Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what Mango?
Speaker 1: What's that? Will?
Speaker 3: So I was doing some research for this week's episode.
Speaker 3: First of all, are you proud of me? I did
Speaker 3: some research for this week's episode like that?
Speaker 2: Uh huh?
Speaker 3: And I was looking up spoonerisms. Now you know what
Speaker 3: spoonerisms are, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're like funny mixed up phrases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like when the beginning of words are confused.
Speaker 3: So if you accidentally say I hit my bunny phone
Speaker 3: instead of I hit my funny bone or something like that,
Speaker 3: that's the spoonerism. But I had no idea that the
Speaker 3: phrases are actually linked back to a real person. Like
Speaker 3: this guy's name was Spooner. It was this lecture at Oxford.
Speaker 3: He was also a deacon, and he was named William
Speaker 3: Archibald Spooner. Now, apparently Spooner was a very sweet and
Speaker 3: bright man, but a very nervous lecturer, and he would
Speaker 3: end up standing in front of the church and saying
Speaker 3: all sorts of these spoonerisms, like the Lord is a
Speaker 3: shoving leopard.
Speaker 2: Do you know what that one?
Speaker 1: Would be a spoonerism for loving shepherd.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And apparently he once gave a toast to the Queer
Speaker 3: Old Dean when he actually, of course meant dear old Queen.
Speaker 3: It's an unfortunate stumble there, but for whatever reason, the
Speaker 3: memory of his gaffes have persisted, and despite living a
Speaker 3: full life, the only thing he's remembered for are these
Speaker 3: linguistic fumbles. But reading about Spooner made me think of
Speaker 3: all the other common words that you might not know
Speaker 3: or actually named for real people, like Nacho's named after
Speaker 3: a chef called Ignacio or Dunce, which was this Scottish
Speaker 3: philosopher whose theories were later ridiculed. And I know you've
Speaker 3: researched a whole bunch of these, so I feel like
Speaker 3: we should dive in.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did research too, but maybe, in the words
Speaker 1: of William Archibald Spooner himself, let's get this stow sharded.
Speaker 4: You've been saying that went up, Well done. Hey there,
Speaker 4: podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
Speaker 4: and as always I'm here with my good friend Mangesh
Speaker 4: hot Ticketter and sitting behind that big booth just relaxing
Speaker 4: to the max, and he's wearing big sunglasses, he's got
Speaker 4: a beach hat on, he's got this big.
Speaker 3: Fan playing and little hair blowing in the wind. He's
Speaker 3: got his feet kicked up on the desk, and he's drinking.
Speaker 3: I think that's a pinaclet. If I'm not mistaken, that
Speaker 3: is our good friend Dylan. Now, Mango, do you know
Speaker 3: why he's looking like vacation Dylan over there? He does
Speaker 3: know he's supposed to be recording this episode, right.
Speaker 1: He told me he's trying to prove that he's so
Speaker 1: relaxed so that we'll start using his name as an eponym.
Speaker 1: I think he wants to turn Dylan into a verb
Speaker 1: for being ultra chill, Like, how are you doing this week? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm straight dylaning over here?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I don't know if I'm seeing that one
Speaker 3: take off, but mercy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I told him to like stop trying
Speaker 1: to make Dylan happen Dylan. Uh. But by that point
Speaker 1: he'd already bought a beach chair and covered the studio
Speaker 1: florenceand and.
Speaker 2: Whatever he got to commit.
Speaker 1: But how about we get started on our list of
Speaker 1: epinems with someone who is the total opposite of Dylan.
Speaker 1: A man who is the wrong person in the wrong
Speaker 1: place at the wrong time, who also did all the
Speaker 1: wrong things. A man named Charles Cunningham Boycott, who of
Speaker 1: course give us the word boycott.
Speaker 3: That's a fun one, all right. Well, tell me a
Speaker 3: little bit about mister Boycott.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Charlie Boycott, or Chaz as I call him, was
Speaker 1: a retired British Army officer who moved to Ireland in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds to become a land agent. And
Speaker 1: if you don't know, a land agent is basically like
Speaker 1: a property manager, but kind of an enforcer for landowners.
Speaker 1: So he was in charge of forcing tenant farmers to
Speaker 1: pay rent and evicting them when they didn't, which is
Speaker 1: obviously a very unpopular job. But to add to all that,
Speaker 1: his timing was not great. He got into the gig
Speaker 1: right around the time of rising Irish nationalism and at
Speaker 1: a time when tenant farmers had started to organize into
Speaker 1: something called the Land League. And at the time the
Speaker 1: farmers were tired of being exploited and it had come
Speaker 1: to a head. So farmers wanted fair rent. They also
Speaker 1: wanted some sense of stability, like They didn't want to
Speaker 1: be kicked off the land if they had paid their
Speaker 1: rent on time, and they wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: sell their opportunity to work the land to other tenant
Speaker 1: farmers without any sort of interference for the landlords. You know,
Speaker 1: all things that feel pretty fair. But in eighteen eighty,
Speaker 1: when Boycott decided to evict eleven tenant farmers, things really
Speaker 1: hit the fan. The Land League encouraged anyone working for
Speaker 1: Boycott to stop working for him, and they froze him
Speaker 1: out of the community in this big way, with shops
Speaker 1: refusing to serve.
Speaker 2: Him, so they basically boycotted him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they also gave him the silent treatment by not
Speaker 1: talking to him, which you know, maybe would have blown
Speaker 1: over eventually. But the reason we know all about this
Speaker 1: is because Boycott decided to take his woes to the
Speaker 1: English press, which escalated the whole thing drastically. He wrote
Speaker 1: a letter from Ireland to publicize the wrongs being done
Speaker 1: to him, and this is all from a site called
Speaker 1: Irish Central, But here are a few excerpts from his letter. Sir.
Speaker 1: The following detail may be interesting to your readers. Is
Speaker 1: exemplifying the power of the Land League. My shepherd has
Speaker 1: been frightened into giving up his employment, though he has
Speaker 1: refused to give up the house he held for me.
Speaker 1: My blacksmith has received a letter threatening him if he
Speaker 1: does any more work for me. My lawn dress has
Speaker 1: also been ordered to give up my washing, so already
Speaker 1: he has dirty clothes, no blacksmithing, and his sheep are
Speaker 1: running astray. A little boy twelve years of age, who
Speaker 1: carried my post bag to and from the neighboring town,
Speaker 1: was struck in order to desist from his work, since
Speaker 1: which time I've sent my little nephew for my letters,
Speaker 1: and even he, on the second October, was stopped on
Speaker 1: the road and threatened if he continue to act as
Speaker 1: my messenger. The shopkeepers have been warned to stop all
Speaker 1: supplies to my house. And I've just received a message
Speaker 1: from the postmistress to say that the telegraph messenger was
Speaker 1: stopped and threatened on the road when bringing me a message.
Speaker 1: So you know things aren't going so well.
Speaker 2: Seriously.
Speaker 1: In addition to all this, he says, my farm is
Speaker 1: public property. The people wander over it with impunity. My
Speaker 1: crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities. The locks
Speaker 1: on my gates are smashed. I can get no workmen
Speaker 1: to do anything, and my ruin is openly avowed unless
Speaker 1: I throw up everything and leave the country.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So obviously things are not going great for Boycott,
Speaker 1: but his publicizing the situation worked in a way. It
Speaker 1: became this major story in the English press, and the
Speaker 1: Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and all these other papers raised
Speaker 1: funds to send farmers to harvest this crops, and also
Speaker 1: newspapers sent a whole mess of correspondence over to cover
Speaker 1: the story, and more than a thousand men from the
Speaker 1: Royal Irish Constibulary were lloyd to protect the harvesters. So
Speaker 1: in the end the episode was blown totally out of proportion,
Speaker 1: and it cost over ten thousand pounds to harvest about
Speaker 1: five hundred pounds worth of crops. Anyway, the whole thing
Speaker 1: was a disaster, and Boycott left Ireland on December first,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty in disgrace, and his name became forever linked
Speaker 1: to any campaign to bring down a tyrant. And in
Speaker 1: the end, the peasants gained a lot of power from
Speaker 1: wielding the boycott, and by the end of eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: the tactic was being used all over Ireland against the British.
Speaker 2: Man makes it feel bad for Charles Boycott.
Speaker 1: There it sounds like he deserved it. But you know,
Speaker 1: the silent treatment part is the hardest and probably hurt his.
Speaker 2: Feelings the most. So that's rough.
Speaker 1: So what's next from you?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Well, I want to talk about my favorite part of
Speaker 3: ice hockey. You know, I know nothing about hockey. So
Speaker 3: my favorite part is, of course the Zamboni, which comes
Speaker 3: to us from one Frank Zamboni.
Speaker 1: Oh I love it. Tell me more, all right.
Speaker 3: So this mostly comes to us from Smithsonian. But Frank's
Speaker 3: story starts in nineteen oh one. He's born to Italian immigrants.
Speaker 3: This is in Utah. The family moves around a bit.
Speaker 3: They go to Idaho and then they settle in California,
Speaker 3: and they're mostly doing work on farms. And so Frank
Speaker 3: and his brothers are pretty mechanical. They're early teens. They
Speaker 3: start doing work like tuning up tractors and fixing up
Speaker 3: baling machines, and also things like drilling wells, installing water pumps.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, very handy guys. And then at
Speaker 3: some point in the nineteen twenties or so, Frank and
Speaker 3: his brother Lawrence start an ice making plant, which is
Speaker 3: really important for farmers in agriculture. Now, you have to
Speaker 3: remember crops are being shipped by railroad and they need
Speaker 3: these massive ice blocks for refrigeration. So they're producing three
Speaker 3: hundred pounds slabs of this ice. So it's really big operation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it really is, and they're actually doing pretty well with it. Now,
Speaker 3: this was up until the mid nineteen thirties when electrical
Speaker 3: fridges and commercial refrigerations start hitting the railroad cars. So
Speaker 3: Frank and Lawrence sell their business nineteen thirty nine and
Speaker 3: they decide to do something fun with it. They decide
Speaker 3: to start an ice skating rink right across from their plant,
Speaker 3: which becomes super popular. They call it Iceland Skating Rink. Now,
Speaker 3: the only thing is the rink ice gets damaged pretty easily.
Speaker 3: It's about three fourths of an inch thick, and replaning
Speaker 3: it takes a whole lot of efforts. You need these
Speaker 3: hoses and squeegees and planing tools and takes about an
Speaker 3: hour and a half to resurface the entire rink. And
Speaker 3: that's if five people are working really hard to do it. Now,
Speaker 3: what Frank realized is that he was paying five or
Speaker 3: six people to stand around with nothing to do until
Speaker 3: the next resurfacing. So that's when Frank starts tinkering. He
Speaker 3: buys a tractor, makes all these little modifications to it,
Speaker 3: and by nineteen forty nine he has a Zamboni Model A,
Speaker 3: which can resurface a twenty thousand foot rink in about
Speaker 3: ten minutes.
Speaker 1: That is insane. So I know what a zamboni is,
Speaker 1: but also I have no idea what it's doing. When
Speaker 1: it's sort of like driving around the ice, cant can
Speaker 1: you walk us through it?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: I like how you asked the guy from Alabama, but
Speaker 3: I have had no idea what a zamboni is doing.
Speaker 3: But I can tell you how the Smithsonian describes it.
Speaker 2: So here's what it says.
Speaker 3: A conditioner mounted behind the rear wheels, contains a blade
Speaker 3: that shaves the ice, an augur that collects those shavings,
Speaker 3: a vacuum that sucks up dirty water, and sprayers that
Speaker 3: then lay down a fresh coat of water filling the cracks.
Speaker 3: Now behind all that is a squeegee, so in a
Speaker 3: single pass the machine can complete what was once a
Speaker 3: five person process.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, and I love that there's a squeege as
Speaker 1: part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty brilliant.
Speaker 3: You're right, there's something about a squeegee that it's just
Speaker 3: so super satisfying. And the principles of the zamboni actually
Speaker 3: haven't changed that much since it was first and vented. Anyway,
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty four, the zamboni debuts and the NHL
Speaker 3: this was in Boston. By nineteen fifty seven, the NCAA
Speaker 3: is using them. By nineteen sixties. Zamboni's get used in
Speaker 3: the Winter Olympics, so they really caught on.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. So I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: but like, if I wanted to get a zamboni, do
Speaker 1: you know how much it would set me back?
Speaker 3: I do think it's funny that, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 3: I don't think you know how to ice skate. So
Speaker 3: it's sort of a funny question for you to be asking.
Speaker 1: But you don't know what I want a zamboni for.
Speaker 3: True, You're right, I don't actually don't know.
Speaker 1: I just want to put it on like concrete blocks
Speaker 1: in my front yard where, you know, give it away
Speaker 1: as a graduation present to my nephew who does play hockey.
Speaker 3: That would be an amazing graduation present and very value
Speaker 3: one because it's a pretty expensive graduation. Give Zamboni's go
Speaker 3: for about one to two hundred thousand dollars. This depends
Speaker 3: on how much you want to trick it out, and
Speaker 3: that's partially because the machines are actually all hand built,
Speaker 3: whether that's coming from their California factory, either won in
Speaker 3: Ontario or the factory they've got in Sweden. But what's
Speaker 3: interesting is that Frank Zamboni is not a one trick pony.
Speaker 3: He invented a whole bunch of other machines, including a
Speaker 3: milk tank, pasteurizer, a track cleaner for NASCAR, among other things.
Speaker 3: But it's the Zamboni machine that has made him a legend,
Speaker 3: which is especially great because Frank Zamboni never enjoyed ice skating.
Speaker 3: I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd rather drive a tractor than ice skate tunes.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So here's a quick one. And it's actually an epinem
Speaker 1: name for the wrong person, which is the guillotine. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, before we get to doctor Guillotine, did you
Speaker 1: watch the Olympics opening ceremonies this week at all?
Speaker 2: Did I?
Speaker 3: I watched, and then I had to go back and
Speaker 3: be like, what was it that I just watched?
Speaker 2: I mean, you had the.
Speaker 3: Of course incredible and touching moments like Celine Dion. The
Speaker 3: whole hot air balloon thing was cool, but like I mean,
Speaker 3: I did not see it coming. The whole like headless
Speaker 3: singer and that just the beheaded singer rather and the
Speaker 3: weird minions running around. Just the whole thing was so
Speaker 3: fricking weird. But it was all so much fun to watch,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I saw this argument on x or Twitter where someone
Speaker 1: was saying to John Green, our friend and the writer,
Speaker 1: that the Beijing Olympics opener was so much better, and
Speaker 1: he wrote, respectfully, the choreography is good, but there were
Speaker 1: no threesomes, no minions, no decapitated dictator spouses, no rain,
Speaker 1: no heavy metal music, and no being thirty minutes late
Speaker 1: to light the torch because you're French.
Speaker 2: That's right, That's accurate.
Speaker 1: Which I love. So back to doctor Guillotine. The story
Speaker 1: I'd heard was that this Parisian doctor, Joseph Thickness Gillotine
Speaker 1: had invented the guillotine and pushed for it as this
Speaker 1: more humane way to execute people during the French Revolution
Speaker 1: and all of that is partially true. So Guillotine was
Speaker 1: a major advocate for the machine because it was swift
Speaker 1: and allowed the accused to die with a shred of dignity.
Speaker 1: As he put it, when he lobbied for the guillotine,
Speaker 1: he said, it can cut off your head in the
Speaker 1: twinkling of an eye, and you never even feel it,
Speaker 1: so unlike things like hanging or burning people to the stake,
Speaker 1: or even using an executioner and an axe, which sometimes
Speaker 1: didn't get the job done on the first chop. You know,
Speaker 1: Guillotine was looking for something much more humane. But the
Speaker 1: thing is he was little more than an advocate. The
Speaker 1: first National razor, as it was nicknamed, was actually designed
Speaker 1: by another doctor from France's Academy of Surgery. This doctor
Speaker 1: named Antoine Lewis, and the machine was initially called the Luizette,
Speaker 1: but as the Revolution ensued and France took up Guillotine's suggestion,
Speaker 1: the machine took on Guillotine's name. But this part is
Speaker 1: really interesting to me. According to mental class, Guillotine was
Speaker 1: horrified by all the bodies that piled up from it,
Speaker 1: and he was quote very distressed at the association, and
Speaker 1: when he died in eighteen fourteen, his family petitioned the
Speaker 1: French government to change the name of the hated machine.
Speaker 1: But when the government refused to do that, Guillotine's family
Speaker 1: actually changed their name to distance themselves from the phenomena.
Speaker 1: And if you look it up, like what did Guillotine's
Speaker 1: family change his name to, it's really hard to find.
Speaker 3: Wow, all these origins are so interesting. I just love
Speaker 3: this topic. Yeah, here's another one that's a little dubious
Speaker 3: and shouldn't be named for the person that's actually named after.
Speaker 3: But did you know that salmonella is named after America's
Speaker 3: first doctor of veterinary medicine.
Speaker 2: This was Daniel E. Salmon. Did you know this?
Speaker 1: No, I had no idea, But it should.
Speaker 3: Be named for a pathologist named Theobald Smith. This is
Speaker 3: all coming from the NIH site. Smith was the son
Speaker 3: of a German immigrant and a tailor, and Smith grew
Speaker 3: up relatively poor in Albany, New York, but based on
Speaker 3: his early brilliance, he earned this full ride to Cornell,
Speaker 3: where he studies philosophy and later some medicine, but really
Speaker 3: was fascinated by bacteriology. And after he graduates, he doesn't
Speaker 3: have the money to travel to Europe to study with
Speaker 3: Pasteur or other leading scientists in this field. So he
Speaker 3: joins something called the Bureau of Animal Industry. But because
Speaker 3: he can read French and German, this gives him a
Speaker 3: really big leg up in this process. And so in
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty five, is trying to curb various epidemics that
Speaker 3: are inflicting farm animals and at the time he's trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what was causing hog cholera. And he
Speaker 3: ends up isolating and identifying this bacteria known as salmonella.
Speaker 3: But before it can be named, his supervisor, Daniel Salmon,
Speaker 3: swoops in and takes credit for himself. In fact, he
Speaker 3: published a paper on the topic. So Salmon doesn't name
Speaker 3: Smith at all in this whole process.
Speaker 1: That is insane. First of all, it's insane that he's
Speaker 1: figuring out this whole thing around the time of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, right, I mean, that's so early. But you know,
Speaker 1: does Smith stay bitter about the whole thing? Does he
Speaker 1: try to get semonella renamed? You know?
Speaker 2: Not really.
Speaker 3: He's kind of this humble genius who cared more about
Speaker 3: his work. So he continues to work with Salmon, and
Speaker 3: together they discover that injecting dead bacteria and animals can
Speaker 3: create immunity from diseases. He ends up coming up with
Speaker 3: the idea for cattle dips to kill ticks and stop
Speaker 3: these cattle fevers. He works on bovine tb comes up
Speaker 3: with a vaccine for diphtheria. Actually theorizes that mosquitos are
Speaker 3: the vector from Lari. I mean, truly just a brilliant guy.
Speaker 3: He is kind of a remarkable scientist and should definitely
Speaker 3: be better known than he is.
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, it's kind of fitting that
Speaker 1: seminella makes us sick and he's not associated with that.
Speaker 3: That's actually a good way to think about it. I'll
Speaker 3: feel okay about it. And I'm sort of sad he
Speaker 3: was robbed, but I feel good about it. So what
Speaker 3: do you have next?
Speaker 1: Well, here's one on the opposite side of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: someone who gave credit to the original innovator. It's for
Speaker 1: the boison berry, which was developed by a man named
Speaker 1: Rudolph Boisen, who was actually a California horticulturist. I found
Speaker 1: a few places that told a story, but the most
Speaker 1: detailed one actually comes from this site called the Devil
Speaker 1: War's Parsley it's this great horticultural site. But basically Boison
Speaker 1: had this vision of a better berry, so he was
Speaker 1: trying to create a hybrid of blackberries, raspberries, dewberries, and loganberry.
Speaker 1: But ultimately he grows this beautiful maroon colored, two inch
Speaker 1: long berry. He takes the vines to his in laws
Speaker 1: farm in Anaheim, and he also shares them with a
Speaker 1: local nursery, where the berry gets called the sensation berry
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Right, that's how it gets advertised,
Speaker 1: and the guy who runs the nursery gets so excited
Speaker 1: about the prospect of this new berry that he posts
Speaker 1: a letter to this guy at the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: named George Darrow, basically to extol the berry's virtues. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the strange shaped berry really does not take off when
Speaker 1: this nursery tries to sell it and boys and eventually
Speaker 1: switches jobs to the parks department and has this tragic accident.
Speaker 1: He falls down a fire pole and basically is hospitalized
Speaker 1: and has to stop working. But then four years later,
Speaker 1: for some reason, Darrow is dusting off his letters and
Speaker 1: he gets super curious about whatever happened to this berry,
Speaker 1: so he goes to that local nursery to talk to
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote that letter. That owner has passed
Speaker 1: away and they no longer have any of the vines there.
Speaker 1: But he's just obsessed with this idea of like what
Speaker 1: this berry could taste like. So he pulls his friend
Speaker 1: Walter Not in and together they locate a bedridden boison
Speaker 1: and they ask him where they can find the vines,
Speaker 1: and he says, maybe try his in law's old land,
Speaker 1: which they no longer own, So they go there. They
Speaker 1: ask the new owners if they can forge land, and
Speaker 1: eventually they find these really pathetic vines that are being
Speaker 1: suffocated by the overgrowth, and they ask if they can
Speaker 1: take them back, and not basically nurses them back to health.
Speaker 1: And you know, when people ask him at his local
Speaker 1: farmstand what the berries he's selling are called, he says
Speaker 1: boison berries, after the original inventure. So the crazy part, though,
Speaker 1: is that the berries just start flying off the shelves.
Speaker 1: Missus Knots turns the berries into this popular pie and
Speaker 1: the whole endeavor helps him build this berry empire, which
Speaker 1: you might have heard of as Knots Berry Farm.
Speaker 2: That is amazing.
Speaker 3: I love the idea of a berry empire two, which
Speaker 3: is something that feels exciting about it.
Speaker 2: That's a fun one.
Speaker 3: I think I will stick with farming here because here's
Speaker 3: when I was surprised to learn, which is how we
Speaker 3: got the word maverick. Now this comes from the Saturday
Speaker 3: Evening Post. But Samuel Maverick was this lawyer from Texas.
Speaker 3: This was the mid nineteenth century, and Maverick was apparently
Speaker 3: a pretty good lawyer and a nice one as well,
Speaker 3: because when one of his clients couldn't pay off his
Speaker 3: debt to him, he accepted four hundred head of cattle instead.
Speaker 3: Of course, Maverick was a lawyer, not a rancher, so
Speaker 3: he hired someone to manage the cattle for him. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the person he hired was fairly lazy and left the
Speaker 3: cattle unbranded, let them roam all over the place. That
Speaker 3: ultimately meant that other ranchers saw it as an opportunity
Speaker 3: to steal the cattle and brand them as their own.
Speaker 3: So the word maverick first got used as a term
Speaker 3: for any unbranded wandering cattle, but over time it changed
Speaker 3: from referring to a cow without a master who wanders
Speaker 3: aimlessly to a cow who rejects being mastered and chooses
Speaker 3: its own directions.
Speaker 2: You can see where it goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really funny. It actually reminds me of this
Speaker 1: thing I read a few weeks ago about this cow
Speaker 1: named Chico from Saint Louis. Did you read this article?
Speaker 2: I think I did.
Speaker 1: I saw it a few places, but I also saw
Speaker 1: it upworthy. And this cow was determined not to become
Speaker 1: a burger, so it broke through like three fences at
Speaker 1: a slaughterhouse, and I think there were like five or six.
Speaker 2: Cows that fold sea.
Speaker 1: Running through traffic and people are chasing. I mean, the
Speaker 1: most amazing part is that someone started to go fund
Speaker 1: me to send all of them to a cow sanctuary.
Speaker 1: So now Chico and his friends are in some like
Speaker 1: Penning Zoo or sanctuary in California.
Speaker 2: But that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: I know, if I find the story, I'll put in
Speaker 1: the links where people look up. But let me talk
Speaker 1: about what I have next.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: The saxophone, which gets his name from the Belgian musician
Speaker 1: Antoine Joseph Adolph Sachs. And I didn't realize this, but
Speaker 1: sax invented the instrument way back in eighteen four, which
Speaker 1: is so long ago. I had no idea the saxophone
Speaker 1: was around that long. But Sax's parents were instrument makers too,
Speaker 1: and they even made instruments for the royal courts, and
Speaker 1: they tweaked the design of the French horn, amongst other things,
Speaker 1: into something called the sax horn. But the saxophone was
Speaker 1: Sax's way of trying to blend the best of woodwind
Speaker 1: instruments but the best of brass instruments, which you know,
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
Speaker 1: It's the only sort of reed instrument with this brass
Speaker 1: around it. But as ingenius as Sax was, he was
Speaker 1: one of the unluckiest people in history. His mom never
Speaker 1: actually thought he'd live long because of his bad luck.
Speaker 1: And this is just a short list of things that
Speaker 1: almost killed him. He accidentally drank a bowl of acid,
Speaker 1: mistaking it for milk. He was hit on the head
Speaker 1: by a roofstone, he fell from three stories, He had
Speaker 1: a hot frying pan fall on him, He fell into
Speaker 1: a river and nearly drown He received serious burns from
Speaker 1: a gunpowder explosion. And he almost died when he accidentally
Speaker 1: swallowed a pin.
Speaker 2: Right, this is insane.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure all those things happened in that one
Speaker 3: scene of the Naked Gun.
Speaker 2: If I'm not mistaken, that's wild.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like some real lunitudes business. But
Speaker 1: he invents the saxophone, but spends twenty years trying to
Speaker 1: pattent it and fighting off legal battles from rival instrument makers,
Speaker 1: and he just ends up bankrupt over and over. It
Speaker 1: is really sad. And this is how Lisburs puts it.
Speaker 1: He was a controversial figure who seemed to collect enemies
Speaker 1: who constantly tried to thwart him. But on the plus side,
Speaker 1: right like John Coltrane and Kenny g wouldn't have careers
Speaker 1: without him, so I guess he does have some sort
Speaker 1: of a legacy.
Speaker 3: And of course you can't forget Lisa Simpson. That was
Speaker 3: her outlet to deal with it all. Okay, I know
Speaker 3: we've got a few more facts to get to before
Speaker 3: we're done, but let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part TI genis where we're talking about
Speaker 1: eponyms aka words that are named after people. So will
Speaker 1: we've got two more facts to go. What is your
Speaker 1: final fact for this show?
Speaker 3: Tough call, because there's still some good ones here, But
Speaker 3: why don't we talk about General Ambrose Burnside, who had
Speaker 3: a checkered military career but a great facial topiary. So
Speaker 3: it's sort of worth the trade off there, I guess. Now,
Speaker 3: sideburns definitely existed before General Burnside, as the BBC points out,
Speaker 3: murals of Alexander the Great and dignified Hindu rulers show
Speaker 3: off their facial hair styling. Charles Darwin and various aristocratic
Speaker 3: Brits had the hairstyle too, although then you know they
Speaker 3: were referred to as side whiskers. I think, but Burnside,
Speaker 3: who was not known for his great military strategy, really
Speaker 3: glorified the look. I mean, he had these big, fluffy
Speaker 3: mutton chops which linked up with these fantastically bushy mustache whiskers.
Speaker 3: They really made him a household nameing like, I just
Speaker 3: really got into that description. But as Liz First points out,
Speaker 3: in eighteen sixty six, the Evening Telegraph in Philadelphia noted
Speaker 3: how debonair the style was. The paperwrights quote, the style
Speaker 3: was so attractive that it had ladies swooning after a
Speaker 3: group of thieves, distracting them from all the honest men around.
Speaker 1: I love that description, so friends, I just killed it
Speaker 1: with ladies and I guess this look was the axe
Speaker 1: body spray of its time, just attracting women.
Speaker 3: A good way to describe it. Because the side whiskers
Speaker 3: was already a common phrase, the words got flipped over time,
Speaker 3: and the facial hair eventually just got called sideburns.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I think what I like about that quote so much, though,
Speaker 1: is that the like this idea that honest men can't
Speaker 1: grow sideburns, but scoundrels absolutely can.
Speaker 3: I think that's the way it works. But anyway, all right,
Speaker 3: you got one more fact, Mango, what do you want
Speaker 3: to end on?
Speaker 1: How about we talk about the men behind the leotard
Speaker 1: Jeules Leotard, who I did not know was a person.
Speaker 1: Apparently Jules was quite right. He was on his way
Speaker 1: to becoming a lawyer and passed this like difficult legal exam.
Speaker 1: But ultimately he decided his passions were in gymnastics, and
Speaker 1: particularly the trapeze, which his father had set up for
Speaker 1: him over a swimming pool for him to practice on.
Speaker 1: But what set him apart from others was that he
Speaker 1: started doing jumps between trapiezes. Right, so he's one of
Speaker 1: the first few people to like jump between trapiezs. He starts,
Speaker 1: performing on everything from two to five different trapezes. He
Speaker 1: also didn't work with any netting, and he also landed
Speaker 1: from a great height onto a few stacked mattresses. But
Speaker 1: while the Arabatics were incredible, and you know, it did
Speaker 1: make him a celebrity in Europe and America's and he
Speaker 1: was traveling everywhere from you know, London, Berlin, Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 1: it's really his costume that sort of drummed up his popularity,
Speaker 1: and he actually had stands on all continents. As Harper's
Speaker 1: Bizarre puts it quote, his skin tight leotard made him
Speaker 1: the heart throb of La Maruse de Leotard, or Leotard's lovers.
Speaker 1: And according to the Journal of Victorian Culture, this was
Speaker 1: really at a time before male muscle mass was fashionable,
Speaker 1: so the tight outfit accentuating his body was almost revolutionary
Speaker 1: for the time, according to the journal quote, Leotard's writing
Speaker 1: and photographs demonstrate he knew his popularity was connected to
Speaker 1: his desirability and his prowess. In his memoir, Leotard ridicules
Speaker 1: the women who admired him and carefully refutes that he
Speaker 1: padded his tights to emphasize his leg muscle, so I'd
Speaker 1: love that they're claiming he's stuffing his.
Speaker 2: Tights, but totally yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the next time you see someone in the leotard,
Speaker 1: just know that it all goes back to one of
Speaker 1: history's greatest trafez artists, Jules Leotard.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like that.
Speaker 3: I thought I had sealed this week's episode with the zamboni,
Speaker 3: but I think you take it for Leotard. And to
Speaker 3: be clear, I would have given this week's trophy to
Speaker 3: Dylan if he'd shown up on a zamboni in his leah.
Speaker 3: He didn't do that on Saturdays. Does that on Saturdays
Speaker 3: most Saturdays.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna give it to you. Mango.
Speaker 1: Congrats, thank you will and such a missed opportunity for Dylan.
Speaker 1: But don't forget. If you've got a favorite eponym that
Speaker 1: we missed, or any other comments you want to tell us,
Speaker 1: drop our moms a line at Peaty Genius Moms at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. A lot of you have asked, Yes,
Speaker 1: our moms actually do read these emails and they will
Speaker 1: pass them along. And if you like the show, please
Speaker 1: tell your friends, make your kids listen to it in
Speaker 1: a car, ask your dentist to play it while you're
Speaker 1: getting a filling and rate and review the show on iTunes.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's episode from Will, Dylan, Mary,
Speaker 1: and myself. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show
Speaker 1: is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongish Chatikler and
Speaker 1: research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support
Speaker 1: from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart
Speaker 1: by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support
Speaker 1: from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.