September 27, 2025 • 30 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with artist and author Tyler Thrasher about the new book “The Universe in 100 Colors: Weird and wondrous Colors From Science and Nature.” (originally published 9/24/2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and it's Saturday, so we have
another Vault episode for you. This is going to be
from nine twenty four to twenty twenty four. This is
going to be The Universe in one hundred Colors with
Tyler Thrasher. This is my interview with artist and author
Tyler Thrasher about his then new book The Universe and
(00:26):
one hundred Colors Weird and Wondrous Colors from Science and Nature.
It's a real fun chat. I really enjoyed talking with
Tyler about this topic and about his book, which is
indeed a beautiful volume to behold. Let's dive right into
the interview.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I'm going to
be chatting with artist and author Tyler Thrasher the new
book The Universe in one hundred Colors Weird and Wondrous
Colors from Science and Nature. Many of you are familiar
with his work already. You may follow him on Instagram
where he is Tyler Thrasher Art, or you may have
(01:12):
seen his work out in the world. It's pretty gorgeous stuff.
The book is out now and it too is pretty amazing.
So without further ado, let's jump right into the interview
than you. Hey, Tyler, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So a lot of the listeners already know you, but
would you mind introducing yourself to those who don't follow
you online or haven't viewed and experienced your work.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, So, my name's Tyler Thrasher. I was gifted with
a really cool last name. A lot of people think
I like changed my name. I didn't. That's my real
last name, and I do a lot of things. I
am a self taught chemist, botanist, artist, illustrator, and I
mean a lot of my work have all around collaborating
(02:01):
with nature. So a lot of people know me as
the guy who grows crystals on insects. I crystallize insects
and I grow opals, I hybridize plants. Pretty much any
area where I can sort of bring creativity into nature
and science, I'll find a way to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So, I understand you're a fellow Dungeons and Dragons player.
Would it be correct to assume that you're a multi
class character in real life?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh man, yes, I definitely think I am a multi
class Funny enough, I actually I don't actually play as
a player. I'm always the dungeon master. I have to
be the dungeon master. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, I'm going to back up to some of the
roles you just mentioned. So growing opals when it comes
to this, just takes me back maybe to like childhood,
like crystal growing kits, and that's where my experience with
anything like this ends. Can you walk us through what
growing oples consists of?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, so growing opals is sort of a different route
than like when I synthesize crystals, and opal isn't necessarily
considered a crystal. It's a mineraloid. So crystals have very
specific geometry that is unique to their molecular structure, whereas
opals are comprised of nanoparticles that perfectly line up. So essentially,
(03:22):
to grow an opal, you have to find a way
to produce nanoparticles. In the case of opals at silica
hydrated silica spheres, you have to find a way to
produce those silica spheres. Then you have to find a
way to allow gravity to let those particles sediment to
the bottom of a container, where they form a cubic
lattice of perfectly aligned silica spheres.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh wow. So I was looking at some of the
images of your artwork on your website here, and I
was especially drawn to these, to the works you've kind
of alluded to already, with like insects specimens and skulls
and crystals and crystaline instances. It takes on a magical
kind of like brightly occult sensibility that I really dig
(04:06):
So how did you come to this particular aesthetic, What
does it mean to you? What are the challenges in
synthesizing it?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, I did not expect to be the guy that
grows crystals on insects. That wasn't on my list of jobs.
And I stumbled upon this practice late in college. I
was a few months from graduating, getting my degree in
computer animation, and I had realized pretty late that I
did not want to be an animator and that's not
(04:37):
what I wanted to do. And I panicked, and I
was like, what am I going to do? Well? While
I was in college, I spent a lot of time caving.
I spent a lot of time underground, and I was
around a lot of minerals, so I was illustrating minerals,
illustrating crystals, illustrating crystals, growing on the things I found
while hiking, so like cicada shells and stuff. And one
(04:58):
day I sat there and I was like, I wonder
if I could make a real crystallized cicada shell instead
of just drawing and illustrating them. And I tapped into
my chemistry background from high school, and I was like,
I think I can do this. I went to my
kitchen and my college house, boiled up some chemicals and
I grew some crystals on a cicada shell and I said,
this is I mean, the first time I saw this,
(05:20):
I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
I fell in love, particularly because I didn't get to
pick the outcome. I was completely surprised when I pulled
it out of the vat. I didn't know what to expect,
and so it felt like this collaboration where I was like, Okay,
here's the plan, but the final outcome I have no
idea what this is going to look like. It blew
my mind. I was like, this is the most fascinating
(05:41):
thing I've ever seen, and then I shared it online.
It went viral, and it became my full time job overnight,
pretty much was providing the world with crystallized insects. And
after a while, there aren't many challenges. Like once you
get the hang of it, you kind of start growing
crystals like it's a second language, and you kind of
understand then the ambient conditions that are needed to grow
(06:03):
really good crystals, and you do. You do it for
enough years and you're just kind of pretty much growing
crystals in your sleep.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, there is something about a crystal. I know. I
always come back to a quote I think it was
Thatch cart Toole talking about crystals is like like a
focus for being present in the now, you know that,
Like even you know, and certainly there're there are various,
you know, other avenues one can take crystals in with,
you know, spiritual beliefs and all. But but just like
the physical reality of the crystal, whatever form it's taking,
(06:35):
like there's just something captivating about it.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, I mean you're looking at the pure geometry of
those molecules. Each crystal is comprised of a series of molecules. Naturally,
curring crystals have many different molecules with impurities that add
to their color, like anthysts for instance, or emerald. But
when you're growing crystals in a lab through like different
(06:59):
molecule that can ionize, what you're looking at is like
the pure representation of the molecular geometry you know of
that compound, which I think is really cool. It's like,
this is that compound in perfect form, and it takes
a lot of patience and a lot of focus. Like
you said, it does feel like to be a crystal
is to be hyper present. Yeah, I like that. I
(07:23):
like that analogy.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Now. I was also really impressed with some of the
plush work that you've created. There are these amazing little
Schrodinger's cat plushies. Can can you describe these for everyone?
You really have to see them, but a short description
will perhaps get everyone more excited to go check it out.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah. So I got in the realm of making scientific plushies,
like quantum plushies and like molting insect plushies, and I
have this idea to do a Schrodinger's cat Schrodinger's cat
plushy where I was like, okay, you have this box
and in the box is either a dead cat or
a living cat, and if you never open the box,
(08:04):
you can you can assume you have either a dead
cat or a living cat, or both. And for those
that aren't familiar with the Schrounger's Cat thought experiment, essentially
you put a cat in a box with a vial
of poison that is released whenever a particle decays, and
the particle will decay, you just don't know when. It's random,
(08:25):
and until you open the box, you can assume that
the cat I either consume the poison, was killed or
hasn't consumed it yet, and so it's neither dead nor alive.
I was like, I want to plushy like this, and
then I designed a third plushy called the Quantum Cat,
which is neither dead nor alive. It's in a quantum
state between the two, and there's like a ten percent
(08:47):
chance you pull the quantum Cat. I just I love
turning science and thought experiments into physical things that people
can play with.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, yeah, I thought this was a really great idea
and I love the design for each of the three cats.
Very cool. Well.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Now, the new book out today is The Universe in
one hundred Colors, Weird and Wondrous colors from Science and nature.
I've got a physical copy right here. It's a gorgeous,
vibrant book that's equal parts like visual coffee table pizazz
and scientific exploration of color in our visual universe. So
(09:24):
can you tell us how this book came together, how
you came to work with your co author Terry Mudge
on this one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
So I had this idea to make a book on
color from one specific origin, and that was my experiments
with growing Opal. And I know we talked about Opel already,
but I didn't get to describe Opal, which is probably
my favorite, absolute favorite thing on the planet. Like I said,
(09:52):
Ople's comprised of siliconnana particles and what happens is white
light enters that cubic lattice and it's difracted into all
of its different wavelengths, which is why Opal was so
colorful and vibrant. And when you rotate it, it changes color.
It's one of the most mesmerizing things this planet has produced,
or the universe has produced, in my opinion. And when
you grow your first Opal in a lab and you
(10:14):
put it under a microscope and you shine a white
light on it, you would have to be dead inside
to not fall absolutely in love with the world all
over again. To see this photonic crystal in action. I
grew my first opal. I screamed. I was running around
the lab cursing. I was like, this is the most
you freaking amazing thing I've ever seen. And I looked
(10:39):
at this thing and I said, I wonder if I
can get other people to feel this way, if I
can get other people to feel the way I feel
about color, just from this opal. And I went to
my friend Terry Mudge, who's the co author. Him and
I were sharing a space at the time. He has
a really wonderful science shop called the stem Cell Science Shop,
and he has all these weird materials in his shop,
(11:01):
and he does a really cool subscription boxer. He sends
all these strange materials. And I said, Terry, you have
all these weird materials in your shop. I love color.
Do you think you and I could work together on
a book where I photographed some of the materials and
you and I write about one hundred really fascinating colors
talk about color science. And he said heck yeah. He
(11:22):
said heck yeah. I took the idea, took it to
a publishing company I was working with I was like,
I want to write a book on color. And I
got this really cool science guy who's equally as nerdy
as I am. We want to make a cool color book.
And they said that sounds awesome. Let's get started.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So did your photography work serve as sort of like
the initial backbone for the structure of the book.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah. So I also do photography, and I photographed a
handful of images. And there the morpho butterfly wing, there's
some uranium glass, some Libyans desert glass, some beetle elytra,
a handful things, and there's some really cool liken that
(12:02):
I sourced a lot of these objects and I photographed
them with a macro lens. A lot of it I
didn't photograph because there's things like radiation, like the Globe
of Radiation, and like brain scans and stuff like that
I didn't photograph, but a lot of it I did.
And that to me was like I can get people
to travel through the lens with me and get really
(12:24):
really close to some of these objects and see the
wonder and all the crunchy details and the juicy textures
and all that, and get people to love color up close.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Earlier, I mentioned the coffee table books. And I mean
that in a loving way, because I know coffee table
books can maybe sometimes mean like a book be put
on a coffee table and forget about. But I tend
to think of it as like, you know, a book
you can pick up in any moment. You can read
cover to cover, but you can pick up at any moment,
flip through it, find something eye catching, and learn something
pretty cool. And I think one of the things that
(13:07):
aids this book is this interesting classification system, in the
system of icons that you use. I really love this touch.
Can you explain how this came to be?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, Well, when you write a book on one hundred
colors and they're all different because we called it the
universe and one hundred colors, and I think maybe some
people might think it's all cosmic colors, like colors from space,
it's not. There are colors that are human made, colors
that are naturally occurring, colors that exist in space from
(13:37):
celestial phenomena. What other classifications do we have? Colors produced
by light, structural colors? And Terry and I sat there
and thought, we love science, and we love classifying and
sorting and organizing things. And I was like, we need
we need a method. We need a method for classifying
these as people flip through each color, we need icons
(14:00):
detail where this falls. So we have like colors that
are luminous, colors that like emit light, or colors that
are produced from light being emitted. Naturally occurring. So there's
a lot of minerals in the book and those which
fall under naturally occurring human made. There are some really
really cool human made colors like ultra white, a lot
(14:23):
of pigments like Banta black that are human made and
products of experimentation. So we needed classification for that. Classification
for structural colors, so colors that exist because of the
structure of the particles that make up that object. So yeah,
we just needed a fun way to categorize everything. Also,
(14:46):
I'm a huge nerd and I love things like I
love Pokemon, and so I'm like, I was like, I
want this to be like a Pokadex for colors, Like
I wanted a fun way to categorize all the colors.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, and some of the colors could come
completely off guard too, like you know some I expected
fount of Life to be in there, and various other
things you know, but then like unappetizing blue, this got
into this whole subject of the blue steak. I was
completely unfamiliar with this idea.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, isn't it gross? Like like I knew when we
talked about what the image should be, like we should
photoshop a steak to be blue. It seems simple until
you look at it, isn't it. It's really gross to
look at.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I wasn't from Is this from the food industry business? Right?
It's kind of you said that. It's been hard to
like really nail down any like actual underlying studies here.
But the idea was that people are not going to
want to eat of food they might normally like if
it's a color they don't expect, like blue.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Right exactly. So what's funny about unappetizing blue is it's
kind of a myth. Like there was supposedly a study
I think it was in the seventies. There's supposedly a
study that a bunch of diners were presented with steaks
and dark room. They ate the steaks, and when they
flipped the lights on, they realized the steaks were blue.
(16:05):
And as the story goes, people completely lost it. People
were throwing plates against the wall. They were vomiting, they
were screaming in horror. And that study was only referenced,
I think once in a trade magazine. I don't think
it was an actual published study. It was just kind
of like this like this lore around food and the
(16:25):
food industry, and they took it so seriously that today,
still today, you won't find many restaurants that experiment with
like making their food blue. And I posted this online.
I was like, guys, you should learn about unappetizing blue.
And sure enough, there were a lot of people. I
had hundreds of people who were like, oh, I accidentally
made my food blue with like cabbage, Like they'd put
(16:46):
cabbage in their meal and it would stay in their
food blue, and they were like, I couldn't eat it.
A lot of people did this study on accident to themselves,
like just in their own kitchen, and they're like I
was like repulsed. I could not eat food that was blue.
I don't think candies count. There's a lot of discussion
on like, like I'm curious what your take is, like
(17:06):
why candy is different than say a blue steak or
a blue burger or blue pasta.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, that's weird. Because like my mind also instantly goes
to like blue drinks, like like you know, there's like
the blue Hawaiian in the realm of tropical cocktails. There's
there's like the blue milk. You can get it, like
you know, the Star Wars area of Disneyland Disney World.
People love those things. But and then blue candy, like
you're saying, that seems to get a pass as well.
(17:33):
But yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of anything outside of
like a blueberry, and then you get into discussions of well,
how blue is a blueberry, and we're we're talking about
different types of blue.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it was funny, as blueberries are actually more purple
than blue. Blue is actually a really hard color to
find the nature. But yeah, I just I think it's
interesting a lot. It brought up a big debate online
where people are like, well, why why does candy get
a pass. It's like, well, things that are synthesized like candies,
it's not naturally occurring, So I think there's something in
(18:04):
our biology that gives it a pass. Whereas if you
see blue food out in nature, it kind of reminds
us of rot like things rotting, like a lot of
blue and green, mold and fungi and stuff. I think
I just it's disgusting. It's really disgusting.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, yeah, I think you might be onto something with
a like we don't necessarily think of candy as food,
and in the sense that I might enjoy a twizzler,
but I'd never think of it as as anything like
a fruit or a piece of bread. It's it's kind
of it's like eating a plastic, but a plastic that
I like to eat sometimes for some reason.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Now, one of the more disturbing and perhaps like seasonally
appropriate entries was mummy Brown. Can you tell us a
little bit about mummy Brown?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Yeah? You know, man, there are some really really messed
up colors out there, and mummy Brown's interesting because it's
just plain discuss it's revolting that we had this idea.
When you look at the era, we got a lot
of colors from a lot of not okay place. There's
a lot of dangerous places. Mummy brown was this sort
(19:11):
of umber brown that was made from the crushed up
bodies of mummies. And as the story goes, a lot
of mummies every mummy is stolen. If a mummy taken
out of its final resting place. If it's removed, it's
stolen for any reason. And a lot of mummies were
stolen and excavated and crushed up into a fine powder
that was used as paint and a lot of oil paints,
(19:35):
and it was a popular brown. What is I think
really horrifying and upsetting about mummy brown is not that
there would be these big mummy parties where people get
together and like, look at these mummies and fantasize about
them being turned into pigments. But mummies were becoming rare,
They're becoming sort of a endangered resource where people were
(19:57):
running out of mummies, so then they would use mummy
either mummified animals, or as the story goes, the mummified
remains of enslaved people. So a lot of mummies were
taken from enslaved people. You know, these were humans that
were deemed lesser than by the artists and the societies
that were excavating and destroying these bodies, and so they
(20:22):
were like, well, no one's going to care about these
enslaved peoples, their their bodies, so we'll use that as pigment.
And I think that is a very tragic, although somehow
not surprising detail from the time, and well that's often
left out today people talk about mummies like they think,
like mummies from Sarcophagai and from ancient Egypt, and it's like, well, no,
a lot of mummies were taken from like mass graves
(20:45):
or from the bodies of enslaved people and used for pigments.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, and there are there are several in here that
have ties into cultural history, maya blue being one, and
then there are others that I guess you would call
more scientific topics like horseshoe, crab blood and so forth. So,
like I say, it's one of these books that I
think it is a lot of fun to just flip
through and it takes you to sort of different realms
(21:12):
with the different colors.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah, some of my favorite colors in there are the inventions,
like there's a new paint, a new pigment that people
are exploring called ultra white that you'll find early on
in the book. And white gets overlooked. I think, like
when you think of white, maybe a lot of people
think like, oh, white is white. Not until you go
(21:33):
to paint a room or a house white, do you
realize there are a lot of whites and those whites
make a big difference on how light is reflected and
bounced around an environment. Ultra white is this new invention
that is titanium based and it reflects so much sunlight.
(21:54):
It's so reflective that it actually makes the surface that
it's painted on cooler than the ambient temperature around it.
You could just find a rock outside, paint it in
ultra white, leave it out in the summer sun, and
the rock will be cooler than the ambient temperature and
the concrete or ground it's on because of how much
(22:15):
sunlight is being reflected from it. So there's theories that
you know, if you painted like a huge like a
percentage of all the roofs on the planet, like thirty
percent of the roofs on the planet ultra white, it
could reflect enough sunlight to actually make a difference with
climate change. Like there's thoughts like that circulating around some
of these colors. But then there's the question of the
(22:37):
extensive mining that would need to be done to obtain
that much titanium to make that much paint to have
that big of an impact. So there's always this give
and take with color, like, oh, it could save lives,
it could change the world, but it could also destroy
the environment trying to get the materials to produce these colors.
It's an interesting tug of war between how far do
(22:58):
we go with some colors?
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Now in putting the book together again, a lot of
these are your photographs. Were there any colors or subjects
that you've found like particularly challenging to sort of to
capture on the page, you know, because it's a very
vibrant book, and you know, there's not a single page
that you didn't astound me one way or another. But
I was just wondering, was there anything that you found
(23:30):
like particularly challenging to try and capture.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yes. Absolutely, there are some colors that are more concepts
than they are solid colors, and those are hard to illustrate.
One of the colors that I like to tell people
about is called eigen growl, and it's probably my favorite
color in the book, or one of them. Igen Growl
essentially is the color you see in the absence of light,
the human eye sees in the absence of light, and
(23:55):
the image we use to illustrate that. I went through
a couple I was like, well, if it's a black
and white image of someone eyes closed, you know, we
ended up going with the black and white image of
like a street lamp, which I thought was kind of
fun and haunting. That was a hard one because eigen
grawl is the color you see when you close your
eyes in a dark room, and it's not black. A
lot of people think you see black. It's actually a
(24:17):
dark gray. And the reason it's dark gray is because
the photon receptors in your eyes the protein that we adopts,
and those photon receptors are still active, So it gives
this sort of illusion of dark gray, like as if
there is just enough light present so you don't see
pure pitch black. And I think that's important. I think
(24:39):
it's interesting. I think it to me, it illustrates this
poetic narrative of the fact that we're always ready to
perceive light, that humans are always ready to perceive light.
And I think that's so beautiful about the human eye.
And I was like, that's a concept. How do you
capture an illustrate a concept? The first color? So in
(25:02):
the book we talked about the first color in the universe,
and for that we used black body radiation, which is
this orange and we know that as the universe cool.
It hit a certain temperature where the universe was a
black body, where that temperature radiated throughout the entire universe
and had this singular glow, and that glow was a
(25:23):
very warm orange, and that was when the universe was
cool enough that photons could move through the universe and
light could travel, and the universe would have been this warm,
ever present, omnipresent orange glow, which would have theoretically been
the first color in the universe. And that's just a concept.
(25:43):
How do you illustrate that? So we had to kind
of reference it with other images, and it was a challenge,
but I hope I did a good job.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, Like I said, every page and
you hear from like the section on black substance in
the brain. I was not expecting that and then got
it getting into things like ice giants and ruby chocolate.
The images are eye catching and then the you know,
each of each page's title like draws you in a
little bit more like Okay, what are they? What are
(26:13):
they about to talk about? Here?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
It really drags yet Yay.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So at the end of the day, how do you
want readers to approach color after this book? What do
you want to what is the ultimate message about color
in our world.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
I hope I'm not speaking for too many people, and
I say this, but I'm included in this. I think
we take color for granted. I think our understanding of
color has been sort of dumb down, where we think
color is just whatever you buy in the bottle at
the arts and craft store. Color is so much more
(26:47):
powerful than that. The stuff you buy in the bottle
is one tiny, tiny, tiny facet of how we experience
color in the universe. I hope this book shows everyone
who reads it, or most people, that there are different
ways color exists all around us, and we should take
the time to understand it. You know, a red paint
(27:10):
is not the same as a red flower, or a
blue pigment, a blue food dyed. It's not the same
as the blue on a morpho butterfly wing, even though
they kind of look the same. How they function and
why we can even see that color on that object
and material varies drastically from object to object. I hope
(27:30):
people read this book and realize, not only is color
all around us in all these amazing ways, it's a
miracle we get to experience them, and it's absolutely astounding
that they all function in their own fun, interesting ways
based on the very mechanism and build up of the universe.
I just hope people read it and they they're picking
their brains up off the floor and scooping them back
(27:52):
in their ear, like, WHOA, I did not know that
color was this complicated but also this approachable and accessible.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Wow. Very nice. So I've mentioned your Instagram and your
website at the top of the episode, and we'll throw
those addresses out of here again in just a second.
But I understand your in promotion mode right now for
the book. This episode is coming out on the release day.
If people want to engage with your work more or
even catch you at an event, where can they look
(28:23):
out for you?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
So I do a lot of posting on social media
and my website, so you can find it on Instagram
under Tyler Thrasher Art. I'm doing a lot stuff on
threads too. That's kind of a new platform that I'm
messing around with, saying Tyler Thrasher art or Tyler Thrasher
dot com. I have a newsletter that I try to
be good about. I could be better, but Tyler Thrasher
dot com where I post all my events and all
(28:46):
the cool projects I'm working on.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Well, Tyler, this has been a lot of fun. Again,
tremendous book. It's definitely going on my coffee table. Well,
actually I need to buy a coffee table to put
it on. I think actually on the coffee table. But anyway,
it's staying out fun book. I showed it to my family.
They really enjoyed it as well, and I just want
to thank you for taking time out of your day
to come on the show to chat with me about it.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, Rob, that means a lot. I'm excited. It's an
honor to be on the podcast, and thank you so
much for hyping up the book. I put everything I
had into it, so I'm very happy you like it
and thank you for sharing it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
All right. Thanks again to Tyler Thrasher for taking time
out of his day to chat with me again. The
book is the Universe in one hundred colors, weird and
wondrous colors from science and nature, and it's out now again.
You can follow Tyler's work on Instagram at Tyler Thrasher Art,
and his website is Tyler Thrasher dot com. Thanks as
always to the excellent Jjpossway for producing this episode, and
(29:42):
if you want to reach out to Joe and myself,
you can do so by emailing us at contact at
Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and it's Saturday, so we have
another Vault episode for you. This is going to be
from nine twenty four to twenty twenty four. This is
going to be The Universe in one hundred Colors with
Tyler Thrasher. This is my interview with artist and author
Tyler Thrasher about his then new book The Universe and
(00:26):
one hundred Colors Weird and Wondrous Colors from Science and Nature.
It's a real fun chat. I really enjoyed talking with
Tyler about this topic and about his book, which is
indeed a beautiful volume to behold. Let's dive right into
the interview.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I'm going to
be chatting with artist and author Tyler Thrasher the new
book The Universe in one hundred Colors Weird and Wondrous
Colors from Science and Nature. Many of you are familiar
with his work already. You may follow him on Instagram
where he is Tyler Thrasher Art, or you may have
(01:12):
seen his work out in the world. It's pretty gorgeous stuff.
The book is out now and it too is pretty amazing.
So without further ado, let's jump right into the interview
than you. Hey, Tyler, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So a lot of the listeners already know you, but
would you mind introducing yourself to those who don't follow
you online or haven't viewed and experienced your work.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, So, my name's Tyler Thrasher. I was gifted with
a really cool last name. A lot of people think
I like changed my name. I didn't. That's my real
last name, and I do a lot of things. I
am a self taught chemist, botanist, artist, illustrator, and I
mean a lot of my work have all around collaborating
(02:01):
with nature. So a lot of people know me as
the guy who grows crystals on insects. I crystallize insects
and I grow opals, I hybridize plants. Pretty much any
area where I can sort of bring creativity into nature
and science, I'll find a way to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So, I understand you're a fellow Dungeons and Dragons player.
Would it be correct to assume that you're a multi
class character in real life?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Oh man, yes, I definitely think I am a multi
class Funny enough, I actually I don't actually play as
a player. I'm always the dungeon master. I have to
be the dungeon master. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Well, I'm going to back up to some of the
roles you just mentioned. So growing opals when it comes
to this, just takes me back maybe to like childhood,
like crystal growing kits, and that's where my experience with
anything like this ends. Can you walk us through what
growing oples consists of?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, so growing opals is sort of a different route
than like when I synthesize crystals, and opal isn't necessarily
considered a crystal. It's a mineraloid. So crystals have very
specific geometry that is unique to their molecular structure, whereas
opals are comprised of nanoparticles that perfectly line up. So essentially,
(03:22):
to grow an opal, you have to find a way
to produce nanoparticles. In the case of opals at silica
hydrated silica spheres, you have to find a way to
produce those silica spheres. Then you have to find a
way to allow gravity to let those particles sediment to
the bottom of a container, where they form a cubic
lattice of perfectly aligned silica spheres.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh wow. So I was looking at some of the
images of your artwork on your website here, and I
was especially drawn to these, to the works you've kind
of alluded to already, with like insects specimens and skulls
and crystals and crystaline instances. It takes on a magical
kind of like brightly occult sensibility that I really dig
(04:06):
So how did you come to this particular aesthetic, What
does it mean to you? What are the challenges in
synthesizing it?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, I did not expect to be the guy that
grows crystals on insects. That wasn't on my list of jobs.
And I stumbled upon this practice late in college. I
was a few months from graduating, getting my degree in
computer animation, and I had realized pretty late that I
did not want to be an animator and that's not
(04:37):
what I wanted to do. And I panicked, and I
was like, what am I going to do? Well? While
I was in college, I spent a lot of time caving.
I spent a lot of time underground, and I was
around a lot of minerals, so I was illustrating minerals,
illustrating crystals, illustrating crystals, growing on the things I found
while hiking, so like cicada shells and stuff. And one
(04:58):
day I sat there and I was like, I wonder
if I could make a real crystallized cicada shell instead
of just drawing and illustrating them. And I tapped into
my chemistry background from high school, and I was like,
I think I can do this. I went to my
kitchen and my college house, boiled up some chemicals and
I grew some crystals on a cicada shell and I said,
this is I mean, the first time I saw this,
(05:20):
I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
I fell in love, particularly because I didn't get to
pick the outcome. I was completely surprised when I pulled
it out of the vat. I didn't know what to expect,
and so it felt like this collaboration where I was like, Okay,
here's the plan, but the final outcome I have no
idea what this is going to look like. It blew
my mind. I was like, this is the most fascinating
(05:41):
thing I've ever seen, and then I shared it online.
It went viral, and it became my full time job overnight,
pretty much was providing the world with crystallized insects. And
after a while, there aren't many challenges. Like once you
get the hang of it, you kind of start growing
crystals like it's a second language, and you kind of
understand then the ambient conditions that are needed to grow
(06:03):
really good crystals, and you do. You do it for
enough years and you're just kind of pretty much growing
crystals in your sleep.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, there is something about a crystal. I know. I
always come back to a quote I think it was
Thatch cart Toole talking about crystals is like like a
focus for being present in the now, you know that,
Like even you know, and certainly there're there are various,
you know, other avenues one can take crystals in with,
you know, spiritual beliefs and all. But but just like
the physical reality of the crystal, whatever form it's taking,
(06:35):
like there's just something captivating about it.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, I mean you're looking at the pure geometry of
those molecules. Each crystal is comprised of a series of molecules. Naturally,
curring crystals have many different molecules with impurities that add
to their color, like anthysts for instance, or emerald. But
when you're growing crystals in a lab through like different
(06:59):
molecule that can ionize, what you're looking at is like
the pure representation of the molecular geometry you know of
that compound, which I think is really cool. It's like,
this is that compound in perfect form, and it takes
a lot of patience and a lot of focus. Like
you said, it does feel like to be a crystal
is to be hyper present. Yeah, I like that. I
(07:23):
like that analogy.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Now. I was also really impressed with some of the
plush work that you've created. There are these amazing little
Schrodinger's cat plushies. Can can you describe these for everyone?
You really have to see them, but a short description
will perhaps get everyone more excited to go check it out.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah. So I got in the realm of making scientific plushies,
like quantum plushies and like molting insect plushies, and I
have this idea to do a Schrodinger's cat Schrodinger's cat
plushy where I was like, okay, you have this box
and in the box is either a dead cat or
a living cat, and if you never open the box,
(08:04):
you can you can assume you have either a dead
cat or a living cat, or both. And for those
that aren't familiar with the Schrounger's Cat thought experiment, essentially
you put a cat in a box with a vial
of poison that is released whenever a particle decays, and
the particle will decay, you just don't know when. It's random,
(08:25):
and until you open the box, you can assume that
the cat I either consume the poison, was killed or
hasn't consumed it yet, and so it's neither dead nor alive.
I was like, I want to plushy like this, and
then I designed a third plushy called the Quantum Cat,
which is neither dead nor alive. It's in a quantum
state between the two, and there's like a ten percent
(08:47):
chance you pull the quantum Cat. I just I love
turning science and thought experiments into physical things that people
can play with.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, yeah, I thought this was a really great idea
and I love the design for each of the three cats.
Very cool. Well.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Now, the new book out today is The Universe in
one hundred Colors, Weird and Wondrous colors from Science and nature.
I've got a physical copy right here. It's a gorgeous,
vibrant book that's equal parts like visual coffee table pizazz
and scientific exploration of color in our visual universe. So
(09:24):
can you tell us how this book came together, how
you came to work with your co author Terry Mudge
on this one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
So I had this idea to make a book on
color from one specific origin, and that was my experiments
with growing Opal. And I know we talked about Opel already,
but I didn't get to describe Opal, which is probably
my favorite, absolute favorite thing on the planet. Like I said,
(09:52):
Ople's comprised of siliconnana particles and what happens is white
light enters that cubic lattice and it's difracted into all
of its different wavelengths, which is why Opal was so
colorful and vibrant. And when you rotate it, it changes color.
It's one of the most mesmerizing things this planet has produced,
or the universe has produced, in my opinion. And when
you grow your first Opal in a lab and you
(10:14):
put it under a microscope and you shine a white
light on it, you would have to be dead inside
to not fall absolutely in love with the world all
over again. To see this photonic crystal in action. I
grew my first opal. I screamed. I was running around
the lab cursing. I was like, this is the most
you freaking amazing thing I've ever seen. And I looked
(10:39):
at this thing and I said, I wonder if I
can get other people to feel this way, if I
can get other people to feel the way I feel
about color, just from this opal. And I went to
my friend Terry Mudge, who's the co author. Him and
I were sharing a space at the time. He has
a really wonderful science shop called the stem Cell Science Shop,
and he has all these weird materials in his shop,
(11:01):
and he does a really cool subscription boxer. He sends
all these strange materials. And I said, Terry, you have
all these weird materials in your shop. I love color.
Do you think you and I could work together on
a book where I photographed some of the materials and
you and I write about one hundred really fascinating colors
talk about color science. And he said heck yeah. He
(11:22):
said heck yeah. I took the idea, took it to
a publishing company I was working with I was like,
I want to write a book on color. And I
got this really cool science guy who's equally as nerdy
as I am. We want to make a cool color book.
And they said that sounds awesome. Let's get started.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So did your photography work serve as sort of like
the initial backbone for the structure of the book.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah. So I also do photography, and I photographed a
handful of images. And there the morpho butterfly wing, there's
some uranium glass, some Libyans desert glass, some beetle elytra,
a handful things, and there's some really cool liken that
(12:02):
I sourced a lot of these objects and I photographed
them with a macro lens. A lot of it I
didn't photograph because there's things like radiation, like the Globe
of Radiation, and like brain scans and stuff like that
I didn't photograph, but a lot of it I did.
And that to me was like I can get people
to travel through the lens with me and get really
(12:24):
really close to some of these objects and see the
wonder and all the crunchy details and the juicy textures
and all that, and get people to love color up close.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Earlier, I mentioned the coffee table books. And I mean
that in a loving way, because I know coffee table
books can maybe sometimes mean like a book be put
on a coffee table and forget about. But I tend
to think of it as like, you know, a book
you can pick up in any moment. You can read
cover to cover, but you can pick up at any moment,
flip through it, find something eye catching, and learn something
pretty cool. And I think one of the things that
(13:07):
aids this book is this interesting classification system, in the
system of icons that you use. I really love this touch.
Can you explain how this came to be?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, Well, when you write a book on one hundred
colors and they're all different because we called it the
universe and one hundred colors, and I think maybe some
people might think it's all cosmic colors, like colors from space,
it's not. There are colors that are human made, colors
that are naturally occurring, colors that exist in space from
(13:37):
celestial phenomena. What other classifications do we have? Colors produced
by light, structural colors? And Terry and I sat there
and thought, we love science, and we love classifying and
sorting and organizing things. And I was like, we need
we need a method. We need a method for classifying
these as people flip through each color, we need icons
(14:00):
detail where this falls. So we have like colors that
are luminous, colors that like emit light, or colors that
are produced from light being emitted. Naturally occurring. So there's
a lot of minerals in the book and those which
fall under naturally occurring human made. There are some really
really cool human made colors like ultra white, a lot
(14:23):
of pigments like Banta black that are human made and
products of experimentation. So we needed classification for that. Classification
for structural colors, so colors that exist because of the
structure of the particles that make up that object. So yeah,
we just needed a fun way to categorize everything. Also,
(14:46):
I'm a huge nerd and I love things like I
love Pokemon, and so I'm like, I was like, I
want this to be like a Pokadex for colors, Like
I wanted a fun way to categorize all the colors.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, and some of the colors could come
completely off guard too, like you know some I expected
fount of Life to be in there, and various other
things you know, but then like unappetizing blue, this got
into this whole subject of the blue steak. I was
completely unfamiliar with this idea.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, isn't it gross? Like like I knew when we
talked about what the image should be, like we should
photoshop a steak to be blue. It seems simple until
you look at it, isn't it. It's really gross to
look at.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I wasn't from Is this from the food industry business? Right?
It's kind of you said that. It's been hard to
like really nail down any like actual underlying studies here.
But the idea was that people are not going to
want to eat of food they might normally like if
it's a color they don't expect, like blue.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Right exactly. So what's funny about unappetizing blue is it's
kind of a myth. Like there was supposedly a study
I think it was in the seventies. There's supposedly a
study that a bunch of diners were presented with steaks
and dark room. They ate the steaks, and when they
flipped the lights on, they realized the steaks were blue.
(16:05):
And as the story goes, people completely lost it. People
were throwing plates against the wall. They were vomiting, they
were screaming in horror. And that study was only referenced,
I think once in a trade magazine. I don't think
it was an actual published study. It was just kind
of like this like this lore around food and the
(16:25):
food industry, and they took it so seriously that today,
still today, you won't find many restaurants that experiment with
like making their food blue. And I posted this online.
I was like, guys, you should learn about unappetizing blue.
And sure enough, there were a lot of people. I
had hundreds of people who were like, oh, I accidentally
made my food blue with like cabbage, Like they'd put
(16:46):
cabbage in their meal and it would stay in their
food blue, and they were like, I couldn't eat it.
A lot of people did this study on accident to themselves,
like just in their own kitchen, and they're like I
was like repulsed. I could not eat food that was blue.
I don't think candies count. There's a lot of discussion
on like, like I'm curious what your take is, like
(17:06):
why candy is different than say a blue steak or
a blue burger or blue pasta.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, that's weird. Because like my mind also instantly goes
to like blue drinks, like like you know, there's like
the blue Hawaiian in the realm of tropical cocktails. There's
there's like the blue milk. You can get it, like
you know, the Star Wars area of Disneyland Disney World.
People love those things. But and then blue candy, like
you're saying, that seems to get a pass as well.
(17:33):
But yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of anything outside of
like a blueberry, and then you get into discussions of well,
how blue is a blueberry, and we're we're talking about
different types of blue.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it was funny, as blueberries are actually more purple
than blue. Blue is actually a really hard color to
find the nature. But yeah, I just I think it's
interesting a lot. It brought up a big debate online
where people are like, well, why why does candy get
a pass. It's like, well, things that are synthesized like candies,
it's not naturally occurring, So I think there's something in
(18:04):
our biology that gives it a pass. Whereas if you
see blue food out in nature, it kind of reminds
us of rot like things rotting, like a lot of
blue and green, mold and fungi and stuff. I think
I just it's disgusting. It's really disgusting.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, yeah, I think you might be onto something with
a like we don't necessarily think of candy as food,
and in the sense that I might enjoy a twizzler,
but I'd never think of it as as anything like
a fruit or a piece of bread. It's it's kind
of it's like eating a plastic, but a plastic that
I like to eat sometimes for some reason.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Now, one of the more disturbing and perhaps like seasonally
appropriate entries was mummy Brown. Can you tell us a
little bit about mummy Brown?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Yeah? You know, man, there are some really really messed
up colors out there, and mummy Brown's interesting because it's
just plain discuss it's revolting that we had this idea.
When you look at the era, we got a lot
of colors from a lot of not okay place. There's
a lot of dangerous places. Mummy brown was this sort
(19:11):
of umber brown that was made from the crushed up
bodies of mummies. And as the story goes, a lot
of mummies every mummy is stolen. If a mummy taken
out of its final resting place. If it's removed, it's
stolen for any reason. And a lot of mummies were
stolen and excavated and crushed up into a fine powder
that was used as paint and a lot of oil paints,
(19:35):
and it was a popular brown. What is I think
really horrifying and upsetting about mummy brown is not that
there would be these big mummy parties where people get
together and like, look at these mummies and fantasize about
them being turned into pigments. But mummies were becoming rare,
They're becoming sort of a endangered resource where people were
(19:57):
running out of mummies, so then they would use mummy
either mummified animals, or as the story goes, the mummified
remains of enslaved people. So a lot of mummies were
taken from enslaved people. You know, these were humans that
were deemed lesser than by the artists and the societies
that were excavating and destroying these bodies, and so they
(20:22):
were like, well, no one's going to care about these
enslaved peoples, their their bodies, so we'll use that as pigment.
And I think that is a very tragic, although somehow
not surprising detail from the time, and well that's often
left out today people talk about mummies like they think,
like mummies from Sarcophagai and from ancient Egypt, and it's like, well, no,
a lot of mummies were taken from like mass graves
(20:45):
or from the bodies of enslaved people and used for pigments.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, and there are there are several in here that
have ties into cultural history, maya blue being one, and
then there are others that I guess you would call
more scientific topics like horseshoe, crab blood and so forth. So,
like I say, it's one of these books that I
think it is a lot of fun to just flip
through and it takes you to sort of different realms
(21:12):
with the different colors.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah, some of my favorite colors in there are the inventions,
like there's a new paint, a new pigment that people
are exploring called ultra white that you'll find early on
in the book. And white gets overlooked. I think, like
when you think of white, maybe a lot of people
think like, oh, white is white. Not until you go
(21:33):
to paint a room or a house white, do you
realize there are a lot of whites and those whites
make a big difference on how light is reflected and
bounced around an environment. Ultra white is this new invention
that is titanium based and it reflects so much sunlight.
(21:54):
It's so reflective that it actually makes the surface that
it's painted on cooler than the ambient temperature around it.
You could just find a rock outside, paint it in
ultra white, leave it out in the summer sun, and
the rock will be cooler than the ambient temperature and
the concrete or ground it's on because of how much
(22:15):
sunlight is being reflected from it. So there's theories that
you know, if you painted like a huge like a
percentage of all the roofs on the planet, like thirty
percent of the roofs on the planet ultra white, it
could reflect enough sunlight to actually make a difference with
climate change. Like there's thoughts like that circulating around some
of these colors. But then there's the question of the
(22:37):
extensive mining that would need to be done to obtain
that much titanium to make that much paint to have
that big of an impact. So there's always this give
and take with color, like, oh, it could save lives,
it could change the world, but it could also destroy
the environment trying to get the materials to produce these colors.
It's an interesting tug of war between how far do
(22:58):
we go with some colors?
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Now in putting the book together again, a lot of
these are your photographs. Were there any colors or subjects
that you've found like particularly challenging to sort of to
capture on the page, you know, because it's a very
vibrant book, and you know, there's not a single page
that you didn't astound me one way or another. But
I was just wondering, was there anything that you found
(23:30):
like particularly challenging to try and capture.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yes. Absolutely, there are some colors that are more concepts
than they are solid colors, and those are hard to illustrate.
One of the colors that I like to tell people
about is called eigen growl, and it's probably my favorite
color in the book, or one of them. Igen Growl
essentially is the color you see in the absence of light,
the human eye sees in the absence of light, and
(23:55):
the image we use to illustrate that. I went through
a couple I was like, well, if it's a black
and white image of someone eyes closed, you know, we
ended up going with the black and white image of
like a street lamp, which I thought was kind of
fun and haunting. That was a hard one because eigen
grawl is the color you see when you close your
eyes in a dark room, and it's not black. A
lot of people think you see black. It's actually a
(24:17):
dark gray. And the reason it's dark gray is because
the photon receptors in your eyes the protein that we adopts,
and those photon receptors are still active, So it gives
this sort of illusion of dark gray, like as if
there is just enough light present so you don't see
pure pitch black. And I think that's important. I think
(24:39):
it's interesting. I think it to me, it illustrates this
poetic narrative of the fact that we're always ready to
perceive light, that humans are always ready to perceive light.
And I think that's so beautiful about the human eye.
And I was like, that's a concept. How do you
capture an illustrate a concept? The first color? So in
(25:02):
the book we talked about the first color in the universe,
and for that we used black body radiation, which is
this orange and we know that as the universe cool.
It hit a certain temperature where the universe was a
black body, where that temperature radiated throughout the entire universe
and had this singular glow, and that glow was a
(25:23):
very warm orange, and that was when the universe was
cool enough that photons could move through the universe and
light could travel, and the universe would have been this warm,
ever present, omnipresent orange glow, which would have theoretically been
the first color in the universe. And that's just a concept.
(25:43):
How do you illustrate that? So we had to kind
of reference it with other images, and it was a challenge,
but I hope I did a good job.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, Like I said, every page and
you hear from like the section on black substance in
the brain. I was not expecting that and then got
it getting into things like ice giants and ruby chocolate.
The images are eye catching and then the you know,
each of each page's title like draws you in a
little bit more like Okay, what are they? What are
(26:13):
they about to talk about? Here?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
It really drags yet Yay.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So at the end of the day, how do you
want readers to approach color after this book? What do
you want to what is the ultimate message about color
in our world.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
I hope I'm not speaking for too many people, and
I say this, but I'm included in this. I think
we take color for granted. I think our understanding of
color has been sort of dumb down, where we think
color is just whatever you buy in the bottle at
the arts and craft store. Color is so much more
(26:47):
powerful than that. The stuff you buy in the bottle
is one tiny, tiny, tiny facet of how we experience
color in the universe. I hope this book shows everyone
who reads it, or most people, that there are different
ways color exists all around us, and we should take
the time to understand it. You know, a red paint
(27:10):
is not the same as a red flower, or a
blue pigment, a blue food dyed. It's not the same
as the blue on a morpho butterfly wing, even though
they kind of look the same. How they function and
why we can even see that color on that object
and material varies drastically from object to object. I hope
(27:30):
people read this book and realize, not only is color
all around us in all these amazing ways, it's a
miracle we get to experience them, and it's absolutely astounding
that they all function in their own fun, interesting ways
based on the very mechanism and build up of the universe.
I just hope people read it and they they're picking
their brains up off the floor and scooping them back
(27:52):
in their ear, like, WHOA, I did not know that
color was this complicated but also this approachable and accessible.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Wow. Very nice. So I've mentioned your Instagram and your
website at the top of the episode, and we'll throw
those addresses out of here again in just a second.
But I understand your in promotion mode right now for
the book. This episode is coming out on the release day.
If people want to engage with your work more or
even catch you at an event, where can they look
(28:23):
out for you?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
So I do a lot of posting on social media
and my website, so you can find it on Instagram
under Tyler Thrasher Art. I'm doing a lot stuff on
threads too. That's kind of a new platform that I'm
messing around with, saying Tyler Thrasher art or Tyler Thrasher
dot com. I have a newsletter that I try to
be good about. I could be better, but Tyler Thrasher
dot com where I post all my events and all
(28:46):
the cool projects I'm working on.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Well, Tyler, this has been a lot of fun. Again,
tremendous book. It's definitely going on my coffee table. Well,
actually I need to buy a coffee table to put
it on. I think actually on the coffee table. But anyway,
it's staying out fun book. I showed it to my family.
They really enjoyed it as well, and I just want
to thank you for taking time out of your day
to come on the show to chat with me about it.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, Rob, that means a lot. I'm excited. It's an
honor to be on the podcast, and thank you so
much for hyping up the book. I put everything I
had into it, so I'm very happy you like it
and thank you for sharing it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
All right. Thanks again to Tyler Thrasher for taking time
out of his day to chat with me again. The
book is the Universe in one hundred colors, weird and
wondrous colors from science and nature, and it's out now again.
You can follow Tyler's work on Instagram at Tyler Thrasher Art,
and his website is Tyler Thrasher dot com. Thanks as
always to the excellent Jjpossway for producing this episode, and
(29:42):
if you want to reach out to Joe and myself,
you can do so by emailing us at contact at
Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
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Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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