🛒 Our merch store closes on September 30th.Shop now if you had your eye on anything!
🎙️ Taha talked toxic masculinity on the Sad Boyz podcast! Check out his episode with Jarvis Johnson and Jordan Adika here.
📈 Sabrina is hosting Study Hall: Real World Statistics. Learn how to navigate the world in numbers in this series brought to you by the same folks who make Crash Course!
🩶 Sabrina deep-dived into interior decor history in this video about Millennial Grey.
🏆 Help Sabrina’s podcast win an award! Last year, Sabrina wrote and directed an episode of You Feeling This 2. Now the show is nominated at the Signal Awards for the best scripted fiction podcast (we’re up against Batman). You can vote here to support the show!
✨ Get your bonus content! Sabrina made a game where you design your own room. Play it on our website with this month’s password: GREY.
Sure, millennials might keep their walls grey and minimal, but their playlists tell a different story. This Millennial Maximalism playlist is full of songs that go all out!
🔓 Patreon Unlocked
AIP dream house
Sabrina committed to the bit (again) for an upcoming video and built an interior design game where Taha and Melissa got to decorate their dream rooms. Watch the chaos unfold in our unlocked Patreon post.
You can play the game yourself in the newsletter exclusives section of our website!
If you want to support our work and get access to even more bonus content and aftershows, consider subscribing to our Patreon :)
💰 Funding Opportunity
Sloan Science Prize Applications Close Sep 30!
Are you an educational content creator or filmmaker with a dream project that needs funding? Sabrina is a juror for the Sloan Science Prizes which supports the creation of exceptional work on YouTube that explores themes related to science and technology. Got an idea? A relatively simple pitch could land you serious support:
Documentary Prize: $100,000 to develop or produce nonfiction work that spotlights science and technology.
Narrative Fiction Prize: $50,000 to create a short film or series pilot that dramatizes scientific themes or characters.
In our last newsletter, we talked about shutting down our merch store to focus on making videos. It officially closes September 30th so you have until then to check out our clearance sale. After that, we genuinely don’t know if/when merch will be coming back.
William Henry Perkin, the grandpapi of colour trends
While researching my Millennial Grey video, I found a really interesting relationship between technological advancement and colour trends starting with the invention of mauve — a purple synthetic dye unintentionally invented by William Henry Perkin while trying to synthesize a malaria cure. This revolutionized the dye industry which largely relied on plant and animal extracts at the time. The colour supposedly entered the sphere of high fashion through Napoleon III’s wife, but it was solidified by Queen Victoria who represented the British invention at her daughter’s wedding in 1858 dressed in mauve attire. This technological invention helped establish the jewel tone trend that defined the era.
However, colour trends at the time were mostly confined to the rich — especially when it came to matters of home decor. John Masury’s popular treatise titled “HOW SHALL WE PAINT OUR HOUSES?” acknowledged how large a role economics played in early house painting choices.
Painting was a laborious process requiring hand-milling pigments, mixing batches on demand, and carefully layering paint lest it end up splotchy or uneven. This is why wallpaper was so popular in the 19th century; it required less expertise to apply.
If a house was painted, it was usually for a practical reason (e.g. rust prevention) and the colour was chosen based on affordability. Masury was excited about the advent of synthetic dyes and their many rich colours (comparing chemists to wizards), but he mainly recommended ochres (dyes made from earth pigments) due to their inexpensive abundance. This meant a lot of yellow/beige and red/brown homes.
Colourful dyes and house paint only became more accessible near the turn of the 20th century with the invention of factory-milled pigments, pre-mixed paints, and the resealable paint tin which lowered the cost of materials and application. Once again, technological innovation played a key role in bringing colour into our lives.
This pattern continued into the middle of the 20th century when materials science advancements from WWI and WWII made their way into our homes. Synthetic fibres and plastics, which were cheaper and easier to maintain than their organic counterparts, took over upholstery and flooring. They were tinted with vibrant dyes largely to lure people out of wartime austerity and solve what manufacturers called “an underconsumption problem”.
A vintage GE ad that emphasizes colour options (circa 1950s)
Colours became a new way to differentiate otherwise identical products, and companies like GE and DuPont were quick to capitalize on it with “Color Conditioning” (a colour system invented by wartime camoufleurs who specialized in using colour and design to assist in functionality). This is what led to the colour kitchens you might associate with post-war America.
However, the role technological advancement had in establishing new trends waned over the years as other factors like international trade and media influence took hold — which is why this finding was cut for time. But we still see the whispers of technology shaping our taste — even in Millennial Grey through cool LED lights and the minimalism of the iPhone.
🔦 Creator Spotlight by Sabrina
Make With Miles
If you are tired of boring home design, you’ll love Make with Miles who is using a mix of woodwork and tech to reinvent furniture staples with new styles and functions. He is also reinventing the makerspace genre by sprinkling in a focus on filmmaking.
🙏 Thank You
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