Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, so that makes this a rough
Speaker 1: and tumble, root and tooting episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: How you doing? I'm great? How are you pretty good?
Speaker 1: You just celebrated a birthday just twenty four hours ago,
Speaker 1: and dude, happy birthday, Chuck. Thanks man. How do you
Speaker 1: feel good? Feel great? I feel I'm tired today, but
Speaker 1: not because of birthdays. I'm just I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: tired today. Do you remember the times back, years back
Speaker 1: when you would be tired because of your birthday? Right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like that day after right exactly. Now you're just
Speaker 1: tired because you're a full year older. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: tired before my birthday too. But we're not talking about
Speaker 1: being tired or birthdays, Chuck, are We were talking about
Speaker 1: playing cards? Yeah, this one. Dave Russ helped us out.
Speaker 1: This is chock full of fun little nuggets that I
Speaker 1: think next time you're playing cards with people, you can
Speaker 1: just kind of pepper these in. Yeah, and they'll love
Speaker 1: you for it. They'll say, give us another one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is one of those. It just has lots and
Speaker 1: lots and lots of little fun factoids. And yes, I
Speaker 1: said factoids. Yeah, they're ten percent of a fact that's right.
Speaker 1: Anyone will get that. A couple of people will on
Speaker 1: the Army page. I'm sure so, Chuck. We talked a
Speaker 1: lot about playing cards before in our Tarot episode, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one of the things we talked about was that
Speaker 1: it's a myth that playing cards developed from taro, which
Speaker 1: is what I had always thought too. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't remember if I said that on the Tarot episode,
Speaker 1: but it was quite the opposite, and cards were around
Speaker 1: long before Tarot cards were, even though they are related.
Speaker 1: Tarot cards were originally invented as new Trump cards basically,
Speaker 1: and then they kind of evolved into the cartomancy and
Speaker 1: all that stuff and just took off from there and
Speaker 1: went on their own path. But playing cards themselves are
Speaker 1: much much older, and there's a lot of debate about
Speaker 1: exactly where the first playing cards were developed, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people say China. Obviously China invented a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff, and it's possible China did invent playing cards,
Speaker 1: but they seem to have possibly invented them in isolation,
Speaker 1: and they may or may not have influenced the playing
Speaker 1: cards that we trace our lineage back to our playing
Speaker 1: cards today, trace that's lineage back to Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: may not be as far as the original Chinese cards
Speaker 1: go as old as they think, because you know, some
Speaker 1: people point to this game called the yazyge. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: go with that, Okay, y e z I separate word
Speaker 1: ge called the Chinese leaf game. And this was like
Speaker 1: ninth century CE Tang dynasty time, and for a long time,
Speaker 1: people I think were like, well, the leaves and the
Speaker 1: leaf game were pieces of paper and probably cards. But
Speaker 1: then more, you know, scrutiny has landed on. No, maybe
Speaker 1: the leaves were just like a rule book or a
Speaker 1: log book that you wrote stuff down because it was
Speaker 1: really a dice throwing game. Or it could have been
Speaker 1: more like dominoes, and the cards are used in that
Speaker 1: way but not used like actual playing cards. But we
Speaker 1: do think we know pretty sure that the Chinese eventually
Speaker 1: did get their playing cards in isolation in the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: not I mean pretty close to when Europe got them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So twelve ninety four is the first unambiguous reference to
Speaker 1: actual what we would call playing cards in China. Europe
Speaker 1: they showed up in thirteen five, so that is a
Speaker 1: really really short amount of time for China to have
Speaker 1: influenced Europe. That's not where European cards came from. Instead,
Speaker 1: European cards came from the mom Luke Empire, which I
Speaker 1: believe we also talked about in the Tarot episode two, right,
Speaker 1: I think so in Egypt. Yeah, And it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: like these cards came about because of or they got popularized,
Speaker 1: I guess because of trick taking games, like not the
Speaker 1: exact games we play today like yuker in spades and hearts,
Speaker 1: and I think bridge is another one, but the kind
Speaker 1: of a similar thing where you have, you know, a
Speaker 1: suit that takes the hand aka the trick, right, and
Speaker 1: there's usually a trump card or a trump suit. And
Speaker 1: these were like among the very first card games, and
Speaker 1: apparently in medieval times they were wild for this game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these kinds of games. They went so nuts that some
Speaker 1: officials were like, you have to stop playing that. We're
Speaker 1: going to actually ban in it. You don't, we don't
Speaker 1: get it, and you guys are into it, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna say you can't do that anymore, right, But those
Speaker 1: mom luke cards from Egypt were pretty similar to what
Speaker 1: we have today, right, Yeah, so there's fifty two in
Speaker 1: a deck, which is all we have today. Four suits, check,
Speaker 1: thirteen cards, pursuit, yes we have okay, yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: yes that's right. So yes, that thirteen times four is
Speaker 1: fifty two. Well, I think where I'm getting mixed up
Speaker 1: is they had a number one card, but they did
Speaker 1: not have a queen. Is that the swap correct? Okay?
Speaker 1: So yeah, they had a one card one through ten,
Speaker 1: and then they had courts in cards, which we call
Speaker 1: court cards or face cards today. But like you said,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a queen. The queen wasn't introduced until
Speaker 1: the French in the i think the fifteenth century, said no,
Speaker 1: we need to feminize this a little bit and much
Speaker 1: fur the better. But back in the Arab world they
Speaker 1: were like, no, we're not doing that. This is the
Speaker 1: third twelfth thirteenth century. Um, we're just gonna go with
Speaker 1: the malik, the king, the naib malik, which would be
Speaker 1: the king's like right hand man. Sure, the Thani naive
Speaker 1: which would be the king's right hand man, right hand man, Yes,
Speaker 1: and Um, that was it. Those were the those in
Speaker 1: addition to one through ten, those were your thirteen cards
Speaker 1: in each suit and the suits themselves, Um, the like
Speaker 1: the cards had a lot of similarities to what we
Speaker 1: think of today, Like they had pips. Each suit was
Speaker 1: represented by a symbol that's called a pip um And
Speaker 1: I knew that somewhere in the back of my head.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. But if you looked at one
Speaker 1: of these cards, one of these very ancient mom Luke
Speaker 1: deck cards, Um, there would be say like um, thirteen
Speaker 1: or say eight pips on one card. That's the aid
Speaker 1: of say cups. If there were eight cups of it,
Speaker 1: just like today, if there's eight little spades on there,
Speaker 1: that's the aid of spades. I mean, this is it
Speaker 1: follows in a really old tradition, I guess is what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say in a really really clumsy way. Well,
Speaker 1: the difference is they didn't write a number eight. They
Speaker 1: just had eight of the pips pictured to represent that number.
Speaker 1: And we still have that. We just added the number
Speaker 1: as well. Exactly. We've got both, yes, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to there, because it's I think the history of how
Speaker 1: these things sort of change from country to country as
Speaker 1: they became the leading manufacturers. Is pretty interesting, it really is.
Speaker 1: That's a will take over from here every century or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it looks like as far as Europe goes,
Speaker 1: the Spanish and the Italians were the first to start
Speaker 1: manufacturing and using playing cards. They were called are called
Speaker 1: Latin decks, and they had as their four suits the cups,
Speaker 1: the coins, the swords in the clubs. But instead of
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned that a polo stick was
Speaker 1: the club and the mamluke cards, Spain said, what the
Speaker 1: heck is polo? Our clubs look like something you beat
Speaker 1: someone over the head with, So that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with. Yeah, they look like real Captain caveman type stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool. So um, the Spanish being among
Speaker 1: the first to start adopting these decks is pretty pretty
Speaker 1: appropriate because they were under rule by the Moops or
Speaker 1: they had been for you know, just a few centuries before,
Speaker 1: so they were in a lot of contact with their
Speaker 1: Muslim neighbors. So for that to be imported to Spain
Speaker 1: and then probably trickle over to Italy, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. And so um, that's kind of reflected
Speaker 1: in what the Spanish word for playing cards is naipas
Speaker 1: anaipees and the Arabic name for playing cards is naive
Speaker 1: n a apostrophe ib clearly descended from it. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that really fascinates me about playing
Speaker 1: card history is like, yes, there's neat like symbolism and
Speaker 1: weird stuff going on, but it's all explicable and it
Speaker 1: all follows like in this neat tradition that was built
Speaker 1: upon and change but really still kind of kept like
Speaker 1: the general guard rails that it was originally set up with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there the changes are like kind of fairly minor,
Speaker 1: and they usually have to do with whatever made the
Speaker 1: most sense in that country. For instance, in Spain, not
Speaker 1: knowing what a polo club was, right, but they're like,
Speaker 1: you can hit somebody over the head with that, so
Speaker 1: we'll replace it with the club. Yeah, we'll use the smasher. Right.
Speaker 1: And there are some speculation in theories about what these
Speaker 1: initial and this is in the medieval society, what these
Speaker 1: four suits represented. But one of the theories that kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense, I think, is that the sword was
Speaker 1: for the military or the nobles, the cup for the clergy.
Speaker 1: The coin for the merchants makes sense, and the club
Speaker 1: for the peasants. And then in Europe we moved to Germany,
Speaker 1: they kind of took over in the fifteenth century as
Speaker 1: making as being I guess champion cardmakers. Sure, and they
Speaker 1: replaced the cup with a heart. It's getting a little
Speaker 1: more like we know it now. Yeah, the club was
Speaker 1: replaced by an acorn, which is a type of masts.
Speaker 1: The sword becomes a leaf, but if you look at it,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a similar shape is what we would
Speaker 1: know as a spade. Yeah, it's like an ivy leaf almost. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the coin because there were nuts about falconry
Speaker 1: in fifteenth century Germany and falcons head bells attached to
Speaker 1: the hawks and falcons. I guess why don't they call
Speaker 1: it hawkry? I think falcons take the cake in falconry.
Speaker 1: You know, hawks place second fiddle to it. They're like
Speaker 1: the the Thanny naihib to the to the falcons. You know.
Speaker 1: The joke here in Atlanta that I use is, whenever
Speaker 1: we see a hawk or a falcon, and we have
Speaker 1: both obvious as Evan inspired sports teams, Uh, it only
Speaker 1: says is that a hawker a falcon, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: you'd know it's a falcon if it flew into a
Speaker 1: tree and then hit the ground. What does that mean
Speaker 1: the reference to the Atlanta falcons. Oh, I see, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it was like I'm flying so high and then no,
Speaker 1: not anymore all of a sudden. Yeah exactly. But I
Speaker 1: mean this isn't the same apply to the hawks too,
Speaker 1: never get off the ground. No, you could kind of
Speaker 1: interchange them. Yeah, but anyway, the falcons and hawks had bells,
Speaker 1: and the coin on the German cards became a bell
Speaker 1: because they were wild about falconry. Yeah, it's very cute.
Speaker 1: The Germans had definitely the most rustic pips of all time.
Speaker 1: I mean, an acorn. Come on, that's wonderful. So the
Speaker 1: Germans are going along. This is the fifteenth century. They
Speaker 1: dominated that as far as the card manufacturing went, and
Speaker 1: then the French took over in the sixteenth century and Ruin,
Speaker 1: which is kind of in the northwest of France, became
Speaker 1: the playing card capital of Europe. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons it became the playing card capital of Europe, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, is because they put out so many playing
Speaker 1: cards and their production increased so dramatically that it's just
Speaker 1: mind boggling. And as a result, the pips that the
Speaker 1: French adapted are the ones we still use today, even
Speaker 1: though we have different names. They were the ones who
Speaker 1: came up with the designs we used today. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they were hearts and clovers. Self explanatory. They had the diamonds,
Speaker 1: but their diamonds were represented paving tiles called carol. And
Speaker 1: then the pike, which is the spear tip. I guess
Speaker 1: is the spade right, just right? But they didn't yeahlways
Speaker 1: give me with that. They don't. They didn't call it
Speaker 1: a spade at the time. But they did a couple
Speaker 1: of key things as far as what we recognized as
Speaker 1: playing cards today, as they came up with the red
Speaker 1: and the black colors, very big deal to differentiate that
Speaker 1: and to make card tricks more fun. And then they,
Speaker 1: like you said, they manufactured a ton of them. And
Speaker 1: they did this because they standardized the pips so that
Speaker 1: they could be stenciled on and it was a lot
Speaker 1: cheaper and a lot faster than hand drawing or doing
Speaker 1: woodcuttings and hand painting these decks of cards, which was
Speaker 1: super expensive and time consuming. Yes, and it made the cards,
Speaker 1: the deck of cards incredibly unattainable to the average person
Speaker 1: back in the you know, up to the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: when the French took over. And once the French took
Speaker 1: over and started producing these cards on mass, card playing
Speaker 1: was just it just took off like a rocket. And
Speaker 1: people had already loved playing cards, but now more people
Speaker 1: could love playing cards. And it was because they figured
Speaker 1: out how to print these things, you know, more cheaply
Speaker 1: and more quickly. So that's why we use the French
Speaker 1: card today, just by virtue of the fact that they
Speaker 1: produced so many that it became like the dominant type
Speaker 1: of card in the world. And then the other reason
Speaker 1: I saw is that England eventually adopted the French card
Speaker 1: and then kind of put their own twist on it,
Speaker 1: basically just renaming it. And then British colonialism is one
Speaker 1: reason why so many people around the world used the
Speaker 1: French deck today. So they took the French deck and
Speaker 1: spread it around the world. Yeah, and so the English,
Speaker 1: like you said, they sort of they used the same
Speaker 1: pip icons. I was about to say logo, but I
Speaker 1: guess they're icons, and they just sort of changed the meaning.
Speaker 1: So the clover they went back to calling it the club,
Speaker 1: even though it's a clover when you look at it.
Speaker 1: So that's why you've you've ever wondered, why the heck
Speaker 1: did they call that thing a club. That's why it's
Speaker 1: a tip to the mouth of the ogs, right, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the spade looks like sort of the head of us
Speaker 1: a spade, a type of shovel. But we think that
Speaker 1: the suit name actually, probably, and this makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense, is the anglicized version of espada, which means
Speaker 1: sword in Spanish, because sword was the original suit. And
Speaker 1: then the diamond they just called the diamond. But they said,
Speaker 1: you know what, this has nothing to do with dumb
Speaker 1: paving tiles. Let's just call it a diamond. And as
Speaker 1: Dave so aptly puts, a heart is just a herd?
Speaker 1: Is that an actual song? Or are you making up
Speaker 1: your aunt that just made that up? But I bet
Speaker 1: you there's a song that goes a heart is just
Speaker 1: a heart? Well you really, you really do that in actuality? Huh? Well,
Speaker 1: that didn't really count. It's usually more like and by
Speaker 1: the way, we heard from a lot of listeners who
Speaker 1: do this. I know. Yeah, you're death so far from yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I didn't think I was unique in anyway,
Speaker 1: but it's Um, it's usually like sung to the lyrics
Speaker 1: or sung to the tune of an other song, right,
Speaker 1: like when you're a heart, You're a heart all the
Speaker 1: way like that exactly. I looked up that where that
Speaker 1: heart shape came from, because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: our hearts don't really resemble that very much like the
Speaker 1: human heart. Yes, and I know I cannot find the
Speaker 1: original source. There's a lot of debate over it, but
Speaker 1: it's centuries old, and prior to it, when it first
Speaker 1: started to emerge, um, the heart was kind of iconogrified,
Speaker 1: m agrifized. I don't know. I think you had it right, okay,
Speaker 1: um as a kind of a pine cone shape. Oh,
Speaker 1: which is a little more accurate. But I like the
Speaker 1: new heart icon new meaning centuries old, but the most
Speaker 1: recent one. Ye mean, that'd be very funny if it
Speaker 1: looked like the actual human heart. Yeah, he just you know,
Speaker 1: the guy in Temple of Doom just pulls out like
Speaker 1: this hard emoji from the guy's chest. Uh. Should we
Speaker 1: take a break? Yes, I think we should. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a break and get to those face
Speaker 1: cards right after this. All right, so we mentioned the courts,
Speaker 1: and cards aka face cards is how we know them today.
Speaker 1: They represented the royal court, of course, and just like today,
Speaker 1: back then they were the the you know, the champion cards,
Speaker 1: the most valuable on the deck. We'll get to the ace.
Speaker 1: There was no ace card yet, and I think the
Speaker 1: story of the ace card is pretty cool anyway, so
Speaker 1: we'll save that. Uh, but these cards were all men until,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned before, the French introduced the queen, and
Speaker 1: here to me is one of the first really fun
Speaker 1: facts of the episode that I love is for a
Speaker 1: long long time, and I guess they don't do it anymore.
Speaker 1: But in the UK and in British India they would
Speaker 1: follow what they called Commonwealth rule or British rule, which
Speaker 1: is to say that the king and the queen can
Speaker 1: flip flop in which one is better in status depending
Speaker 1: on who the monarch is at the time. So if
Speaker 1: you have a woman on the throne, then the queen
Speaker 1: is the top card, just below the ace or until
Speaker 1: the ace was came along. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, agreed. Well,
Speaker 1: something I didn't realize is that for many centuries, the
Speaker 1: kings the queens and the jacks, which were at the
Speaker 1: time called the knaves, were actually modeled on historical figures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Charlemagne was the of hearts. I believe King David,
Speaker 1: the guy who killed um Goliath, he was spades, Julius
Speaker 1: Caesar was diamonds, and Alexander the Great was clubs. Had
Speaker 1: no idea, but like, if you look at a super
Speaker 1: old deck and I'm guessing somewhere around probably up into
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, at some point you could say, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's Charlemagne. I'd recognize him anyway. Look at
Speaker 1: that beard on King David, right, he's juggling a rock yep.
Speaker 1: Do we should we go through? The queens and the
Speaker 1: jacks are just suffice to say that they stood for people. No,
Speaker 1: I think we should give him a shout out. The
Speaker 1: queens were Palace of Athena, Judith, Rachel, and Argene, which
Speaker 1: could be an anagram for Regina. That's all over the
Speaker 1: place if you if you search Argene, the only thing
Speaker 1: that comes up is the card name, So there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have been a historical person named Argene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of those upon research that it's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's difficult to corroborate some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: But you see the same facts everywhere, which a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, when we did our episode on
Speaker 1: how to research stuff, well that can be a big
Speaker 1: red flag. Yeah, but maybe this is a case where
Speaker 1: it's not so much a red flag and just like
Speaker 1: lore that people have just agreed upon. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 1: if it is, if there is a red flag attached
Speaker 1: to it, we usually turn it up eventually, and this
Speaker 1: one just didn't seem to have it. But yes, I'm
Speaker 1: with you. It smelled like it, but upon a much
Speaker 1: deeper smell, I was like, Okay, this might this might
Speaker 1: actually work. Who were the jacks? The jacks were Hector,
Speaker 1: who was the hero from the Greek city of Troy,
Speaker 1: Etienne de Vignoles, who was a hero of the Hundred
Speaker 1: Years War in France. Okay, Ogier the Dane who was
Speaker 1: Charlemagne's night and either Judah maccabee or Lancelot was the
Speaker 1: Nave of clubs, and Jude mcabee was from the Hannakas story.
Speaker 1: Lancelot was one of King Arthur. Yeah, the Maccabees. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if depending on the deck you had it would it
Speaker 1: would basically you would you just knew back in the
Speaker 1: day that if you're playing the King of Hearts, that
Speaker 1: was Charlemagne right there. It wasn't just this yeah, generic
Speaker 1: weird looking king. Um, it was supposed to be somebody, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a brand name king exactly. And speaking of brand name kings,
Speaker 1: the god to talk about the suicide king, definitely, that
Speaker 1: is the king that looks like he's stabbing himself in
Speaker 1: the head with a sword. That is the one if
Speaker 1: you're looking at a modern deck of cards, that's the
Speaker 1: King of Hearts, And that's the one that looks most
Speaker 1: different from the other kings in that he has four
Speaker 1: hands and does not have the mustache, which is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like I said, appears to be stabbing himself with
Speaker 1: a sword. For a long time, there was a legend
Speaker 1: that that's how Charlemagne took his life, but we know
Speaker 1: that's not true, right because he died of pleurisy. But
Speaker 1: what they now think is that the early French decks
Speaker 1: Anglo French decks had a King of Hearts with an
Speaker 1: axe above his head, and that just printing over time,
Speaker 1: the axe went kind of further and further down until
Speaker 1: it was behind his head such that you couldn't even
Speaker 1: see the axe blade, and so I guess that axe
Speaker 1: handle just became a sword, looking like it was going
Speaker 1: into the king's head. Yeah. And now that you know,
Speaker 1: so like that axe was originally it was like the
Speaker 1: King of Hearts was captured in the back swing, like
Speaker 1: he was about to chop somebody with his axe, right, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And now if you know that, you can see that
Speaker 1: the King of Hearts is now just doing the same
Speaker 1: thing with a sword. He's in the back swing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lob someone's head off, right, but not his own. Yeah, either.
Speaker 1: One The important point is someone's head is about to
Speaker 1: come off. They don't care whether it's lob or lop.
Speaker 1: Look at that. No mustache, Yeah, no mustache. And one
Speaker 1: other thing, the King of Diamonds now is the only
Speaker 1: one with an axe, which I never noticed before. I
Speaker 1: didn't either. I mean, you don't often, or at least
Speaker 1: I don't often sit around and look at it a
Speaker 1: deck of cards like I play cards, but I never
Speaker 1: study them because it's sort of one of those things
Speaker 1: that's so ubiquitous in your life over the years that
Speaker 1: you don't really it's interesting. Might tie into our semantic
Speaker 1: assaciation short stuff coming up. Nice tease. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about that Ace card, because it took a while for
Speaker 1: the Ace, and it has a really neat story of
Speaker 1: how it happened. But it took a while for the
Speaker 1: Ace to become the high card because when the Ace
Speaker 1: eventually did come along, it was the number one and
Speaker 1: it was the lowest card. It was the worst card
Speaker 1: on the deck. It was so lowly that they referred
Speaker 1: to it as an AS, which was the least valuable
Speaker 1: coin in the Roman Empire. But then the French changed that, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is this is why the Ace can sometimes be
Speaker 1: the highest card in the deck or serve as the
Speaker 1: number one card. Because if you ever, if you've never
Speaker 1: noticed before, the number cards started two. You go through
Speaker 1: two through nine, right, no, two through ten? Yeah, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm one hundred percent certain two or ten. But this
Speaker 1: as the AS card. It was named after the least
Speaker 1: valuable coin in the Roman Empire, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of like a slang term to kind of just talk
Speaker 1: about how lowly that one card was. Then the French
Speaker 1: Revolution came along and they kind of conceptually pitted the
Speaker 1: AS card against the court cards. They said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this lowly one. We're gonna make it topple the court,
Speaker 1: the King, the queen, the jack, and now the Ace
Speaker 1: is the top of the heap. This little lowly single
Speaker 1: card is now higher than any of the other ones.
Speaker 1: And then, by the way, they also change the King, Queen,
Speaker 1: and Jack to liberties, equalities, and fraternities. So they didn't
Speaker 1: they weren't really into them kings and queens around the
Speaker 1: French Revolution very much. Yeah. And if you've ever wondered
Speaker 1: why the ace is the most sort of lavishly decorated
Speaker 1: card generally speaking, it's got a cool story behind that
Speaker 1: one too. Yeah. So the British had a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: solution to taxing decks of cards, which was, if you
Speaker 1: were a card maker, you had to you couldn't print
Speaker 1: your own Ace of Spades. You had to get that
Speaker 1: from the government as an official you know, card of
Speaker 1: the British Empire, right, Yeah, and that was your that
Speaker 1: was your tax and they were as such, they were
Speaker 1: very highly decorated. They were uniquely stamped to try and
Speaker 1: prevent forgeries from happening, right, And you couldn't, like as
Speaker 1: a card manufacturer, if you were just like, forget that,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna We're just gonna print our own Ace
Speaker 1: of Spades and they'll never know. You could be hung
Speaker 1: or have your head lopped off or lobbed off. You
Speaker 1: could be hanged, you mean the penalty what they hung.
Speaker 1: The penalty was death if you've forged an Ace of
Speaker 1: Spades playing card. Yeah, there's a man named Richard Harding, which,
Speaker 1: as far as I or anybody else can tell, was
Speaker 1: hanged for forging an Ace of Spades, and that nuts.
Speaker 1: That is crazy to think about in a weird I guess,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a weird way to pull off attacks,
Speaker 1: but it's also sort of brilliant in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean that's why. So each company had their
Speaker 1: own design, and it was a lavish design, and that's
Speaker 1: why still today the Ace of Spades just stands out
Speaker 1: as the most lavishly designed card. There's one other thing
Speaker 1: about that too. While they were during that period, I
Speaker 1: think in the early nineteenth century to the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: the name for those Ace of Spades was Old Frizzle
Speaker 1: Old Frizzle. Yeah. I found that on a website. There
Speaker 1: was a post about the evolution of the or the
Speaker 1: history of the evolution of playing cards, written by a
Speaker 1: game reviewer named enders game. I thought it was gonna
Speaker 1: be snoop dog no no. But it does have a
Speaker 1: definite snoop quality too, it doesn't it. Yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of fun. If you've ever you know, bicycle playing cards
Speaker 1: are very popular brand. I prefer the aviation poker cards personally, okay,
Speaker 1: but I like a good bicycle deck. If you've ever
Speaker 1: looked at the Ace of Spades, you might see the
Speaker 1: number eight O eight on there. And there's long been
Speaker 1: speculation that there was some sort of cryptic meaning behind
Speaker 1: what the AD eight does. And apparently it's just a
Speaker 1: model number because they had earlier decks that were six
Speaker 1: H six is. So there's no like kind of fun
Speaker 1: hidden meaning to that. No, And Bicycle is not its
Speaker 1: own company. It's actually the eighth edition of the US
Speaker 1: playing card companies designs, right, it's the eighth design that
Speaker 1: came up with. So that's what the A eight is.
Speaker 1: And so you'll find that a too on the Ace
Speaker 1: of Spades. You said, right, as spades, baby, So that
Speaker 1: As of Spades in particular, the bicycle aid Ace of
Speaker 1: Spades has a really storied history as far as world
Speaker 1: wars go. Apparently a world War two, the Ace of
Speaker 1: Spades was considered a lucky card, and so sometimes you'd
Speaker 1: see soldiers carrying the Ace of Spades around with them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you see you see it a lot in the
Speaker 1: tucked in the helmet in those war movies. Yes, And
Speaker 1: this is why most often you'll see it in Viet
Speaker 1: movies about the Vietnam War. There is a myth that
Speaker 1: was apparently considered correct at the time, that the Vietcong
Speaker 1: viewed the Ace of Spades as a symbol of death.
Speaker 1: The legend was that French cartomancers who had occupied the
Speaker 1: country previous to the war had basically introduced them to
Speaker 1: the Ace of Spades as a as a doom card,
Speaker 1: and that the Vietcong were just scared to death of it.
Speaker 1: That's the legend, But that's not true. From what I saw,
Speaker 1: it seems to not necessarily be true. What now, we're
Speaker 1: coming into the true part. There were a couple of lieutenants,
Speaker 1: I believe in Charlie Company, who rode into the Bicycle
Speaker 1: um to the US Playing Card Company, makers of bicycle cards,
Speaker 1: and explain this and said, could we just get decks
Speaker 1: of nothing but the Ace of Spades and US Playing
Speaker 1: Card company said, you got it, And for the war effort,
Speaker 1: they actually did produce decks of nothing but Ace of
Speaker 1: Spades for US soldiers to use to scare or intimidate
Speaker 1: the Vietcong. Yeah, and they were called the bicycle trademarked brand,
Speaker 1: the Bicycle secret Weapon. And apparently they would they would
Speaker 1: drop these cards throughout the villages and the jungles and
Speaker 1: stuff just to sort of, you know, freak them out
Speaker 1: or Yeah. But even if it didn't work, as you know,
Speaker 1: because the Vietcong were already primed to be afraid of
Speaker 1: the aces, you would probably start to associate it with
Speaker 1: some bad stuff if any time you came upon like
Speaker 1: a fallen soldier of yours with an Ace of Spades
Speaker 1: on his chest laying in the jungle. Sure, even if
Speaker 1: it hadn't already had that connotation before, I'm sure it
Speaker 1: developed that connotation pretty quickly just by use of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, I came across one of my closet
Speaker 1: the other day and I came across my box of
Speaker 1: trading cards. Oh yeah, yeah, And I popped him out
Speaker 1: and kind of looked through them real quick. The one
Speaker 1: thing I forgot that I had in addition to all
Speaker 1: those Star Wars cards. And it turns out I have
Speaker 1: a lot of Star Wars cards and I looked in there.
Speaker 1: Apparently they're not valuable or not very valuable. But I
Speaker 1: had a bunch of Superman the movie trading cards. I
Speaker 1: remember those, man, Yeah, like there their photographs from the movie, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like little scene stills or whatever. I remember those.
Speaker 1: And then also, even though I don't even remember necessarily
Speaker 1: being that into the show, I guess I watched it
Speaker 1: a little bit. But I also have some Battlestar Galactica
Speaker 1: cards eighties version obviously, uh. And then a fair amount
Speaker 1: of football, NBA, hockey, but mostly baseball cards right that
Speaker 1: I think are all basically worthless. You just jogged my memory.
Speaker 1: I remember now that they had Rambo trading cards for
Speaker 1: a little while. Oh, I would have loved to have
Speaker 1: had those kind of I guess it was three where
Speaker 1: he's like shirtless and shooting like rockets at at people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was a First Blood guy. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you know, the Rambo's got a little more ridiculous
Speaker 1: with each one, you could say, But I stand by
Speaker 1: First Blood as being a really great movie. Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It's a good movie, but it's it's it's a different
Speaker 1: genre than the other two, you know what I mean. Agree,
Speaker 1: although I do have to say that First Blood never
Speaker 1: produced the greatest chewing gum of all time. Second greatest
Speaker 1: chewing gum of all time Rambo chewing gum, which is
Speaker 1: BlackBerry flavored Big League Chew. Oh my god, it was
Speaker 1: good and it was second only to lemon lime bubble yum,
Speaker 1: the kind that was green on the outside with the
Speaker 1: yellow center. Yeah. I love that stuff. There's a pack
Speaker 1: for sale on eBay, and every once in a while,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what did it still work? Could I still
Speaker 1: chew it? Should I buy that a good toothbreaker? Yeah? Probably,
Speaker 1: but me and that'd be amazing. Did the big leage
Speaker 1: chew have a little caricature of Rambo in it? It
Speaker 1: had like a movie still of him shirtless with the
Speaker 1: rocket launcher shooting it at somebody and like a big
Speaker 1: fire explosion in the background, that rocket launcher. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you'd just put the whole pack in your cheek and
Speaker 1: be like, somebody came me a rocket launcher. It's amazing
Speaker 1: how many products they marketed at us were phony tobacco products.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I used to do. Remember beef jerky chew.
Speaker 1: It was like a candid dip, but it was trying
Speaker 1: to be jernky. I love that stuff. The gum cigarettes
Speaker 1: that you could puff on. They still have those. I
Speaker 1: saw those recently. Did they really? And I was like, what,
Speaker 1: they still make these in my local convenience store. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's very surprising. Yeah, it was pretty funny. What about
Speaker 1: those um pink gum cigars? I don't remember those they
Speaker 1: were They were just a long stick of gum in
Speaker 1: the shape of a cigar and then it had like
Speaker 1: a cigar band wrapper on it. And they tasted awful.
Speaker 1: It was the most awful gum there was worse than
Speaker 1: like the sticks that you would get an old baseball
Speaker 1: card packs. But um, it was just a different taste
Speaker 1: and it was not good gum. But they were still
Speaker 1: fun to like, you know, pretend you're a up and
Speaker 1: coming smoker with. I wonder if there's a candy cane
Speaker 1: blunt or something like that, we don't know about it.
Speaker 1: I suddenly realized why I started smoking at age fourteen.
Speaker 1: I was kind of primed to do that. Also, before
Speaker 1: we break a no, we're tangenting on tangents. But I
Speaker 1: meant to clear up when I that story about Emily
Speaker 1: getting a note from her mom to buy cigarettes at
Speaker 1: the at the store. Yeah, she was like six years old.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a teenage thing because you were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I bought him when I was ten or eleven. She
Speaker 1: was younger than my daughter. And just the thought of
Speaker 1: her going into a store at that age, a child
Speaker 1: and getting cigarettes, because you have noticed just it doesn't
Speaker 1: get any more seventies in that, I'm well, not just that,
Speaker 1: it's very Ohio too. Yeah, so much so I'm going
Speaker 1: to coin a new term. That's so higo. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like you using that from now on. All right,
Speaker 1: h well, let's reel it in, take a break, and
Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about the Joker or the
Speaker 1: Yoker right after this. Okay, Chuck, you really teased it up.
Speaker 1: Right before this this ad break, m we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about Uker and which is where the Joker came from?
Speaker 1: You play Uker? Yeah, we've talked about it on the
Speaker 1: Show's that's right. My Ohio relatives introduced me to it,
Speaker 1: and I had to get it re explained every Christmas
Speaker 1: because I could just could never remember the rules right,
Speaker 1: Yuker is very so high. Yes, it's so HIGHO. But
Speaker 1: Uker came from the Alsace region of Germany, and it
Speaker 1: was originally called yuker Spiel. Okay, yeah, with the with
Speaker 1: the j u c k Yes, j u c k
Speaker 1: e r spiel. Whereas what's the Uker card game? How's
Speaker 1: that spelled that we play today? It's spelled you or
Speaker 1: sorry e U c h r E Yuker And then
Speaker 1: Dave points out like Eucharist, and I think he was
Speaker 1: trying to trigger in us a mention that he's the
Speaker 1: host of the hit podcast Biblical Time Machine, so I
Speaker 1: think he put that in there. Was that what it was? Okay,
Speaker 1: although there's not many words out there that are like
Speaker 1: the word yuker, but we we latinized it right from
Speaker 1: j u c k e r to e U c
Speaker 1: h r E. But originally that j u c k
Speaker 1: e rum. In America, people started calling it Juker with
Speaker 1: the hard J like the j pronounced not like a why.
Speaker 1: And then that very quickly became Joker, which was a
Speaker 1: card that was designed expressly for the game of Uker. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right, the jolly Joker, who has always been sort
Speaker 1: of a sort of a court gester e imp like person. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they think that that's a reference to that the
Speaker 1: Joker and Uker was a trickster who took the tricks
Speaker 1: of the game because it was the super trump card. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like the number one trump card. And we're not going
Speaker 1: to go over Yuker. But it's all about the Trump
Speaker 1: cards and descending value of the bower and the left
Speaker 1: bower right and then the uber card, which is the
Speaker 1: Yuker or the Joker. And they call those those original
Speaker 1: trump cards the right and left bower bower like they're
Speaker 1: in the act of bowing. But that's actually a bastardization
Speaker 1: of the German bower b aue r, which means farmer
Speaker 1: in German m like Jack Bauer. Yeah. So it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to see how just completely mixed up things can get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you just change the spelling of a word, didn't
Speaker 1: even pronounce it the same, but just change some spellings
Speaker 1: here or there, and all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: you've just completely lost its original meaning and adopted a
Speaker 1: new one. I find that fascinating. But anyway to sum
Speaker 1: this up, the Joker was created to become the best Bower,
Speaker 1: the Imperial Bower, and then over time, because it was
Speaker 1: associated expressly with Yuker Joker, it became the joker. That's right.
Speaker 1: And we're going to finish up with some fun poker
Speaker 1: facts slash Las Vegas facts. Yeah, here's one. Barry Manlo
Speaker 1: has his own blackjack tables. Yes, we've seen them with
Speaker 1: our own eyes. Didn't play on them because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to desecrate it by losing on a Barry Manlin table.
Speaker 1: But playing cards and gambling obviously is you know, people
Speaker 1: started gambling with playing cards a long long time ago,
Speaker 1: and when it comes to poker or really any kind
Speaker 1: of card game you're gambling with, they wanted to understandably
Speaker 1: not had their cards be seen by other people. So
Speaker 1: these sort of gigantic icons of suits and these bigger
Speaker 1: fonts and things like that wasn't working out. So for
Speaker 1: poker cards, they introduced a few a few little changes
Speaker 1: to make this more possible to hold your hand tighter together,
Speaker 1: and that is called the squeezer card, which was you know,
Speaker 1: the first cards to have a very small symbol at
Speaker 1: the top left corner indicating the number and the pip
Speaker 1: or the suit right and so that means that's why
Speaker 1: on you see a poker player holding that really tight hand,
Speaker 1: all you need is that left hand corner barely exposed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those little the little the pip with the number
Speaker 1: or the letter of the face card is called an indicy.
Speaker 1: Those are indices, and before them the reason why it
Speaker 1: makes so much sense in poker, Like you were saying,
Speaker 1: you used to have to spread your cards out wide
Speaker 1: to say like, oh, there's nine pips on here, this
Speaker 1: is a nine of clubs. And now it was just
Speaker 1: kind of marked in the corner, which is great because
Speaker 1: you're not sharing your hand with the other people. There
Speaker 1: was another way you could give away what kind of
Speaker 1: cards you had in old style cards, and that the
Speaker 1: face cards, the court cards were printed one direction. There
Speaker 1: was one direction that was up, in one direction that
Speaker 1: was down, not like today where they're both up or down.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter which way it's dealt. Before you would
Speaker 1: have had to have taken that court card and flipped
Speaker 1: it around if it was dealt to you upside down,
Speaker 1: and you would have just told everybody at the table,
Speaker 1: I have at least one face card in here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with total giveum and think about the mom looks. They
Speaker 1: had to sit there an out loud go four, five, six,
Speaker 1: and they would have to count those pips and everyone
Speaker 1: would Now you have a six of something, right, But
Speaker 1: that's what that's what the poker players had to do too.
Speaker 1: But like off, until you had the squeezer cards, I
Speaker 1: thought they had the number on there. They just had
Speaker 1: a bigger number. I don't they had the number at all.
Speaker 1: I know, I don't think they had the number at
Speaker 1: all until the Squeezer the Indussease cards were introduced. And
Speaker 1: there was one other thing about it too. Why would
Speaker 1: they do that because other decks of plane cards had
Speaker 1: numbers on them, Why didn't they just use those like
Speaker 1: prior to the nineteenth century? No, just prior to the
Speaker 1: squeezer card they did. So the squeezer card came out
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, is what I'm saying. Oh have
Speaker 1: they been around for that long? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: And that's the first time that the actual number was printed. Yes,
Speaker 1: before you would just have nine hearts on there. There
Speaker 1: you go. I thought they just did it super small. No,
Speaker 1: well no, they they put it super small, like out
Speaker 1: of the gate. But that was too so you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to spread your cards out and see what you
Speaker 1: were dealing with. You see what I'm saying. Sure, the
Speaker 1: other thing that was changed with the indices, Chuck, was
Speaker 1: remember I said that the jack's used to be called naves,
Speaker 1: and a nave is like an assistant to the royal
Speaker 1: family basically, or a night or something like that, and
Speaker 1: it spelled like night k N A v E. Well,
Speaker 1: now that you have the induices and you have a
Speaker 1: k Q or J. If you had a k Q
Speaker 1: or k N, which is how they initially abbreviated nave,
Speaker 1: if you didn't spread your card far enough, you might
Speaker 1: think you had a king, but in fact you had
Speaker 1: a jack. And they actually changed nave to jack because
Speaker 1: of those indusries at the top. Yeah, and they also
Speaker 1: used to be white on the back. They didn't even
Speaker 1: have fancy decorations, that's right. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: have it's very easy to mark a white card with
Speaker 1: some smudge or something, or it might just accidentally give
Speaker 1: get a smudge or a stain or something. Sure, you're
Speaker 1: in derritos at a poker game that they can get everywhere,
Speaker 1: and then you know, of course the derrito card is
Speaker 1: the ace of spades or whatever. And apparently the Thomas
Speaker 1: de la Ruined Company was a British printer who was
Speaker 1: first credited with those beautiful lithographic designs on the back
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century. And I did mention Vegas.
Speaker 1: If you dug this stuff up, it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: If you wonder how how much they switched decks of
Speaker 1: cards in Vegas. If it's going wild and crazy, they
Speaker 1: might switch a deck of cards every hour. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: that same reason. They don't want them to get marked
Speaker 1: so that somebody would have an advantage by noticing that
Speaker 1: there's like a fray on the ace of spades, you know,
Speaker 1: right corner or something. Yeah. The most that they use
Speaker 1: them for is twelve hours, right, Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's it. The barry Man Aul just wasn't getting much action.
Speaker 1: There was another thing too that a lot of people
Speaker 1: point out that we have no idea whether it was
Speaker 1: purposeful or not, but it's pretty astounding if it's coincidence,
Speaker 1: right about the whole the seasons in the year and
Speaker 1: the months and all that. Yeah, fifty two cards, right,
Speaker 1: fifty two weeks? Yes, the two colors are they night
Speaker 1: and day? Yes? Do those four seats suits represent the
Speaker 1: four seasons, perhaps correct, and then what's the last? Just
Speaker 1: knock them down. Here, there's twelve court cards, there's twelve
Speaker 1: months in the year, there's thirteen cards in each suit,
Speaker 1: and there's thirteen full moons in a year. The one
Speaker 1: that so up to this point you're like, wow, that's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. This is the one that gets me. If
Speaker 1: you count every single pip on all fifty two cards
Speaker 1: and add them together, there are three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five of them. What yeah, and't that neat? That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: I agree. And there's a pretty cute ted talk by
Speaker 1: a guy named m Marco Tempest from several years back
Speaker 1: where he explains all this while doing pretty neat card tricks.
Speaker 1: It's it's a good one. You can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 1: All right, you got anything else about cards? I got
Speaker 1: nothing else about cards. We've done tarot cards, trading cards,
Speaker 1: playing cards. I guess greeting cards is next. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could do one on the Hallmark company. Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: sponsor it. Oh, that's a great idea. We'll talk to
Speaker 1: ad sales about that one. Yeah. Well, while we're off
Speaker 1: talking to ad sales, Well, we'll hold off on that
Speaker 1: and instead do a listener mail first. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this just to follow up. As I was talking about
Speaker 1: people making up their own songs, we heard from quite
Speaker 1: a few listeners. It seems like mostly board dads who
Speaker 1: do the same thing as I do. This is from
Speaker 1: who is this from? This from Jeff? He said, Hey guys.
Speaker 1: At the very beginning of the episode, Chuck details how
Speaker 1: he makes up songs like That's Tomorrow. My eyes lit up, because, dude,
Speaker 1: I do the exact same thing. Maybe it's a common
Speaker 1: thing that most people do and they're too embarrassed to
Speaker 1: admit to, but I've never met anyone else who claims
Speaker 1: they do it. One example from last night I'm particularly
Speaker 1: proud of was I was making my three year old
Speaker 1: daughter dinner, grabbed the box of Annie's Macaroni and cheese,
Speaker 1: shout out to Annie's, and almost involuntary the words. Involuntarily,
Speaker 1: the words flew out of my mouth, and I'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and sing it in the tune of nights and
Speaker 1: whites Happen. Oh, okay, shells and white cheddar. Microwave is
Speaker 1: your friend. I don't know what's better When there's not
Speaker 1: much to spend. That's pretty good stuff. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: really good. I also had a little social commentary at
Speaker 1: the end too. Yeah, and that's from Jeff with a G.
Speaker 1: Because it's Annie's brand. I was expecting to say something like,
Speaker 1: it's a maccin cheese night for us, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Huh Wow, I'm getting on that train too, Chuck.
Speaker 1: It is intoxicating, isn't it. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: be like Jeff, Jeff and tell us about some amazing
Speaker 1: song you came up with, way to go. By the way, Jeff,
Speaker 1: that was pretty great. You can email us at stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.