Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and uh, let's see, we've
Speaker 1: got a couple of producers out there. We're in a
Speaker 1: new studio. We've got Will and man Guesh from Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius. It's like we all have our pants on.
Speaker 1: It's a that's weird. That's the weird part. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a just a big family fest. Stuff you should know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome you guys. Thank you. Guys were in this brand
Speaker 1: new studio. Isn't this exciting? From from the fromale the hide.
Speaker 1: It's a lot like a science class And yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's what happens in here at night science class.
Speaker 1: There making extra money to pay for this new studio
Speaker 1: to fill everybody in. We're just doing like in joke
Speaker 1: frenzy right now, Stuff you should Know or I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Work says um expanded. We've got so many
Speaker 1: podcasts these days, and so many coming down the pike
Speaker 1: that they've built out new studios and we're using this
Speaker 1: is our first time, but you guys have used this
Speaker 1: one before, right, yeah, it's an awesome studio. So Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's introduce these guys. Huh, okay, well, will is who
Speaker 1: you've heard speak? Man guesses who you've heard laugh? I
Speaker 1: would say you do have a great laugh uh, and
Speaker 1: they are the we should have a laugh off at
Speaker 1: some point you and me laugh. Right, I've been told
Speaker 1: I don't know all right man, guests, you go oh wow. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: So these guys are the hosts of Part Time Genius,
Speaker 1: and they just let us know that it is your
Speaker 1: and co founders of Mental Plus many years ago. But
Speaker 1: today is your one year anniversary. We have been at
Speaker 1: house stuff works for one year. Congratulation. Hopefully Jerry will
Speaker 1: work in some sort of post production sound effect or
Speaker 1: applause or the fanfare button. Right, yeah, well, congrat um
Speaker 1: and you guys. So you guys have been doing Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius? Has it come out like three times a
Speaker 1: week from the get go? No, it was two times
Speaker 1: a week at the beginning, and then and we decided
Speaker 1: we didn't have enough work. Right there was it was
Speaker 1: around the time of the eclipse, and we thought, you
Speaker 1: know what we should have done in eclipse episode and
Speaker 1: let's just share some fun facts and then the next
Speaker 1: week we were like, you know what, there's been some
Speaker 1: really bad news, as there has been frequently recently, and
Speaker 1: so we thought, you know what, let's do an episode
Speaker 1: on nine things to make you smile. And so most
Speaker 1: of our episodes are big questions where we ask a
Speaker 1: question like, you know, will we ever be able to
Speaker 1: live without sleep? Or something like that, and so we
Speaker 1: decided to start throwing in these bonus episodes where we
Speaker 1: do nine things about whatever. It might be, facts about
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers or house plants. Yeah, you know, house plants,
Speaker 1: the usual. But there's still pretty robust episodes of like
Speaker 1: twenty minutes basically. Right. Yeah, so three times, three times
Speaker 1: a week. My hat is off to you. I'm also
Speaker 1: vaguely threatened by that because I'm worried, like, did you
Speaker 1: guys put out three a week? Yeah? We were running
Speaker 1: at the Classic. I don't know if that counts because
Speaker 1: it's not extra work, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: I'm a little a little nervous, but still it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: We're so building up to get the Classics Wednesdays, Thursdays
Speaker 1: and Fridays, right, that's right, So how did you guys
Speaker 1: end up at housetuf works because Chuck said, you're you're
Speaker 1: the co founders of mental floss, Like, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's worth saying a couple more times. Yeah, Mental Flaws magazine. Ye,
Speaker 1: like a site we used and still use all Ye,
Speaker 1: actually we don't use anymore now that you guys, that's
Speaker 1: not true. I emailed them about a bug. I found
Speaker 1: a bug where like if you went to go put
Speaker 1: the like the like easy reader format or whenever I'm Firefox,
Speaker 1: it would bring up a different article. So I let
Speaker 1: them know I did, but I was like one degree
Speaker 1: separated from the dev team mental Floss. Yeah, Josh emailed me,
Speaker 1: and of course we reached out to them, and they
Speaker 1: were very much appreciative like that. It's a great team there.
Speaker 1: It's still obviously a great site, and uh, we love
Speaker 1: all the crew at mental floss. And we were just
Speaker 1: excited about what's happening in the world of podcasting. We've
Speaker 1: been big fans of you guys for a long time,
Speaker 1: thank you, and just knowing how much is happening in
Speaker 1: this space. Um, we were eager to try something new
Speaker 1: when we were approached about the idea of coming here
Speaker 1: and and we've been doing mental Flass. We've been talking
Speaker 1: about Mental Class since we were nineteen, you know, like
Speaker 1: like it's been a long time and and we've done
Speaker 1: like so many fun projects, so many things. But by
Speaker 1: the end of it there we're just managing so many people,
Speaker 1: you know, and we weren't getting to do the creative
Speaker 1: stuff as much. At least that's how I felt. And
Speaker 1: when we started, like you know, thinking about podcasts, it
Speaker 1: just really felt like how Mental Class started, where it
Speaker 1: was conversations and it felt like intimate and the way
Speaker 1: you have to build such an amazing community of people
Speaker 1: who care and are so invested, and and somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way I felt like, um, you know, mental Class
Speaker 1: was such a massive site that I didn't know the
Speaker 1: readers anymore. Too many and somehow, somehow, even the a
Speaker 1: podcasts are huge, Like you know, you guys have millions
Speaker 1: and millions of listeners, like they all feel like they
Speaker 1: know you, and we sort of missed that connection. Is
Speaker 1: truly in the cradle, guys. Very sad with the Silverspoon. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys are here. I know Chuck is too,
Speaker 1: so welcome, Welcome to the family. After a year, Well
Speaker 1: on our first day here. Were talked about this previously,
Speaker 1: but like we we went around the house, works offices,
Speaker 1: we met everyone. We're in these meetings and stuff. Everyone
Speaker 1: went home early and and and yeah that's a staple.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. I mean, everyone works hard, but they also
Speaker 1: get to spend time with their families. And uh, when
Speaker 1: we got in the elevator, We're like, where did they
Speaker 1: keep the jerks? Like there don't seem to be any
Speaker 1: in this company. It was just so not did you say,
Speaker 1: are we the jerk? That's what I said, We're here
Speaker 1: at the jerks. Yeah, that's one of the really cool things,
Speaker 1: Like we I think we differ from a lot of
Speaker 1: podcast companies in that way, and that we have all
Speaker 1: this great like talent on the roster and we're also
Speaker 1: going out and developing cool stuff. Yeah, very cool. So
Speaker 1: so enough about all this, Let's talk about the show
Speaker 1: some more. All Right, you guys have like quizzes typically
Speaker 1: you have lots of guests on what are some of
Speaker 1: the best um questions that you've asked and some of
Speaker 1: the best guests that you've had so far. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's been one of the most fun parts about this
Speaker 1: is getting to reach out to experts in different things,
Speaker 1: and even experts in areas that we didn't realize there
Speaker 1: were experts. You know, we got to talk to America's
Speaker 1: only certified water Somali A. I mean, we always hear
Speaker 1: about in the world of wine and that there's an
Speaker 1: expert in the world of water that these fine restaurants
Speaker 1: reach out to and getting me hear the ins and
Speaker 1: outs of that. But it was Antarctica's poet in residence
Speaker 1: right right, So it's wonderful or she's not allowed to
Speaker 1: leave the hu Well she eventually left, but we didn't
Speaker 1: get to take a lot of hot showers, don't you.
Speaker 1: I can imagine, And she probably swam away made her getaway.
Speaker 1: We had a a guest on recently that an author
Speaker 1: of a book called When, and it was about the
Speaker 1: science of perfect timing. His name is Daniel Pink, and
Speaker 1: he was teaching us about, you know, how much time
Speaker 1: of day affects all of us and helping us learn
Speaker 1: the uh, the disturbing fact that we're all a little
Speaker 1: more racist than the afternoons. And it was just weird
Speaker 1: things like that. He was talking about staging these court
Speaker 1: cases where they have these kind of mock jurors and
Speaker 1: they put them together. This was not on a real trial,
Speaker 1: that would be an unfortunate way to test this, and um,
Speaker 1: they would test their behavior and whether they were more
Speaker 1: or less likely to convict someone um in certain scenarios.
Speaker 1: And they looked at what happened in the morning and
Speaker 1: what happened in the afternoon, and had people of different races,
Speaker 1: and they were more likely to come down more hard
Speaker 1: on on someone of you know, a different race in
Speaker 1: the afternoons. Yeah, I mean it really does have to
Speaker 1: do with our our body clocks are circadian rhythms, and
Speaker 1: it's honestly that's that's that's part of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the science of that perfect timing, and uh, we
Speaker 1: learned we've changed our behavior around this. A different fact
Speaker 1: that came out of that one was that they've done
Speaker 1: a statistical analysis on teams that do more high fiving
Speaker 1: and chest bumping, and it said head slapping. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly what that dangerous mango slaps my head before
Speaker 1: every episode and they are actually shown to win more frequently.
Speaker 1: It might be because they're winning, so they're high fiving.
Speaker 1: Probably not high fiving, but it's just a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to have these people on that have studied such
Speaker 1: fascinating things. You know, we consider them the experts. Were
Speaker 1: not experts, but it's a selfish thing for us. We
Speaker 1: get to sit back and learn from people who know
Speaker 1: so much about so many interesting things. Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: had we didn't show on rudeness and and whether there's
Speaker 1: a rudeness epidemic. And there's this guy at Danny Wallace
Speaker 1: who wrote this great book, and one of the facts
Speaker 1: he was talking about was that this mayor in uh
Speaker 1: Cortina or somewhere in Columbia he uh he fired the
Speaker 1: corrupt police force and hired a bunch of mimes to
Speaker 1: mock people as they were jaywalking. And it basically shames
Speaker 1: the into being more polite. It was amazing or annoyed
Speaker 1: them into being either way. But I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like minds are underused career. They really are, especially as
Speaker 1: civil servants arise in mind violence. That's right, there's another
Speaker 1: study being done about how that could have happened. Well,
Speaker 1: everybody out there, if you haven't picked up on the
Speaker 1: idea that you would love Will and Man guests show,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is go to their website.
Speaker 1: It's part time Genius dot Com. Right, part Time Genius
Speaker 1: dot Show. We decided to check it to another lot,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, yeah, Um that's really really um forward thinking
Speaker 1: of you or dot com was, but we were really
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Yeah, Part Times Genius dot Show. You've
Speaker 1: got the podcast archives on there, so everybody go check
Speaker 1: it out, yeah, or of course iTunes or where we
Speaker 1: get your podcast. That's right, and that what we say.
Speaker 1: I think we say those things all right, fis bumps, guys,
Speaker 1: no head slaps, Thank you so much. All right, thanks guys.
Speaker 1: It's always a joy to hang out with those two. Huh.
Speaker 1: I love those guys. They are truly good guys. Um, so, Chuck.
Speaker 1: We are talking about words today, Yeah, specific words, historical
Speaker 1: words that people may or may not be using correctly,
Speaker 1: correct that people may or may not have really defined
Speaker 1: some of these instances. There's really no problem with them,
Speaker 1: but they're fun to talk about, right. It's that whole
Speaker 1: descriptive ist prescriptive ist thing, you remember, that whole thing
Speaker 1: we used to get into. Boy, it's a trip down
Speaker 1: memory lane, isn't it. Thing? So so like descriptivists are
Speaker 1: kind of like language is constantly involved. Just go with
Speaker 1: the flow. Prescriptivists are like, no, no, that languages language,
Speaker 1: and you're if you're using it wrong, you're wrong, right, Um,
Speaker 1: Like David Foster Wallace was a prescriptivist, like basically, grammar
Speaker 1: nazi is another way to put it right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I want to go ahead and this is not on
Speaker 1: our list, but let's go ahead and throw decimate in there,
Speaker 1: because um, that is a word that we used to
Speaker 1: hear from a lot when we said something was decimated,
Speaker 1: and we would have perse script which one is the
Speaker 1: yes email us and say decimate means you know, desa
Speaker 1: is by tin, so reducing by ten percent is what
Speaker 1: it means, guys. And eventually I had just started writing
Speaker 1: people back and saying, you know, the modern dictionary even
Speaker 1: says that it has now come to learn decimate can
Speaker 1: just mean you know, yeah, later waste wiping out like this,
Speaker 1: this bush mails decimated me last night. It well reduced
Speaker 1: you by probably more than ten percent, depends on how
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's always been a grete for me. Like
Speaker 1: even when it's officially changed its stephan and over time
Speaker 1: and recognized as such, people will still get their hackles up.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, dude, it's usually dude. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: a prescriptive ist railing against it. Well yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: also like, come on, man, like I'm sorry, we're not
Speaker 1: using the fifteen century usage of the word. So yeah,
Speaker 1: decimate they got their tunic in a twist, no tunics technically,
Speaker 1: So I guess this one is. I think this episode
Speaker 1: is kind of for the prescriptivists if you think about it,
Speaker 1: I still don't know who's who. Prescriptivists are the ones
Speaker 1: who are who you're talking about the what are we
Speaker 1: prescriptive ist pennant? So we're not that, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: we're definitely we go with that to each each their
Speaker 1: own motto. Yeah, and this is, of course another we
Speaker 1: haven't done a top ten in a while, but as
Speaker 1: everyone knows, our top tens are never ten U And
Speaker 1: it kind of occurred to me that's usually because some
Speaker 1: of them we just think are dumb, and also because
Speaker 1: of because the way we go these things would be
Speaker 1: a way we're an hour long, we decimate the top
Speaker 1: ten lists. Actually, yeah, alright, so let's start. Man, we're
Speaker 1: talking again. I don't know if we got this across
Speaker 1: yet or not, but we're talking about historic words that
Speaker 1: come from history that are either used wrong or not
Speaker 1: fully not not. They don't really get across the original
Speaker 1: intent necessarily. They're just kind of evolved over time, right,
Speaker 1: and the first to kind of pair together quite well,
Speaker 1: like a nice like a nice wine and a shot
Speaker 1: of bush mills. Right. Oh god, I'm not even on
Speaker 1: a bush mills kick. I don't know where this came from.
Speaker 1: We had bush mills and a long time. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's not something you would normally shoot it either, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: or dropping a glass of cabernet. Right, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: people shoot bush mills. Yeah, you probably shoot anything. You
Speaker 1: know who do headonists? Very nice, thank you, very clever.
Speaker 1: So that's so that's the first word is hedonism, right yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh, most people think of the word hedonism as
Speaker 1: and and they do mention in this article that there
Speaker 1: is a nudist resort in Jamaica called Hedonism, which I
Speaker 1: and there's hedonism too. I think there's more than one. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nudists crowded on the island. I
Speaker 1: remember remember when we did our nudist episode. Um, I
Speaker 1: ran across an article about like a swingers resort. I
Speaker 1: think it was hedonism and it was just like it
Speaker 1: may have been immense health article or BuzzFeed or something
Speaker 1: like that, but it was like, I want to a
Speaker 1: nudist swingers resort and basically never want to have sex again.
Speaker 1: I'm so grossed out with myself humanity. Yeah. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: to say that that's hedonism, because they may eventually be
Speaker 1: a sponsor one day, that's right. But hedonism is most
Speaker 1: people use that throw that word around to equate with
Speaker 1: just the ultimate in like sexual slash uh party, debauchery.
Speaker 1: Debauchery is a great word for it. Drinking fornicating orgies
Speaker 1: or find uh scented oils and silken linen's being completely ruined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is that's basically what most people think of
Speaker 1: with hedonism. It's like giving into your every desire, especially
Speaker 1: carnal desires um even at great personal risk and without
Speaker 1: much foresight. Right. Apparently that is not at all the
Speaker 1: case of what hedonism meant originally, but you can kind
Speaker 1: of see how it evolves over time because hedonism stems
Speaker 1: from the Greek word for pleasure, right, hedonia, And the
Speaker 1: idea is that originally the Heatonist it was an umbrella
Speaker 1: school of philosophy. I think We kind of touched on
Speaker 1: it in our Stoicism episode, but it was an umbrella
Speaker 1: philosophy where I basically said, there's two things in life
Speaker 1: that are that you need to pay attention to, and
Speaker 1: everything else falls into place if you are maximizing pleasure
Speaker 1: and avoiding pain. Yes, those are the two things, pleasure
Speaker 1: and paint. Maximize one, minimize the other. Yeah, But the
Speaker 1: whole thing is they don't say. Nowhere in there does
Speaker 1: it say and by the way, this involves um orgies,
Speaker 1: um charcooterie trays, which is weird because we're talking the
Speaker 1: Greeks here. You know. Well, I mean, I'm sure hedonism
Speaker 1: it also meant that, but it didn't exclusively mean that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, so like, it could also
Speaker 1: mean delights of the mind, intellectual pursuits, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It even says altruism, which is it's kind of funny
Speaker 1: to think about someone saying like I brought I bought
Speaker 1: groceries from my elderly neighbor and it was a pure
Speaker 1: hedonistic sensation came up from So you're such a hedonist.
Speaker 1: But technically back then that could have been the way
Speaker 1: you might use that word. Yeah, And and even more
Speaker 1: to the point that hedonist said, there is there's something
Speaker 1: you really want to pay attention to here. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to experience pleasure, but it is really easy for
Speaker 1: pleasure to turn into pain or degradation or addiction. And
Speaker 1: you have to bear this stuff in mind or else
Speaker 1: you're you're you're going to pursue pleasure at your own expense,
Speaker 1: and then you're not doing it right. Um, there's actually
Speaker 1: this guy in the I think the eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if he was at Cambridge or Oxford.
Speaker 1: Were five million emails, surely we have. But he was
Speaker 1: a fellow or a dawn or whatever of philosophy at
Speaker 1: this university that's still around, and every year at one
Speaker 1: of their annual banquets they bring his mummified head out
Speaker 1: and put it at the head of the table. I
Speaker 1: think on it like a wax dummy. So he's dressed
Speaker 1: as himself and they've got the guy's mummified head. That's
Speaker 1: how much of a revered philosopher he was. He came
Speaker 1: up with this thing called philosophic calculus. It's basically a
Speaker 1: an equation an equation, right, This is pretty dry, but
Speaker 1: it's the whole point is is to pursue pleasure as
Speaker 1: much as possible and to avoid pain. And he said,
Speaker 1: you have to consider things like the duration of the
Speaker 1: pleasurable event, the intensity um, how certain it is, the
Speaker 1: fecundity like is it going to spawn more pleasure afterward? Um,
Speaker 1: the purity will it actually devolve into pain? Um? The
Speaker 1: extent of it, which means how many people are are
Speaker 1: affected by it um. And if you take all these
Speaker 1: factors into account, you can you can run any experience
Speaker 1: or any decision you have in life through that and
Speaker 1: decide I'm not gonna do this, or yeah, I'll have
Speaker 1: that bite of cool whip out of the fridge. Is
Speaker 1: anyone still use that? I'm sure there's a few people
Speaker 1: out there that do. They're very exacting, I mentioned so,
Speaker 1: so that's hedonism. Yeah right, we took all the pleasure
Speaker 1: out of that pretty quick. But that leads to another
Speaker 1: word that's misused frequently, epicurean. Epicurean. Yeah, that's the thing
Speaker 1: that nowadays you hear people use the word epicurean. There
Speaker 1: are probably a lot of restaurants that have a name
Speaker 1: on some derivation of this word, but it's tied into
Speaker 1: food and drink, like really fine food, top shelf wine
Speaker 1: and food. If you have epicurean tastes, then you were
Speaker 1: someone who concerns yourself with the finer things at in
Speaker 1: the dining room specifically, right, And it's not quite as much,
Speaker 1: it's not quite as much identified with overdoing it as hedonism,
Speaker 1: But there's um I think more than anything. It's like
Speaker 1: you said, it's it's the finer things, but you might
Speaker 1: overindulge here there. Yeah, and if you use that word
Speaker 1: about yourself then you are probably pretty obnoxious. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: people like you who are needed at parties for other
Speaker 1: people to avoid. But the word, once again from Greek epicure,
Speaker 1: came from the philosopher Epicurus, and people, if you don't
Speaker 1: know much about the root of the word, you probably
Speaker 1: think that his whole deal was about food, and that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case. But he was a a hedonist
Speaker 1: in there, right. Yeah, he was like one of the
Speaker 1: great hedonistic thinkers, but in the ancient Greek sense of
Speaker 1: the word. Right. So his whole his whole deal was
Speaker 1: at our axia, which was inner tranquility, and that you
Speaker 1: should pursue pleasure by just being content rather than going
Speaker 1: off and getting like wasted or eating a bunch or
Speaker 1: something like that. That and that if you did have desire,
Speaker 1: it was better to eliminate it than satisfy it. But
Speaker 1: it was. But if you did satisfy it, you should
Speaker 1: do it thoughtfully your mind. So really he was kind
Speaker 1: of the opposite of what people who consider themselves epicureans
Speaker 1: or Yeah, but also didn't he have a lot to
Speaker 1: say about following your own path when it comes to that.
Speaker 1: It's like it was very, very centered around the self.
Speaker 1: So you do whatever you whatever is best for you
Speaker 1: in the moment, and not necessarily what someone else thinks
Speaker 1: might be the best thing for you. Right. But again
Speaker 1: the point is his virtue um like value hedonism, like
Speaker 1: doing things that are actually good and that produced good
Speaker 1: rather than um, I'm going to shoot this heroin even
Speaker 1: though my my significant other doesn't want me to. That's
Speaker 1: that's not what it was about at all. It was moderation.
Speaker 1: You have to find what gives you pleasure in life
Speaker 1: rather than looking to other people, look inward to yourself. Right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, moderation was a huge part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what I couldn't find and that was the case
Speaker 1: with a few of these is where it got all
Speaker 1: wrapped up in food. I couldn't either, Um, I think
Speaker 1: it was people like food. So we just sort of yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all I can think of. I couldn't find. I
Speaker 1: was really hoping that there was like a turning point
Speaker 1: where it was like, this is where it happened. And
Speaker 1: there are a few places where I couldn't find that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's just not out there, is lost
Speaker 1: to history. All right, So we're disappointed. So we're going
Speaker 1: to take a break, go put our heads together, pull
Speaker 1: ourselves together, and turn our attitude around. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We're gonna stick around in ancient
Speaker 1: grease for a little while long. Why not? I mean
Speaker 1: they've produced a lot of misused words. Frankenstin's all open here?
Speaker 1: Do you like frankinsense? I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a resin based incense. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think Have you smelled it? Sure? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean I was raised Catholic? Oh is that a Is
Speaker 1: that a thing? Have you ever been to a Catholic mass?
Speaker 1: M Nope? So there they'll go through with like this
Speaker 1: big incense burner and just stink up the whole church
Speaker 1: with frankinsense. I've seen that in movies and they're well,
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing, is burning frankinsense, and it's actually
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good smell. Now, the only Catholic jams I've
Speaker 1: been involved in were sadly a couple well wine tastings now,
Speaker 1: a funeral, uh, and a wedding or two maybe maybe four, Well,
Speaker 1: it seemed like four four weddings and that was close. Uh.
Speaker 1: So cynic is the word? Did you already say that? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't, Okay, cynec is the word, and this is one.
Speaker 1: I kind of like this word as we use it
Speaker 1: today because I try to abandon cynicism in my own
Speaker 1: life and I'm pretty turned off by cynicism as a whole, okay,
Speaker 1: which means in our usage is like a cynic to
Speaker 1: me is someone who's uh, who's always suspicious, suspicious of
Speaker 1: what's going on, Like yeah, like that person is doing
Speaker 1: something seemingly pure, but um cynical, So I wonder what
Speaker 1: that's all about. It can't be true. I saw a
Speaker 1: great um definition of cynicism and the modern usage a
Speaker 1: cynic as a person whose faded belief or kurdled trust
Speaker 1: had left him unfit for attachment to others. That's a
Speaker 1: like a that's a deep cynic definition. Yeah, that's pretty heavy,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it can be a little lighter than that.
Speaker 1: It could just be somebody who's not willing to just
Speaker 1: kind of go with the flow and take things at
Speaker 1: face value and be happy about things. Trust other people. Yeah, trust,
Speaker 1: I think has a lot to do with it, right, agreed.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those words I actually kind
Speaker 1: of found where this one turns, which we'll get to
Speaker 1: in a second, But it's based on so cynicism again
Speaker 1: is a is an ancient Greek philosophy, and the cynics
Speaker 1: were not like the hedonists at all. They actually thought
Speaker 1: that pleasure was to be avoided, that if you're going
Speaker 1: to lead a virtuous life, you basically need to needed
Speaker 1: to be um, take a vowid poverty, um issue any
Speaker 1: comforts or pleasures, just basically be a bit of a jackass.
Speaker 1: Really kind of the idea of like, you know, the
Speaker 1: guys who like walk around and whip themselves self flagellation, right,
Speaker 1: that would have been a very cynical thing to do.
Speaker 1: In the original sense of the term. Yeah, and our
Speaker 1: own article brings up this guy. Apparently he was a
Speaker 1: pretty notable cynic diogenous. I think diogenes diogenes of sinope.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's sinope or signope. I bet
Speaker 1: a snope. Okay, we'll go with that. Sounds nice, So
Speaker 1: diogenesis connected dianetics of Elrond Hover. Uh he was. He
Speaker 1: was one of these guys that would, uh and they
Speaker 1: the example he's in here. He would he would go
Speaker 1: barefoot in the cold weather just to like acclimate his body,
Speaker 1: and his friends would just watch with their arms crossed
Speaker 1: and shake their head like what. Yeah. But he would
Speaker 1: also bark at them right and said that you need
Speaker 1: to be doing this stuff like you and your luxurious
Speaker 1: things need to be more like me. You like that wine,
Speaker 1: You're a loser for drinking that wine. You're a loser
Speaker 1: for enjoying it. That was his thing. Yeah, you should
Speaker 1: be a cynic, right, And he was definitely not one
Speaker 1: of those go along and get along types. Right. Doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like it, So maybe that is a little bit
Speaker 1: where it evolved from it. Certainly, he certainly seems to
Speaker 1: have taken cynicism to the extreme. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the legends of this of cynicism is that, um,
Speaker 1: he was at a banquet once and he was I think,
Speaker 1: kind of telling everybody what jerks they were for enjoying themselves.
Speaker 1: No idea who invited this guy, but they yeah, but
Speaker 1: they threw bones at him like he was a dog,
Speaker 1: like here, eat these bones, enjoy yourself for once. Uh
Speaker 1: maybe they were saying, I'm just paraphrasing, but um he said,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll show you I think your bones and
Speaker 1: hempeate on them. Which this whole thing is just taken
Speaker 1: like a violent, weird turn violent. And we still haven't
Speaker 1: gotten to the root of where cynicism came to be understood,
Speaker 1: as as how we how we use it today. The
Speaker 1: best I could find was that it lies in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century with Russo, who was a critic of the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: who was, from what I understand, the embodiment of modern cynicism.
Speaker 1: He couldn't just trust that the Enlightenment and rationalism were
Speaker 1: the way to go and that it led to good things.
Speaker 1: He's a huge vociferous critic of the Enlightenment, and I
Speaker 1: think was either self labeled the cynic or label the cynic,
Speaker 1: and that was the modern use of the word. Haven't
Speaker 1: seen it everywhere, but that's the closest I've found man
Speaker 1: ancient Greece. How'd you like to hang around there for
Speaker 1: like a week. I don't know that I would. It
Speaker 1: just seems like such a crazy time, and that all
Speaker 1: these deep thinkers and philosophers and then hey, let's go
Speaker 1: he's fourteen people in a room with some farm animals
Speaker 1: and some feathers, and see what kind of party we
Speaker 1: can have. Yeah, I mean, I guess I want to
Speaker 1: take that back if I ever got the opportunity to
Speaker 1: travel anywhere in time for a week. Since I mentioned
Speaker 1: the farm animals, you're like, I hadn't thought about the
Speaker 1: farm animals. It just seems like a really crazy time
Speaker 1: in our history for man, almost like it's like it
Speaker 1: took place on a different planet. Yeah, you might as
Speaker 1: well have been, like Asian Greece is on Pluto. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: but so many things, I mean, and that's what I think,
Speaker 1: thinking about like the arts and sciences and mathematics is
Speaker 1: just like what weird amazing time. So we're gonna go fat,
Speaker 1: We're gonna fast forward a little bit in history so
Speaker 1: far we've generally been hanging out in the uh fourth, third,
Speaker 1: second century BC. Here, we'll take a few hundred years. Now,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to the nineteenth century, right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go to Um the Antibellum South, which is where, surprisingly,
Speaker 1: the term cakewalk came from. Yeah, and this was remember
Speaker 1: when we used to blog. Yes, this is a blog post.
Speaker 1: I don't need to tell you that because you wrote
Speaker 1: it and then send it to me yesterday. But I'm
Speaker 1: telling everyone else out there. We used to blog like
Speaker 1: everyone else did in the early two thousands. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is one of Josh's post And I had no
Speaker 1: idea did you read the blog post that I wrote?
Speaker 1: The Sorry, but this had has weird racist roots. When
Speaker 1: you hear term cake walk, everyone uses it now to
Speaker 1: say something that's super easy to do, absurdly easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a cake walk, Like you just basically show
Speaker 1: up and you you win the pride. It's a cake walk. Right.
Speaker 1: It turns out that that's actually extremely denigrating to um
Speaker 1: anti bellum slaves in the nineteenth century because cake walks
Speaker 1: used to be an actual thing. Yeah, this is distressing
Speaker 1: and weird to me, it really is, and especially that
Speaker 1: you can trace the evolution of the word for once. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: So here's what would happen on a plantation and how
Speaker 1: often did this happen. I would guess it was annual.
Speaker 1: It seems like something like that. So let's just say
Speaker 1: once a year every so often at the plantation, the
Speaker 1: white folks would get together and they would throw a
Speaker 1: big ball, like they would throw for themselves, but they
Speaker 1: would have the slaves played the part of the white people,
Speaker 1: and actually it was a ball for the slaves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't you know, like here, let me reward
Speaker 1: you with something nice. It's hey, dress up as us,
Speaker 1: and we'll all sit back and laugh at how you
Speaker 1: think we are right, and you do your best impression
Speaker 1: of of slave master and kind of entertain us right
Speaker 1: in a mocking, jeering way. Like have you heard of
Speaker 1: I know you have Saturnalia, which is like again a
Speaker 1: Greek I believe it was Greek maybe roman Um, this
Speaker 1: festival where social conventions were turned upside out and the
Speaker 1: masters became the servants and the servants became the masters
Speaker 1: for like a day, and the whole point of this
Speaker 1: was culturally socially that had actually reinforced social norms, because yes,
Speaker 1: these slaves in Saturnalia and then the slaves at the
Speaker 1: cakewalk were mocking the social conventions that they had to
Speaker 1: live in the other three hundred and sixty four days
Speaker 1: a year, but they were doing it within a socially
Speaker 1: prescribed framework that was really overseen by the people in charge.
Speaker 1: So yes, they were forced to do it, but they
Speaker 1: were allowed to do it, I think, is you know so,
Speaker 1: so actually in a really weird roundabout but very very
Speaker 1: real way, reinforce the social norms that that kept slavery afloat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't think we mentioned the reason cake comes
Speaker 1: into it to begin with is whichever couple uh in
Speaker 1: the cake walk did the best job and was able
Speaker 1: to mimic the white people the best got a cake
Speaker 1: as a as a prize. So the cake walk was
Speaker 1: an actual thing. And the story actually continues on a
Speaker 1: little further and it gets even worse to tell you
Speaker 1: the truth. Um, those cake walks they happened on plantations
Speaker 1: in the South, and so if you went to a
Speaker 1: cake walk, you were probably one of a very few
Speaker 1: number of people, especially outside of the South, who had
Speaker 1: been to one of these things. But the minstrel shows
Speaker 1: that led to the vaudeville shows in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: UM they would actually very frequently perform a cake walk,
Speaker 1: but the cake walks they did were basically making a
Speaker 1: mockery of even the mockery that the the slaves were undertaking. Right,
Speaker 1: So at the very least you could say of the
Speaker 1: cake walks that the real ones the slaves were most
Speaker 1: likely they meant the mockery that they were doing right.
Speaker 1: Even though they were allowed to mock it, they still
Speaker 1: meant it. The reason the minstrel shows were so horrible
Speaker 1: is that it was a cakewalk. It was a a
Speaker 1: staged version of a cake walk, making fun of the
Speaker 1: cake walks, so it even removed and robbed from the
Speaker 1: slaves that little bit of agency that the cake walks
Speaker 1: gave them because it was white minstrels in black face. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: so the but the the whole premise of the minstrel
Speaker 1: show version of the cake walk was not that the
Speaker 1: black slaves were mocking white society, but that they were
Speaker 1: actually doing this because they really wanted to emulate white society.
Speaker 1: But we're failing miserably at it. So it's a really
Speaker 1: despicable and disgusting change, conversion or perversion of the original intent,
Speaker 1: which is already pretty messed up to begin with, just
Speaker 1: just one of the many problems of minstrel shows. Right, So,
Speaker 1: the idea of cake walk, since more people saw minstrel
Speaker 1: shows than actually we're at a cake walk, this was
Speaker 1: the idea of the cake walk. So when people said
Speaker 1: this is a cake walk, the idea was that even
Speaker 1: if you were just clumsy and inept and could never
Speaker 1: hope to succeed at what you're trying to do, you
Speaker 1: could still win the cake That was the original usage
Speaker 1: of the word. So what I can't gather is is
Speaker 1: this a term now that like people just shouldn't use
Speaker 1: or has it changed such that it's not like a
Speaker 1: genuinely offensive thing. I don't know. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: too many people out there that take offense to it.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if that's because a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know what the origins of the worlds are. Not
Speaker 1: many people probably know this. Who knows? But you can
Speaker 1: also make the case that the use of it today
Speaker 1: is actually agi because cake walks are normally found in
Speaker 1: nursing home. Really, yeah, I never heard that, And the
Speaker 1: the couple's promenade is replaced with musical chairs. And even
Speaker 1: even in even in these these competitions of musical chairs,
Speaker 1: everybody's still basically a winner. I wonder if piece of
Speaker 1: cake comes from cake walk. Yes it does. So that
Speaker 1: piece of cake interesting, I think we just covered it.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm gonna start saying it was a total piece
Speaker 1: of pie. Right there you go, easy as pie. Well
Speaker 1: there you go. Where did that come from? Uh, it's
Speaker 1: probably somebody who knew what cake walk meant and wanted
Speaker 1: to change things a little. Or I wonder if that
Speaker 1: came from the fact that pie is generally easier than
Speaker 1: baking a cake. I don't know if that's true, is it?
Speaker 1: I think so, because there's not chemistry like you can
Speaker 1: bind some apples and cinnamon and stuff and throwing an oven.
Speaker 1: He got a pie. There's a pie maker just like
Speaker 1: through their iPod across the room, Like a pie is
Speaker 1: not gonna fall because you didn't put just the right
Speaker 1: amount of That's a good point. You know. There's no
Speaker 1: Lady Baltimore pile. I'll tell you that. I think what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is pie makers you need to step up
Speaker 1: your game. Try a cake. Try making a cake United
Speaker 1: take over. I love pie. We've had this talk. I
Speaker 1: like it all. I don't see any reason to to
Speaker 1: choose no, have both? Um, should we move on? Should
Speaker 1: we do Kafka esque? Yes? Sure, all right. So Franz Kafka,
Speaker 1: very famous writer. This is I did not know that
Speaker 1: a lot of most of his works were published after
Speaker 1: his death. I didn't know that either. But he had
Speaker 1: a knack for writing books. And I read The Metamorphosis
Speaker 1: in high school. But it feels like to his books
Speaker 1: had a central character that was going through some kind
Speaker 1: of like walking through molasses, some really hard struggle that
Speaker 1: they have no control over, probably have no hope of solving.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times it was a an I guess,
Speaker 1: an allegory for an oppressive government. Yeah, almost always right.
Speaker 1: So the person is being there, their forward progress of
Speaker 1: their life or whatever it is they're trying to do
Speaker 1: is either interrupted or um being opposed by some faceless,
Speaker 1: immutable yeah entity, typically in the form of like a
Speaker 1: government or an office or something like Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: movie the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil is probably accurately described
Speaker 1: as cough esque. I would guess that's absolutely right. But
Speaker 1: the Kafka, Um wrote, he's very well known for the
Speaker 1: Trial of the Metamorphosis. Um, but he wrote a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of the different uses of kafka Esque
Speaker 1: actually work because they definitely touch upon some of his
Speaker 1: different work. Right. So one of the uses of kafka
Speaker 1: Esque that came into fashion supposedly in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain fell. Um, well,
Speaker 1: the Iron curtain fell before that, but as as the
Speaker 1: the faceless centralized government bureaucracies like really kind of put
Speaker 1: their stamp on on the lives of all millions and
Speaker 1: millions of people. Apparently the word cough gaeste came into
Speaker 1: use then to kind of describe having to deal with
Speaker 1: these absurd bureaucracies that made zero sense but still could
Speaker 1: just shuffle you around for days on end if it
Speaker 1: wanted to. Yeah, And then the article uses a good
Speaker 1: example that it started getting misused and that somebody might
Speaker 1: say that they uh race to catch a bus and
Speaker 1: then got to the bus stop and they made this
Speaker 1: great effort to get there, but then they find out
Speaker 1: there's a bus driver's strike and said that that was
Speaker 1: kafka esk, when in fact that's just bad luck. It is.
Speaker 1: It's it's if that's the worst thing that happens to
Speaker 1: you that day, you're probably doing but just life. But
Speaker 1: that's not cough gask. No, it's not so um that that.
Speaker 1: But but that's not to say that there is a
Speaker 1: central definition of cough gask. It is a pretty wide um,
Speaker 1: widely defined, a multiply defined word. This guy does a
Speaker 1: good job of describing. And I thought it is an
Speaker 1: author named Frederick Carl with a K, and apparently in
Speaker 1: the New York Times he said this, what's kafka esque
Speaker 1: is when you enter a surreal world which all your
Speaker 1: control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which
Speaker 1: you have configured your own behavior begins to fall to pieces.
Speaker 1: When you find yourself against a force that does not
Speaker 1: lend itself to the way you perceive the world. You
Speaker 1: don't give up, You don't lie down and die. What
Speaker 1: you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment,
Speaker 1: with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand
Speaker 1: a chance. That's tough, Gask, especially the last part two.
Speaker 1: It's like you don't stand a chance, but you still try,
Speaker 1: You still try, because yeah, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Is just be like, Okay, well I guess I'll die.
Speaker 1: You still try to save yourself for to to to
Speaker 1: follow your self determination, but you're never going to win.
Speaker 1: You're doomed from the outset. That is super tough. Gask that.
Speaker 1: That dude, he was his biographer, so he's kind of
Speaker 1: an authority on him, right, you know, so doomed. In
Speaker 1: other words, you want to take one more break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, we're doing that right now. All right, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Now it's time for one of my favorites on this list. Yes, blood,
Speaker 1: I got called this a few years ago by my
Speaker 1: friend Scotty Scott. Come on, this is more than a
Speaker 1: few years ago. But I'm ashamed to say I had
Speaker 1: never even heard the word I used it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't remember what I was complaining about. Really, you hadn't
Speaker 1: heard the word ludite? Huh? Had never heard it? I
Speaker 1: mean this wasn't like six months ago. It's like five
Speaker 1: or six years ago. But he called me that. I
Speaker 1: think called me that, or maybe Emily did you go
Speaker 1: what I think? I was like, well, I'm no luddite,
Speaker 1: and then I like raced over and looked at him
Speaker 1: on my smartphone problem. Uh. Yeah, So people throw that
Speaker 1: word around to mean anyone who's anti technology basically, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people throw it out apparently. Um. Prince
Speaker 1: Charles railed against g m os famously he was called
Speaker 1: a ludite. I know France and UM just talk mad
Speaker 1: trash about Twitter. Yeah, I think on Twitter even I
Speaker 1: can't remember, but he was called a luddite. I don't
Speaker 1: remember how it played up, but I'm pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was on Twitter. Um. But yeah, any anybody who is like, um,
Speaker 1: like like we used I was just getting used to
Speaker 1: like Google docs, and all of a sudden, we're using
Speaker 1: base camp around here. And I think you called me
Speaker 1: a lot I didn't you or an old man one
Speaker 1: of the two. Non, okay, but you could have also
Speaker 1: said you're a luddite. The thing is is this is
Speaker 1: one of those words that has evolved to basically mean
Speaker 1: the exact same thing as a technophone, Right, somebody who's
Speaker 1: afraid of technology, either because they don't understand it or
Speaker 1: their words going to lead to the end of the world,
Speaker 1: whatever the reason. New technology makes you nervous, Right. That
Speaker 1: is such a generally accepted definition of this word that
Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes. It is um. It is
Speaker 1: the definition of blood. The thing is is, if you
Speaker 1: dig back in history, is totally wrong. Yeah Bloodyes, were
Speaker 1: people from ancient Greece. They were they were from Nottinghamshire.
Speaker 1: I love that word England and they were weavers. So
Speaker 1: what was beginning to happen and you can see how
Speaker 1: it got its roots here is automated looms came around
Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution, and they
Speaker 1: were like, wait a minute, this puts our jobs at risk,
Speaker 1: so we're not gonna take it. Like twisted sisters will
Speaker 1: eventually say we're not gonna take it, and they would
Speaker 1: go like, trash these looms. And they named themselves real
Speaker 1: they took the name or they were they were named.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how it panned out, but they were
Speaker 1: called Bloodites because decades before, and I think seventeen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: a guy in the same area named Ned Blood had
Speaker 1: trashed like asie hose reframe yeah, ned lud too many
Speaker 1: too many d's and too few other letters. Um. He
Speaker 1: trashed to hosiery frame and became kind of a hero,
Speaker 1: working class hero for doing that. And the thing is is, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get the idea that these people were afraid
Speaker 1: of these automated looms, and it was they were really
Speaker 1: afraid of technology. No, that is has zero to do
Speaker 1: with it. It turns out that looms had been in
Speaker 1: use for hundreds of years already. This is not really
Speaker 1: new technology, which is a kind of an ironic thing
Speaker 1: about the whole thing. What they were were it was
Speaker 1: class warfare is what they're engaged in, not anti technology.
Speaker 1: Um terrorism, Yeah, they were. They wanted to keep their jobs. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a ban on trade unions, so they had
Speaker 1: no well, let's say they had no choice. They felt
Speaker 1: like they had no choice rather than to go out
Speaker 1: and riot and trash these looms. Um. But they they
Speaker 1: they used all sorts of technology to do so. Well.
Speaker 1: I saw that the the to these people, to the Latites,
Speaker 1: the looms were they symbolized the concentration of wealth because
Speaker 1: they didn't own the looms. Somebody they worked for own
Speaker 1: the looms, and that they weren't seeing anything from They
Speaker 1: weren't reaping any benefits from these looms. So when they
Speaker 1: were destroying a loom, they were striking at the loom owner,
Speaker 1: this this wealthy person, which is why it was such
Speaker 1: class warfare rather than anti technology rioting. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't I think until the nineteen seventies that bloodite became
Speaker 1: kind of the more modern usage. Is that right? So
Speaker 1: I found so this this thing the seven says the seventies.
Speaker 1: There's actually an article in New Scientists that used the
Speaker 1: word in nineteen seventy. But apparently there was a famous
Speaker 1: essay called the Two Cultures by a scientist named CP.
Speaker 1: Snow and he basically said, we have a problem here
Speaker 1: because literary intellectuals and scientific intellectuals are beginning to diverge,
Speaker 1: and you literary intellectuals, you guys are basically nothing more
Speaker 1: than luddites. This is nineteen fifty three, and I think
Speaker 1: he might have been the first person to use it
Speaker 1: to mean technophobes or in this case, I think he
Speaker 1: was saying, like, you don't understand what the importance of
Speaker 1: the industrial revolution. Two people sat on that for seventeen years,
Speaker 1: and then New Science is like, the time is the right,
Speaker 1: let's bring it back, all right. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's that's my favorite. These are kind of like I
Speaker 1: think a few of these you can throw around your
Speaker 1: next dinner party and either make people think you're interesting
Speaker 1: or that you're an obnoxious jerk. It depends on how
Speaker 1: you present it. Agreed. You know, so what else we
Speaker 1: got here? I don't know. You want to do two
Speaker 1: or one? Let's do well, let's definitely do nim Rod.
Speaker 1: How about that Nimrod. This one confuses me because that
Speaker 1: Pixie song Nimrod's son. Oh yeah, so Nimrod actually did
Speaker 1: marry his mother. He had a mother wife for a queen,
Speaker 1: but he was That's not what he was known for.
Speaker 1: No that was a real Nimrod in the Bible, and
Speaker 1: Nimrod was if you've ever heard of Noah from the Bible,
Speaker 1: this Noah was the great grandfather of Nimrod. So he
Speaker 1: had quite a pedigree. He was Ham's son Ham. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we don't use that as a first name enough
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, here it is a last name occasionally,
Speaker 1: but John Ham. Yeah, with two m's, but you never
Speaker 1: hear like, hey, I'm Ham Johnson, good to meet you.
Speaker 1: That would be a great name for a sportscaster or
Speaker 1: a weather person. Ham Johnson casters the Ham Cast with
Speaker 1: Ham Clark and Ham Bryant. That's not bad, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's our spinoff idea and we threw around that word
Speaker 1: a lot in our ham Radio podcast because they're called hams.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what our ham Cast could be about, how
Speaker 1: nice ham radio operators are as well as bad comedy. Right,
Speaker 1: and then every once while we review a ham that
Speaker 1: we eat on air. Dude just figured it out. Look
Speaker 1: at that, I mean you predicted shark Nato. Alright, The
Speaker 1: ham Cast coming soon iTunes where if you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Somb his hams Son. He is a biblical figure. He
Speaker 1: was very well known as the founder of Babylon. Yes,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that. I'm not much of a Bible
Speaker 1: scholar myself. No, not really, um, but he was. He
Speaker 1: was the founder of Babylon and one of the big
Speaker 1: features of Babylon was the Tower of Babel. Yes, this
Speaker 1: one I did know about. Yeah, the Tower of Babel
Speaker 1: is what he was credited with constructing, and that was
Speaker 1: a structure on top of a temple with the idea
Speaker 1: that you could reach God ultimately and destroy God and
Speaker 1: push him around. Yeah. So not a good thing for
Speaker 1: ancient Christians. No, So God was like, um, I can
Speaker 1: kind of see into the future, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: let that happen. And he goes um different languages, she's am,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, the people who are building
Speaker 1: and constructing this tower Babbel can no longer speak to
Speaker 1: one another because they all speak different languages. And this
Speaker 1: is supposedly the origin story of different languages, foreign languages
Speaker 1: in the world. So everybody, since they couldn't really communicate
Speaker 1: with one another, went off their separate ways. And this
Speaker 1: is another one where they don't know for sure where
Speaker 1: it made the switch eventually to be like a dumb
Speaker 1: dumb but I think this Bugs Bunny. I think this
Speaker 1: holds water. It definitely has some legs. It tracks, uh
Speaker 1: Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny nineteen forties, shout out to our
Speaker 1: friend Jessica. Oh yeah, whose grandfather was Noah? Was Chuck Jones?
Speaker 1: That's right? Greater so, uh, Bugs Bunny. In one of
Speaker 1: the Elmer Fud episodes, who was a hunter? Um called
Speaker 1: him Nimrod in an episode, And I don't think we
Speaker 1: said Nimrod was known as a great hunter. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess that the irony was lost then, right, Yeah, They're like,
Speaker 1: I get it it. Yeah, So I don't know if
Speaker 1: they put Nimrod in there, because Nimrod was a great
Speaker 1: hunter if it just worked out that way. But it
Speaker 1: had to have been had to mean because that was
Speaker 1: the thing that was Fudd's whole thing. He was just
Speaker 1: terrible at hunting, but that's what he was always doing,
Speaker 1: was hunting, right, So we called him a nimrod, right,
Speaker 1: and I saw that it became into use of slang
Speaker 1: among teenagers in three. Yeah, that seems about right, does
Speaker 1: it really? Oh it feels like a very eighties I
Speaker 1: heard that a lot growing up. Really to me, it
Speaker 1: seems really square in like fifties. Oh no, I'm thinking like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear Nimrod and I think grody to the max
Speaker 1: and like pop callers and the cost alligators. Did you
Speaker 1: ever pop your collar? Sure? I always I never felt
Speaker 1: like I could pull it off. That was a bit
Speaker 1: of a prep I was too, but I just I
Speaker 1: don't know it. Never I tried it. I looked at
Speaker 1: myself in the mirror a lot. Well that's the key.
Speaker 1: He's popped the collar and go out the door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't have that kind of collar. Still, don't you
Speaker 1: get the get done with your flow, be cut poper
Speaker 1: collar and go Yeah. Yeah, as the other confidence, it's
Speaker 1: just foolishness. I was thinking the other day, how I
Speaker 1: haven't touched a hair brush since like seven or eight.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I literally have not put a brush or
Speaker 1: comb in my hair. Did you have one of those
Speaker 1: Goodies tortoise shell brushes from the eighties? Remember those? Now
Speaker 1: I had a Goodies and it wasn't tortoise shell, but
Speaker 1: I think it's probably the same thing where yeah it
Speaker 1: had it been, or the burnout come where you had
Speaker 1: it sticking out of your back pocket and every I'd
Speaker 1: never really used combs. I was a brush guy, but
Speaker 1: to get my wings down. But ever since high school
Speaker 1: is I've just been a finger comer? Yeah? Same here
Speaker 1: these these these five fingers. Yeah, to get out of
Speaker 1: the shower, just gonna spike the hair up and it
Speaker 1: stays there. Yeah, it's nice. It's very lucky. You don't
Speaker 1: use product. No, man, that's insane. Are you kidding? Man?
Speaker 1: My hair won't stand up. It's just limp and lifeless.
Speaker 1: Well minus too. I don't wash my hair much. How
Speaker 1: often do you wash your hair every day? Oh, well
Speaker 1: that's your problem. Well, there's your problem. Here's your problem.
Speaker 1: Get a little get a little little funk build up.
Speaker 1: I need a little funk. I guess product is natural funk.
Speaker 1: Go party with some farm animals. And I think that
Speaker 1: was a George Clinton album. My product is natural funk.
Speaker 1: It's nice. Should have been, it's it definitely should have been.
Speaker 1: And now because of the Sharknado thing again, that's his
Speaker 1: comeback album. Uh, you got anything else? Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about George Clinton, you can type
Speaker 1: his name into the search part house to works dot
Speaker 1: com and it'll bring up something. And since I said's something,
Speaker 1: it's time for listening to mail. I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: vaping backlash. Oh yeah, we're hearing about it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: nice to hear the vapors stand up and be like, hey, dudes,
Speaker 1: to heck with you. Yeah. So, in retrospect, I think
Speaker 1: we kind of made fun of them a little too much. Think, yeah,
Speaker 1: in retrospect. Sure, so this is from Peter, So this
Speaker 1: is a mea culpa? Then, well sort of. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: usually enjoy your work, which is that's always a great start.
Speaker 1: But the vaping episode, come on, guys, the whole episode
Speaker 1: reeked of mockery and belittled all vapors, even the ones
Speaker 1: who are simply using it. As a harm reduction method
Speaker 1: or to quit smoking. I'm fifty one and use the
Speaker 1: cigrettes to quit smoking instantly and permanently. Mind you, about
Speaker 1: eight years ago. It's the only thing that worked for me.
Speaker 1: All I can do all day is puff flat fat clouds.
Speaker 1: Your research was seriously lacking in this one. You would
Speaker 1: have been much more informed if you actually talked to
Speaker 1: a vaping advocate. I I wanna. I want to interject here.
Speaker 1: Our research is not at all lacking. We did a
Speaker 1: ton of research for this episode. Please go on. Well,
Speaker 1: we tried to get in touch with vapors, but they
Speaker 1: are all out on the sidewalk blocking backglouds or at
Speaker 1: least someone on the local scene. Guys from this century, preferably,
Speaker 1: things have come a long way in the last ten years.
Speaker 1: Some of the facts he uses in quotes you were
Speaker 1: citing based on seriously flawed research. For example, the vapor
Speaker 1: vaporized metals particles portion was brand new. Nobody, nobody, he says,
Speaker 1: would vape at the temperatures needed to replicate that in
Speaker 1: the real world. Um, but as usual, people see the
Speaker 1: headline and don't dig deeper. Uh. This guy is starting
Speaker 1: to really upset me to really. Yeah, we've researched just
Speaker 1: as much as we ever do. Buddy, what's this guy's name.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. Okay, we did get called out.
Speaker 1: A couple of other people said that those temperatures, like,
Speaker 1: you don't vape at those temperatures. No, but you can
Speaker 1: and some people do. And I, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: the leaching metals thing was not about temperatures. It was
Speaker 1: about the newness of the coil. Okay, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm refereeing, uh calling people stupid and dummies
Speaker 1: for vaping at zero nicotine levels. Smack my head. There's
Speaker 1: more to cigarette addiction than the nicotine issue. I think
Speaker 1: aping could potentially eradicate smokers from our society the very
Speaker 1: least safe, thousands of lives and millions of dollars in
Speaker 1: medical and pharma. To paint it all with the idiotic
Speaker 1: foolishness brush is playing wrong in a real disservice to
Speaker 1: your audience. I'm pretty piste off. As you can tell.
Speaker 1: There are only I'm sorry, sure, there are people who
Speaker 1: vape that make us all look silly, but man, this
Speaker 1: is the only smoking cessation method that works for many people.
Speaker 1: You just turned a lot of people away from it
Speaker 1: who could really benefit possibly not die disappointed listener here
Speaker 1: that it's from Peter Joett in Vancouver. Peter, Peter, I
Speaker 1: will totally agree with you. Our mockery was way over
Speaker 1: and be above and beyond. We yucky. Um, totally for sure,
Speaker 1: and I apologize. I want to make a couple points here.
Speaker 1: We definitely definitely did our research. We don't just phone
Speaker 1: episodes and it doesn't matter what we think of the topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we still do our research. And then secondly, I really
Speaker 1: don't feel like we turned people off of vaping and
Speaker 1: onto tobacco, because if I remember correctly, we definitely made
Speaker 1: it clear that you were even dumber if you smoke tobacco.
Speaker 1: The tobacco was far, far worse. I think the whole
Speaker 1: point of that episode was that vaping was not necessarily
Speaker 1: as good for you as it's been portrayed in the
Speaker 1: same media that you railed against earlier. I would agree
Speaker 1: with that. I don't think we I think we po
Speaker 1: po all forms of nicotine and definitely did there you go.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you're using it to get off
Speaker 1: of tobacco, that's great. Step two is getting off of
Speaker 1: the baking. Uh. Well, if you're like Peter and you're
Speaker 1: pod about something you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us. I'm at joshum Clark, Chuck's
Speaker 1: at movie Crush uh, and we're both at s Y
Speaker 1: s K podcast, Chuck's on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know and slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and has always showed us
Speaker 1: her home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. M