This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

My boy Maslow's favorite color is red. My boy Carver's favorite color is blue.

Carver is okay with the color red, but Maslow hates blue.

They're twins, and for those who don't know them well, the color they wear is how people tell

them apart. These colors were not chosen for them. It just happened. It is fundamental to who they are.

When you're a kid, your favorite color is one of maybe five of the most important aspects of your

personality. Over the course of our lives, the fervor for a specific favorite color tends to die

down, but over the course of human history, the search for the brightest splash of color has been

a defining feature of our species. Cassius Inclair is fascinated by color, how it's made, what it

means, and how it defines us. She wrote a beautiful book called The Secret Lives of Color that I love

so much that I invited her in to talk with me and she's riveting. So this episode is just that.

My conversation with Cassius Inclair all about The Secret Lives of Color.

So Cassia, how did you begin becoming obsessed with colors and what made you want to write a

whole book about The Lives of Color? Yes, I'm lucky that I came from quite a creative family.

My mother was a florist and I have very vivid memories of kind of messing around in her flower shop

when I was little and I would be given kind of like the offcuts to make little bouquets from.

So that was, I think, the beginning of my love of color, but I became interested in it academically

at university because I was studying 18th century women's history and more specifically what women

wore to masquerade balls during the 18th century. And one of the things that I loved about studying

this very niche topic is the fact that I got to read so many journals and letters about what people

were planning to wear or had worn at parties and you know, was sort of filled with gossip.

And something that really struck me time and again was the fact that friends were using

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