollution. Although not everyone was worried. You know Claude Monet, for instance, for his part he traveled to London to paint the pollution to paint the purple smog. He saw hanging over the city and he thought it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever witnessed. I think this brings us quite smoothly to the final color in my book and this talk I think and the color I think that in many respects represents the defining issue of our own time. Because the industrialization of human society I've just discussed had as we all know now a momentous impact on our planet and one that's growing with every passing year. The color green of course has has long been associated with nature, more for more than a billion years in fact because chlorophyll, the pigment responsible for photosynthesis implants is green. But it's really only in the last 50 years or so that we have come to identify the color green, the color of chlorophyll with the environmental crisis the environmental revolution. You know the so-called growth green movement has been gathering momentum since the late 1960s early 1970s and it's now virtually impossible to avoid greens environmental connections we are perpetually a behind start me to buy green to go green to think green. And I think really green has become a key word of our times and ideology of our times loaded in the way that the gender or sexuality or nation race or ethnicity are. But it's funny though when we when we think of climate change. We typically think of the world becoming less green and yet the opposite. So far is the case because over the last 35 years or so largely as a result of warming temperatures and rising co2 levels 18 million square kilometers of new vegetation has appeared on this planet that's an area roughly twice the size of the United States. So the earth surprisingly is greener today than it has been for millennia for all the wrong reasons of course but it is greener today than it has been for many thousands of years. Although what color it will turn in the long run remains deeply uncertain and will in part depend on how we change our behavior. I fear I have pretty much run out of time but I thought I would just conclude by by trying to say what do I hope readers will take from this book well. Above all I think I want readers and anyone to look at the world more closely as a result of reading this book. You know the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau he once said that the hardest things to see are the things we see every day. I think color is one of those things. It's so ubiquitous it's so much a part of life and technology has made colors so plentiful and so easily reproduced that we take color for granted. You know we can buy products in almost any color we like home decorators have so many colors to choose from that they can't even have sensible names for them you know think of elephants breath for instance. And I've got one other example here this is my son's box of crayons let me open it. There you are a few centuries ago a product like this, which reproduces pretty much every color in the spectrum and lines it up and puts it in a box that you can buy would have sent alchemists and emperors into raptures artists would have gone crazy for it people might have fought wars over it. Nowadays it's little more than a children's talk. So I do hope that after reading this book, people will find more wonder in their surroundings, even in banal things like boxes of crayons or the myriad greens and a piece of broccoli or the shades of brown on a flat white or indeed the colors of an annoying fly. And I think in the end, we should never forget that we as humans are ultimately inseparable from color, because every hue we see around us is actually manufactured within us. It's manufactured in the same gray matter that forms our language that stores our memories that stokes emotions that shapes thoughts that gives rise to consciousness itself. And to pardon the pun color is a pigment of the imagination that we paint all over the world and I think it might well be the greatest human creation of them all. Thank you. That was such a fascinating conversation that covered so many different areas. And before I get into my own questions with James, I just want to remind everyone to please do something your questions down below. And so, yeah, let's get right into it because there's so many different things to cover and it's, it's just really interesting. The first thing I noticed is that there was one color of the kind of main colors of the rainbow I guess that was missing and that's orange and I was just wondering if you could explain why maybe orange didn't make the cut. I would have loved to write about orange I would have loved to write about gray I would have loved to write about brown. But in the end I made the decision that the number of chapters I wanted to write was seven, and I did that for a reason I did that because I think seven is a particularly meaningful color in human history you think of you know the seven days of the week the seven ages of man the seven cardinal sins the seven virtues, and of course the seven colors that Isaac Newton identified on the spectrum so I thought seven had seven felt like the right color, the right number of colors to choose. But what I did try to do aware possible was to allude to other colors within those colors I've chosen so my chapter on yellow does deal with quite a lot of orangey substances so I deal with saffron for instance which is probably more orange than it is yellow. I deal with gold, which is a, you know, not strictly yellow either. And in purple I deal with colors all the way through from magenta through to indigo. So I do try to allude to the broader range of colors. But you know this book took me so long to write had I added some extra chapters I think you know it would have been another 10 years to write it. Sorry. And so, I guess, now I think it would be interesting to talk about colors and relationships to maybe some artists so, for example you mentioned Titian Spakis and Ariadne. And there's so many colors in there, aside from the blue that you mentioned that are really interesting. And I also have heard of Titian red, which is he's associated with that hair color that he's using his work is is now a name for that. And I'm just wondering are there other artists that come to mind if someone says off blue, red, black, that artists that work are known to work with those colors. Yes, I think that I think up many artists have had color preferences as we all do. I mean, one of the one of the most fascinating things I discovered in my research was in an archive a manuscript a piece of paper that from the 1860s that recorded the outcome of a after dinner game that was played quite a lot in the Victorian period and this game was called my favorite things and what would happen is you would bombard a particular person with a series of quickfire questions saying what's your favorite food what are your favorite clothes what is your favorite activity and and one of the people who played this game was the very great Victorian artist forward Maddox Brown. And at one point he was asked what's your favorite color. And he wrote magenta, which was actually a very new color it had only been invented a few years earlier. And when you actually look at forward Maddox Brown's work you see a lot of magenta in his work. One of his famous famous paintings is the last of England it's got the most incredible magenta ribbon in it that took him four weeks to paint on its own. I think that you do find a number of artists being identified with certain colors through history, particularly in the modern period so Turner admitted, but you know that the yellow was his favorite color. The Impressionists. I've already shown money but Impressionists were were famed for their association with violets and purples. Monet was a big fan of black, as he was inspired by Velasquez who was also a fan of black. And then in the 20th century you get artists with real monomanias devoted to particular colors. You can think of, you know, Ben Nicholson's whites and Robert Reimann's whites and, you know, add Reinhart's blacks, Pierre Soulage's blacks, Eve Klein blue, Gustave Klimt's golds. And as you go through time, particularly in the modern period, artists are often particularly affectionate towards specific colors, not always but some are. Yeah, and Klein blue is definitely one of the first one that comes to your mind, he got his name on a color, you know, and it's still to this day quite hard to get your hands on the true kind of ultramarine blue it's still an expensive color to get. I mean, you know, Klein was a huge fan of ultramarine, a huge fan of blue, and but he felt that there were some problems with it so actually ultramarine which I talked about which was very hard to get very hard to make. In the early 1800s there was a competition in France to try and create a synthetic version of ultramarine and someone did ultimately crack several people actually at the same time cracked this synthetic ultramarine. That's the color we still use today when you see in your box of oil paints you see ultramarine, that synthetic ultramarine, but Eve Klein felt that when you actually put that pigment on canvas. It was slightly deader than he wanted it to be so he spent a year in the late 1950s with a remarkable legendary color man called Edouard Adam to try and devise a new way of suspending that pigment so that the whole thing was more was more resonant and vibrant and when you do actually see IKB blue the the color that he patented I think in 1959 it is just so explosive and resonant it's the most magnificent blue. It's nearly neon I mean it's not quite a neon but there's there's like a yeah you know the way that neon colors have a glow to them I find that true ultramarine has that sort of glow to it. It really does and when you look at those paintings closely and he applied them in very clever ways to enhance the effect. But when you look at those paintings I mean your retina can't really land on the color it's so it's so oscillating and vibrating but it's it's quite an unsettling experience but a but a magnificent experience as well. It sounds to me that I'm describing what you find it with the blue and the mauve and things like that. Also the processes that you describe it sounds like very hard work again boiling on those mollusks. Were the people creating these pigments very precious about their recipes because it sounds like it's a real commodity a lot of money to be made if you're the only person that knows how to make this desirable color.  You had your own specific recipe that might have been passed down by your your you know by your ancestors, and you would guard it jealously and it was an important part of your intellectual property it was a part of your signature style as an artist and so people really really were very possessive about their colors. In the 19th century when we when we see the emergence of move and all those purples. I mean, it was unbelievable the amount of court cases that took place to try for when people try to stop other people using their recipes or mass producing their colors without permission. There are I mean I've actually described some of those court cases in the book, and of course this process, this this kind of competition still goes on today I remember a few years ago. The British sculptor Anish Kapoor got into real trouble when he signed an exclusivity deal with a company for the so called blackest black ever made. So he went down there to the fact I actually went down to see this product myself to the factory and it's an incredible black. And he signed this deal with them so no other artist could use it and of course this made artists furious so it's still happening even today. That's the Vanta black is that right. Vanta black. You've seen it in person. I went down shortly after it for the research of this book actually and shortly after they'd, they'd announced it. It's a very strange it's not really even a pigment it's a material that is grown in a very dense, like a very dense forest of nanotubes and they're so dense that when the light hits them, the light gets trapped between the carbon nanotubes and hardly any of that light comes back and when you see it next to another black product you are, it makes the other black project product look gray by comparison it's that dark. Yeah, you know that's interesting that you mentioned that about shades black because I think it's one of those colors that you think of as being like. How can there be shades if there are shades then it's great right. But if you've ever like tried to mix match black clothes you know very well that there are these undertones and things so that's actually really interesting to think about shades did you talk much about that in the book. Yes I mean black is the I think the most misunderstood color in some ways and that's so often people think of it as a as a as a as a non color. As a as a as a form of darkness, you know they think of black as pitch dark. The truth is, it's not. It's not dark really I mean actually the color of pitch darkness absolute darkness is not black it is gray.  So in order to have blackness you need to have light to create that contrast. So that was one of that's one of the biggest misunderstandings of all is that black is an absence of light, you need light to see black. And of course as many artists have shown you think of artists like Pierre Soulage as I mentioned before. He's someone who shows that color with black which contains all the colors is the most unbelievably luscious rich generous color of all. And I say that people people knew this before people you know what the very word black. It originates in the proto Indo European word leg, which means shine or bright or Glee. So black, you know even even that even in terms of our language, it's linked to brightness and light. That's so interesting because like you say everyone thinks of it as the opposite. So that is really interesting. So you mentioned the mall we called it but a quantum leaf. And I'm wondering are there other moments that stand out in your mind that you researched and wrote about that really felt like big advances in color development. Yeah, as I say, as I said in my talk then they're not that many there I would say there are there are a handful of moments when we make this great leap forward in terms of how many colors we can produce I think the first one is probably right at the beginning. When humans first start creating pigments they first start burning woods and stones and bones to make charcoal they start excavating and processing red ochre. And then you get in the neolithic period the development of colors like vermilion in Spain and indigo in South America and, and Egyptian blue and ancient Egypt is in an early synthetic blue, Han purple in China. And then you get massive developments in dye manufacturing in Venice in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And then of course in the 19th century I've mentioned it already, you get the synthetic revolution. When you get all these extraordinary pigments that are being manufactured in the lab. And these are the pigments these are the dyes that we still use today, you know as I say, you know if you find an ultramarine in your paint palette that's a synthetic ultramarine. You can see your genes are dyed with indigo that synthetic indigo that was invented in the 19th century. So I think that the synthetic revolution is the one that that shapes I mean it's the one that has died all the colors on those beautiful books behind you Farron those are all synthetic colors. And then as you're talking and especially when you're talking about purple and toxicity and things, it made me think how many of these colors and pigments were poisonous, because you hear about women putting on makeup, and like, like, you get the white on her face and that it was like poisonous. So it was there a bit of danger involved. Oh yes of course I mean many of these colors were made from various toxic chemicals that greens were particularly toxic. I mean this is quite an irony actually that green synthetic dyes that we use today are some of the least environmentally friendly so all those recyclable green bags that are supposed to be good for the planet are actually pretty bad compared to various other pigments because they use a lot of chlorine to make them.  And then there's the Helgar and Orpiment, which I mentioned in the Titian those had arsenic in them. The million beautiful red had arsenic in it as well so lots of these pigments were made from chemicals that weren't necessarily very good for us. So interesting to think of how, in a way because as we did it's all around you almost, if you're a person who sees all the colors, just take them for granted. You start to hear the kind of risk involved in producing the colors the amount of money that went into acquiring the colors. It's like this quietly very important cultural thing. That's happening, but also kind of not really talked about that much as it did for you in terms of meeting to then write this book and talk. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe we can take some questions. And let's see what we have here. Someone says loving this thank you. Do we see a rise and mentioned citations usage of the word blue discussions from Benji in Europe that corresponds with the arrival and growth of lapis lazuli based on pigments. Well, not, not necessarily then. However, one of the things I discovered in my research was I was able to, with regard to us with the help of a PhD thesis from from the 19th century, was able to do this calculation and their two graphs in the book that show how the incidents the number of uses of blue in English in English literature in novels and poetry rose dramatically from the 1514 15th century to the romantic period so Chaucer hardly ever uses the word blue. Shakespeare uses a little bit more but by the time you get to Byron and Keats and Shelley it's it's one of the most if not the most oft used colors. So I think you do see a massive rise in the use of the color the word blue throughout this period. I don't think it's due to ultramarine I think it's due to probably broader cultural phenomena about describing nature and describing skies it's also about the word just becoming more as I said before you know blue arrives very late in most languages, and there are still many languages around the world that don't have a word for blue yet, or don't have a word for blue at all. So, it takes time to get to get the word for the color blue but then obviously, as I said, with regard to the popularity blue then takes over everything. How do you come up with a name for something that's never had a name. I guess some some languages are still wondering that. Yeah, I mean that's what my my theory is the reason it comes late is you don't need to name it I mean if you're not dealing with blue things in your life in nature on a regular basis. But your but but the sky is blue and the sea is but you don't need to name those things as blue you can call them a sky you can call them the sea. But it's when you're actually manipulating and dealing with things and making distinctions between things. That's when you need color terms whether it's dark and light or red fruit and yellow fruit or particular kinds of green leaves or not. I think of color I guess in a hierarchical hierarchical way in terms of their primary colors. So, red blue yellow. It feels like that's the starting point because the other colors come from a combination of that so to think that blue is kind of like at the end is interesting. Well culturally speaking anthropologists will tell you that the primary colors are black white and red. These are the colors that are the kind of if you like the fundamental archetypal colors in human culture. They are the first three colors we get where the human language gives names to and all the others green yellow blue purple elephants breath. They come later on in in society elephants breath way much much later. And all right let's do another question and has your research on color caused you to reevaluate the meanings of specific works of art. Well that's that's a really good question yes I think it has and I think that when you when you look at you know works when you when you realize how the meanings of color change over time and colors that we might find appealing were unappealing at a given point in time. You begin to realize that those were chosen for a meaning so chosen for a reason I always for instance in in jotos arena chapel I always really admired that picture I showed of the kiss of Judas it's the most extraordinary confrontational picture and I always admired that beautiful golden yellow cloak that that Judas was wearing, but it's only when you look back and you think well what did that color mean. Back then that you realize that it would have been something that anyone who walked into that chapel before they even saw the picture before they even saw Judas's face, they would have known that that meant he was not to be trusted. So I think that yeah when you start to think about how meanings of color change over time. It's inevitable that it will it will change your response to the pictures. Yeah, I think it does unlock something in the way that you can look at art the more you know about color and their potential needs and it makes me think about there's a scroll. A tiny scroll that shows the emperor on this journey it's a southern tour and all these things, and you can immediately find him because he's wearing yellow and that's the emperor's color. So, once you have that context it just unlocks that, you know, little bit of information which I think it's really interesting. Yeah. One another question this time from David. It was interesting to hear your views on the relationship between the centrality of red and art and earth. Can the links between our biological reactions to color and our use of color and art be quantified. I don't know if they can be quantified. I think that it's, it's certainly true that some of these connotations seem very deep rooted and this is one of the things I tried to talk about in the book is that obviously in some ways, the meanings of color are ever changing. They're not universal. They're not consistent. They're constantly on the move. And yet we also see these particular kinds of associations and correlations just sticking around. And so one is that connection between red and blood.  It sounds like a cliche but that's because it's so hardwired. We see it from those earliest cave paintings, all the way through to, you know, if you look at Schindler's List or American Beauty or Alfred Hitchcock's film Marnie, blood that that symbolism of red as blood is still the case. The same is true of black and darkness. We see it very, very early on in human society. We still have it today, even though as I say, black and darkness are not the same thing. So I think that there are certain deep rooted connotations that I wouldn't want to quantify them. But I do think they are hard to ignore. There does certainly seem to be something to it because you find that hospitals are sometimes painted in certain colors. Fast food restaurants often use similar colors and go on the cereal aisle, the boxes might use. So there must be some kind of physiological response. Yes, I mean, well, but that's definitely true. I mean, there's certainly certainly true that lots of studies have found that, for instance, that red and yellow are appetite stimulants. And so that's why a lot of fast food places will have red and yellow signage because it's more like you when you see it to think I want to eat. We've also found that blue is associated with stability and loyalty. And so therefore we often see banks financial service companies choosing to have blue. Purple is often associated with extravagance. And so if brands want to present themselves as luxurious, you know, whether it's Liberty or whether it's particular chocolate companies, then purple will be the color they go for. We've also got studies that that, you know, people are more likely to trust a doctor if they're wearing white, a white coat, even though we know now that white coats are great carriers of disease. And that's why at the NHS, for instance, doctors aren't allowed to wear white coats. I didn't know that.   It also causes fear for some people. Is it? Yes. It's called white coat syndrome. Yeah, there is there is fear. There's also trust as well. And when you talk about the color of hospitals. Another study found that people are believed to recover more quickly from surgery if they have if they're either in green rooms, or have access to or can see green vegetation, green trees, green landscapes outside their their windows. So there are these interesting studies. I think we have to take some of them with a pinch of salt. But I think there is certainly something in them. So we've got time for just a couple more questions. And this, the J peak says, Have you explored musical tones related to certain colors, as with synesthesia. My experience is that those affected see the same tones per color. By far, and you'll probably know more about this than I do because you did a fantastic podcast on the on the subject, but I think that it's certainly true that people have linked colors and music. Many for a long time in the most famous example is Kandinsky, of course, Vasily Kandinsky could hear color. He could see sound. He had particular correlations that he thought, for instance, a cello sounded dark blue, I think in a violin sounded pale blue. There's a there is one study that showed that many people think of trumpets as red, although I didn't think of trumpets as red but that is supposed to be something that lots of people think of. Synesthesia is obviously a fascinating phenomenon, I think actually most of us experience it on to a lesser degree, but then of course there are wonderful writers and artists who are able to exploit it and make something from it. It's interesting as well that that it kind of infiltrated our history synesthesia because with Kandinsky. He started making what he called compositions, right from hearing music and then he would make these paintings and he called them composition, borrowing the term from music. And now it's quite normal to talk about compositions of artworks and things like that so it's quite fun. Synesthesia is really interesting. I don't have it but I find it really fascinating, especially people who have it with tastes and things like that. Yeah, no it could be if you had it quite strongly it could be a bit burdensome. We've got another one last question and I'm going to combine two questions here. One of them was, what is your favorite color, and the other is, if you could only see one color for the rest of your life. Well, I mean I think that I'm extremely unoriginal in this and I would say that my favorite color is is blue and as I say that's what many, many people think. But is it just regular blue you know is there is there a specific. I think I think give me an ultramarine I generally like the deeper the deeper tones of every color the richer tones of every color but deep deep ultramarine blue and that's the blue that has a slight violet. Tinge to it, not a greenie blue don't like a greenie blue. Although, you know turquoise is an egg shells and love it's and those kinds of colors are wonderful but I don't like a sort of. I've never like Prussian blue which is a kind of dull greenie blue, but a beautiful violety blue, I think is a really, really desirable experience that it has a depth to it, if you feel like you can fall into it in a way that you can plant with other colors blue recedes from the from the eye so some are some of the colors advanced towards us yellows and reds advanced to the eye blues and purples recede and I think actually that that that color that draws you into it in that sense. I find particularly appealing so yes blue would be would probably be my choice but as I say 30 to 40% of people would choose would make the same decision. I do really love ultramarine blue I also like ochre. It has a similar. It gives me similar good feelings is when I see that the ultramarine. Yeah, and then if you could only see one color that sounds pretty intense, like. I maybe I'd go for something like gray, I wonder if you go if you can have shades of gray. We're so used to seeing the world seeing seeing things through black and white photographs black and white films that perhaps it would be less unsettling than than seeing the world in only one other color, but obviously. I'm just wearing one color maybe that seems more like if you could only you know where one color decorate your house, you know my house is blue I have a song. Everything was one color that you used what would you go. Oh I think black black or gray probably I we recently renovated our house and we went for we went for some murky mid tone gray I'm ashamed to admit and I do quite like it because you don't really almost you don't really notice it. So maybe gray or black. I think if you were black all the time, you could just shake them right. Oh, they aren't seeing. Well that's the other thing about black actually although it has these these negative connotations going back thousands of years of people think you've connected to darkness. It did emerge, particularly in the early 20th century as the most chic color and this of the color that was somehow timeless and stylish, and we still use that phrase you know x is the new black again and again and again. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to have this conversation. I mean this is so interesting. I hope everyone has enjoyed this as much as I have, and have your questions answered. Don't forget to click that link above to buy the book, because James does talk about these things and more and in greater detail and there's so much pop culture and art and so many things discussed in the book it's really interesting. Thank you so much. Thank you for and thank you everybody for for listening in on a Friday night. Yeah, good times.