1
00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:07,080
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:14,600
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

3
00:00:14,680 --> 00:00:15,800
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

4
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:19,159
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to

5
00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:23,840
Speaker 3: begin a series of episodes about the psychology of numbers,

6
00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:29,400
Speaker 3: specifically the interesting and strange varieties of meaning and emotion

7
00:00:30,040 --> 00:00:34,240
Speaker 3: that we attach to the concept of number parody p

8
00:00:34,400 --> 00:00:37,800
Speaker 3: A R I T y number parody meaning whether a

9
00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:42,239
Speaker 3: number is odd or even. Now to start to kind

10
00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:44,680
Speaker 3: of back up one step and start with the broader question,

11
00:00:44,920 --> 00:00:47,239
Speaker 3: I do realize at first it might seem kind of

12
00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:53,800
Speaker 3: counterintuitive that anybody would have emotions about or read meaning

13
00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:59,680
Speaker 3: into numbers themselves, because a number is almost the text

14
00:00:59,720 --> 00:01:04,200
Speaker 3: book example of a neutral, abstract object. You know, it

15
00:01:04,280 --> 00:01:08,360
Speaker 3: is a tool for describing reality that is supposed to

16
00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:12,120
Speaker 3: have no connotations of its own until it is applied

17
00:01:12,120 --> 00:01:15,240
Speaker 3: to a quantity of something. So, you know, when people

18
00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,800
Speaker 3: are just in conversation trying to speak about something that

19
00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:23,440
Speaker 3: is neutral and without connotations, a number is one of

20
00:01:23,480 --> 00:01:25,280
Speaker 3: the most common things people will bring up.

21
00:01:25,600 --> 00:01:27,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, in fact, there's all you know, the idea of like, oh,

22
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:30,679
Speaker 2: I'm just a number to you that would mean that, yeah,

23
00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:33,000
Speaker 2: I have no value to you outside of whatever my

24
00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:34,280
Speaker 2: numerical value is.

25
00:01:34,360 --> 00:01:36,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the idea that you would be

26
00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:42,280
Speaker 3: stripped of all personality, connotation and significance in somebody else's mind. So,

27
00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:46,520
Speaker 3: depending on the context, it does seem totally normal that

28
00:01:46,600 --> 00:01:50,200
Speaker 3: you would have thoughts or feelings about the fact that

29
00:01:50,280 --> 00:01:53,880
Speaker 3: you have twenty three dollars cash in your pocket, or

30
00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,200
Speaker 3: the fact that you have six eggs left in the refrigerator.

31
00:01:57,720 --> 00:01:59,640
Speaker 3: They might be kind of simple thoughts like this is

32
00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:01,960
Speaker 3: enough for now, or this is not enough for now,

33
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:05,320
Speaker 3: or something like that. But the question is, why would

34
00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:09,400
Speaker 3: anybody have particular thoughts or feelings about the number twenty

35
00:02:09,440 --> 00:02:14,400
Speaker 3: three itself or the number six when quantifying nothing in particular.

36
00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:18,120
Speaker 3: And yet I do think there's some interesting evidence that

37
00:02:18,160 --> 00:02:23,239
Speaker 3: we sometimes read meaning into bare numbers and project feelings

38
00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:27,080
Speaker 3: and human characteristics onto them. And this goes beyond the

39
00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:30,280
Speaker 3: practical sense of using those numbers to quantify things that

40
00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:32,320
Speaker 3: are good or bad for us, you know, where we

41
00:02:32,320 --> 00:02:35,639
Speaker 3: would prefer to have more or less of something. And

42
00:02:35,880 --> 00:02:37,920
Speaker 3: one example that came to mind when I was thinking

43
00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:42,800
Speaker 3: about this is in art, music, storytelling, in the creative domains.

44
00:02:43,240 --> 00:02:43,360
Speaker 1: Now.

45
00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:45,400
Speaker 3: We're going to come back and do a deeper discussion

46
00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:48,840
Speaker 3: of visual art in a bit later in this episode,

47
00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:52,160
Speaker 3: but I wanted to start here by saying that I

48
00:02:52,200 --> 00:02:55,840
Speaker 3: think a lot of times when a number or quantity

49
00:02:56,200 --> 00:03:01,520
Speaker 3: is featured in an artwork, you cannot explain any rational

50
00:03:01,639 --> 00:03:05,320
Speaker 3: reason that the number is more appropriate than any other,

51
00:03:05,480 --> 00:03:08,320
Speaker 3: but it just is. It's just the correct number that

52
00:03:08,360 --> 00:03:12,639
Speaker 3: should be there, which means it feels like it means something.

53
00:03:13,320 --> 00:03:16,040
Speaker 3: One example that came to mind for me is on

54
00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:19,320
Speaker 3: the Beatles White album from nineteen sixty eight. There is

55
00:03:19,360 --> 00:03:22,560
Speaker 3: a track on there that's kind of famously pretentious in

56
00:03:22,600 --> 00:03:25,720
Speaker 3: some people's minds, mind blowing to others. It is the

57
00:03:25,760 --> 00:03:30,320
Speaker 3: avant garde sound collage track Revolution nine or Revolution number nine,

58
00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:33,359
Speaker 3: which is made out of a bunch of looping tape

59
00:03:33,360 --> 00:03:37,440
Speaker 3: segments that play over one another, and it creates this

60
00:03:37,800 --> 00:03:42,320
Speaker 3: weird sound collage of people reading bits of text, of music,

61
00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:46,920
Speaker 3: of old orchestras playing symphonic music, of the sounds of people,

62
00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:50,360
Speaker 3: you know, yelling or street noise, all different kinds of things,

63
00:03:51,200 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 3: and the way that phrases and words are repeated in

64
00:03:54,920 --> 00:03:58,320
Speaker 3: this track has the most It creates the most peculiar,

65
00:03:58,360 --> 00:04:02,600
Speaker 3: incantatory feeling. It's both creepy and sort of thrilling, and

66
00:04:02,640 --> 00:04:05,520
Speaker 3: a major motif in this track is a looping voice

67
00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:09,360
Speaker 3: that just says over and over again, number nine, number nine.

68
00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:12,920
Speaker 3: Now I went and looked up some stuff about this

69
00:04:13,040 --> 00:04:15,920
Speaker 3: track to see what the significance of the number nine was,

70
00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:19,640
Speaker 3: because I never knew. And according to John Lennon, that

71
00:04:19,760 --> 00:04:25,000
Speaker 3: segment came from a test tape found at EMI Studios

72
00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:29,320
Speaker 3: that featured a sound engineer saying, this is EMI test

73
00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:33,240
Speaker 3: series number nine. Now, of course people have come along,

74
00:04:33,320 --> 00:04:37,440
Speaker 3: including the artists themselves, and they would later attach all

75
00:04:37,520 --> 00:04:40,800
Speaker 3: kinds of meaning to that number, like I think this

76
00:04:40,839 --> 00:04:42,800
Speaker 3: is part of the track that some people thought was

77
00:04:42,880 --> 00:04:45,360
Speaker 3: like saying Paul is dead when you played it backwards,

78
00:04:45,400 --> 00:04:49,440
Speaker 3: so contributed to all kinds of conspiracy theories. But originally

79
00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:52,919
Speaker 3: it was about as close to a totally random number

80
00:04:52,960 --> 00:04:54,880
Speaker 3: as you could get. It was just a number found

81
00:04:54,920 --> 00:04:58,200
Speaker 3: on a tape that some engineer was saying. And yet

82
00:04:58,839 --> 00:05:02,680
Speaker 3: I think something about the vague cloud of emotion created

83
00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:06,400
Speaker 3: by that track would be very different if it were

84
00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:10,000
Speaker 3: a different EMI tape series number that had been used.

85
00:05:10,200 --> 00:05:13,320
Speaker 3: Like I tried to imagine the track but with a

86
00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:17,279
Speaker 3: loop of someone saying number eight or number ten. I

87
00:05:17,360 --> 00:05:19,680
Speaker 3: can't be sure, but it seems like that would feel

88
00:05:19,760 --> 00:05:23,359
Speaker 3: quite different, even though I can't explain exactly how so,

89
00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:27,080
Speaker 3: even when numbers are not quantities of things that matter

90
00:05:27,160 --> 00:05:30,520
Speaker 3: to our lives but simply numbers read aloud on a

91
00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:33,679
Speaker 3: tape over and over, they can feel like they mean something,

92
00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:36,520
Speaker 3: and by consequence, the meaning would be changed if the

93
00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:37,480
Speaker 3: numbers were different.

94
00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:40,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, of course, it's important to note that

95
00:05:41,440 --> 00:05:44,520
Speaker 2: we're going to get into this obviously, that none of

96
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,599
Speaker 2: these numbers have been hermetically sealed away from all other

97
00:05:47,720 --> 00:05:52,960
Speaker 2: culture an influence, so they have other associations that we

98
00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:57,000
Speaker 2: end up dragging into our reevaluation and reuse of them.

99
00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:01,000
Speaker 2: But that being said, I think they're you can find

100
00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:04,960
Speaker 2: something cool about every number. I think about this a lot,

101
00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:08,279
Speaker 2: because when I'm swimming laps, I have to do something

102
00:06:08,320 --> 00:06:10,440
Speaker 2: to make sure that I don't forget which lap I'm on,

103
00:06:10,600 --> 00:06:15,200
Speaker 2: especially later on in my set, because if I forget,

104
00:06:15,279 --> 00:06:17,400
Speaker 2: I have to back up, and then I can't keep

105
00:06:17,440 --> 00:06:19,120
Speaker 2: doing that because then I'll just be there all day.

106
00:06:19,680 --> 00:06:22,400
Speaker 2: So you know, it's like if I'm on lap number four. Well,

107
00:06:22,480 --> 00:06:24,760
Speaker 2: a lot of times I will, Well, some of the

108
00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:27,320
Speaker 2: times I'll think about things particularly tied to four, like

109
00:06:27,320 --> 00:06:29,640
Speaker 2: a fourth film and a particular franchise or something. But

110
00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:32,160
Speaker 2: other times I'll just I'll sort of cast about, Okay,

111
00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:32,720
Speaker 2: what is it about?

112
00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:32,920
Speaker 3: Four?

113
00:06:32,960 --> 00:06:34,919
Speaker 2: I can think about, Okay, we've got the you know,

114
00:06:34,960 --> 00:06:38,120
Speaker 2: the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and so forth. Okay, Five,

115
00:06:38,200 --> 00:06:40,960
Speaker 2: what's coming up next? All right? Five Wounds of Christ? Okay, well,

116
00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:42,919
Speaker 2: what do we got next? Six? You know, and so forth?

117
00:06:43,240 --> 00:06:47,279
Speaker 2: And generally culturally speaking, you know, from from a literary

118
00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:50,280
Speaker 2: standpoint and so forth, musical standpoint, there's going to be

119
00:06:50,320 --> 00:06:51,719
Speaker 2: something to latch on for all of them. And it

120
00:06:51,760 --> 00:06:54,200
Speaker 2: depends on what your sort of pyramid of interest and

121
00:06:54,240 --> 00:06:55,000
Speaker 2: influences are.

122
00:06:55,040 --> 00:06:57,440
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, yeah, though I would say I think

123
00:06:57,480 --> 00:07:00,400
Speaker 3: the number of semantic reference points you can use from

124
00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:03,120
Speaker 3: your life or from broader culture or literature or whatever,

125
00:07:03,800 --> 00:07:06,000
Speaker 3: that those are going to be clustered lower on the

126
00:07:06,080 --> 00:07:08,640
Speaker 3: number scale. So like the lower the number is, the

127
00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:11,720
Speaker 3: more easily you will find lots of different significances of that.

128
00:07:11,960 --> 00:07:14,960
Speaker 3: Once you start getting into like the triple digits and stuff,

129
00:07:14,960 --> 00:07:16,800
Speaker 3: I bet then you start you do start to get

130
00:07:16,800 --> 00:07:19,480
Speaker 3: some numbers where you can't really think of anything for them.

131
00:07:19,760 --> 00:07:21,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a long walk between four twenty and six

132
00:07:22,040 --> 00:07:25,160
Speaker 2: sixty six, that's for sure. I never swum that high,

133
00:07:25,200 --> 00:07:25,840
Speaker 2: so I don't.

134
00:07:25,680 --> 00:07:29,040
Speaker 3: Have to worry. Yeah, But anyway, So okay, the Beatles

135
00:07:29,120 --> 00:07:32,320
Speaker 3: example I used, that's in the context of art and music,

136
00:07:32,720 --> 00:07:36,040
Speaker 3: where we are primed to think about everything as imbued

137
00:07:36,080 --> 00:07:39,120
Speaker 3: with meaning or causing feeling, you know, even if we

138
00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:42,560
Speaker 3: wouldn't give it a second thought in another context. So

139
00:07:42,920 --> 00:07:45,120
Speaker 3: that's a different kind of scenario. But I still think

140
00:07:45,160 --> 00:07:49,440
Speaker 3: that even in everyday life, we sometimes have mysterious tendencies

141
00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:54,560
Speaker 3: to feel and think about quantities that are not relevant

142
00:07:54,560 --> 00:07:57,960
Speaker 3: to our personal fortunes. And that's what I wanted to

143
00:07:57,960 --> 00:08:00,720
Speaker 3: look at for the rest of the series. Specific again

144
00:08:00,760 --> 00:08:05,760
Speaker 3: with respect to number parity, meaning odds and evens. So

145
00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:09,400
Speaker 3: separating numbers into odds and evens is one of the

146
00:08:09,400 --> 00:08:14,160
Speaker 3: first principles we learn early in mathematical education, and fortunately

147
00:08:14,240 --> 00:08:18,320
Speaker 3: it's a pretty simple principle to learn and apply. I

148
00:08:18,360 --> 00:08:20,080
Speaker 3: think I remember the way I thought about it when

149
00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:22,440
Speaker 3: I was a little kid, was just sort of an

150
00:08:22,480 --> 00:08:26,360
Speaker 3: alternating counting principle. You count starting at one and every

151
00:08:26,400 --> 00:08:30,320
Speaker 3: other number is even. The more formal way to express

152
00:08:30,360 --> 00:08:32,960
Speaker 3: it would be that an even number can be expressed

153
00:08:32,960 --> 00:08:36,560
Speaker 3: as two times in, wherein is any natural number any

154
00:08:37,440 --> 00:08:41,719
Speaker 3: positive whole integer, and an odd number can be expressed

155
00:08:41,800 --> 00:08:44,880
Speaker 3: as two times in plus one. And when I started

156
00:08:44,880 --> 00:08:47,480
Speaker 3: thinking about this topic for today's episode, it sort of

157
00:08:47,480 --> 00:08:50,760
Speaker 3: occurred to me that when we begin to think about

158
00:08:50,800 --> 00:08:53,839
Speaker 3: a number for any reason, any number, a number comes

159
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:57,520
Speaker 3: into your mind. I think, at least for me, one

160
00:08:57,559 --> 00:09:00,600
Speaker 3: of the first things I notice about in number that

161
00:09:00,640 --> 00:09:03,600
Speaker 3: I think of is whether it is odd or even.

162
00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:08,679
Speaker 3: In other words, that parity is a high salience characteristic

163
00:09:08,760 --> 00:09:12,560
Speaker 3: of individual numbers in our brains. And later in my

164
00:09:12,640 --> 00:09:15,480
Speaker 3: reading preparing for this episode, I did find a reference

165
00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:18,000
Speaker 3: to a scientific study from the seventies that would seem

166
00:09:18,040 --> 00:09:21,800
Speaker 3: to kind of line up with that intuition that parity

167
00:09:21,880 --> 00:09:25,400
Speaker 3: is a high, high salience characteristic of numbers. So there

168
00:09:25,480 --> 00:09:29,440
Speaker 3: was a paper called the Internal Representation of Numbers by Shepherd,

169
00:09:29,480 --> 00:09:33,600
Speaker 3: Kilpatrick and Cunningham published in the journal Cognitive Psychology in

170
00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:36,760
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five. And in this study, the authors found

171
00:09:36,840 --> 00:09:40,400
Speaker 3: that if you give people random numbers, either as Arabic

172
00:09:40,480 --> 00:09:43,960
Speaker 3: numerals like we used today, or as groups of dots,

173
00:09:44,280 --> 00:09:48,680
Speaker 3: or as spoken words, and you ask people to arrange

174
00:09:48,760 --> 00:09:52,280
Speaker 3: these numbers by similarity, group them together with other more

175
00:09:52,320 --> 00:09:56,640
Speaker 3: similar numbers. Apparently, one of the major criteria that people

176
00:09:56,679 --> 00:09:59,520
Speaker 3: seemed to used to group them by similarity was the

177
00:09:59,559 --> 00:10:02,840
Speaker 3: odd even distinction. So that seems to be represented pretty

178
00:10:02,880 --> 00:10:06,760
Speaker 3: high in people's minds as a characteristic of numbers. And

179
00:10:06,920 --> 00:10:10,520
Speaker 3: this suggests to me that if we do have strange,

180
00:10:10,559 --> 00:10:16,280
Speaker 3: sometimes irrational feelings about numbers, oddness and evenness would likely

181
00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:20,040
Speaker 3: play a role in these feelings. So I was casually

182
00:10:20,040 --> 00:10:25,160
Speaker 3: reading about this looking for references to people having feelings

183
00:10:25,200 --> 00:10:27,960
Speaker 3: about odd and even numbers, and I came across some

184
00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:32,000
Speaker 3: evidence that there are indeed patterns in people's feelings about numbers,

185
00:10:32,040 --> 00:10:34,720
Speaker 3: and one of those patterns has to do with number parody.

186
00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:37,480
Speaker 3: So shout out to where I came across some of

187
00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:39,600
Speaker 3: these references. It was in a couple of articles on

188
00:10:39,679 --> 00:10:42,960
Speaker 3: this subject from twenty fourteen by a British writer and

189
00:10:43,040 --> 00:10:48,040
Speaker 3: science communicator named Alex Bellows, who apparently writes on mathematics

190
00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:50,800
Speaker 3: somewhat frequently and had written a book concerning some of

191
00:10:50,800 --> 00:10:54,120
Speaker 3: these topics around this time. But anyway, these articles mention

192
00:10:54,400 --> 00:10:58,439
Speaker 3: several different experiments with findings about emotional preferences for odd

193
00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:02,920
Speaker 3: and even numbers and so. One example was an experiment

194
00:11:04,360 --> 00:11:07,880
Speaker 3: by a researcher named Mariska Milikowski of the University of

195
00:11:07,920 --> 00:11:12,480
Speaker 3: Amsterdam who showed subjects random numbers between one and one

196
00:11:12,559 --> 00:11:15,960
Speaker 3: hundred and then asked people to judge whether these numbers

197
00:11:15,960 --> 00:11:20,440
Speaker 3: were good or bad, or also excitable or calm, which

198
00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:23,199
Speaker 3: is sort of an absurd task because why would numbers

199
00:11:23,240 --> 00:11:26,760
Speaker 3: be any of those things? So because of the absurdity

200
00:11:26,800 --> 00:11:29,880
Speaker 3: of the task, you might imagine the results would be random,

201
00:11:30,360 --> 00:11:33,160
Speaker 3: but instead she found there was a pattern. On average,

202
00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:36,000
Speaker 3: people are more likely to say that even numbers are

203
00:11:36,080 --> 00:11:40,360
Speaker 3: good and odd numbers are bad, and also even numbers

204
00:11:40,400 --> 00:11:45,640
Speaker 3: were judged as more calm. So good and calm.

205
00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:49,640
Speaker 2: It's so ridiculous, and yet I do feel some of it.

206
00:11:49,679 --> 00:11:53,760
Speaker 3: As we'll get into Bellos mentions another research team, Dan

207
00:11:53,960 --> 00:11:59,280
Speaker 3: King of National University of Singapore and Chris Jannieshevitz of

208
00:11:59,600 --> 00:12:04,000
Speaker 3: the Univerity of Florida, who again gave people random numbers

209
00:12:04,520 --> 00:12:07,800
Speaker 3: randomly arranged between one and one hundred and asked if

210
00:12:07,800 --> 00:12:11,520
Speaker 3: they liked, disliked, or felt neutral about all these numbers,

211
00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:16,560
Speaker 3: And it turns out that people tend to like even

212
00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:21,360
Speaker 3: numbers and numbers ending in five better than they like

213
00:12:21,480 --> 00:12:24,840
Speaker 3: the other odd numbers that don't end in five. So

214
00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:29,720
Speaker 3: people show more emotional positivity toward numbers that are divisible

215
00:12:29,760 --> 00:12:32,120
Speaker 3: by two or five. Seems like kind of a strange

216
00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:34,840
Speaker 3: pattern again, But as we go on in the series,

217
00:12:34,880 --> 00:12:38,240
Speaker 3: we might find some interesting reasons for that kind of

218
00:12:38,320 --> 00:12:42,400
Speaker 3: pattern why people would have preferences of this sort. One

219
00:12:42,400 --> 00:12:46,719
Speaker 3: more thing, there's a kind of practical business implication. Bellos

220
00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:49,760
Speaker 3: says that consumer research appears to show, at least in

221
00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:53,720
Speaker 3: some cases, that people have preferences for products with an

222
00:12:53,840 --> 00:12:56,480
Speaker 3: even number in their name as opposed to the same

223
00:12:56,559 --> 00:12:59,960
Speaker 3: product with an odd number. I think the article Minshew

224
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:03,560
Speaker 3: and a hypothetical cleaning product that was in one of

225
00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:06,240
Speaker 3: these experiments. But you can just imagine, you know, V

226
00:13:06,400 --> 00:13:09,199
Speaker 3: eight juice versus V seven juice. I don't know if

227
00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:12,040
Speaker 3: I'm drinking a V seven. Some seems wrong there.

228
00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:15,600
Speaker 2: I will admit, V seven sounds more like it's supposed

229
00:13:15,600 --> 00:13:17,840
Speaker 2: to go in your engine, I guess, and VA could

230
00:13:17,920 --> 00:13:19,280
Speaker 2: conceivably go in your body.

231
00:13:19,480 --> 00:13:21,439
Speaker 3: Wait, isn't a vight a type of engine.

232
00:13:21,840 --> 00:13:24,280
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess part part of what's going on

233
00:13:24,360 --> 00:13:26,959
Speaker 2: here is that V eight is coded to both engine

234
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:30,600
Speaker 2: and to made a drink. V seven does not have

235
00:13:30,679 --> 00:13:34,040
Speaker 2: a drink connotation, but he's close enough to the thing

236
00:13:34,320 --> 00:13:37,680
Speaker 2: that is also, you know, something to do with cars.

237
00:13:38,080 --> 00:13:41,240
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's I feel like there's a lot of

238
00:13:41,240 --> 00:13:43,160
Speaker 2: this that goes on with any of these, Like there's

239
00:13:44,040 --> 00:13:46,800
Speaker 2: there's the reference you're aware of, and then there's like

240
00:13:46,880 --> 00:13:51,400
Speaker 2: another sort of like phantom reference in your pyramid of

241
00:13:51,400 --> 00:13:54,800
Speaker 2: interest and influences that is changing the way you think

242
00:13:54,800 --> 00:13:55,480
Speaker 2: about a number.

243
00:13:55,840 --> 00:13:59,360
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, But anyway, this made me so curious, like

244
00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:03,400
Speaker 3: if these patterns are actually valid in the real world,

245
00:14:03,480 --> 00:14:06,720
Speaker 3: if people do, in many cases show a kind of

246
00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:11,560
Speaker 3: greater liking or emotional preference for even numbers, especially in

247
00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:14,960
Speaker 3: certain contexts, or maybe even numbers and numbers numbers that

248
00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:18,800
Speaker 3: are otherwise easily divisible by a common factor like five,

249
00:14:19,520 --> 00:14:24,320
Speaker 3: what causes that? And how do similar patterns manifest throughout

250
00:14:24,400 --> 00:14:27,600
Speaker 3: human life and in our cultures and in our art.

251
00:14:27,960 --> 00:14:30,200
Speaker 3: Oh and just to throw this in, because it was

252
00:14:30,200 --> 00:14:32,560
Speaker 3: a funny thing that Bellos mentions in one of these

253
00:14:32,640 --> 00:14:35,440
Speaker 3: articles I was talking about, he brings up the fact

254
00:14:35,560 --> 00:14:38,880
Speaker 3: that Douglas Adams is talking about the number forty two

255
00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:42,640
Speaker 3: seems like a mostly unremarkable number, though it does play

256
00:14:42,680 --> 00:14:44,760
Speaker 3: a role in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because

257
00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:48,080
Speaker 3: spoiler alert, it is discovered to be the Oh what

258
00:14:48,160 --> 00:14:50,160
Speaker 3: is the exact phrasing? It is the answer to the

259
00:14:50,240 --> 00:14:52,680
Speaker 3: question like what is the meaning of life? The universe

260
00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:57,320
Speaker 3: and everything? I apologize if I get that slight, that's correct, okay, yeah,

261
00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:00,800
Speaker 3: and so so the answer is forty two. But Douglas Adams,

262
00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:03,840
Speaker 3: speaking of the number forty two apparently said that it

263
00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:07,200
Speaker 3: was quote the sort of number that you could without

264
00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:11,680
Speaker 3: any fear, introduced to your parents that you know that.

265
00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:12,920
Speaker 3: That seems kind of right.

266
00:15:12,800 --> 00:15:14,960
Speaker 2: Something feels absolutely correct.

267
00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:18,400
Speaker 3: Communicates rectitude. Why. I don't know. I don't think it's

268
00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:21,800
Speaker 3: a cultural association with the number. It feels deeper. It

269
00:15:21,840 --> 00:15:25,680
Speaker 3: feels like something mathematical about the number forty two kind

270
00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:27,160
Speaker 3: of seems like upstanding.

271
00:15:27,320 --> 00:15:30,160
Speaker 2: Yeah it should be. There's like a proof for it. Yeah, yeah,

272
00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:31,920
Speaker 2: it's it's weird to think about it. Like you were

273
00:15:31,920 --> 00:15:35,880
Speaker 2: talking about revolution number nine earlier, and it's like, to me,

274
00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:38,720
Speaker 2: on some level, nine just feels right, nine feels nine's

275
00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:41,920
Speaker 2: kind of a bad boy. You know, it belongs in

276
00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:46,120
Speaker 2: a rock song. So somehow, you know, now, I do

277
00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:47,640
Speaker 2: want as we get into all this, I do want

278
00:15:47,680 --> 00:15:49,760
Speaker 2: to just throw this out there that even when we're

279
00:15:49,760 --> 00:15:52,120
Speaker 2: talking about evens and odds, we do have to be

280
00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:56,400
Speaker 2: aware of the the temptation of the realm of numerology,

281
00:15:57,240 --> 00:15:59,880
Speaker 2: the you know, the belief in a magical, mystical and

282
00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:04,240
Speaker 2: infernal or divine relationship between numbers and reality. It's really

283
00:16:04,240 --> 00:16:08,200
Speaker 2: easy to get into, uh with with with numbers in general,

284
00:16:09,080 --> 00:16:12,560
Speaker 2: if only even if you're only doing it like surface level,

285
00:16:12,640 --> 00:16:15,640
Speaker 2: you know, just sort of like accidentally believing in various

286
00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:18,880
Speaker 2: superstitions about numbers, and then and then when push comes

287
00:16:18,880 --> 00:16:21,480
Speaker 2: to shove saying well, okay, I'll go with twelve instead

288
00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:24,080
Speaker 2: of thirteen, thank you very much. But then you'll find

289
00:16:24,120 --> 00:16:29,120
Speaker 2: some some very strong examples of numerology concerning say, oh,

290
00:16:29,160 --> 00:16:32,120
Speaker 2: I ran across one that said, okay, look to even

291
00:16:32,200 --> 00:16:34,920
Speaker 2: numbers in the Bible, because that's that's how God is

292
00:16:34,960 --> 00:16:39,920
Speaker 2: speaking to you. God speaks through even numbers. Why you know,

293
00:16:39,960 --> 00:16:41,960
Speaker 2: I wasn't gonna I didn't. I didn't go too deep

294
00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:44,320
Speaker 2: on it because I had a feeling the answer was

295
00:16:44,360 --> 00:16:45,320
Speaker 2: not going to be fulfilling.

296
00:16:45,720 --> 00:16:47,760
Speaker 3: What's wrong with the odd numbers in the Bible?

297
00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:50,880
Speaker 2: Well, one thing that through that I instantly thought of

298
00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:53,000
Speaker 2: is like some other bit of I guess, sort of

299
00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:56,640
Speaker 2: you know, vaguely Christian numerology. I mean, maybe this is

300
00:16:56,720 --> 00:16:59,440
Speaker 2: rooted in like more traditional Christian numerology, or maybe it

301
00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:02,760
Speaker 2: was more like you know, recent like nineteen nineties fundamentalism.

302
00:17:02,800 --> 00:17:04,920
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but I remember reading at some point

303
00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:08,199
Speaker 2: in my past that, oh, well seven is the holy

304
00:17:08,320 --> 00:17:12,359
Speaker 2: number because it's odd and it can't be divided, but

305
00:17:12,720 --> 00:17:17,240
Speaker 2: six six is bad because it can be divided, And I, like,

306
00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:20,600
Speaker 2: I distinctly remember that, and for a while when I

307
00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:22,399
Speaker 2: was younger, I was like, yeah, yeah, that that adds

308
00:17:22,480 --> 00:17:25,480
Speaker 2: up right, But no it doesn't. What is what sense

309
00:17:25,520 --> 00:17:28,040
Speaker 2: does that possibly make? And yet on some level I

310
00:17:28,080 --> 00:17:30,560
Speaker 2: still hold by it that like, yet, yeah, seven feels

311
00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:34,480
Speaker 2: like a holy righteous number and six six falls a

312
00:17:34,480 --> 00:17:36,520
Speaker 2: little bit short. Six is going into the inferno.

313
00:17:36,840 --> 00:17:39,400
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny you mentioned seven because this also came

314
00:17:39,480 --> 00:17:41,440
Speaker 3: up in some of the articles I was reading for today.

315
00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:43,760
Speaker 3: I don't remember the exact source, so I'm sorry, but

316
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:46,440
Speaker 3: one of them got into the idea that if you

317
00:17:46,560 --> 00:17:49,440
Speaker 3: ask people to pick a random number between one and ten,

318
00:17:50,160 --> 00:17:53,720
Speaker 3: the most common number people will pick is seven. And

319
00:17:53,840 --> 00:17:57,360
Speaker 3: there's actually a logic there because it's the number between

320
00:17:57,400 --> 00:18:01,639
Speaker 3: one and ten that actually feels the most random, Like

321
00:18:01,920 --> 00:18:05,200
Speaker 3: all the even numbers between one and ten. That doesn't

322
00:18:05,200 --> 00:18:07,960
Speaker 3: seem right because there's something about even numbers that doesn't

323
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:11,720
Speaker 3: feel very random to us. That even numbers feel too predictable.

324
00:18:12,080 --> 00:18:14,720
Speaker 3: So you need to pick one of the odd numbers.

325
00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:17,159
Speaker 3: So you shouldn't pick one because that's the beginning of

326
00:18:17,200 --> 00:18:20,880
Speaker 3: the scale. You shouldn't pick nine because that's divisible by three.

327
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:23,359
Speaker 3: You shouldn't pick three because three times three is nine.

328
00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:25,720
Speaker 3: You shouldn't pick five because five times two is ten.

329
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:29,359
Speaker 3: But seven, that's nothing. You can't do anything with that

330
00:18:29,440 --> 00:18:31,840
Speaker 3: in there. No, there's no multiple, there's no way to

331
00:18:31,880 --> 00:18:34,560
Speaker 3: divide seven into a whole number. It's prime, and there's

332
00:18:34,600 --> 00:18:36,639
Speaker 3: no way to multiply it and still get a number

333
00:18:36,680 --> 00:18:38,960
Speaker 3: within the scale of ten. So it's like the one

334
00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:40,200
Speaker 3: that stands out in there.

335
00:18:40,560 --> 00:18:43,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's kind of the rationale behind some

336
00:18:43,359 --> 00:18:45,560
Speaker 2: of the ideas that the seven is holy, that it's

337
00:18:45,600 --> 00:18:48,080
Speaker 2: like it is. It is like God, and that it is.

338
00:18:48,840 --> 00:18:52,160
Speaker 2: It cannot be divided, it's and it can't be doubled

339
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:54,520
Speaker 2: and still hit something within the one to ten range

340
00:18:54,560 --> 00:18:58,800
Speaker 2: and so forth. I don't know, but you know, again,

341
00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:00,960
Speaker 2: this is also, at the end of the day, pretty silly.

342
00:19:01,800 --> 00:19:04,760
Speaker 2: The late Emberto Echo rightfully pointed out. He goes into

343
00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:07,879
Speaker 2: this in an extended bit in Fuco's Pendulum, but he

344
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:11,080
Speaker 2: rightfully pointed out that humans have manipulated numbers since ancient

345
00:19:11,119 --> 00:19:15,720
Speaker 2: times to create illusions of meaning, and that one can

346
00:19:15,840 --> 00:19:19,600
Speaker 2: ultimately do whatever one wants with numbers. You can torture

347
00:19:19,640 --> 00:19:21,440
Speaker 2: the numbers and get what you want. You can do

348
00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:25,320
Speaker 2: all sorts of weird analysis of like, oh, well this

349
00:19:25,320 --> 00:19:28,080
Speaker 2: this person has, you know, so many letters in their

350
00:19:28,119 --> 00:19:30,480
Speaker 2: first name, so many in their last name. You know,

351
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:32,439
Speaker 2: divide by the root of such and such, and we

352
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:34,280
Speaker 2: have the number of the beast and so you can

353
00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:37,679
Speaker 2: do that kind of thing all day and it doesn't

354
00:19:37,680 --> 00:19:40,359
Speaker 2: mean anything other than you can make the numbers do

355
00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:42,280
Speaker 2: what you want and so and on top of that,

356
00:19:42,359 --> 00:19:46,840
Speaker 2: number based superstition's number based heuristics. These can be very sticky,

357
00:19:47,520 --> 00:19:49,399
Speaker 2: you know, even if you don't really believe in them,

358
00:19:49,440 --> 00:19:52,720
Speaker 2: absolutely they're in there in the background of your mind

359
00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:55,680
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with numbers that otherwise don't mean anything,

360
00:19:55,920 --> 00:19:59,560
Speaker 2: and your mind again always wants to make the best

361
00:19:59,600 --> 00:20:02,520
Speaker 2: sense of the data it's presented with, even if it

362
00:20:02,520 --> 00:20:04,639
Speaker 2: has to depend on things that are not real. So

363
00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:08,919
Speaker 2: that's a warning against going too far. But that's not

364
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:12,160
Speaker 2: what we're for the most part talking about in this series.

365
00:20:12,560 --> 00:20:15,200
Speaker 3: Right Well, I personally take no position on whether odd

366
00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:17,919
Speaker 3: or even numbers are holy or unholy or whatever. But

367
00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:21,960
Speaker 3: I am interested in if we have patterns of feelings

368
00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:24,480
Speaker 3: about them or ascribe meaning to them, and if so,

369
00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:38,280
Speaker 3: why do we have the psychological tendency to do that. Now,

370
00:20:38,359 --> 00:20:41,360
Speaker 3: one of the things that first got me interested in

371
00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:45,040
Speaker 3: this subject of preferences for odd and even numbers or

372
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:48,679
Speaker 3: odd and even quantities of things was an idea that

373
00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:52,080
Speaker 3: actually comes from the world of art, of art theory,

374
00:20:52,240 --> 00:20:56,919
Speaker 3: art criticism, and the idea is that there is a

375
00:20:57,160 --> 00:21:02,840
Speaker 3: widely held natural preference that people have for the staging

376
00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:07,560
Speaker 3: of odd numbers of items within visual art, or the

377
00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:13,960
Speaker 3: division of visual art into odd numbers into odd patterns,

378
00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:17,800
Speaker 3: basically odd quantified patterns, and that this applies to painting

379
00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:21,840
Speaker 3: and photography and film and so forth, and I found

380
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:25,119
Speaker 3: that so curious, and that does ring very true to me.

381
00:21:26,040 --> 00:21:28,720
Speaker 3: But I don't quite know where that preference would come

382
00:21:28,760 --> 00:21:31,120
Speaker 3: from or why that is. And if so, is that

383
00:21:31,640 --> 00:21:33,440
Speaker 3: I don't know, does that go to something deep within

384
00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:35,600
Speaker 3: our brains or is it just sort of a is

385
00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:39,160
Speaker 3: sort of a cultural preference, a convention that we've established.

386
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:42,800
Speaker 3: What's going on with this idea about odds and visual art?

387
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:46,159
Speaker 2: Well, the short answer is absolutely yes, definitely know and

388
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,840
Speaker 2: it depends on who you ask, But it is really

389
00:21:49,920 --> 00:21:53,320
Speaker 2: fascinating to get into so well, one of the big ones.

390
00:21:53,520 --> 00:21:55,439
Speaker 2: There are several different things that are kind of like

391
00:21:55,520 --> 00:22:00,240
Speaker 2: different concepts and laws and rules that are involved. But

392
00:22:00,280 --> 00:22:01,840
Speaker 2: the big one, the one that I imagine a lot

393
00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:03,920
Speaker 2: of you are thinking of, is, of course, the rule

394
00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:08,000
Speaker 2: of thirds. This is a pretty widespread and famous composition rule.

395
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:12,240
Speaker 2: It's pretty standard in photography, cinematography, various forms of visual art,

396
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:16,560
Speaker 2: and it's a standard overlay in various visual editing software

397
00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:20,440
Speaker 2: titles and even in like phones and cameras. Most of

398
00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:23,320
Speaker 2: you have seen this. It's pretty basic. Though. It's also

399
00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:27,280
Speaker 2: interesting that when we're talking about the rule of thirds,

400
00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:32,160
Speaker 2: how do we compose it? Well, we use we divide

401
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:37,560
Speaker 2: the frame up into an odd number of zones by

402
00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:41,520
Speaker 2: using an even number of lines. So it's kind of

403
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 2: like depending on which team you on, are you on

404
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:46,720
Speaker 2: Team even or Team odd? You could like either team

405
00:22:46,760 --> 00:22:48,920
Speaker 2: could make a claim for this and say that your

406
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:53,560
Speaker 2: team is at the center of visual perfection. Oh interesting, Yeah,

407
00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:57,520
Speaker 2: So the standard overlay in question consists of two evenly

408
00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:02,160
Speaker 2: spaced horizontal lines and two evenly spaced vertical lines, thus

409
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:04,320
Speaker 2: breaking up an image. And this particularly works well if

410
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,760
Speaker 2: you're thinking of, you know, the movie screen, you know,

411
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:14,120
Speaker 2: a rectangle, breaking it up into nine equal parts nine.

412
00:23:14,520 --> 00:23:19,159
Speaker 2: Another big score for Team odd. But how do you

413
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:23,480
Speaker 2: use this grid? Well, okay, there's major caveat that there

414
00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:27,800
Speaker 2: are different versions of this rule that break it down

415
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:31,359
Speaker 2: a little differently, So there's not like one definition that

416
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 2: is the answer, and there seems to be a little

417
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:35,640
Speaker 2: bit of wiggle room, and even more wiggle room when

418
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,199
Speaker 2: we get into the details. But the prevailing wisdom is

419
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:41,440
Speaker 2: that you make sure that the important parts of the image,

420
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 2: the parts where we're going to focus our attention or

421
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:48,359
Speaker 2: where we're meant to focus our attention, that those points

422
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:52,359
Speaker 2: exist along these lines or at their intersection and there's

423
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 2: so many examples of this, and I honestly think that

424
00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 2: it's probably best for listeners to look up some examples,

425
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:03,440
Speaker 2: because we'll talk about some here. We'll try to describe

426
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:05,679
Speaker 2: some of the simpler ones. But for the most part,

427
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:09,720
Speaker 2: you know, this is an audio medium and we're talking

428
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 2: about visual arts that we can only take you so far.

429
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 2: But for example, if you think of a particular film

430
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 2: that is very well regarded, you know, a great director,

431
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 2: great cinematographer, you can probably probably look up the title

432
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 2: of that film or that director and the term rule

433
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:30,119
Speaker 2: of thirds, and you might get some shots from that

434
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:32,719
Speaker 2: film where somebody has been so kind as to apply

435
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 2: the grid and show you how things line up. I

436
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:38,560
Speaker 2: included one for you here, Joe, for us to look

437
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 2: at and discuss. This is a scene from Stanley Kubrick's

438
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey, And yeah, you

439
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,640
Speaker 2: can see it. They're here, two people talking to each

440
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:52,880
Speaker 2: other in a spacecraft and their heads are perfectly aligned

441
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:55,119
Speaker 2: with the nexus of these lines.

442
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:57,119
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the famous scene where the two

443
00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,479
Speaker 3: astronauts on the ship have begun to suspect that there

444
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 3: is something wrong with hal and so they step off

445
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 3: of the ship into a secluded I think they step

446
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,479
Speaker 3: into like a I don't know, an airlock or a

447
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,360
Speaker 3: pod or something so that they can talk to each

448
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 3: other without being listened to. And so they're sort of

449
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 3: both leaning toward the middle of the frame, but they're

450
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:20,119
Speaker 3: at each side of it. And as they talk to

451
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,800
Speaker 3: each other, we get that reveal where hal is watching

452
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 3: through the window and reading their lips as they talk,

453
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:28,520
Speaker 3: so they are not having the privacy they think they have.

454
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 3: But before that, we're shown the two of them just

455
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 3: sitting opposite one another, sort of reasoning about what's going on.

456
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I would

457
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 3: have noticed this without the lines imposed on the screen,

458
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:45,120
Speaker 3: but the characters are lined up perfectly along this division

459
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:48,400
Speaker 3: of thirds vertically, and sort of their heads are right

460
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 3: at the top division of the thirds horizontally.

461
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there are other ways to break down

462
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 2: even a simple but beautifully shot scene like this as well.

463
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 2: You have two individuals, two humans, but also how the

464
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:05,639
Speaker 2: third individual visible through the panel in the center. So

465
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:10,200
Speaker 2: you have this triangle where you have these two individuals

466
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:12,919
Speaker 2: in the foreground the one in the back, and that

467
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,479
Speaker 2: is serving as a way to sort of channel your

468
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 2: attention back towards how who they are talking about. Now.

469
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,679
Speaker 2: Another important way of thinking about the rule of thirds

470
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:25,199
Speaker 2: is the way that you may have encountered it with

471
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 2: your camera before, if you've ever been encouraged to use

472
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 2: the rule of thirds, and that is, if you're taking

473
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:33,640
Speaker 2: a picture of somebody, especially if it's like a portrait,

474
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,080
Speaker 2: you don't want to take that picture of them dead center,

475
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 2: because if they're dead center, they're in the middle of

476
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 2: the grid. They're not at any of the on any

477
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 2: of the lines, or any at the convergence points. No,

478
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:47,920
Speaker 2: you want them generally a little bit to the left

479
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 2: or a little bit to the right. And you know,

480
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 2: if you look at various portrait shots out there, and

481
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 2: plenty of scenes in films and paintings and so forth,

482
00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 2: this often holds up. They're not dead center, they're a

483
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 2: little bit to the side. And often times the rest

484
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:06,159
Speaker 2: of the shot, like the over to their left or

485
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 2: over to their right, there is sort of the thing

486
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 2: they're looking at, or the thing or the vista that

487
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 2: we're supposed to sort of take in as being either

488
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 2: part of the story that's happening in the shot or

489
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 2: part of some other level of contemplation, like I don't

490
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 2: know's it's a shot in your it's a photograph in

491
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 2: your local newspaper about a gardener, and well, here's the

492
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 2: gardener in the picture, and there's their garden. The gardener

493
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 2: is going to be a little bit to the right,

494
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 2: lining up with that second vertical line, and then you're

495
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 2: going to see their garden more or less in full

496
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 2: to their left. Now, to be clear, this again is

497
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 2: not a natural law. There's nothing absolute about it. And

498
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 2: in creative endeavors, rules are made to be broken. And

499
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 2: there are plenty of other overlays you can use, though

500
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 2: some of them line up with the rule of thirds,

501
00:27:57,440 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 2: Like the golden spiral is a big one. And you've

502
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,440
Speaker 2: probably seen silver lay and film editing software or cameras

503
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 2: and so forth, or also people you know showing you

504
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 2: the brilliance of their favorite scene from their favorite movie.

505
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 2: Look what happens when I put this golden spiral over

506
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 2: this scene from Underworld three Rise of a Lichens.

507
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 3: Clearly they did that on purpose. Yeah yeah.

508
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,160
Speaker 2: But on the other end of the spectrum, symmetry can

509
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 2: be quite intoxicating. And this is where it gets tricky too,

510
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:27,399
Speaker 2: because you can have a very symmetrical shot that lines

511
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,439
Speaker 2: up with the rule of thirds. But this idea of

512
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 2: having like a single person in the shot and there

513
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 2: a little to the left or the little of the

514
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:37,880
Speaker 2: right that ends up making a shot that's not symmetrical.

515
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 2: But then we are also drawn to symmetry. And I

516
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 2: was talking about this with my wife, who's a photographer,

517
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 2: and she said, well, you know, this is why you

518
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 2: see so many pictures of bands on a railroad track,

519
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 2: oftentimes very symmetrical looking, because it's just irresistible. We like

520
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 2: the symmetry and all.

521
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 3: Yeah.

522
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 2: We also like those parallel lines heading off into the distance.

523
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, not only thematically suggesting that there's a

524
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 3: lot of road to go or something, but they meet

525
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 3: the vanishing point. They converge far away.

526
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 2: Plus they're bad boys because they're on the tracks and

527
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 2: it's dangerous. Just a word of caution, please don't take

528
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 2: photos of your band on active train tracks. Those are

529
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 2: active train tracks, y'all. But as for the term the

530
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,120
Speaker 2: rule of thirds, where does this come from? Well, the

531
00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 2: concept under this name is generally attributed to English painter

532
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 2: and engraver John Thomas Smith, who lives seventeen sixty six.

533
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 2: Through eighteen thirty three, who provides the earliest known reference

534
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 2: to it by this name in his seventeen ninety seven

535
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 2: work Remarks on Rural Scenery, a work described in library

536
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 2: catalogs as a collection of quote essays on landscape gardening

537
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 2: and on unit uniting picturesque effects with rural scenery, containing

538
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 2: directions for laying out and improving the grounds connected with

539
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 2: a country residence.

540
00:29:57,720 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 3: The way you said that about the coinage of the

541
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 3: term raw, I take that to mean you're saying that

542
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 3: Smith is not necessarily saying that he invented the idea

543
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 3: of using thirds in art.

544
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, he's based on my reading of this section

545
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 2: of his book. It's a rather stuffy book otherwise, which

546
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 2: I think you can get from the topic covered time period.

547
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:24,479
Speaker 2: But my take on it is that he is saying, Hey,

548
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 2: here's this thing I've observed. This seems to hold true.

549
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it has a name, but this

550
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 2: is what I'm going to call it. In fact, he

551
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 2: refers to it as the as the rule of thirds

552
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 2: and says if I may be allowed to call it that,

553
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 2: So he's not pretending to invent it, but he's pointing

554
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 2: it out as a guiding principle of good esthetics, calling

555
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 2: out other principles that were well established, like Hogarth's line

556
00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 2: or the line of beauty. That's an S shape, curved

557
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 2: line that is often held to be attractive in visual works,

558
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 2: and not merely in a sexual fashion either, but like

559
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 2: you'll see it like lined with just say pictures of

560
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:04,720
Speaker 2: just you know, random humanoid figures or abstract patterns.

561
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't know about this already, but I

562
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 3: googled it after I saw this in your notes, and

563
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:12,400
Speaker 3: this is interesting. So yeah, it's like a sort of

564
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,160
Speaker 3: S shape that I don't know figures and a lot

565
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 3: of old drawings and paintings do seem to follow. It

566
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 3: kind of reminds me of something we've talked about before

567
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 3: in sculpture, which is a kind of a popular posture

568
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 3: used in classical sculpture that is sometimes called contraposto, meaning

569
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 3: sort of counterpoise, where a figure is not standing exactly

570
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 3: straight up, but their body is kind of tilted or

571
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 3: leaning at the hip.

572
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Smith speaks to the rule of thirds generally

573
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 2: for landscapes, and he speaks of it as two thirds

574
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 2: of one element to one third of the other. With

575
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 2: his given example being two thirds land to one third water,

576
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 2: providing us with, for example, a beach scene. And indeed,

577
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:00,200
Speaker 2: this is what we see in some beach paintings. Looking

578
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 2: around at various beach paintings, and there are a lot

579
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 2: of different ways to paint a beach, and they certainly

580
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:07,719
Speaker 2: don't all line up with this. But for your an

581
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 2: easy example for listeners is imagine you have a horizontal

582
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 2: painting and if you're scanning it from left to right,

583
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 2: all right, here's ocean. Okay, I'm halfway through the painting.

584
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 2: There's still nothing but ocean. And then the third, the

585
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 2: right most portion of the painting, Oh, suddenly it's beach

586
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 2: and there are people and buildings and so forth.

587
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 3: Yeah. And of course this can have very interestingly different

588
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 3: effects depending on which part of the scene you decide

589
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 3: to devote the two thirds versus the one third. Too.

590
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 3: I often notice I'm kind of attracted to landscape paintings

591
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 3: where the two thirds part is the more empty part,

592
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 3: you know, where it gives more to the void. In

593
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 3: this case, with the ocean, is the two thirds.

594
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:53,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And then we'll get into different ways to

595
00:32:53,360 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 2: potentially read painting as well, because I just use the

596
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 2: example of left or right, but there's nothing that says

597
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 2: you can't go right to left. There are some very

598
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,479
Speaker 2: definite reasons why you might do that. And I was

599
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 2: just thinking of this casually too. If you've ever been

600
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 2: to an art museum, if you were at one where

601
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 2: there are other people, sometimes you end up approaching a

602
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 2: piece that already has someone viewing it, and you don't

603
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 2: get to choose at what point you start viewing the picture.

604
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 2: You know there might only be room on the right

605
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 2: or the left, and that might or might not dictate

606
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 2: how you scan it. And that's assuming you just give

607
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 2: it like one really meaningful scan and you don't sit

608
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 2: there and try different things on it. So I'll read

609
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 2: just a quick quote from Smith. I say, a lot

610
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:35,040
Speaker 2: of his writing is a little stuffy for my taste,

611
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 2: but this kind of sums up what he's saying. In short,

612
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 2: in applying this invention generally speaking to any other case,

613
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 2: whether of light, shade form, or color, I have found

614
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 2: the ratio of about two thirds to one third or

615
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 2: of one to two a much better and more harmonizing

616
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:54,959
Speaker 2: proportion than the precise formal half the two far extending

617
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 2: four fifths, and in short, than any other proportion whatever.

618
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 2: So fair enough, This is a man who's tried out

619
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 2: different proportions doesn't like that four fifths? Yeah, what about

620
00:34:06,800 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 2: three fitths doesn't like it? What about two fits doesn't

621
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 2: like it? Now? I've also read an interpretation that the

622
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 2: rule of thirds also works because the eye is typically

623
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 2: drawn towards points just beyond the center of an image,

624
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 2: and in cultures where people read left to right, they

625
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,320
Speaker 2: also tend to scan an image in the same fashion,

626
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: making the upper left hand portion of an image the

627
00:34:29,719 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 2: easiest to overlook, in the bottom right the likely focus.

628
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 2: I was reading about this in a masterclass article on

629
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 2: the rule of thirds, and this got me interested to

630
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:42,760
Speaker 2: learn a little bit more about this whole linguistic effect.

631
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 2: And indeed, there have been various studies on the effects

632
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:49,360
Speaker 2: of language reading direction on a number of cognitive and

633
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 2: sensory processes. So, you know, just to remind everyone, you know,

634
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 2: not all languages are read left to right. Some are

635
00:34:56,680 --> 00:35:00,800
Speaker 2: read right to left, and they're there have been a

636
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 2: lot of observations and thoughts and some research looking into well,

637
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:08,919
Speaker 2: how does that change the way that various things work,

638
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 2: you know, cognitively and observationally. So according to Smith at

639
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 2: all in native reading direction and corresponding preference for left

640
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:22,359
Speaker 2: or right lit images. This is from twenty thirteen in

641
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 2: Perceptual and Motor Skills. Apparently at the time there was

642
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:28,719
Speaker 2: a lot that hadn't been agreed on yet, and I'm

643
00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 2: to believe that this is still largely the case. They

644
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:37,399
Speaker 2: point out that the first language and individual learns does

645
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 2: appear to influence spatial attention, and it may factor into

646
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 2: differences in eye movement as well. However, one of the

647
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:47,719
Speaker 2: things that you see when you start looking at some

648
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,360
Speaker 2: of this research is that it tends to result in

649
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 2: a leftward bias in left to right readers, and I'm

650
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 2: not sure if that really lines up with some of

651
00:35:56,520 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 2: these ideas about position objects in the rule of thirdsh okay.

652
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 3: So, if the classical idea is a person who is

653
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:10,320
Speaker 3: in a left to right reading literacy culture would quote

654
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:13,239
Speaker 3: read a painting from left to right, and thus they

655
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 3: will end up on the right, and so you should

656
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:17,439
Speaker 3: have stuff at the bottom right if you want people

657
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:20,359
Speaker 3: to kind of land decisively on that when looking at

658
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 3: the image. This research would seem to suggest more of

659
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 3: the opposite, that there's more of a tendency to look

660
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,320
Speaker 3: to the left of the painting more towards the beginning

661
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 3: of the lines on the page where he used to Yeah.

662
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:34,839
Speaker 2: And I think an important thing to note here too,

663
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 2: is that maybe some of these concepts would be more

664
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 2: defined if you're dealing with something really abstract. But when

665
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,960
Speaker 2: you get into scenes via in visual arts, or certainly

666
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 2: in films where there are human beings involved and or

667
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 2: environments that are realistic or or unrealistic for that matter,

668
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 2: your mind is also trying to put piece together a story.

669
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 2: It's trying to predict the future. Even if you're looking

670
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 2: at a still painting where you haven't had an update

671
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 2: on what happens next, but your brain is still trying

672
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 2: to figure out what will happen next in the world

673
00:37:07,640 --> 00:37:09,799
Speaker 2: of that painting, And therefore there are all these other

674
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:12,839
Speaker 2: things involved, like where's what's the person looking at? Are

675
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 2: they looking at me or they're looking off? If the

676
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 2: person in the painting is looking to the left or

677
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 2: to the right, well then that changes the value of

678
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 2: the left or the right to me, the reader or

679
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:26,279
Speaker 2: the viewer. And so like I say this, a lot

680
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 2: of this comes back to the fact that the rule

681
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 2: of thirds, the exact definition of it and the application

682
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 2: of it kind of depends on who's accounting it and

683
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 2: how much weight they're putting behind it. Again, it's not

684
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 2: a natural law or anything. It is often held up

685
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 2: as kind of maybe a best practices for subjective art,

686
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 2: but it's a rule that's made to be broken. I

687
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 2: was reading about it a little bit more in a

688
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 2: paper titled evaluating the Rule of Thirds in Photographs and

689
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 2: Paintings by a Mirasha at All. This was from twenty

690
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:02,240
Speaker 2: fourteen in the journal Art and Perception, and they conducted

691
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:07,240
Speaker 2: a study where the researchers compared computer calculated rock values.

692
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 2: I should note that in multiple articles folks abbreviate rule

693
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:14,439
Speaker 2: of thirds two rot ROT, So I end up reading

694
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 2: a lot about rot and testing out rot. But they

695
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 2: compared computer calculated ROT values with human test subject ROT

696
00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 2: values concerning images and their findings. They argued suggested that

697
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 2: rot might not be as essential to the evaluation of

698
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 2: photos and artworks has previously thought, and that quote it

699
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:35,800
Speaker 2: might have become a normative aspect of creating artworks rather

700
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:38,319
Speaker 2: than a qualitative one. Ah.

701
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 3: Okay, So if that's the case, it could be more

702
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:46,320
Speaker 3: a result of a kind of convention that we expect

703
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 3: to see replicated because it is a convention used by artists,

704
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 3: but not so much a natural preference of all viewers

705
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 3: of art.

706
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. I was reading a little

707
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 2: bit more about this too, in a paper titled when

708
00:39:00,239 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 2: Might We Break the Rules? A Statistical analysis of esthetics

709
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:07,279
Speaker 2: and Photographs from plus one twenty twenty two by one

710
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 2: at All, And they they pointed out something that is

711
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 2: also worth taking into account here, because they were talking

712
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:17,280
Speaker 2: about how, okay, high quality photographs often obey a handful

713
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 2: of various rules, not only the rule of thirds, but

714
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 2: also things like the rule of odds, which simply states

715
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 2: that if you're going to have multiple subjects or objects

716
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 2: in your work, an odd number is better than an

717
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:30,720
Speaker 2: even number.

718
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 3: Ah, here we come full circle. So this is what

719
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 3: I was thinking about originally, though the rule of thirds

720
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 3: does sort of catch some of this as well.

721
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are a lot of examples of this,

722
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 2: and like, basically, like we can basically go back to

723
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 2: the example we were talking about with how and the

724
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 2: two humans earlier. Three figures may be positioned in a

725
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 2: triangular format, which naturally draws our attention in and gives

726
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 2: us that depth. I included a picture. I've included a

727
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 2: still here from the excellent Kurosawa film Throne of Blood

728
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 2: was on a video maker article by Wayland Bourne, and

729
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 2: this is another one. This is kind of I'll briefly

730
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 2: describe this because this is a classic setup. To the

731
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:10,840
Speaker 2: right and the left. You have two individuals their backs

732
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 2: turned to you, and they are entering into a room

733
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:17,239
Speaker 2: or a structure, and there is a third person in

734
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 2: the center of the frame, facing out, facing us, the viewer,

735
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 2: and this creates that triangle.

736
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 3: Corrasawa was a genius at framing scenes like this, and yeah,

737
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 3: this does look incredibly striking, especially because of the So

738
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 3: this is a film in black and white. It is

739
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 3: an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and these two characters I

740
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 3: think are the story's equivalents of the Macbeth and Banquo characters.

741
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:44,800
Speaker 3: I don't recall what their names are in Throne of Blood,

742
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:48,440
Speaker 3: but they're coming across the equivalent of what in Macbeth

743
00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 3: is the three witches who give the prophecy. In this movie,

744
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 3: it is an old figure who lives in the forest

745
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 3: and is working some kind of device. Is it like

746
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:00,799
Speaker 3: a spinning wheel or something like that.

747
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 2: Something like that.

748
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, and is whereas the two warriors are dressed in

749
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 3: dark samurai armor, the prophet or witch figure is very

750
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 3: brightly lit and appears kind of hazy and pale. And

751
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 3: so this three person to composition with the opposite facing

752
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:20,760
Speaker 3: and the difference in the white versus dark, the contrast there,

753
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 3: it's brilliant. It looks so good.

754
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 2: I'll have more on witches here shortly, because another way

755
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:29,319
Speaker 2: to look at this rule of odds is that if

756
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 2: you have four characters in a scene in an image,

757
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 2: you can also go ahead and group three together and

758
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 2: have one off to the side. You can do things

759
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 2: like this where okay, I have an even number of

760
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,400
Speaker 2: subjects in this picture, but I can group them in

761
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 2: a way that makes them read as odd you know. Now,

762
00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 2: again this is another thing where this is not a

763
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,240
Speaker 2: natural law. This is a rule that's made to be broken.

764
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 2: And so you'll find plenty of examples of people not

765
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 2: following this because you don't have to follow it. But

766
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 2: it was it was interesting. I started thinking about witches

767
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 2: more because you know, what is the classic number of witches,

768
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 2: and certainly in western traditions, is three, right, three witches

769
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:16,239
Speaker 2: or three hags. And I instantly thought to some of

770
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:21,080
Speaker 2: the paintings of Goya, for example, and some of them

771
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 2: have a lot of witches in those pictures where it's

772
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 2: it's not even really worth thinking about whether it's an

773
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:29,280
Speaker 2: even or odd number. But there is one called Elcunjuro

774
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 2: that is sometimes is given the English title witches or incantation.

775
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 2: And if you look here, we have what's a one, two, three,

776
00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 2: four five witches, So it's a it's a nice odd

777
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:43,759
Speaker 2: amount of witches. But at the same time, I don't

778
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 2: know if you're being like very analytical of it too. Okay, well,

779
00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 2: we have one, two, three, four, five witches and then

780
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 2: a we have a sixth individual here that is like

781
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 2: the subject of their interests, and the way that he's

782
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:59,239
Speaker 2: blocked the witches is interesting in that we basically have

783
00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 2: four witches and then a fifth individual, and then we

784
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 2: have one witch in the foreground. Another comparison that I

785
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 2: ran across is you look at Albruck Duro's the Four

786
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 2: Witches as a black and white image, and you have

787
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 2: four witches that they're basically nude females. You don't know

788
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 2: that they're witches based on anything of the title. They're

789
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:21,280
Speaker 2: not doing anything that I can see is particularly witchy

790
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 2: other than they're naked. But I've seen it compared to

791
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 2: a sculpture by Antonio Kanova titled the Three Graces. The

792
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 2: Three Graces as it as the title and indicates three

793
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:37,359
Speaker 2: naked individuals and the witches, we have four, but in

794
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:42,200
Speaker 2: Albruk Duura's artwork. Here they're grouped like three with a

795
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:44,879
Speaker 2: fourth witch kind of in the background. You'll only really

796
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:46,480
Speaker 2: see her from like the shoulders. Hup.

797
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it still feels like three. It's three and

798
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 3: one instead of four.

799
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:02,919
Speaker 2: Now, going back to that paper by waying at all,

800
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 2: they point out that we have these various rules, but

801
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 2: we also have plenty of examples of artists that break

802
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 2: the rules, but in doing so it doesn't seem to

803
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 2: hamper the esthetic merits of their work. And they break

804
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 2: all this down at a level of detail that doesn't

805
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 2: really suit our purposes here, but suffice to say that

806
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:24,480
Speaker 2: they point to a number of various other desirable aesthetic

807
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 2: elements that enable the breaking of rules, and the paper

808
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 2: seems interested in codifying all of this further. But I

809
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 2: think one of the big takeaways for our purposes is

810
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 2: that something like the rule of thirds is important and

811
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:38,600
Speaker 2: seems to align with the sort of esthetic qualities we

812
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 2: look for. But again, there are plenty ways. There are

813
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:44,840
Speaker 2: plenty of ways to skirt around it. Rules and subjective

814
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 2: art once more, are there to be broken. In thinking

815
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:51,160
Speaker 2: about all of this too, and certainly thinking of cinematic examples,

816
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 2: I also instantly thought about the work of director Wes Anderson,

817
00:44:56,120 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 2: who is especially with his longtime cinematographer Robert Yeoman. It's

818
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 2: known for shots that often have a high degree of

819
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 2: symmetry to them. Yeah, and you know this often helps

820
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 2: create that sort of signature, stage flavored, slightly surreal vibe

821
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 2: that he's going for in his pictures.

822
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 3: Yes, there's absolutely that. I would almost say also the symmetry,

823
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:25,279
Speaker 3: there's something kind of cute about it that can make

824
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 3: a scene kind of feel cute or tidy or friendly

825
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 3: or amusing in a way where, even if the subject

826
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:39,400
Speaker 3: matter would otherwise be i don't know, more threatening or

827
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:42,680
Speaker 3: upsetting or something like that, there's a kind of gentle

828
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 3: harmlessness that creeps in with the symmetry of the framing,

829
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 3: if that makes any sense.

830
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:47,640
Speaker 2: Yeah.

831
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

832
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 2: The most recent full length film his that I've seen

833
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 2: is twenty twenty three's Asteroid City, which I thought was

834
00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:59,240
Speaker 2: quite good. But it has their elements to the plot

835
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 2: that involves stage productions, and then there's this flavor extends

836
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:05,240
Speaker 2: throughout the rest of the piece, and so you'll often

837
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 2: have these, you know, for instance, that very symmetrical subject

838
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:13,920
Speaker 2: in center shots that also do, at least via the background,

839
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 2: adhere to the rule of thirds, So you could you

840
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 2: could definitely lay the grid over this and be like,

841
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:20,879
Speaker 2: all right, you know, there are things line up here,

842
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,240
Speaker 2: but we are looking at the character dead center. Sometimes

843
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 2: I feel like that kind of blocking in his films.

844
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:31,279
Speaker 2: It kind of creates this feeling of, you know, very

845
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 2: much an amateur play, but with of course impeccable set

846
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 2: design and generally you know, a very talented actor at

847
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 2: the center of it. So you get this kind of

848
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:46,440
Speaker 2: interesting juxtaposition there that again create helps create this feeling

849
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:49,839
Speaker 2: of slight unreality. All right, So I'm gonna I'm gonna

850
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:52,359
Speaker 2: skip up my other examples from Wes Anderson's work, because

851
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 2: again you can't see them listening to the podcast, so

852
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 2: I feel like it would just mostly be Joe and

853
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 2: Me geeking out of some of these images. But to

854
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 2: skip ahead a bit, I will point out that there

855
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 2: are critics of of rot of the rule of three

856
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:11,320
Speaker 2: that very much argue that there's less of a direct

857
00:47:11,440 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 2: connection here. For instance, I was looking at a twenty

858
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:17,840
Speaker 2: sixteen post by an artist by the name of Anthony

859
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:22,240
Speaker 2: Waculus who this was titled A Spurious Affair A Primer

860
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 2: on Pictorial Composition, Part four, and he argued that it

861
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 2: is akin to theories of spontaneous generation, you know, the

862
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 2: idea that flies are born from rotten mead and rats

863
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 2: and so forth, that it's you know, it's correlation that

864
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 2: might spring forth from a bag of grain exactly. That's

865
00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:46,879
Speaker 2: sort of thing basically, and it's it's a very good boast.

866
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:49,080
Speaker 2: He makes that argument that, look, there's so many things

867
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:50,960
Speaker 2: going on in the human brain when we make sense

868
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 2: of an image, including you know, quite importantly again prediction

869
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:59,040
Speaker 2: and modeling over what's going to happen next, including you know,

870
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 2: arguably better supported visual perception biases such as inward bias

871
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:07,760
Speaker 2: that's inward facing objects, of bias for inward facing objects

872
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,720
Speaker 2: near the border, center bias that's front facing figures near center,

873
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,640
Speaker 2: and goodness of fit, which can also depend on how

874
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 2: you're tackling it, favor central stability, and an image.

875
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 3: Okay, so those three things like inward facing objects near

876
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 3: the border or front facing figures in the center. This

877
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 3: author is saying that those are better supported by research

878
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:32,799
Speaker 3: as things that we naturally favor in artworks than the

879
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 3: rule of thirds is correct.

880
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 2: That's their argument. So you know, I think at the

881
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 2: end of the day, again, it's not a natural law.

882
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 2: It's a rule that's meant to be broken. But there's

883
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 2: something about it that does at least correlate with the

884
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 2: things we like and or create in visual representations. There

885
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 2: is something about dividing things up into thirds that works

886
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 2: really well for us, and it processes well for us.

887
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean we can only deal with thirds, but

888
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 2: there is something about it, and it serves as a

889
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 2: great guide, certainly for people who are figuring out what

890
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 2: they're doing with their art, with their visual representations and

891
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 2: in their filmmaking.

892
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:18,719
Speaker 3: Right. So, I mean, the way I would look at it,

893
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 3: if you're thinking about the rule of thirds or the

894
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 3: rule of odds with numbers of subjects in an artwork,

895
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 3: I would never say that, like, oh, well, good art

896
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,919
Speaker 3: follows this rule and bad art doesn't. But I would

897
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 3: say there there is likely a reason. There's some kind

898
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 3: of reason that there is this tendency to say, uh,

899
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 3: you know, grouping things in terms of three or five

900
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 3: is better than two or four, and that if you

901
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 3: have four of something, you have this impulse to split

902
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 3: it into three and one, or if you have two

903
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 3: of something, you have this impulse to put something between

904
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 3: them to make it more like three of something. There

905
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 3: is something we're feeling there, even if it's not actually

906
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 3: the difference between art being good or bad, there's an

907
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:04,880
Speaker 3: impulse we're following.

908
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would like to come back to the

909
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 2: rule of odds in another episode and look at some

910
00:50:10,239 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 2: of the literature around its usage in food advertising, because oh,

911
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:17,120
Speaker 2: I feel like this seems like an area where you

912
00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 2: can be a lot more on target with how we're

913
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 2: processing it, because we want to eat the food, or

914
00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:25,760
Speaker 2: at least we're thinking about eating the food, and therefore

915
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 2: there's like more of a like a direct relationship with

916
00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:30,919
Speaker 2: the number. Because Yeah, the basic idea here is that, yeah,

917
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:33,719
Speaker 2: if you're gonna have an advertisement for I don't know,

918
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 2: slider Hamburgers, you would want to have three on a

919
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:43,720
Speaker 2: little silver platter in your magazine ad. Not two, not four,

920
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 2: not one, but three.

921
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, especially if you're showing them on like a

922
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 3: TV commercial or in a visual picture. The idea, even

923
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 3: if they like the two were bigger and you're getting

924
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 3: the same amount of food overall, you want the three.

925
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, huge victory for team odd there.

926
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:05,800
Speaker 3: Why are there always three things in a fast food combo?

927
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 3: You know it's like you get the sandwich, the fries,

928
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:11,760
Speaker 3: and the drink, and they never like put the fries

929
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 3: on the sandwich, and you just get two things, the

930
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 3: sandwich in the drink.

931
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta have that side, right, you have that

932
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 2: third element. Otherwise it feels like you're missing something. Like

933
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 2: even if it's just a very measily side salad, and

934
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 2: I love a good side salad, but sometimes a side

935
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:29,400
Speaker 2: salad is just some lettuce thrown on there, Like, it

936
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 2: still feels like a certain sacred law is being obeyed,

937
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:36,600
Speaker 2: you know, some sort of Game of Thrones esque arrangement

938
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 2: where it's like, okay, a side has been served, we

939
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:40,399
Speaker 2: cannot murder each other.

940
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:45,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, the law of hospitality. I accept your bread and

941
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:49,920
Speaker 3: chicken fries or whatever they're still doing chicken fries out there.

942
00:51:49,920 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 3: I wonder how many of those you get. I bet

943
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 3: it's an odd number.

944
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about chicken fries, so I can't

945
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 2: speak to them. Is it chicken or fried? Like what's

946
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:00,680
Speaker 2: the or is it like fries maybe with chicken fat.

947
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 2: I don't know.

948
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I think it's fries made out of chicken.

949
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, you can get chicken parts that

950
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 3: come in normal chicken parts shapes, but then you could

951
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:11,880
Speaker 3: also just take that chicken and turn it into fries,

952
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:12,759
Speaker 3: and that's what they do.

953
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:15,480
Speaker 2: That really sounds like chicken fingers to me. I don't

954
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 2: understand why this is we need this category confusion.

955
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 3: Chicken fingers got a lot of edges, a lot of contours,

956
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 3: you know, don't you just want a straight pillar of chicken,

957
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:27,239
Speaker 3: just like just like.

958
00:52:27,239 --> 00:52:31,760
Speaker 2: A shredded chicken, but shredded but stiff. I don't know. Maybe,

959
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:32,240
Speaker 2: I guess.

960
00:52:32,680 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think we're gonna have to call it there,

961
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 3: But we will have more to say about our thoughts

962
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:40,600
Speaker 3: and feelings about odd and even numbers next time.

963
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 2: That's right. In the meantime, I'm sure you have some

964
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 2: observations and thoughts about a thought odds and evens and

965
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:49,879
Speaker 2: numbers in general. Write in, we would love to hear

966
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 2: from you. Let's see our core science and culture episodes

967
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 2: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind here on Tuesdays and

968
00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:57,800
Speaker 2: Thursdays here, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast

969
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:02,719
Speaker 2: feed short form episodes on Wednesday's Weird House cinemon Fridays.

970
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 2: That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and

971
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film. Then we have some

972
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 2: vault episodes sprinkled in there, and then we also are

973
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:13,760
Speaker 2: still doing listener mail episodes. They're just not occurring every Monday.

974
00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:18,439
Speaker 2: They are occurring periodically once or twice a month as

975
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 2: the mailbag fills up, so keep those emails rolling in.

976
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 2: Oh and if you're on Instagram, you can follow us

977
00:53:24,160 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 2: at STBYM Podcast. That's our handle there.

978
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:31,160
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

979
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

980
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

981
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:37,680
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

982
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:40,439
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow

983
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:48,960
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

984
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

985
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:54,879
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app,

986
00:53:55,040 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.