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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. I don't have any scientific statistics about this,

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Speaker 1: but I'm going to say it's a safe bet that

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Speaker 1: you have either given or received a piggyback ride at

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Speaker 1: some point in your life. But if you stop to

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Speaker 1: ponder that name, the piggyback ride, I mean, what's that

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Speaker 1: all about. Although some pigs do grow to an impressive size,

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Speaker 1: we humans have never really ridden on their backs, partially

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Speaker 1: because they can grow to an impressive size and they

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Speaker 1: can be opinionated. The origins of the word piggyback stretch

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Speaker 1: to the mid fifteen hundreds and back. Then, when people

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Speaker 1: carried bundles of various goods on their backs or shoulders,

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Speaker 1: or on those of animals, that was called pickpack, since

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Speaker 1: you picked up a pack to put it on your back,

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Speaker 1: or possibly pick was a verbal variant of the word pitch,

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Speaker 1: meaning to eve or fasten, since you were pitching the

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Speaker 1: pack up on your shoulders either way, As is so

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Speaker 1: often the case with language, pickpack morphed over the years.

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Speaker 1: First it became pick a pack, and then pick a

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Speaker 1: back since the pack being picked went on someone's back.

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Speaker 1: Things get a little murkier from there. Some people think

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Speaker 1: that by the mid eighteen hundreds, pick a back morphed

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Speaker 1: into similar sounding phrases like pick a back or pickyback,

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Speaker 1: which then eventually became piggyback. Others think that around that

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Speaker 1: time people were confused by the pick a portion of

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Speaker 1: pick a back, so they changed it to a word

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Speaker 1: that they were familiar with that sounded similar piggy This

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Speaker 1: is a language process called folk etymology. No one knows

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Speaker 1: for sure whether people in Britain or North America were

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Speaker 1: the first to bring pigs into the conversation when speaking aloud,

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Speaker 1: but the earliest written reference seems to be from Britain

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Speaker 1: from eighteen thirty seven, when a text called a dialogue

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Speaker 1: in the Devonshire Dialect explained that schoolboys would sometimes carry

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Speaker 1: each other in a pigaback ride. In the United States,

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Speaker 1: the earliest written references to piggyback with the meaning that

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Speaker 1: we use today are from the eighteen eighties. Of course,

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Speaker 1: today piggyback is used in a wide variety of contexts,

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Speaker 1: not just for giving kids rides on your shoulders. In

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Speaker 1: the field of transportation, piggybacking means something riding on top

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Speaker 1: of something else, such as cars being transported on a

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Speaker 1: train's flatbed. It's also used in the trucking industry to

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Speaker 1: denote a trailer that's hauling up to four more trucks

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Speaker 1: in a chain. Each truck's front is mounted to a

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Speaker 1: hitch while the rear wheels touch the ground. In astrophotography,

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Speaker 1: piggybacking describes the practice of attaching a camera to a telescope,

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Speaker 1: then shooting photos through the camera lens. In the music world,

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Speaker 1: drummers often employ symbol piggybacking by mounting two or more

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Speaker 1: symbols on the same stand. Healthcare providers can create intravenous piggybacks,

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Speaker 1: where a smaller secondary IV bag is connected to the

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Speaker 1: main line. The piggyback bag is used for intermittent treatments,

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Speaker 1: and the piggyback setup allows the patient to avoid having

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Speaker 1: a second dive site PopEd in. And then there's piggybacking credit,

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Speaker 1: which refers to the practice of becoming an authorized user

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Speaker 1: on the credit card account of a person with a

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Speaker 1: good credit rating, which can help you establish credit or

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Speaker 1: up your credit score. However, the traditional meaning does still apply.

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Speaker 1: According to Guinness World Records. The fastest mile long piggyback

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Speaker 1: race was completed in eleven minutes and eleven point eighty

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Speaker 1: one seconds in twenty fifteen. The event took place on

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Speaker 1: a track in Smith, England as part of an army fundraiser.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article why do we

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Speaker 1: call it a piggyback Ride? On HowStuffWorks dot com? Written

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Speaker 1: by bealanie Red Seepy McManus. Brainstuffs production of iHeartRadio in

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Speaker 1: partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

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Speaker 1: Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app,

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