Latest / Why We Do What We Do / If These Flags Could Talk
Transcript
- 0:00Hey, everyone, just a quick heads up. There was some construction going
- 0:03on when we recorded this discussion. We didn't realize as we were recording how
- 0:08much some of those construction sounds blood into the audio background. You can hear
- 0:12everything we say clearly, but there was some hammering in the background that you
- 0:15will hear during parts of the discussion. So now you know what is there
- 0:18and why it's there. Enjoy the episode you're listening to Why we do what
- 0:26we do? Welcome to Why we Do what we do. I am your
- 0:38symbolic host Abraham, and I'm You're waving in the wind host Shame. Where
- 0:44a psychology podcast. We talked about all of the weird things that people do
- 0:47around the world, in many cultures and in many different ways, but of
- 0:51a similar form kind of Yes, actually, this topic is one of those
- 0:55ones that people do have been doing for many, many many years, many
- 0:59deck eight centuries even, and have strong opinions about too. Yes, that's
- 1:04a way to put it. Anyway, As I said, we talk about
- 1:07psychology things. If you would like to support the show, if you end
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- 1:23it and fly that baby high proud. That's it. Make it as big
- 1:27as possible, like one of those car dealerships to have giant American flags exactly.
- 1:33And I'll talk more about the ways that you can support us at the
- 1:34end of this discussion, but I do want to note that we are currently
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- 1:57like a little trivia a game, or some other virtual thing that maybe we'll
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- 2:10being a Patreon and of getting hang out with us. If that's something you
- 2:14want to do. I hope you do. I mean, if you don't,
- 2:15then I would have so many questions and that would be such a blow
- 2:19to my ego, which is so fragile already right, hanging on by a
- 2:23thread. Well, this episode is going to be published on or is being
- 2:27published. You're hearing it now on the date that it's published, which is
- 2:30May tenth of the year twenty twenty three. And the May tenth comes with
- 2:34it some holidays for us to recognize. Yes, so today is donate a
- 2:38day's wages to charity Day. That's very generous. Yeah, it says day
- 2:43too many times in there. It's also National Receptionists Day, so be kind
- 2:47to a receptionist, get them a gift. Yes, save all the PAMs
- 2:52and Paul's and whoever is a receptionist. It's also Mother Ocean Day. Love
- 2:57that sure. National Night Shift Workers Day. Appreciate those people who stay up
- 3:01lates to keep everything floating and working the way it needs to. Have you
- 3:06ever had a nightshift job? I have a couple of times. For brutal.
- 3:10It is rough. It is rough. It's also a National Small Business
- 3:14Day, so please go support small businesses. That's us. Yeah. We
- 3:17are also Root Canal Appreciation Day. I guess you can appreciate what it's trying
- 3:24to do. Appreciated the act itself seems a little tough. It's all order.
- 3:29Yeah, yeah, yeah that they had to make a day for it
- 3:30because they're like nobody, nobody appreciates this the way they should. That's right.
- 3:35And it's also World Loupas Day. Okay, yeah, good to know.
- 3:38Usually it's like awareness, it's just Lupas Day, where just like celebrating
- 3:42lupas. Yeah, I was, that's when I looked at up. It
- 3:44was World Loupas Day. Okay. Great. It is Arson Awareness Week,
- 3:47so there isn't awareness out there, and yes, is of fire, yes,
- 3:52yes, be aware of fire. It is also Be Kind of Animals
- 3:53Week, which you know gets the WWDWWD stamp of approval agreed, Yeah,
- 4:00and lasts from now until May tenth of next year, I think, yes,
- 4:02and every year beyond that. That's right for the rest of time.
- 4:06It is also International Clitteris Awareness Week, so that thing to also know that
- 4:13it existence, yes, and more people should. It's also National Children's Mental
- 4:16Health Week super important, yes, indeed, and just in case you forgot
- 4:21already, it is also Root Canal Appreciation Week. Still there's a day and
- 4:29a week. I just want to make sure that everybody is really clear about
- 4:30that. It's a whole day and then the whole a whole last week.
- 4:33That's right. You get you get everything you need about from Canal Appreciation,
- 4:39one total package right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did look
- 4:42it up. May is not Root Canal Appreciation month though, so missed opportunity.
- 4:46That's it. One day. It could have been holidays nested within like
- 4:49days, weeks, months, It would have been great. What if this
- 4:51was like a misconstrued thing. There's like an actual canal that's like a really
- 4:56important canal for a community. It's called Root Canal, and that's what it
- 4:59was. But dentists were like they co opted it. They totally, they
- 5:01totally took it in there like it's ours, that's probably it. It was
- 5:04like a very important shipping route that every country on the planet used at some
- 5:10point or uses at some point, and it was Root Canal. Yeah,
- 5:15dentist appropriated it. Yeah, the dentist took it. And now everyone's confused.
- 5:23All right, that's my favorite new lore. That's that's heed canon.
- 5:27Well, if you are a vexillologist, you will either love or hate this
- 5:31episode. So welcome vexillologists, amateur and professional among you. What is a
- 5:38vexillologist. I had a hard time saying that myself. That's a tough one.
- 5:45Vexillology is the scientific study of flags. So vexillologist is one who then
- 5:50studies flags as their job. I guess maybe hobby. I'm not sure.
- 5:55One of my favorite things is that every time we get into a topic,
- 6:00discover that there's some field of study around a very specific thing, like somebody
- 6:03had to put together this, like they were like, you know what,
- 6:06the study of this, the science of this, the research in this,
- 6:10like the degree that you get in this is vexillology. Now welcome to that
- 6:14world. Yeah. So there's just there's so many people in the world that
- 6:16this something like this can exist. And all that is to say that we
- 6:20are talking about as I mentioned flags, I'm talking about flags, what they
- 6:25are and all of that, And I think it raises an important question why
- 6:29what a psychology podcast talk about flags? Because they're everywhere and they are interesting
- 6:32as a form of communication intended to convey some kind of meeting without knowing the
- 6:35language of the communicator, so they are like kind of a universal communication tool.
- 6:41They are imbued with symbolism in nearly every aspect of the design, whether
- 6:44it's shape, size, color, symbols, where it's flown, combinations of
- 6:47all those things, and super super fascinating when you get into like how flags
- 6:51are used in those spaces. Yeah, and furthermore, where in the United
- 6:56States of America the USFA and flag culture in the US is particularly flamboyant,
- 7:02sometimes to the point of jingoism and sometimes to the point of it being comical.
- 7:08But flags are a very big thing in the US, Yes, and
- 7:12so this episode in particular is going to be a how to, like how
- 7:15to read and interpret flags as well as why it do explanation, as well
- 7:18as a history of and finally, here's some interesting stuff you may not have
- 7:23known type of discussion. So there's a lot to unpack here, but we
- 7:27won't We're not going to talk year off. Although there's kind of a lot
- 7:30of different things to talk about, they don't take a lot of time to
- 7:32talk about them, So I think this will probably be on a little bit
- 7:36of the shorter side. Although for us who knows what that actually means.
- 7:40I know, we can be a little long window. Yes, yes,
- 7:42yes, we always find a way to turn a thirty minute episode into an
- 7:45hour and a half. Yeah. At the end of every year, Spotify
- 7:47tells us we produced x percentage more content than the year before, and it
- 7:51just keeps going up. So apparently we like to talk. Yeah, it's
- 7:56trending up. Yeah, all right, Well, let's get into the background
- 7:59of this some of the information that you need to have to know about flags.
- 8:03What is the history of flags? What do we know about where flags
- 8:05came from? And in the vast internet of knowledge, the best that I
- 8:09could find for the origin of flag is we don't know. Yeah, most
- 8:13sources estimated thousands of years back that flags started, Yeah, with the longest
- 8:18estimate being eleventh century BC in ancient China. You know, that's as far
- 8:22as we've gotten so far. But it's important about that is what even is
- 8:24a flag? And the definition is relevant because things that we now call flags
- 8:30likely and almost certainly evolved from other forms of signage, particularly things like a
- 8:35standard and a military formation, which was kind of just a cloth banner that
- 8:39hanged down from a horizontal cross or other signage, things that people might have
- 8:43used. Right. Although a flag is generally described as a piece of material,
- 8:48usually cloth, cut into a particular shape, containing images depicting various symbols,
- 8:52icons, colors, or other images, there are things that function as
- 8:56flags or precursors to flags that were like made out of materials, including metal,
- 9:01And would that would be really difficult to burn a metal flag. It
- 9:05would be just melts. It doesn't do what you want to do in that
- 9:09case, not quite as a showy yeah. And furthermore, at this point,
- 9:13the symbolism of the flag is likely the most important part and really thinking
- 9:16about what a flag is conveying and what's on the flag, because you can
- 9:20now see flags depicted in many ways that don't involve cloth. So for example,
- 9:24flag might be painted onto a material, might have a flag that's a
- 9:28sticker that goes on like a car, or on a water bottle or whatever.
- 9:33You have flags that are tattoos that of course or that not made out
- 9:35of material unless you consider skin material. And if you do, then maybe
- 9:39turn yourself into the FBI, yeah, or whatever law enforcement agency heads your
- 9:43country that investigates violent crime, or you know, anything where we can see
- 9:48the colors or shape of the flag depicted in some way. Again, the
- 9:52material part is the actual flag. But if I were to say there's a
- 9:56flag on that car, you might still understand that that flag as a sticker
- 10:00or a painting or something of that nature or decal and not necessarily an actual
- 10:05material flag that's mounted on it. Sure that makes sense. Because the origin
- 10:11of flag is uncertain, the reasons for its use are equally unknown. We
- 10:15don't really know where flags started as like a symbolic type of communication. But
- 10:20as we said at the beginning, generally the primary purpose of the flag is
- 10:22to communicate, specifically without having to speak the language other communicator or needing to
- 10:28be able to read. And so many flags do have text. We do
- 10:30recognize that, and it speaks to who the intended audience is for that message.
- 10:35But they can still be interpreted by somebody who doesn't speak the language,
- 10:39or at least they can understand that flag is trying to communicate something, right,
- 10:43and you can imagine that predating things like other forms of communication, radio,
- 10:48morse code, you know whatever. It is, the only way that
- 10:50people could communicate at a distance was to use often some either very very loud
- 10:56sound or some kind of visual media and which has the benefit of potentially not
- 11:01being loud and attracting people to your position and that sort of thing. The
- 11:05flags then could be used to communicate, and as we said, it often
- 11:09did not have anything that was superfine detail like text. And you can also
- 11:13imagine that back at the time that flags were sort of starting to be used,
- 11:16that was way before literacy was going to be very widespread or even kind
- 11:22of common among most people, and so it really did need to be a
- 11:26symbolic representation anyway. Absolutely, so many people believe that flags were likely used
- 11:31early on for ships at sea to signal one another. They might signal that
- 11:33they had sick crew, to communicate the weather conditions, and to signal allegiance
- 11:39to one another so they wouldn't fire on one another, although this would mean
- 11:41that if it was an enemy flag, they might be fired upon. So
- 11:46there was a lot of sea battles, and especially when you get into the
- 11:48pirate age and all the fun stuff that went along with that and all the
- 11:52symbology around flags. It's always really great to hear those stories. And we'll
- 11:54talk a little bit about that later. Yeah, and then others also suggested
- 11:58that flags were used in combat and or initially or early on, probably both
- 12:03to signal and coordinate troops, but also there's some amount of it that was
- 12:07sort of peacocking to just look like there was a lot going on. You
- 12:11know, it's big and bright and flashy and colorful, and it adds to
- 12:15the mixture of numbers, so it can be kind of hard to tell exactly,
- 12:18and so it sort of gives a little bit more fanfare and is showy
- 12:22in that way. And then there was also probably general use for things that
- 12:26were like if you imagine a lot of signage that people had that might have
- 12:31adorned shops, It might have adorned buildings, It might have adorned government,
- 12:35it might have adorned a lot of things that were either material like a cloth
- 12:39or other materials that were meant to be some kind of signage, and that
- 12:43those essentially just went from a fixed position on a thing like a building to
- 12:48essentially being mounted on a more portable thing like a stick or a pole.
- 12:50Right, And so that's kind of where they probably originated as among those places.
- 12:56I try to think of some examples of flags that I've seen that kind
- 13:00of had an impact on me. In general, like when you think about
- 13:03the symbology of it and stuff. And the one thing I can keep going
- 13:05back to is in Dune, partly because I've been reading the Dune series,
- 13:09but the one vision that Paul keeps having is that as the Treaties start to
- 13:16expand across the universe, he sees the green flag of the Tredees on every
- 13:20planet. And so the idea like that was a big symbol of his kind
- 13:24of like his reign of terror as the as the Emperor and how that would
- 13:30apply and it was never like it was never war and blood and I mean
- 13:33that was part of it, but it was really kind of his big thing
- 13:35was seeing a flag, the flag of the Treaties on every planet in the
- 13:39Empire. Interesting, I did not remember that that detail of the flag specifically
- 13:43in those books. But yeah, I mean most people remember the worms,
- 13:46and that's that's fair. The other words are cooler. Worms are cooler.
- 13:52But the flag that has kept coming back to me. I was like,
- 13:54oh, yeah, that's like a kind of a pretty powerful symbol. It's
- 13:56good to just remember the you know, the Lord of Dune as we will
- 14:00go forward, because it's just so good. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
- 14:03everybody. Everybody's addicted to wormpoop. That's really what it is, like,
- 14:05that's the that's the that's the story of doone and understandably, so,
- 14:11yeah, wormpoop makes space travel possible. That's what Done is about. Well,
- 14:15we should probably talk more about wormpoop, but first we're going to listen
- 14:18to some wormpoop and that is adds. Yes, Okay, so we were
- 14:28just talking about wormpoop, but what we were going to talk about is more
- 14:31about the history of flags and sort of the why of flags in some certain
- 14:35ways. Now, one thing that I was thinking about is why flags are
- 14:41made of a flexible material? Why not just have it be that you're holding
- 14:45up like a board, like a billboard that has a sign or a piece
- 14:48of metal or whatever. And I actually had a difficult time tracking down any
- 14:52concrete information about this, but particularly thinking about cloth in like weather, you've
- 14:58got a lot of rain and that sort of thing. It makes it less
- 15:01resilient. But I think there were some very practical concerns that probably weren't involved
- 15:05in this. I just didn't find a lot of people talking about it.
- 15:07But one thing I did find so what sort of alluded to is that one
- 15:13of the things to consider is fabric as lightweight. So if you were trying
- 15:16to communicate a lot of information via signage, it would be a lot easier
- 15:18to mount that thing without having to really engineer a very sturdy pull or expect
- 15:24someone with very strong arms to hold it for a long period of time,
- 15:28because it just wouldn't weigh very much. So there's a very practical concern around
- 15:33like how tough your infrastructure needs to be to fly a flag. If it's
- 15:37very light weight, then you can essentially make it relatively cheap and not that
- 15:43rigid of a structure. And also just kind of thinking about the natural phenomenon
- 15:48that is wind that would make it so that the flag can be seen periodically
- 15:52no matter what angle you're viewing it from, Matt, the wind will blow
- 15:54it in certain directions and make it facing and really two directions at the same
- 15:56time. If the flag is printed and created on both sides, right,
- 16:00yeah, exactly, so, then if you can see it from one side,
- 16:03you can see it from the other, and then as it sort of
- 16:06moves around, it allows it to be seen from many people. You're exactly
- 16:08right. Anymore. Flags are most popularly used to identify and represent a country.
- 16:15I think that one of the most common things people will know is that
- 16:18every country has a flag and nationalities, and there are also flags down to
- 16:22small municipal regions like states and cities. And they also belong to clubs and
- 16:26groups of people and that sort of thing. So they might represent a specific
- 16:30government or system of government, they might represent a very specific geographical region.
- 16:34They're used kind of as anything that can be some kind of logo or iconic
- 16:40representation about some almost always a group of people in a particular setting, if
- 16:45you will sure. Now, although flags are used for communication or have been
- 16:51historically, they're used for other specific activities. So a person might use a
- 16:53flag to signal the start of a race, to indicate the winner at the
- 16:57end of the race, the checkered flag, which is like the flag of
- 17:00daytona beach, right to stake a claim on a newly explored area, which
- 17:04is why there's an American flag on the moon, supposedly to indicate offsides in
- 17:10a soccer or a football game. And little flags in the grass to warn
- 17:14people not to walk, cut the grass or dig in a particular area.
- 17:17So there's lots of like lots of uses, whether they're just giant, big
- 17:21flags or like tiny little flags stuck in a yard over a cable. Yeah,
- 17:23so you can imagine flags serve all kinds of purposes. And I was
- 17:26trying to, you know, really trying to pull out examples of things where
- 17:30you wouldn't necessarily think of as being a flag, but they are, like
- 17:33they're functionally and topographically all examples of flags. Yeah, So essentially flags can
- 17:40serve many purposes. They can be a form of decoration. People, as
- 17:44we said, use them as warnings. They obviously use for messaging and advertising
- 17:47as well as signaling, and a lot of people use them to communicate some
- 17:52message, even when it's like a flag that is a national flag, how
- 17:56it's posted, where it's posted, all of that can actually have its own
- 18:00implications and meaning as people use it. Absolutely so would that being said,
- 18:06I think it's important to recognize there are different shapes of flags. We typically
- 18:10are familiar with the rectangular flag, which is often used for national flags and
- 18:14state flags and all that in the United States, but there are so many
- 18:18shapes, like so many ships a lot. So does the kind of give
- 18:22a couple off the top of my head, and I don't know if you
- 18:25want to go over all of these, but some of these words are really
- 18:26fun. So there's a rectangular flag, a square flag, a pennant,
- 18:30a double pennant, a fanyon, a burgee, a swallowtail, a swallowtail
- 18:33and tongue, a gonfulon, a bumping, a flag with schwenkel, which
- 18:38I love. There's a ribbon, streamers or a flams and wind socks,
- 18:44just to name a few. Some that you might see outside of a business
- 18:47include a vertical flag, a curved vertical flag, or a feathered vertical flag.
- 18:52And the feathered ones are those ones that I feel like are like right
- 18:55outside H and R blocks, are like do your taxes today? Yes,
- 18:59sort of thing. Those advertising really common ones. But there's also just like
- 19:03there's a bunch. There are these swallow tails. There's these penance and double
- 19:07pennance and upside down pennance. There is one called the tampo, the curvy
- 19:11arc swing. I mean, we're just giving you names, but essentially what
- 19:15a lot of these are is there are flags that have like points on them,
- 19:18so almost like they end in a bunch of triangles, or they have
- 19:22like vs cut out of the end of the flag. They also have ones
- 19:26that sort of curve downward like a bird's beak, or they curved downward as
- 19:30a rectangles or sort of a curvy rectangle, or they end in streamers.
- 19:33There's actually one that has a hole. A flag with a hole is what
- 19:36it's called. So there's all kinds of different shapes that these flags take.
- 19:41There's there's tons of them, and they're they're used for different things. It's
- 19:44actually pretty pretty fascinating. I think the raven banner is pretty interesting. It
- 19:48looks like kind of like a quarter circle. Like it looks like kind of
- 19:51like how you would draw a sun in the corner of a piece of paper,
- 19:53right like as a child. Yeah, you know, you draw the
- 19:56circle and they're like the little beams from it. It looks like that.
- 19:59There's the shield, which is shaped like kind of like a medieval shield.
- 20:02And there's also two different types of rectangle. There's rectangular one to two ratio
- 20:06and there's a rectangular two to three ratio. There you go, and so,
- 20:10as I said, what's interesting about flags is that they are basically meant
- 20:14to be symbolic in every way, like they represent something, they indicate something,
- 20:18they imply something, and so one of the things that is important about
- 20:22flags is understanding the position of the flag. One position of a flag can
- 20:26be supposed to upside down, and this is actually people, I'm curious if
- 20:32you are reacting to an upside down flag and what that might mean. But
- 20:36what you might not know is that the upside down flag officially is used as
- 20:41a signal of distress and many many places. As a matter of fact,
- 20:44the US Flag Code specifies that is the only acceptable condition under which to invert
- 20:49the flag to be upside down is to indicate distress. So like on a
- 20:53ship, for example, they might put their flag upside down and that means
- 20:57like please help us as a thing, right, which made me think of
- 21:00flags that have very symmetrical designs, like I think of the Japanese flag,
- 21:06which you know when you turn upside down is the same flag. But that
- 21:10goes back to some places just don't have a meaning for an upside down flag
- 21:11that's not part of the code and the quorum of that particular flag. So
- 21:15that made me think of that right away. Yeah, there are there are
- 21:18a few that they can't be inverted, either forward or backward, or upside
- 21:22down or right side up because they're perfectly symmetrical, or they might be symmetrical
- 21:26in one way or not another. But yeah, they're right, they can't
- 21:29be inverted. Of course, many people are probably thinking, and they're not
- 21:33wrong, that an upside down flag can also mean like descent. They can
- 21:37mean disapproval of their government, or that you are dissenting from the government in
- 21:41some way. And in some countries that do not have the freedom to criticize
- 21:45the government built into their constitution in their laws, flying an upside down flag
- 21:49may be a punishable offense because they don't have freedom there. Yeah, were
- 21:55you ever somebody who would fly or post an upside down flag? No,
- 22:00mostly because I've had so few flags in my life that would not have been
- 22:06an opportunity to do that. I remember doing that when we went into the
- 22:10Iraqi War and in like kind of that that whole thing when we invaded our
- 22:14Iraq and Afghanistan, and I remember posting stuff on it was like MySpace or
- 22:18something, causing a ruckus with all the top friends and all that. Yeah,
- 22:22so it was it was a whole thing. Now that was like kind
- 22:23of like a punk symbol, right, Like, so it's like the upside
- 22:26down flag was always something you saw it like punk shows, and like especially
- 22:29with political punk bands like Anti Flag, I'm pretty sure sure their whole thing
- 22:33is that they are like named after an upside down flag. Yeah, glad
- 22:37you mentioned anti flag because I was not thinking about all the flag bands that
- 22:40we could talk about. Yeah, black black flag, anti flag also too.
- 22:45There's other symbols. There are other positionings, right that that mean different
- 22:48things. A flag at half mast or half staff is most often used to
- 22:52indicate mourning for someone, usually someone powerful, or maybe some kind of major
- 22:56national tragedy. Yeah, after someone's passed away. But yeah, as you
- 23:00said, national tragedy or someone has died is a common time that that'll happen.
- 23:03And I actually found that that seems to be internationally fairly common. Yeah,
- 23:07although definitely is the case in the United States. It seems to be
- 23:10mostly if like a politician dies, is when they'll go to half masted,
- 23:14right, or someone who is like a public servant in some way, But
- 23:17almost never for someone who's just a celebrity, they would have to also be
- 23:21like a public servant in some way. I did see, which was a
- 23:23wild thing to me, Like Rush Limbaugh like when he passed away, people
- 23:27were putting their flags a half staff, and I was like, no,
- 23:30that's not right. Double staff. Yeah, to put it up higher,
- 23:33which I shouldn't celebrate the death of others, but half staff does seem like
- 23:37a bit of a stretch to me for I highly charged political figure. Yes,
- 23:44like show host, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
- 23:45yeah, that's kind That was kind of my thought, my general my general
- 23:48thought on that, like, I wouldn't fly a flag at half masted if
- 23:51Joe Rogan were to pass away suddenly, No, no, yeah, that's
- 23:56the equivalent I think. Yeah, Now, an American flag will be displayed
- 24:00backward. And what I mean by backward is that if you look at American
- 24:03flag, if you're those that you're not familiar with it, on the way
- 24:07that it's designed is on the top left corner is a blue rectangle with a
- 24:11bunch of white stars in it, and then it's red and white stripes from
- 24:14top to bottom. And if you were to flip that so that the on
- 24:18the right top is the star, so it's not upside down, but it
- 24:21is now switched to it's facing the other direction. That actually is something that
- 24:25people do on purpose in the government, and so it's displayed in that backward
- 24:30manner on the passenger side of cars, which in most of the world means
- 24:36the right side of the car if you're driving in it. But in some
- 24:38places where people drive on the right side of the car, then it would
- 24:42not the passenger side would not be anyway point being passenger side for people who
- 24:45drive on the left side of the road. Okay, what are the driver
- 24:48seas and the left side of the car. It's also on the right sleeve
- 24:52of military uniforms it has shown backwards, and it's actually this is considered a
- 24:56sign of loyalty and respect, and it's because with an object like a car
- 25:02or someone's shoulder, the forward motion of the object where they want the stars
- 25:07to come first, so the stars would be forward. They sort of made
- 25:11the argument that there is no upper left because it's on the right shoulder,
- 25:15which I don't fully understand their logic there, but anyway, the point being
- 25:18they want the stars to come forward, so if you're moving forward, then
- 25:21the stars are in the front. And it also should look like what the
- 25:23flag would look like if you were seeing it from both sides. So if
- 25:26you imagine like the car being transparent if you have it facing the right direction
- 25:32on the driver's side door, and then if you were to view it from
- 25:34the other just flipped around, then the stars would then be on the right,
- 25:37if that makes sense. And the same is true for the flag on
- 25:40the sleeves of uniforms. Is that if you were to see it from the
- 25:42left on the left, if the person was transparent and all you saw was
- 25:47the flag on the other side of them, the stars would be on the
- 25:48right. And so there's a whole thing about this being the official position that's
- 25:52considered loyalty and respect to fly the flag. To have the flag posted backward
- 25:57when it's meant to be on the right side of a thing. Interesting,
- 26:02My educated guests would have been that you put the stars forward, because if
- 26:04I'm running forward, that's how the flag would fly if I were holding the
- 26:08flag up right. Yeah, so like it would fly with the bars,
- 26:14you know, the stripes facing backwards or pointing backwards. I think that is
- 26:17kind of what that means by putting the flag the stars forward, is that
- 26:21there indicates the forward motion of it. I think you're right. Yeah,
- 26:26Well, we have been talking about colors on the flag, so it's probably
- 26:29worth diving into that a little bit because I feel like colors and we already
- 26:33did an episode on like color psychology and all that, which I think is,
- 26:37you know, if it's not necessarily related to this, but it might
- 26:40be a fun listen to kind of dive into. But we know that part
- 26:42of the communication of flags is the color of the flag, the color on
- 26:47the imprint, or the symbolism within each color. I mean, we know
- 26:49in the United States we've got the red, white, and blue. The
- 26:52red and white are supposed to be the original thirteen colonies. Not necessarily the
- 26:56colors being used as symbolism, but the stripes themselves the symbol right, Okay,
- 27:00So a lot of times the colors that are chosen like they're they're often
- 27:06meant depending on the situation, Like there's a high level of contrast people might
- 27:12want to show, and so often like the most common meanings are the ones
- 27:17they gonna get the most vibrant, most contrasted colors because of the easiest to
- 27:21discern, and so common colors that you're going to see on flags are black,
- 27:25white, red, blue, green, yellow, and orange. And
- 27:27then the different combinations of colors can mean things because there are. Of course,
- 27:30those aren't the only colors you can see. You might also see purple
- 27:34and other, you know, other other colors, but those are the very
- 27:37common ones anyway. And so we'll just sort of talk through what those different
- 27:41colors mean when they're depicted, and then what different combinations might mean as well.
- 27:47Right, So, I think the first one that might come up is
- 27:48the black flag. And this can mean a couple different things. It can
- 27:52mean determination, it could mean at the carritage. It can mean the feet
- 27:55of the enemies. It can mean symbols of death or mourning. You know.
- 27:57That tracks with a lot of kind like symbolism around the color black in
- 28:00general. Yeah. In addition, people are probably familiar with that a black
- 28:04flag can be some sort of sign of anarchism, anti government sentiment, that
- 28:08sort of thing. Although apparently, and you might have known this, but
- 28:12I didn't know this, a black flag is used to summon a race car
- 28:15driver who's on a racecar track to come and stop at the pit stop for
- 28:19quick maintenance. So you could be anti government or pro racecar. Yeah,
- 28:26anti government or pro new tires exactly, all right. So the white color
- 28:32of a flag is often used as maybe a possible surrender if you're in a
- 28:37battle. You kind of see that a lot. When people say throwing in
- 28:40the towel, they usually throw in a white towel to give up or surrender,
- 28:42like in a fight or something like that. The color white is often
- 28:45use a symbol of peace. Historically, it's been used to describe purity,
- 28:49harmony, things like that. As a matter of fact, Stephen King uses
- 28:53the color of white as the example of good in his world, and the
- 28:57color red is actually evil, like something is of the red, they are
- 29:02usually of the evil side, and of the white means that they are of
- 29:04the pure good side. All right, I can say that. Yeah,
- 29:07it seems like a lot of places have sort of adopted white to have a
- 29:11similar meaning. Red is super common. You're going to see this in a
- 29:14lot of flags, and red, as you might imagine, has a lot
- 29:17to do with indicating some amount of like war or blood. It can also
- 29:22indicate a sense of power. Revolution is a very common one, so you'll
- 29:26see that in a lot of places. So red is meant to be sort
- 29:29of this aggressive ish color. Although it's not meant to indicate the nation is
- 29:32aggressive, it often is just could be saying something like this flag, this
- 29:36nation, this government was forged from overcoming a wartime history, and so there
- 29:41are a lot of meanings that could be indicated in that. Like there was
- 29:45one where the government I believe that they gained their independence and they adopted a
- 29:51red stripe in the middle of their flag to essentially indicate the lives lost as
- 29:55in the fight for their independence. So it was not meant to be an
- 29:57aggressive thing in that sense. It was meant to sort of honor those who
- 30:00served in the revolution for their independence. Sure, I think that makes sense.
- 30:04When I think of the color red is like a predominant color on a
- 30:07flag, I immediately think of the Soviet Union. It's understandable. Well yeah,
- 30:11yeah, yeah, you know, there's a whole history with that.
- 30:14But I think even more so than that, thinking about how some of the
- 30:17propaganda and some of the discussions around the nation itself was about power and strength,
- 30:22and it made sense that that was like kind of like the primary template
- 30:26for the entire flag. Yeah. Absolutely. The color blue, which is
- 30:29a personal favorite of mine, is usually related to liberation. I like the
- 30:33idea that it's related to good fortune. Yeah, that's kind of a nice
- 30:36thing. There's some other people that will say that it stands for let's say
- 30:41determination, like maybe the country is determined, they have persevered, which actually
- 30:45tracks a lot with American history and kind of like getting out from under a
- 30:48British rule. So it makes sense that you've got that kind of like that
- 30:51swath of blue on the United States flag and liberation as well as part of
- 30:55that. And then alertness, which I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah,
- 30:57liberty is very common with the blue color, although it has also been
- 31:00used to indicate things like open ocean and sky. So for example, there
- 31:04are some island nations that have a blue flag and then there's sort of a
- 31:10color icon in the center. I actually just say, like one that was
- 31:12interesting to me is a place called Saint Lucia, which has as their flag
- 31:17it's an all sort of sky blue flag, and it has this black triangle
- 31:21that's actually meant to represents sort of the indigenous people that are there. It's
- 31:23got this gold triangle that's meant to represent some of the sunlight and the warmth
- 31:27and the fact this is like a you know, a place with warm and
- 31:32sunny. Yeah, and then it kind of has this image of this triangle
- 31:34in this blue field that sort of looks like an island in the middle of
- 31:37water. So there's a lot of symbolism wrapped up in it that I think
- 31:41was kind of really thoughtful and how it was put together that reminds me.
- 31:44And we'll probably talk about this a little bit more later, but the flag
- 31:47for the state of Florida is actually pretty thoughtful. It's white, and it's
- 31:49got like kind of like some red bars on it in the seal in the
- 31:52middle, and it's got some imagery of somebody standing in kind of like the
- 31:57swampy like woodlands of Florida. So it looks like kind of old Florida and
- 32:01has somebody like somebody who's an indigitous person, and which is like kind of
- 32:05ironic. I'm surprised Ronda Santa doesn't try to change it. Yeah, but
- 32:07fascinating. It's the only flag in the United States that has an exposed breast
- 32:12on it. That's interesting. Yeah, so Florida's wild. So anyway back
- 32:19to colors, the color green is usually in reference to something that has to
- 32:23do with like fertility, which makes sense. You can see that with like
- 32:27land fertility and growth. You see that with agricultures in places that have like
- 32:31maybe a large agriculture industry. It could be used as youthfulness. It could
- 32:36be used for hope. It could be used as prosperity. It could be
- 32:38used as a few different things like that. But it seems to make sense
- 32:42that it would be something related to the land and growth in that space.
- 32:45Yep, and yellow, and there's sort of yellow and orange I think are
- 32:50obviously somewhat similar to colors. But yellow has been viewed as it can represent
- 32:53the sun, it can represent wealth and energy. It can also represent happiness
- 32:58a sort of this way that yellows depend did that sort of sense of things,
- 33:01and then orange can be a representation of courage and sacrifice, sort of
- 33:06a blending of the red in there. A little bit. You might be
- 33:08wondering how you might combine all those colors to depict a specific message. But
- 33:14first, the cankersore of the media world advertisement. Okay, so we were
- 33:25talking about the different colors that might be on flags and what those could mean,
- 33:29but there's also very common combinations of colors that you'll see, and so
- 33:32we'll address those right now. And one of the first ones that you might
- 33:36be thinking about is red, white and blue. Yeah, you didn't say
- 33:38that, right though. It's not red, white and blue. It's red,
- 33:40white and blue. Sorry I missed the appropriate inflection. It happens.
- 33:45It happens. So many Americans actually kind of look at this idea as combination
- 33:50as our own. It's unique. We did this thing, we created this
- 33:53what you know, I think it's kind of common for many Americans. I
- 33:57think that we did this thing first when we are an incredibly new nation.
- 34:00Yeah, people don't realize that kind of in the history of the world,
- 34:04but this blend has been existent well before the United States and has actually been
- 34:07found in a lot of European countries and just the name a few Croatia,
- 34:12Czech Republic, France, Netherlands, Serbia, the UK, and Slovenia.
- 34:16You see, it's kind of already existed. And this combination is usually a
- 34:22way to represent We mentioned it before liberty, we talked about representative government,
- 34:25we talked about independence. Those are typically you'll find those colors in those spaces,
- 34:30which is ironic given that Russia is also red, white and blue.
- 34:34Right now, Oh, I didn't know that they were blue right now,
- 34:36figured it was still red with the hammer and sickle. Nope, it's red,
- 34:38white, and blue, but the bars are horizontal. Weird. Okay,
- 34:40green, red, and yellow color combinations you might see in some African
- 34:45countries Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Mali. There's lots of places that you're
- 34:50going to see that combination of colors. But there are also many places around
- 34:52the world that include green, red, and yellow. We also see the
- 34:55green red is very common as well as white and black. So you see
- 34:59that those four colors together in a lot of the Muslim countries. So you'll
- 35:04see that in a United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, I
- 35:07think, Iraq, Afghanistan, the countries in the Middle East that have a
- 35:10Muslim faith will often use the red, white, green, and black colors.
- 35:15One other color that you'll sometimes see on flag is not as common is
- 35:17purple, and that really is just meant to represent like royalty, wealth,
- 35:22that sort of thing. So if you see purple flags, that often indicates
- 35:24like a monarchy or a kingdom of some sort. You know, it's funny
- 35:28that you bring that up. I cannot, for the life of me think
- 35:30of a flag for a nation right now that has the color purple on it,
- 35:35Like I can think of all the other colors I can think of,
- 35:37like all I can think of those in one way or another, but I
- 35:38cannot think of purple. Oh only three national flags Dominica, El Salvador,
- 35:45and Nicaragua. Oh interesting, okay, yeah, use purple and their flags.
- 35:50So interesting. Well, you'll find is like every flag that has flown,
- 35:53at least for nations specifically, and that's kind of what we're talking about,
- 35:57probably has like some very unique symbology or history behind why those colors were
- 36:00selected for that particular flag. Yeah, exactly. So many of the colors
- 36:07that are put on the flag represent a country's former relation to another nation.
- 36:09What you'll find is that, like when a country has been colonized and takes
- 36:14back it's independence, it might adopt the colors of the colonizing nation's flag,
- 36:17as was the case of the original American flags. The United Kingdom's flag was
- 36:22red, white, and blue. It's the Union jack. And then so
- 36:23we did that, take that and we applied that. Fun fact, Betsy
- 36:29Ross was apparently the first person who designed like the design the first American flag
- 36:32that had the thirteen stars were the stars the circle of the stars. Everybody
- 36:37knows about Betsy Ross. I heard that, and then I heard that there
- 36:38was some dispute about the veracity of that claim. I just actually look it
- 36:43up for this episode, so I'm not one hundred percent clear on that one.
- 36:45There might be some people who argue against that. That's fine, they
- 36:49can argue against it. I'm gonna say I'm for it because I am directly
- 36:52related to Betsy Ross. It's reasonable. Yeah, it's in my family.
- 36:57It's all I'm saying, Like, you're welcome for the American flag, is
- 37:00what I'm saying. Let's see the white flag of surrender, which we talked
- 37:02about a little bit, that goes back at least as far as the Roman
- 37:06Empire. China will also was flying white flags around a similar time, so
- 37:09it's not clear who did it first. It's possible this was sort of convergent
- 37:13thing that both arrived at that Now China as they used in battle, they
- 37:16would actually lead their armies with white flags, but as as a flag of
- 37:21surrender, it was most likely started in the Roman Empire as far as we
- 37:23can tell, and then it was used by British forces during the Revolutionary War.
- 37:29In the United States, they used the white flag in combination with a
- 37:32drum cadence that was meant to indicate a request for parley because they were they
- 37:37were surrendering at the siege of Yorktown, Virginia. Hell yeah, they were,
- 37:40sorry, they have been Southern just came right out of shape, you
- 37:45know, it's a whole thing. Yeah, I'm not sure if that was
- 37:50the first instance in sort of modern time is probably not. But anyway,
- 37:52the Geneva Convention actually officially recognizes the white flag as a symbol of surrender,
- 37:58and because of that, there are some specific rules around this, which is
- 38:01that it's illegal to pretend to surrender and then use that as a way to
- 38:05ambush your attacker, and it's also illegal to continue to fire on someone who
- 38:08has raised a white flag. So I've always thought it was a little bit
- 38:12weird to have wartime laws, but I also get like why there are wartime
- 38:15laws because people will do terrible things. People will do horrible things. Yes,
- 38:20anyway, that is the thing is that the white flag is a sign
- 38:23of surrender. It has been for a very long time and is officially recognized
- 38:28as such. Fascinating. It's one of those things you may have entered this
- 38:30episode not thinking that flags were super interesting, but I think they're really really
- 38:34cool and for these types of reasons. So there's some other interesting things I
- 38:37found about flags and I thought would just be fun to share that didn't fit
- 38:40super neatly into like a particular topic, But there are some things that I
- 38:44found. One thing that I found was that the oldest state flag is Denmark's
- 38:47flag from the thirteenth century. So obviously flags have been around longer than that,
- 38:52but this is the longest one that seems to be. This has been
- 38:54unchanged since then. It's just a red flag with a white sideways. Is
- 39:00obviously meant to indicate some religious background with the government at the time that that
- 39:05was developed. That makes sense. There also seems to be ongoing competitions to
- 39:08break the world record for the largest flag, and the largest flag flown in
- 39:13the world as of twenty twenty two was two thousand and five hundred and fifty
- 39:16four point three one square meters as far as we can tell, because we
- 39:20are on the Imperial system, as you can see by our flag, or
- 39:23twenty seven thousand, four hundred and ninety four square feet thirteen square inches,
- 39:30so about what we said five square miles. Yeah, about that five miles.
- 39:35That's way too big. A flag is very very large that was created
- 39:39and flown in Egypt, and I think it was specifically to break the world
- 39:43record. The first Pride flag was flown in San Francisco on June twenty fifth,
- 39:49nineteen seventy eight. I was looking up all the different Pride flags because
- 39:52I was going to list them, but there are at least twenty two of
- 39:54them. Wow. And they represent various aspects of gender, sexual orientation,
- 40:00and intersectionality of those things with different backgrounds, and so there's just a lot
- 40:06of representation in the different flags that mean different things, and the lgbt QIA
- 40:09plus community. I love it. There's also the black flag with a skull
- 40:14and two cross swords, also known as the Jolly Roger. It was actually
- 40:17used by pirates and was meant to symbolize both that they adhered to no countries
- 40:22rules and that they might do anything in a fight or to plunder another's boat.
- 40:25Interesting, though, there are lots of different symbols that you might find
- 40:30on pirate flags. So there's like red skeletons, there's a skull with cross
- 40:34bones, there's a skull with a bone underneath it. Sometimes there's hearts,
- 40:37sometimes they're red and yellow. Sometimes there's an arm with a sword on it,
- 40:42and sometimes there's an actual hourglass, and they all mean different things,
- 40:45which are really really cool sometimes too, as a matter of fact, because
- 40:49pirates don't obey any laws or rules, they would capture different ships and they
- 40:53would take those countries flags and fly them depending on who they were encountering,
- 40:59and they'd be like surprise, gotcha, and then be a pirate and then
- 41:01capture that flag. So yes, I heard about that as well. I
- 41:05actually did see that the skull and crossbones was not actually the Jolly Roger that
- 41:10came to be known as the Jolly Roger, but originally it seemed to just
- 41:14be referred to the pirate flag as in general. Yeah, it was some
- 41:16information that I had, so and I just found a list just that.
- 41:20And this is something pirates always fascinating me, because there's just pirates in Florida
- 41:22apparently, and my favorite baseball teams the Pittsburgh Pirates. But the skull meant
- 41:25death, a red skeleton meant that they were particularly violent, a skeleton with
- 41:30horns meant the devil dripping blood met a slow, painful death. Weapons like
- 41:35sword, spears, daggers were violence and a pirate's willingness to fight. The
- 41:38hour glass, sometimes with wings, meant that time was running out or flying
- 41:42away, death is near. So a lot of them just mean like,
- 41:45you're gonna die if you see them. Initials referred to the captain or to
- 41:47his enemies. Raised glasses meant a toast to death or to the devil.
- 41:52A clothes figure meant that it represented the pirates captain, and a naked figure
- 41:55meant that it was the pirate's lack of shame. Wow, okay, that's
- 41:59a lot. The scope of pirate flags was beyond what I originally anticipated.
- 42:02Yeah, so fun. I just loved it. It was like different symbols
- 42:06for like, yeah, you're gonna die. You're gonna die in different ways,
- 42:07but you're gonna die. Yes. Basically, for those of us in
- 42:10the United States who are listening to us from the southern part of the country,
- 42:15you'll probably recognize the name Gadsden flag, But for those people who are
- 42:19unfamiliar with it, this is a flag with a snake on it that says,
- 42:22don't tread on me. Now. This was developed early in the country's
- 42:27history as an anti British pro US government flag that was developed leading up to
- 42:31the Revolutionary War and at the time as a note. Part of the reason
- 42:37that there was a snake on it is at the time there was just a
- 42:38lot of snake symbolism being used in various aspects of things, including multiple flags
- 42:45that were intended to do the same thing that just weren't. That didn't get
- 42:47as much popularity because I think people liked the coiled snake that was a rattlesnake,
- 42:52and they also liked the short phrase don't tread on me, so that
- 42:57one gained in popularity, but otherwise snake iconography was very common at the time.
- 43:01That's a pretty powerful image. I mean, you see it, it's
- 43:04like you know it right away. Yeah. Then the Paul flag is the
- 43:07only flag that is not quadrilateral. It's actually a double pennant, which is
- 43:10super interesting. So it's like two triangles. It's two triangles. Yeah,
- 43:14exactly right. It's a cool looking flag, but it's the only one that
- 43:17is not a rectangle. There have been up to what I was able to
- 43:22find, at least twenty seven versions of the US flag. Now most of
- 43:27them or some combination of stars and stripes like that's been the overwhelming theme,
- 43:30and those are in various patterns, including three different iterations where the stars and
- 43:37the blue part of the flag are arranged to be a star made out of
- 43:40stars, so a bunch of stars a lot lined up to make a larger
- 43:45star. That happened three different times. At least. There was one with
- 43:49an eagle with a bunch of stars around it in the blue part of the
- 43:52flag, or a circle or concentric circles made out of stars. And one
- 43:55of the most original, and this is one of the things that we were
- 43:58talking about early, is not only did we adopt the red, white,
- 44:00and blue from the Union Jack British flag, but one of the first American
- 44:05flags was the stars and stripes, but with the Union Jack where the blue
- 44:10field now is, so we actually had the British flag inside the American flag.
- 44:15And again that corresponds to the originating country of where the American colonists came
- 44:21from. Yeah, I think my favorite looking at these is the Great Star
- 44:24because it's just a pentagram in the blue field. There is a pentagram.
- 44:30Yeah, it's it's it's not it's not a panagram. It's an upside down
- 44:31star. Like the top point is on the bottom, so it's it's But
- 44:35there's one that's like the stars a kind of off center. It's called the
- 44:37Great Flower design. Yeah, it's like tilted. There are some countries that
- 44:43have stars on them where the stars are in a very specific constellation. Like
- 44:46I know there's one that has a constellation there. It's a country in the
- 44:50Southern Hemisphere, and you can only see this constellation from the Southern Hemisphere.
- 44:53It looks really cool on the flag. But they depict the stars in different
- 44:57sizes on the flag to represent the brightness of the st ours in that constellation.
- 45:00So some of the stars are bigger than others on that constellation on the
- 45:04flag, which I thought that was kind of a cool artistic choice. Yeah,
- 45:07and there are some states to have constellations. My first thought was that
- 45:08California's flag had a constellation. It does not. It does have a star,
- 45:13but it has a bear on it. So I was like, oh,
- 45:14yeah, it's got earths a major on it. It might have at
- 45:15one point in time, but it does not now. It just has a
- 45:17big bear. Yeah, which you could imagine it was a constellation if you
- 45:21wanted to. Yeah, you could. You could think of it as a
- 45:22constellation when you need to talk about some more rules and regulations and laws and
- 45:28things about flags on boats. But first we need to listen to some ads
- 45:31on boats. All right, we're back. We're talking about the international maritime
- 45:43flag laws. Yes, so there is an international maritime flag system that was
- 45:47created in Britain. Surprise that the country that is known for colonizing so many
- 45:52countries has created a thing that everybody they're like, everybody's going to use this
- 45:54right, But it has been in place for over one hundred and fifty years
- 45:58and the system uses square flags of different colors to represent different letters, and
- 46:01ten pennants of different colors to represent numbers, and so the flags are used
- 46:06in accommodation to signal other ships. For instance, the flag for O is
- 46:09divided by a diagonal line from the left top to the bottom right the right
- 46:14corner with red on top and yellow on the bottom, and that symbol means
- 46:17that somebody's gone overboard. Some of them means like we're needed distress. Some
- 46:22of them means like we have people who are in the water diving, like
- 46:25don't come near because we don't want you to hit them, or anything,
- 46:30And so there's lots of these different symbols. And actually a couple of the
- 46:32flags are cut into the swallow tail sort of sign, although it's with a
- 46:37square flag. But yeah, they represent the different letters of the alphabet.
- 46:40Then there's the penance that represent different numbers, and a lot of these are
- 46:44actually meant to communicate back and forth, like one of these flags just means
- 46:47yes and another one just means no. And so they'll they'll basically raise these
- 46:52flags to communicate to one another as a way of giving some out of communication
- 46:55if there's not another way to do it. And they only use five colors.
- 47:00They're only white, blue, red, yellow, and black. There's
- 47:04no purple, there's no orange. Like they're very like, they're very stark,
- 47:07very clear symbols when you see them. Yeah, And actually the ones
- 47:10that are often used for the most like important distressing like this is need to
- 47:16get your attention right away are the ones with the most vibrant, most easily
- 47:20contrasted colors that are very easy to see, very little detailing, monochromatic.
- 47:24Yes, it's just you need to be able to understand it at a glance.
- 47:29What's going on? Absolutely all right, I think That's mostly what I
- 47:31have to say about flags. Anything that I missed or anything we need to
- 47:34add to talk about flags, I don't have anything else. I think it's
- 47:37super fascinating. I think it's worth being able to see kind of Maybe if
- 47:40you live in a place where there are multiple flags that represent where you're at,
- 47:45I think it's actually pretty cool for you to kind of explore the history
- 47:49why that flag was developed that way and where it came from, because it
- 47:52might give you some insight on why a flag has like a bear on it
- 47:53or a booby. It's right good. Join a vexillology club, Go find
- 47:59some other flag enthusiasts, and learn all about the flags that are out there.
- 48:02Fly your freak flag high. Yeah, we didn't even cover freak flags.
- 48:08I don't really have a lot into for tacoms. I just think I'm
- 48:10actually I'm not someone who's ever been super enthusiastic about flags, But what I
- 48:15really appreciate is the symbolic nature of it. The fact that they are meant
- 48:20to be communicative to a large audience very easily, I think is interesting and
- 48:23kind of cool. So I thought it was worth spending some time exploring some
- 48:27flags. Absolutely I agree. Cool. All right, well, I think
- 48:30that is all that we have before we get to some recommendations. But first
- 48:35I would like to do my thank yous the people who help make this podcast
- 48:38possible. If you would like to join us and support us, you can
- 48:43head on over to Patreon. There you'll get access to If you join us
- 48:45on Patreon, you'll get access to things like early episodes, on edited episodes,
- 48:51videos, our notes, and then if we come up with random content
- 48:54that we like to post, then that sometimes will go out, like if
- 48:58we talk to chat GBT and ask it to help us explain a concept.
- 49:00Chat GPT notes will often make their way to Patreon, and this episode in
- 49:05particular, we use a ton of pictures in our notes, which doesn't help
- 49:07very much in an audio medium, but if you're getting our notes then you'd
- 49:10get to see those things. So anyway, head on over to Patreon.
- 49:14Help us get to our goal of fifteen so we can hang out with people
- 49:16and it'll be a jolly old time over there. That's what I'm saying exactly,
- 49:22And there are already people who have done that thing, and we really
- 49:23appreciate them all of their continued support and the help that They've allowed us to
- 49:29continue to do this show as long as they have, and that includes Mike
- 49:31m Megan, Leyla, Mike t, Justin, Kim, Joshua, The
- 49:36Daily BA, Brad, Stephanie, Kelly, Olivia, and Brian. Thank
- 49:39you all so much for your support. Yes, we appreciate you so so
- 49:44so so much. Well, perfect, let's go ahead and talk about some
- 49:45recommendations and then we'll get out of here. Absolutely redations. So mine is
- 50:00a comic series. I am as a child of the nineties, I am
- 50:02a huge Nija Turtle fan. I understand. It is something that I was
- 50:07absolutely obsessed with for a very long time, to the point where my parents
- 50:10talk about how obsessed I was and I still have all my action figures from
- 50:14when I was a kid. Wow, like all of the originals, it's
- 50:16a sickness. It's a problem, is what I'm saying. But in the
- 50:21last few years they have kind of revitalized the comic series through IDW Publishing,
- 50:25and the comic series has been really great. They recently put out a storyline
- 50:30called The Last Ronan Have you heard of this yet? I saw the forty
- 50:35seven Ronin movie that was not that great. Different, different story Yeah.
- 50:39So in this one, it's set in a in a like a post apocalyptic
- 50:44future kind of where the Foot Clan have taken over New York City and there
- 50:46is only one Ninja Turtle left and you're left to guess who it is because
- 50:52they use all of the weapons because all the other the other three Turtles are
- 50:55dead. Oh my god, and they wear a black mask. And so
- 50:58that's the story. It's like, it's really dark and really kind of like
- 51:00it's it's a very adult story. It's incredible though, and it takes some
- 51:05twist and turns that you're not prepared for. It's heart wrenching and ends with
- 51:09some really interesting kind of advancements that go along with the Ninja Turtle series.
- 51:14So they just did it was supposed to be like a one series thing,
- 51:17but they turned it into a new They the way it ended ended up with
- 51:21a sequel series, which is gonna be really cool. It sounds like fun.
- 51:23Yeah, it's fantastic, and the art is great, and it just
- 51:27it's interesting watching a grizzled Ninja Turtle just like beat the crap out of everybody.
- 51:30A grizzled turtle. Huh yeah, yeah, grizzled turtle, which is
- 51:35like an odd thing to think about, grizzly turtle maybe. Oh, and
- 51:39it was written by It was written by one of the original I believe it
- 51:43was written by Kevin Eastman, who was one of the original creators of the
- 51:45Ninja Turtles. Oh wow, that's cool. Yeah, I am recommending a
- 51:50podcast. I've listened to you just a little bit of this one, but
- 51:52we got to be in touch with the host of this podcast a little bit,
- 51:55and I think it's worth checking out for many people. If you're interested
- 51:59in psychology and other other psychology related things, this is definitely worth checking out.
- 52:04This is called Meredith for Real. The Curious Introvert podcast should be available
- 52:07as far as I know, on all the sort of regular podcast streaming platforms
- 52:12similar to US. Covers a wide variety of topics, tends to have it
- 52:15seems like a guest to come on and who's sort of an expert in the
- 52:16thing. Men share their experiences and sort of talk somewhat candidly about that,
- 52:22and it looks like the similar format hourish long sort of episodes. Then they'll
- 52:25do a deep dive. One of the more recent ones I know was on
- 52:29ADHD and meditation, so you can sort of skim through and look at what
- 52:31kind of content stands out to you or just subscribe and follow along. But
- 52:36podcasts worth all y'all check it out. Yeah, absolutely, And Meredith has
- 52:39been a wonderful to chat with. I got to chat with her on our
- 52:43Instagram page. So cool, awesome, All right, very good. Well,
- 52:45I definitely need to give credit where credit is due. Music and editing
- 52:49by Justin Greenhouse, writing and fact checking by Shane, Selena, Jess and
- 52:52myself. And thank you all of course for listening to this episode today.
- 52:57As I said, you can subscribe, leave a rating, interview, talk
- 53:00about us to our friends. That sort of thing helps us all out.
- 53:02Is there anything that I missed before we wrap up? Shane? Nope?
- 53:06Perfect then, and I think that we are done. This is Abraham and
- 53:08this is Shane. We're out. See yup, you've been listening to Why
- 53:13We Do What We Do. You can learn more about this and other episodes
- 53:16by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope
- 53:22you have an awesome day.