What exactly is a favorite color?

While the simple question “what is your favorite color?” seems rather straightforward, three out of the five words are anything but.

And here are roughly 5600 words to prove it.

What does it even mean to have a "favorite color"? And why were people fearful for the negative repercussions of "favorite colors" on humanity as a whole? Why were psychologists attracted to the question? What does my "favorite color" say about me?

But to begin, we need to understand what the word "favorite" means.

Original Favorites

In the 16th and 17th centuries in English, we mainly saw the the word “favorite” (or “favourite”) begin as a noun, mainly euphemistically referring to a preferred “associate” of the king, or a pet.

It would also be used to describe generalities. The favorite of the Muses may have been a location. None of the Muses would have necessarily said "we're going to hang out at our favorite", it's more a post-facto description we use to describe things that seemed to common in certain cultures or pantheons.

When the adjective begins to be used, it’s not precisely how we would use it now. It’s more of a generalized concept than a personal one. The jasmine would be a favorite flower of horticulturalists or poets, for example. It wouldn’t necessarily be the favorite of anyone in particular. We associate it with the superlative, “the most commonly favored”, but it was not always that way.

This may strike you as being rather pedantic of me, but it contextualizes some of the earlier uses of the phrase “favorite color”, as being national or regional in nature, not of any one specific person.

For example, just because blue was a favorite color of the British collectively doesn’t mean that any individual person preferred it. We extrapolate through usage, which provides us information in the aggregate, but doesn’t tell us about preferences of any single British person.

Husbandry

We then see a lot of “favorite color” talk about livestock, like chickens and horses. It’s a preference, but it is a preference in a very specific industry or realm. Favorite colors in these cases are functional in nature.

If you are purchasing livestock, you have a color that you would prefer to buy from all the colors of cows. It’s not necessarily only an aesthetic choice, and it doesn’t necessarily carry over to any other field or even animal. Your favorite color of cows may be white and black, but your favorite color may be red when it comes to roosters. It gives you a place to start. But even more importantly, it helps you make faster decisions.

Artists

Regarding artists, it was usually a retroactive extrapolation or assumption. For example, one may extrapolate Michelangelo’s favorite color was green because he used it for the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, as an underpaint to accentuate skin tones, and as the color of God’s scarf in his “Creation of Man”.

I have absolutely no idea if that is correct, but I can make the argument.

Favorite as a personal choice

We begin seeing the phrase “favorite colors” used in interior design in the 18th and 19th centuries, as these were tangible decisions one had to make and decide between various options. You only have a favorite if you have a choice to make. If clothing is only available in one color, you don’t tend to think of the chosen color as your favorite color.

When used with the individual, the favorite was usually the result of much debate and deep thought. You were selecting colors, and you'd have to live with them for a while. This wasn't a frequent decision. And your favorite color would likely change the following time you decided to redo your interior.

It meant that "favorite" was still not how we think about it today.

Except, I'm assuming, with wedding cake tasting, when you'd use a phrase like "the flourless chocolate with the chocolate ganache was my favorite". It doesn't mean that it's your favorite cake in the entire world, just that you tasted that day.

Increase in choices

Once colors begin being synthesized and dyes and pigments are readily available and relatively inexpensive to offer an item in a variety of colors, people begin to develop their personal favorites. They were confronted more and more often with choices to make about colors.

Mind you, they may have had preferences prior to that but without function, there would be very little reason to state out of the blue, “pink is my favorite color”, unless it is some sort of statement.

The concept of favorite shifted from meaning the "most common" to the "choice I most prefer, and have decided on".

When we think back to the euphemistic concept of the “favorite” of the king, it was the result of a selection of potential “friends”. It made it much easier to decide with whom to spend time.

While on the topic of kings and favorite colors, here’s a somewhat related tangent. I will not include any spoilers.

Tangent #1 - You can totally skip this and not miss a thing

There is a scene towards the end of movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where, in order to pass the Bridge of Death, the old man from scene twenty-four the Bridge Keeper asks each traveler a series of five three questions. 

For those unfamiliar with the film, by answering any of the questions incorrectly, you are cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril, which was not good. One of the questions was “What… is your favorite color?”

As we saw above, the problem is that such a question is highly anachronistic and would have not actually have likely occurred during the Autherian period. 

It is quite shocking that the Monty Python comedy troupe, which included classicists among their ranks, would get this so egregiously wrong. On many occasions I have applauded the historical verisimilitude and veracity of other scenes, such as the “Burn the witch” scene taken right from 17th and 18th century books, or many of the scenes from “Life of Brian”. The Latin graffiti lesson scene in "Life of Brian" was even quoted by my Latin professor in order to teach us about irregular verbs. 

I have just come to expect more from them. It is just frustrating that in the case of the Bridge Keeper, they employed a modicum of artistic license, which unfortunately broke the illusion of authenticity for me.

(Though Sir Galahad's response to the question may actually reveal an extremely deep understanding in the etymology of color, but that somehow makes this even worse.)

Back to the actual history of the “favorite color”

While we see a marked rise in the usage of “favorite color” during the 20th century, partially because by the 1950s you could buy anything in a wide variety of colors, the end of the 19th century is interesting.

We begin to see the question posed as a parlor conversation starter, after questions such as “what is your favorite Christian name (male)?” and “what is your favorite Christian name (female)?” or “what is your favorite occupation?”

It is important to note that personal choices of all sorts were being fêted at the same time, not just color. The 19th century had brought about a spirit of the individual, separate from the member of the community. You were encouraged to make your own choices. You could finally have opinions!

The end of civilization as we know it

It is apparent that choosing favorites became a widespread epidemic, because I discovered a beautiful polemic against it. It is such a joyful piece of writing, I must share most of it:

Civilization, gradually reducing the rough, awkward individualities until they conform to the type which has been found to be the most comfortable for all, has established a sort of commonplaceness which is irksome to the meekest member of the great human family.

Everyone strives in some small way to make himself stand out separately from the great body of his fellows. If he cannot rise above them he at least wishes to have some kind of a circle drawn around his ego which shall mark him an individual, a personality, not merely a resident of a certain city or a member of a certain family. It is this instinct which makes a man sensitive about his name; which makes him feel a passing resentment when his initials are transposed, which fills him with bitterness when he hears of "a man who looks just like you," and which makes him cherish a grudge forever against the person who mistakes him for someone else. 

Another manifestation of this instinct is the taste for making collections, the adopting of fads, and the riding of hobbies. These come from the desire of the individual to distinguish himself. There are, of course, collectors who love the objects they collect, but did anyone on earth ever love postage stamps? Yet many are the people who cherish an ambition to be known as the owner of the finest collection of stamps in the town, state, or nation, the size of the territory over which he wishes to rule being bounded only by his ambition.

…

The queer idea of adopting a favorite color, a favorite flower, or author, or musician, or book, a favorite tree, or month of the year, or amusement, or occupation is part of this attempt to round out a personality.

Is it possible that any one color is a perpetual favorite with any human being; that the colors in the blue sky, the white clouds, and the green grass does not each at some time seem the most grateful and beautiful thing that the eyes ever rested on? 

As to a favorite author, did one writer ever meet all moods, grave and gay, lively and severe? Does not the same reader at different times enjoy dozens of different novelists and half a dozen poets? There are moments in most lives when even Shakespeare would not be welcome, and yet he surely has more claim than anyone else to be a favorite author. 

The people who are passionate tennis players sometimes would deserve the game for a comic opera; and as to favorite flowers, they are a mockery. Nobody could wish for a rose when the first breath of the spring brings the violets or when the lilacs blossom in old gardens. What satisfaction is there in hothouse flowers! Does not the air and sunshine cry out for the flower which nature has fashioned for each passing season!

To exalt any one object into a "favorite" it is necessary to close the mind to some other source of happiness, to narrow the sympathies, to miss something which is worth having, for which the building up of a factitious taste and an artificial individuality offers no compensation. 

Unless the inborn test, the natural bent of the mind takes some particular direction there is infinitely more pleasure to be enjoyed by gathering up happiness out of all the things on the earth that is ever to be found in arbitrary specializing of tastes and pursuits. Take beauty wherever it is to be found, and you may be sure at least that you do not miss any of the happiness that the commonplace enjoy by seeking to get more happiness out of one thing than ordinary people do.

— The anatomy of fads… rebellion against commonplace… Kansas City Start (From Vanity Fair, 1894)

This tells us that the word “favorite” was going through an evolution at that time, and people were trying to figure out what it meant in the personal sense. No one would have ever thought (in the example above) that poets (in the general sense) only wrote about jasmine when they wrote in an encyclopedia that jasmine was a favorite of the poets.

It is also interesting to note that none of the colors mentioned were choices or selections. They were colors in the great tapestry of nature. Because it does sound ludicrous to say "I prefer the green grass to the blue sky."

To use their example, what is the difference between it being ok to be "passionate" about tennis, and having tennis as your "favorite" activity? I don't know.

Desert Island Dinner Parties - BYOB (Bring your own books)

This editorial is considering “favorite” to be the equivalent of a “desert island” question, or a “dinner party” question. “If you were going to be beached alone on a desert island, which 10 books would you bring?” “If you could have a dinner party with any three people, alive or dead, who would they be?” They are theoretical thought experiments. They are quite helpful and informative in conveying aspects about yourself and meeting new people.

But the editorial seems to be saying “If I say that Haruki Murakami is my favorite author, I’m not allowed to read anyone else.” or “If I say that Andy Warhol is my favorite artist, I’m not allowed to take a peek at a Mondrian, or experience a Rothko.” 

What a bleak existence that would be! 

Perhaps I enjoy it so much because it reminds me of my favorite book on Japanese aesthetics “In Praise of Shadows” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. In the afterward, after describing the perfect Japanese aesthetic, admits to not wanting to live in a home that conforms to all of those rules.

Experience the rainbow

The other thing that the editorial is not understanding is that in order to have a favorite, you must experience many different flavors of something. You can’t have a favorite author if you have only read one book. You must read hundreds. Good. Bad. Horrible. Incredible.

For most things, having a "favorite" means something. You've invested time and effort into identifying your likes and dislikes, and you are comfortable with declaring that you have made a decision. And contrary to popular belief, it isn’t set in stone. 

I attended more than 130 live theatre performances when I lived in New York, and I wanted to see bad theatre. (I mean, I wanted to walk out a few times, but didn't.) Because if you only attend good theatre, you either don’t know what you like, or you are just following the crowd.

However, I'm not sure what that means with regard to having a "favorite color".

Dr. Jastrow fils

In 1893, Dr. Joseph Jastrow, a professor of psychology at University of Wisconsin, son of Dr. Marcus Jastrow, creator of the Jastrow Dictionary, and longtime hero of my brother Menachem, held a two month study on color preferences during the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, a city located in the midwestern United States.

Before sharing any details about colors, here is his opening to his 1897 article in Popular Science, “The Popular Æsthetics of Color” about the study. Note, that similar to the editorial above, he begins by talking about the human race.

The human race, like most large groups in Nature, presents a considerable variety amid a still more fundamental similarity. It is evident that, if only we measure finely enough, no two specimens, however simple, are precisely alike; and in proceeding from the simple to the complex the opportunity for variation and diversity rapidly increases; and yet admit all this diversity of individuals there is much that is common, typical, and similar. 

In mental processes, with which we are here primarily concerned, it seems fair to expect that, given the same premises and a fairly simple problem, similar conclusions will be reached by different individuals, owing to the similarity of the logical processes involved. But we know very well that when these processes are complex, and particularly when the emotions and interests of men are involved under substantially similar circumstances, very diverse conclusions may be reached, until, in extremely complex questions and in those in which personal interests are dominant, we find tot homines ton sentitiæ.

(The Jewish way to translate the Latin is "two Jews, three synagogues".)

Of all varieties of human judgment, the ones generally considered as least subject to rule and most open to caprice are those commonly referred to as questions of taste. These questions of taste refer partly to our individual and peculiar likes and dislikes, and partly to our more strictly æsthetics preferences and aversions. Æsthetic judgements, however are subject to the influence of heredity and environment, of education, of general mental development, and the like. We speak of certain preferences as childish, as savage, as Philistine, as uneducated, as national, as local, as a fashion or a fad. 

I was going to make a joke about Dr. Jastrow’s father, Dr. Jastrow, being fluent in Philistine, but I stopped myself, not out of good taste or a sense of humor, but because I was curious how and when “Philistine” became associated with the uneducated brute, because nothing in the Bible really indicated that. Also, because the "joke" just wasn't actually accurate.

Tangent #2 - Not connected to color in the slightest

It was introduced to the world of aesthetics by Matthew Arnold, a mid-19th century British poetry critic, when writing about Heinrich Heine, who was described as 

“a young man of genius, born at Hamburg, and with all the culture of Germany, but by race a Jew; with warm sympathies for France, whose revolution had given his race the rights of citizenship…”

The old guard of poets in Germany had been led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and as it was an essay about Heine, Arnold structured as a modern “David and Goliath” without mentioning either of them by name. 

“Heine was in 1830 in no humor for any such gradual process of liberation from the old order of things as that which Goethe had followed. His counsel was for open war. Taking that terrible modern weapon, the pen, in his hand, he passed the remainder of his life in one fierce battle. What was that battle? the reader will ask. It was a life and death battle with Philistinism.”

Arnold continues to describe Philistinism as a slur on the “respectable” class.

“Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong dogged opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light.”

That's lovely, but it turns out that Arnold was completely wrong about the original connotation. In fact, he was thinking of the wrong biblical story about Israel’s interactions with the Philistines.

In his dictionary, Jacob Grimm explains that it had nothing to do with the characteristics of biblical Philistines, per se. “Der Philister” was a name the German university students had called the local (uneducated) townspeople since the late 17th century. As far as I can tell, it began in 1677 because a student at the University of Jena died while running away from a local prison guard at a women's prison which had had four statues of monkeys on it. The guard was annoyed that students called them a “monkey guard”, which was also sort of a slur for idiocy. 

However exactly it happened, during his sermon, the priest at the student’s funeral quoted Delilah (after she betrayed Samson) from Judges 16:9, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you,” seemingly to give some color about how this travesty could have happened. One of the deceased students friends must have yelled to urge them on.

In sociological terms, this is known as an in-group term to refer to the “other”. Even in the Bible, the Philistines were coded as the “other” by referring to the lack of Goliath’s circumcision. (viz 1 Samuel 17:36)

However, Arnold could be forgiven for his error, because it was Heine himself was the one who extended the metaphor setting “old official Germany, the moldy country of the Philistines (which has, however, produced no Goliath, and no one great man)” against the French as the new Israel, was the land of freedom.

Back to the colors

In any event, Dr. Jastrow’s experiment was as such: They presented people with 24 separate colors and 24 combinations of primary colors (along with “no choice”), and requested to select their favorite color and their favorite combination, and write their gender and age on the back of the card. 

They tallied up roughly 4500 entries and performed a rough statistical analysis. More people preferred dark colors to light colors, men preferred blue and similar colors, women preferred red and similar colors and so forth. People between 25 - 30 were most likely to have no opinion. People under 18 preferred lighter colors.

This resulted in theories abound.

Did anything happen in the 1860s?

There are numerous similar psychological studies from the 1890s to the 1960s, often limited to a single racial group or ethnicity (often with quite racist/ phrenological connotations), with a lot of conclusions for different ages, etc.

And I could list the results and the associated theories, but I honestly don’t know the validity of most of them. Additionally, by and large, these studies seem to miss the sociological and historical connotations.

Regarding Jastrow’s survey, did something happen thirty years before 1893 which would have caused people in a northern city like Chicago to overwhelmingly prefer the color “dark blue”?

While it would be very easy for me to sit 130 years later and question the validity of the method or of the results, it is more important that the experiment happened, because it shows the science-mindedness and serious nature that people were taking around the turn of the century.

Even if we were to take Jastrow's experiment at face value, would we say that each color choice is that person's "favorite color"? If we were using at the earlier version of "favorite", in other words, the "wedding cake tasting" version of "favorite", it would be. Each person made a selection, comparing each color to all the other colors and resulted in choosing a "favorite".

But would we call it a favorite color?

I divide this into the conceptual and the functional.

Conceptual Favoritism

If you list six colors of a blackboard and ask children to choose a color by what is their favorite and what is prettiest, or why they like it, it is not actually about aesthetics, it’s viewing colors as a concept.

Talking about personal colors, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wife’s had a favorite shade of blue called “Eleanor Blue”.

When people say that blue is their favorite color, which blue exactly are they referring to? Baby blue, royal blue, sky blue, or even… indigo? The entire range of hues?

I could say that Glaucus / Sea God Blue (my eye color) is my favorite color, but what does that mean? I don't currently wear any clothing in my eye color, I don't drive a car in my eye color; it's as useless as a having favorite number anywhere but a roulette table.

A Theory of Functional Favoritism

My criticism, which connects back to my main thesis of this letter, is that the concept of the favorite color is inextricably connected to function, not theory. 

If you were to offer a kindergarten child a box of Crayola crayons, and track which colors they use, or create a site where you allow people to browse for clothing by color, you are much more likely to identify what a person’s preferred color actually is. If they continue making the same choice every day, you can extrapolate the existence of the "favorite color".

But functional favoritism goes well beyond that.

The Most Adorable Demographic

Another fascinating source of color preferences is found with car colors, and a fascinating area of both journalistic and research-driven articles on it.

The colorist for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company wrote an op-ed for the New York Times  in 1928 about the evolution of car colors. But it was sparked by an intro which piqued my interest by using an unusual way to describe a certain demanding demographic.

A prominent toy manufacturer remarked recently that his company had been compelled by the small-boy demand to color its trains in the hues and combinations familiar on automobile nowadays. This shows how far the influence of car coloring has gone. The physical world, at least, is not as drab as it used to be.

Its relevance is that little boys wanted their toys to have the same color as their Daddy’s car, and that is far from a shocking revelation today. He didn't want a Walnut Brown toy train, he wanted a train in the same color as Daddy's Walnut Brown car. The actual color didn't matter, it was what the color represented.

A few decades later, in fact, Mattel would start an empire on that insight.

A little later in the op-ed, he writes this:

Any one who has sketched knows that he cannot portray nature in the colors as they come to his palette. Considerable intermixing is necessary, for when it comes to color nature never repeats herself; no two trees will look alike and no two leaves on a tree will be of the same green. Indeed, if nature arrayed herself in either unchanging sobriety or bachanalean [sic] hues the year around, we would die of ennui in the one case or go mad in the other.

His critique, while differing from the really long editorial above, is similar in that he sees the world as a beautiful unique place, precisely because of its lack of uniformity. The world is beautiful because it changes.

Blame the (purple) dinosaur in the room

The pendulum also swings the other way, from children's toy to car color.

There is a humorous account in a New York Times article on February 25, 1996 of a massive increase in purple-hued colored cars being sold in the US over the previous years. In 1992, 8224 vehicles were sold. Three years later, in 1995, that number rose to 496,489. 

The article begins:

Blame it on Barney, the ubiquitous purple dinosaur, or blame it on nostalgia for the psychedelic '70's. But these days, more and more new cars are painted purple.

And by the end clarifies:

But the most common refrain is that Barney the purple dinosaur was a key factor.

"Repeated exposure to anything sometimes causes trends to happen." said Robert S. Daily, the color marketing manager for one of the nation's biggest auto paint suppliers, the Dupont Company. Of course, repeated exposure can always backfire. Mr. Daily said, "A lot of people with six- to eight-year-olds say, "Oh, Barney – sick of it."

But what if it wasn’t only the dinosaur? Maybe it had to do with bipartisan politics, as Clinton was elected in 1992. And purple is a mix between red and blue. (Probably not.)

Sports, Religion, Politics.

(Please just respond to this email to register your complaints.)

In fact, repeated exposure and affinity to religion, sports, and politics can have a lot of influence on favorite colors. Because quite often, stating a favorite color is making a statement way beyond preference for a certain hue. And there is function in that action as well.

They are also three topics that no one will ever agree on, and cause arguments simply for mentioning.

The Chelsea Football Club has a related terrace chant called “Blue is the Colour”. If you were to ask any Chelsea supporter what their “favourite colour” is, I’m sure they would overwhelmingly answer “blue”.

I found the abstract for a 2016 Arabic-language study performed in the West Bank city of Hebron: 

The study concluded that the most important colors favored by students are: green, red, and blue, there are differences in the favorite colors due to gender, females preferred red, pink, yellow, & indigo, according to the place of residence, differences were found in preferring green in favor of the north residents and brown in favor of the south residents of Hebron district, and according to grade school, differences were found in preferring the red, green, brown and black colors in favor of fifth and sixth grades. 

The three colors most connected with Islam globally are green, red, and black. This can be seen in virtually every flag of a Muslim country. I’m not going to even try to hazard a guess on the “green/north” vs “brown/south” debate.

Continuing with politics, the results of a study were published in the 2014 Psychonomic Bulletin & Review in an article titled “The politics of color: Preferences for Republican red versus Democratic blue” is fascinating in that they note is when the question was asked on Election Days, the favorites were starkly partisan, whereas when the question was posed on other days, the favorites were more mixed. It would be interesting to read a similar study performed over the following decade.

But that study didn’t shock, because “red” and “blue” become as metonymic with the related political parties as “the White House” does with the US presidency. As an election is a functional choice, which becomes mirrored in the colored tie and other assorted accoutrement of the politicians and political parties.

If you ask which color I prefer on that day, I’m obviously not going to say the color associated with the opposing party. I want to show my allegiance with my favorite. My favorite is a statement, not a difficult choice.

The functional argument seems to indicate that "favorite color" is relative, not absolute. It depends on what the current context is.

Are red and blue actually colors?

Which brings me to the final word of the phrase I began with: in this context, are “red” and “blue” even considered “colors” anymore? It is true that we cannot separate the associations of the color with the color itself, but what does it even mean? 

And what does favorite mean, in this context?

How much does the political color connotation spill into other purchases and decisions? Does it work more in a positive way, or a negative way? In other words, if I vote for the Democratic party, would I actively purchase blue clothing, would I actively avoid purchasing red clothing, or would I only refrain from purchasing red clothing which could be mistaken for a political statement? 

I’m sure that there is a mountain of research on the topic, but it distracts from the question, what does it even mean to have a favorite color? 

Examples of Functional Favoritism

I sympathize with the argument of the 1894 editorial I shared above, but I return to my contention that “favorite color” is driven by the functional act of choice.

Functional favoritism makes it easier to make choices. The effects of "The Paradox of Choice" and Decision Paralysis increase with the increased number of options.

The example most people would use for Functional Favoritism is Steve Jobs and his black turtleneck. He made a decision a single time and stuck to it.

I can’t but share the final paragraph of the 1957 profile of a color consultant for interior design, a Miss Lee Childress. 

Miss Childress has a favorite color—yellow. She justifies her loyalty to this sunny choice by saying, “Yellow looks the same in every light. There are endless variations of yellow. So many other colors blend with it.”

Her description is not connected to personality, mood, or aura; it may be related to aesthetic, but it is a purely functional choice. Yellow would be the first color she begins designing a room around. That simplifies the process.

In fact, her entire service was about creating nine volumes of color collections (colors which easily complement one another) and the only hard choice someone had to make was what would be the key color.

Your color identity

Conceptual favorites are functional as well.

Favorite colors becomes intertwined with your identity: whether personal, gender, affinity group, community, regional, or national. Each favorite color becomes a statement about your personality. It telegraphs semiotic information to whoever is paying attention. And that is a function.

Favorite Fluidity

Just like "best friend" no longer necessarily refers to a single individual, but a class of people, so too "favorites" offer helpful constraints, not shackles. Favorites are a class of heuristics which allow you to cognitively manage your likes and dislikes, and winnow down decision making processes to a manageable amount.

Favorites are your starting points for discovery of new things, not limits on experimentation. If you have a favorite author, you may want to read more books by them, or you may ask for suggestions of authors similar to them.

In general, favorites allow you to qualify, quantify, and communicate your tastes in a concise fashion.

Some favorite links

There is a bookstore (well, a few bookstores) in upstate New York, One Grand Books which was originally founded by Aaron Hicklin on the basis of such "Desert Island" booklists. A wide array of people from very different life experiences create curated lists of which books they'd bring to a desert island and a short description of why. You are able to buy all the books as a bundle or individually. Just a few: Kehinde Wiley (artist), Gabrielle Union (actor), Ta Nehisi Coates (writer)

One Grand also has a journal which is beautifully designed and brilliantly curated. I highly recommend you subscribe to the printed version, if you are into that sort of things. Etgar Keret in conversation with Helen Phillips

My friend/neighbor Leah Jones has a podcast called Finding Favorites which is all about talking to people about their favorite things and getting recommendations without using an algorithm. She interviewed actor Paul Scheer about the LA Clippers (a NBA Basketball Team) last week and my friend, 2023 Ms. Illinois North America, Bee Vargas (about powerlifting) a few months ago.