I keep hearing about Radiolab’s stuff of late, and here’s one that is largely within our purview … the

official blurb:

What is the color of honey, and “faces pale with fear”? If you’re Homer–one of the most influential poets in human history–that color is green. And the sea is “wine-dark,” just like oxen…though sheep are violet. Which all sounds…well, really off. Producer Tim Howard introduces us to linguist Guy Deutscher, and the story of William Gladstone (a British Prime Minister back in the 1800s, and a huge Homer-ophile). Gladstone conducted an exhaustive study of every color reference in The Odyssey and The Iliad. And he found something startling: No blue! Tim pays a visit to the New York Public Library, where a book of German philosophy from the late 19th Century helps reveal a pattern: across all cultures, words for colors appear in stages. And blue always comes last. Jules Davidoff, professor of neuropsychology at the University of London, helps us make sense of the way different people see different colors in the same place. Then Guy Deutscher tells us how he experimented on his daughter Alma when she was just starting to learn the colors of the world around, and above, her.

via: Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? (Radiolab … go there for the very interesting podcast)

If you want to read Gladstone’s chapter, click here (move the slider to page 479 in the digital version (457 in real life).
… by the way there’s a pile of advertising in the first minute or so of the podcast, then it gets down to business.