April 3, 2018 • 57 mins
Historical words often morph and change to take on new meanings. Today on the podcast, Josh and Chuck sit down and talk about a handful of them, their original meanings, and how they changed over the years to reflect almost nothing about their original use.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and uh, let's see, we've
got a couple of producers out there. We're in a
new studio. We've got Will and man Guesh from Part
(00:24):
Time Genius. It's like we all have our pants on.
It's a that's weird. That's the weird part. It's a
it's a just a big family fest. Stuff you should know. Yeah,
welcome you guys. Thank you. Guys were in this brand
new studio. Isn't this exciting? From from the fromale the hide.
It's a lot like a science class And yes, yes,
(00:46):
I think that's what happens in here at night science class.
There making extra money to pay for this new studio
to fill everybody in. We're just doing like in joke
frenzy right now, Stuff you should Know or I'm sorry,
How Stuff Work says um expanded. We've got so many
podcasts these days, and so many coming down the pike
that they've built out new studios and we're using this
(01:07):
is our first time, but you guys have used this
one before, right, yeah, it's an awesome studio. So Chuck,
let's introduce these guys. Huh, okay, well, will is who
you've heard speak? Man guesses who you've heard laugh? I
would say you do have a great laugh uh, and
they are the we should have a laugh off at
some point you and me laugh. Right, I've been told
(01:28):
I don't know all right man, guests, you go oh wow. Yeah. Uh.
So these guys are the hosts of Part Time Genius,
and they just let us know that it is your
and co founders of Mental Plus many years ago. But
today is your one year anniversary. We have been at
(01:48):
house stuff works for one year. Congratulation. Hopefully Jerry will
work in some sort of post production sound effect or
applause or the fanfare button. Right, yeah, well, congrat um
and you guys. So you guys have been doing Part
Time Genius? Has it come out like three times a
week from the get go? No, it was two times
a week at the beginning, and then and we decided
(02:10):
we didn't have enough work. Right there was it was
around the time of the eclipse, and we thought, you
know what we should have done in eclipse episode and
let's just share some fun facts and then the next
week we were like, you know what, there's been some
really bad news, as there has been frequently recently, and
so we thought, you know what, let's do an episode
on nine things to make you smile. And so most
(02:32):
of our episodes are big questions where we ask a
question like, you know, will we ever be able to
live without sleep? Or something like that, and so we
decided to start throwing in these bonus episodes where we
do nine things about whatever. It might be, facts about
Mr Rogers or house plants. Yeah, you know, house plants,
the usual. But there's still pretty robust episodes of like
twenty minutes basically. Right. Yeah, so three times, three times
(02:53):
a week. My hat is off to you. I'm also
vaguely threatened by that because I'm worried, like, did you
guys put out three a week? Yeah? We were running
at the Classic. I don't know if that counts because
it's not extra work, you know what I mean. So
I'm a little a little nervous, but still it's pretty awesome.
We're so building up to get the Classics Wednesdays, Thursdays
and Fridays, right, that's right, So how did you guys
(03:14):
end up at housetuf works because Chuck said, you're you're
the co founders of mental floss, Like, I feel like
that's worth saying a couple more times. Yeah, Mental Flaws magazine. Ye,
like a site we used and still use all Ye,
actually we don't use anymore now that you guys, that's
not true. I emailed them about a bug. I found
a bug where like if you went to go put
(03:35):
the like the like easy reader format or whenever I'm Firefox,
it would bring up a different article. So I let
them know I did, but I was like one degree
separated from the dev team mental Floss. Yeah, Josh emailed me,
and of course we reached out to them, and they
were very much appreciative like that. It's a great team there.
(03:55):
It's still obviously a great site, and uh, we love
all the crew at mental floss. And we were just
excited about what's happening in the world of podcasting. We've
been big fans of you guys for a long time,
thank you, and just knowing how much is happening in
this space. Um, we were eager to try something new
when we were approached about the idea of coming here
and and we've been doing mental Flass. We've been talking
(04:16):
about Mental Class since we were nineteen, you know, like
like it's been a long time and and we've done
like so many fun projects, so many things. But by
the end of it there we're just managing so many people,
you know, and we weren't getting to do the creative
stuff as much. At least that's how I felt. And
when we started, like you know, thinking about podcasts, it
(04:37):
just really felt like how Mental Class started, where it
was conversations and it felt like intimate and the way
you have to build such an amazing community of people
who care and are so invested, and and somewhere along
the way I felt like, um, you know, mental Class
was such a massive site that I didn't know the
readers anymore. Too many and somehow, somehow, even the a
(05:00):
podcasts are huge, Like you know, you guys have millions
and millions of listeners, like they all feel like they
know you, and we sort of missed that connection. Is
truly in the cradle, guys. Very sad with the Silverspoon. Well,
I'm glad you guys are here. I know Chuck is too,
so welcome, Welcome to the family. After a year, Well
(05:22):
on our first day here. Were talked about this previously,
but like we we went around the house, works offices,
we met everyone. We're in these meetings and stuff. Everyone
went home early and and and yeah that's a staple.
It's amazing. I mean, everyone works hard, but they also
get to spend time with their families. And uh, when
we got in the elevator, We're like, where did they
(05:43):
keep the jerks? Like there don't seem to be any
in this company. It was just so not did you say,
are we the jerk? That's what I said, We're here
at the jerks. Yeah, that's one of the really cool things,
Like we I think we differ from a lot of
podcast companies in that way, and that we have all
(06:03):
this great like talent on the roster and we're also
going out and developing cool stuff. Yeah, very cool. So
so enough about all this, Let's talk about the show
some more. All Right, you guys have like quizzes typically
you have lots of guests on what are some of
the best um questions that you've asked and some of
the best guests that you've had so far. I mean,
that's been one of the most fun parts about this
(06:25):
is getting to reach out to experts in different things,
and even experts in areas that we didn't realize there
were experts. You know, we got to talk to America's
only certified water Somali A. I mean, we always hear
about in the world of wine and that there's an
expert in the world of water that these fine restaurants
reach out to and getting me hear the ins and
outs of that. But it was Antarctica's poet in residence
(06:46):
right right, So it's wonderful or she's not allowed to
leave the hu Well she eventually left, but we didn't
get to take a lot of hot showers, don't you.
I can imagine, And she probably swam away made her getaway.
We had a a guest on recently that an author
of a book called When, and it was about the
science of perfect timing. His name is Daniel Pink, and
he was teaching us about, you know, how much time
(07:08):
of day affects all of us and helping us learn
the uh, the disturbing fact that we're all a little
more racist than the afternoons. And it was just weird
things like that. He was talking about staging these court
cases where they have these kind of mock jurors and
they put them together. This was not on a real trial,
that would be an unfortunate way to test this, and um,
they would test their behavior and whether they were more
(07:30):
or less likely to convict someone um in certain scenarios.
And they looked at what happened in the morning and
what happened in the afternoon, and had people of different races,
and they were more likely to come down more hard
on on someone of you know, a different race in
the afternoons. Yeah, I mean it really does have to
do with our our body clocks are circadian rhythms, and
(07:54):
it's honestly that's that's that's part of it. But yeah,
the the science of that perfect timing, and uh, we
learned we've changed our behavior around this. A different fact
that came out of that one was that they've done
a statistical analysis on teams that do more high fiving
and chest bumping, and it said head slapping. I'm not
sure exactly what that dangerous mango slaps my head before
(08:16):
every episode and they are actually shown to win more frequently.
It might be because they're winning, so they're high fiving.
Probably not high fiving, but it's just a lot of
fun to have these people on that have studied such
fascinating things. You know, we consider them the experts. Were
not experts, but it's a selfish thing for us. We
get to sit back and learn from people who know
so much about so many interesting things. Yeah, we we
(08:38):
had we didn't show on rudeness and and whether there's
a rudeness epidemic. And there's this guy at Danny Wallace
who wrote this great book, and one of the facts
he was talking about was that this mayor in uh
Cortina or somewhere in Columbia he uh he fired the
corrupt police force and hired a bunch of mimes to
(08:59):
mock people as they were jaywalking. And it basically shames
the into being more polite. It was amazing or annoyed
them into being either way. But I mean, I feel
like minds are underused career. They really are, especially as
civil servants arise in mind violence. That's right, there's another
(09:22):
study being done about how that could have happened. Well,
everybody out there, if you haven't picked up on the
idea that you would love Will and Man guests show,
all you have to do is go to their website.
It's part time Genius dot Com. Right, part Time Genius
dot Show. We decided to check it to another lot,
right Yeah, yeah, Um that's really really um forward thinking
(09:42):
of you or dot com was, but we were really
thinking about it. Yeah, Part Times Genius dot Show. You've
got the podcast archives on there, so everybody go check
it out, yeah, or of course iTunes or where we
get your podcast. That's right, and that what we say.
I think we say those things all right, fis bumps, guys,
no head slaps, Thank you so much. All right, thanks guys.
(10:10):
It's always a joy to hang out with those two. Huh.
I love those guys. They are truly good guys. Um, so, Chuck.
We are talking about words today, Yeah, specific words, historical
words that people may or may not be using correctly,
correct that people may or may not have really defined
(10:33):
some of these instances. There's really no problem with them,
but they're fun to talk about, right. It's that whole
descriptive ist prescriptive ist thing, you remember, that whole thing
we used to get into. Boy, it's a trip down
memory lane, isn't it. Thing? So so like descriptivists are
kind of like language is constantly involved. Just go with
the flow. Prescriptivists are like, no, no, that languages language,
(10:58):
and you're if you're using it wrong, you're wrong, right, Um,
Like David Foster Wallace was a prescriptivist, like basically, grammar
nazi is another way to put it right. Yeah, And
I want to go ahead and this is not on
our list, but let's go ahead and throw decimate in there,
because um, that is a word that we used to
hear from a lot when we said something was decimated,
(11:18):
and we would have perse script which one is the
yes email us and say decimate means you know, desa
is by tin, so reducing by ten percent is what
it means, guys. And eventually I had just started writing
people back and saying, you know, the modern dictionary even
(11:39):
says that it has now come to learn decimate can
just mean you know, yeah, later waste wiping out like this,
this bush mails decimated me last night. It well reduced
you by probably more than ten percent, depends on how
But anyway, that's always been a grete for me. Like
even when it's officially changed its stephan and over time
(12:01):
and recognized as such, people will still get their hackles up.
And I'm like, dude, it's usually dude. Yeah, but that's
a prescriptive ist railing against it. Well yeah, and it's
also like, come on, man, like I'm sorry, we're not
using the fifteen century usage of the word. So yeah,
decimate they got their tunic in a twist, no tunics technically,
(12:26):
So I guess this one is. I think this episode
is kind of for the prescriptivists if you think about it,
I still don't know who's who. Prescriptivists are the ones
who are who you're talking about the what are we
prescriptive ist pennant? So we're not that, no, no, okay,
we're definitely we go with that to each each their
own motto. Yeah, and this is, of course another we
(12:47):
haven't done a top ten in a while, but as
everyone knows, our top tens are never ten U And
it kind of occurred to me that's usually because some
of them we just think are dumb, and also because
of because the way we go these things would be
a way we're an hour long, we decimate the top
ten lists. Actually, yeah, alright, so let's start. Man, we're
(13:10):
talking again. I don't know if we got this across
yet or not, but we're talking about historic words that
come from history that are either used wrong or not
fully not not. They don't really get across the original
intent necessarily. They're just kind of evolved over time, right,
and the first to kind of pair together quite well,
(13:33):
like a nice like a nice wine and a shot
of bush mills. Right. Oh god, I'm not even on
a bush mills kick. I don't know where this came from.
We had bush mills and a long time. Yeah, and
it's not something you would normally shoot it either, oh yeah,
or dropping a glass of cabernet. Right, yeah, I think
people shoot bush mills. Yeah, you probably shoot anything. You
(13:56):
know who do headonists? Very nice, thank you, very clever.
So that's so that's the first word is hedonism, right yeah.
So uh, most people think of the word hedonism as
and and they do mention in this article that there
is a nudist resort in Jamaica called Hedonism, which I
and there's hedonism too. I think there's more than one. Well,
(14:19):
there's a lot of nudists crowded on the island. I
remember remember when we did our nudist episode. Um, I
ran across an article about like a swingers resort. I
think it was hedonism and it was just like it
may have been immense health article or BuzzFeed or something
like that, but it was like, I want to a
(14:40):
nudist swingers resort and basically never want to have sex again.
I'm so grossed out with myself humanity. Yeah. Yeah, not
to say that that's hedonism, because they may eventually be
a sponsor one day, that's right. But hedonism is most
people use that throw that word around to equate with
just the ultimate in like sexual slash uh party, debauchery.
(15:07):
Debauchery is a great word for it. Drinking fornicating orgies
or find uh scented oils and silken linen's being completely ruined. Yeah,
so that is that's basically what most people think of
with hedonism. It's like giving into your every desire, especially
(15:29):
carnal desires um even at great personal risk and without
much foresight. Right. Apparently that is not at all the
case of what hedonism meant originally, but you can kind
of see how it evolves over time because hedonism stems
from the Greek word for pleasure, right, hedonia, And the
(15:51):
idea is that originally the Heatonist it was an umbrella
school of philosophy. I think We kind of touched on
it in our Stoicism episode, but it was an umbrella
philosophy where I basically said, there's two things in life
that are that you need to pay attention to, and
everything else falls into place if you are maximizing pleasure
(16:14):
and avoiding pain. Yes, those are the two things, pleasure
and paint. Maximize one, minimize the other. Yeah, But the
whole thing is they don't say. Nowhere in there does
it say and by the way, this involves um orgies,
um charcooterie trays, which is weird because we're talking the
Greeks here. You know. Well, I mean, I'm sure hedonism
(16:37):
it also meant that, but it didn't exclusively mean that,
you know what I'm saying, so like, it could also
mean delights of the mind, intellectual pursuits, stuff like that.
It even says altruism, which is it's kind of funny
to think about someone saying like I brought I bought
groceries from my elderly neighbor and it was a pure
(17:00):
hedonistic sensation came up from So you're such a hedonist.
But technically back then that could have been the way
you might use that word. Yeah, And and even more
to the point that hedonist said, there is there's something
you really want to pay attention to here. Yeah, you
want to experience pleasure, but it is really easy for
(17:23):
pleasure to turn into pain or degradation or addiction. And
you have to bear this stuff in mind or else
you're you're you're going to pursue pleasure at your own expense,
and then you're not doing it right. Um, there's actually
this guy in the I think the eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham.
I can't remember if he was at Cambridge or Oxford.
(17:45):
Were five million emails, surely we have. But he was
a fellow or a dawn or whatever of philosophy at
this university that's still around, and every year at one
of their annual banquets they bring his mummified head out
and put it at the head of the table. I
think on it like a wax dummy. So he's dressed
(18:07):
as himself and they've got the guy's mummified head. That's
how much of a revered philosopher he was. He came
up with this thing called philosophic calculus. It's basically a
an equation an equation, right, This is pretty dry, but
it's the whole point is is to pursue pleasure as
much as possible and to avoid pain. And he said,
(18:29):
you have to consider things like the duration of the
pleasurable event, the intensity um, how certain it is, the
fecundity like is it going to spawn more pleasure afterward? Um,
the purity will it actually devolve into pain? Um? The
extent of it, which means how many people are are
affected by it um. And if you take all these
(18:51):
factors into account, you can you can run any experience
or any decision you have in life through that and
decide I'm not gonna do this, or yeah, I'll have
that bite of cool whip out of the fridge. Is
anyone still use that? I'm sure there's a few people
out there that do. They're very exacting, I mentioned so,
(19:11):
so that's hedonism. Yeah right, we took all the pleasure
out of that pretty quick. But that leads to another
word that's misused frequently, epicurean. Epicurean. Yeah, that's the thing
that nowadays you hear people use the word epicurean. There
are probably a lot of restaurants that have a name
on some derivation of this word, but it's tied into
(19:33):
food and drink, like really fine food, top shelf wine
and food. If you have epicurean tastes, then you were
someone who concerns yourself with the finer things at in
the dining room specifically, right, And it's not quite as much,
it's not quite as much identified with overdoing it as hedonism,
(19:54):
But there's um I think more than anything. It's like
you said, it's it's the finer things, but you might
overindulge here there. Yeah, and if you use that word
about yourself then you are probably pretty obnoxious. Yeah, it's
people like you who are needed at parties for other
people to avoid. But the word, once again from Greek epicure,
(20:16):
came from the philosopher Epicurus, and people, if you don't
know much about the root of the word, you probably
think that his whole deal was about food, and that's
not necessarily the case. But he was a a hedonist
in there, right. Yeah, he was like one of the
great hedonistic thinkers, but in the ancient Greek sense of
the word. Right. So his whole his whole deal was
(20:38):
at our axia, which was inner tranquility, and that you
should pursue pleasure by just being content rather than going
off and getting like wasted or eating a bunch or
something like that. That and that if you did have desire,
it was better to eliminate it than satisfy it. But
it was. But if you did satisfy it, you should
do it thoughtfully your mind. So really he was kind
(21:01):
of the opposite of what people who consider themselves epicureans
or Yeah, but also didn't he have a lot to
say about following your own path when it comes to that.
It's like it was very, very centered around the self.
So you do whatever you whatever is best for you
in the moment, and not necessarily what someone else thinks
(21:22):
might be the best thing for you. Right. But again
the point is his virtue um like value hedonism, like
doing things that are actually good and that produced good
rather than um, I'm going to shoot this heroin even
though my my significant other doesn't want me to. That's
that's not what it was about at all. It was moderation.
You have to find what gives you pleasure in life
(21:45):
rather than looking to other people, look inward to yourself. Right.
But yeah, moderation was a huge part of it. Yeah,
And what I couldn't find and that was the case
with a few of these is where it got all
wrapped up in food. I couldn't either, Um, I think
it was people like food. So we just sort of yeah,
that's all I can think of. I couldn't find. I
(22:05):
was really hoping that there was like a turning point
where it was like, this is where it happened. And
there are a few places where I couldn't find that
kind of thing. It's just not out there, is lost
to history. All right, So we're disappointed. So we're going
to take a break, go put our heads together, pull
ourselves together, and turn our attitude around. We'll be right back.
(22:51):
All right, we're back. We're gonna stick around in ancient
grease for a little while long. Why not? I mean
they've produced a lot of misused words. Frankenstin's all open here?
Do you like frankinsense? I don't even know what it is.
It's a it's a resin based incense. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think Have you smelled it? Sure? Yeah? I
mean I was raised Catholic? Oh is that a Is
(23:13):
that a thing? Have you ever been to a Catholic mass?
M Nope? So there they'll go through with like this
big incense burner and just stink up the whole church
with frankinsense. I've seen that in movies and they're well,
that's what they're doing, is burning frankinsense, and it's actually
pretty pretty good smell. Now, the only Catholic jams I've
been involved in were sadly a couple well wine tastings now,
(23:36):
a funeral, uh, and a wedding or two maybe maybe four, Well,
it seemed like four four weddings and that was close. Uh.
So cynic is the word? Did you already say that? No?
I didn't, Okay, cynec is the word, and this is one.
I kind of like this word as we use it
(23:57):
today because I try to abandon cynicism in my own
life and I'm pretty turned off by cynicism as a whole, okay,
which means in our usage is like a cynic to
me is someone who's uh, who's always suspicious, suspicious of
(24:22):
what's going on, Like yeah, like that person is doing
something seemingly pure, but um cynical, So I wonder what
that's all about. It can't be true. I saw a
great um definition of cynicism and the modern usage a
cynic as a person whose faded belief or kurdled trust
had left him unfit for attachment to others. That's a
(24:45):
like a that's a deep cynic definition. Yeah, that's pretty heavy,
but yeah, it can be a little lighter than that.
It could just be somebody who's not willing to just
kind of go with the flow and take things at
face value and be happy about things. Trust other people. Yeah, trust,
I think has a lot to do with it, right, agreed.
So this is one of those words I actually kind
of found where this one turns, which we'll get to
(25:07):
in a second, But it's based on so cynicism again
is a is an ancient Greek philosophy, and the cynics
were not like the hedonists at all. They actually thought
that pleasure was to be avoided, that if you're going
to lead a virtuous life, you basically need to needed
to be um, take a vowid poverty, um issue any
comforts or pleasures, just basically be a bit of a jackass.
(25:31):
Really kind of the idea of like, you know, the
guys who like walk around and whip themselves self flagellation, right,
that would have been a very cynical thing to do.
In the original sense of the term. Yeah, and our
own article brings up this guy. Apparently he was a
pretty notable cynic diogenous. I think diogenes diogenes of sinope.
(25:55):
I don't know if it's sinope or signope. I bet
a snope. Okay, we'll go with that. Sounds nice, So
diogenesis connected dianetics of Elrond Hover. Uh he was. He
was one of these guys that would, uh and they
the example he's in here. He would he would go
barefoot in the cold weather just to like acclimate his body,
(26:17):
and his friends would just watch with their arms crossed
and shake their head like what. Yeah. But he would
also bark at them right and said that you need
to be doing this stuff like you and your luxurious
things need to be more like me. You like that wine,
You're a loser for drinking that wine. You're a loser
for enjoying it. That was his thing. Yeah, you should
be a cynic, right, And he was definitely not one
(26:37):
of those go along and get along types. Right. Doesn't
sound like it, So maybe that is a little bit
where it evolved from it. Certainly, he certainly seems to
have taken cynicism to the extreme. One of the one
of the legends of this of cynicism is that, um,
he was at a banquet once and he was I think,
kind of telling everybody what jerks they were for enjoying themselves.
(26:59):
No idea who invited this guy, but they yeah, but
they threw bones at him like he was a dog,
like here, eat these bones, enjoy yourself for once. Uh
maybe they were saying, I'm just paraphrasing, but um he said,
all right, I'll show you I think your bones and
hempeate on them. Which this whole thing is just taken
(27:21):
like a violent, weird turn violent. And we still haven't
gotten to the root of where cynicism came to be understood,
as as how we how we use it today. The
best I could find was that it lies in the
eighteenth century with Russo, who was a critic of the Enlightenment,
(27:42):
who was, from what I understand, the embodiment of modern cynicism.
He couldn't just trust that the Enlightenment and rationalism were
the way to go and that it led to good things.
He's a huge vociferous critic of the Enlightenment, and I
think was either self labeled the cynic or label the cynic,
and that was the modern use of the word. Haven't
(28:04):
seen it everywhere, but that's the closest I've found man
ancient Greece. How'd you like to hang around there for
like a week. I don't know that I would. It
just seems like such a crazy time, and that all
these deep thinkers and philosophers and then hey, let's go
(28:25):
he's fourteen people in a room with some farm animals
and some feathers, and see what kind of party we
can have. Yeah, I mean, I guess I want to
take that back if I ever got the opportunity to
travel anywhere in time for a week. Since I mentioned
the farm animals, you're like, I hadn't thought about the
farm animals. It just seems like a really crazy time
in our history for man, almost like it's like it
(28:47):
took place on a different planet. Yeah, you might as
well have been, like Asian Greece is on Pluto. Actually, yeah,
but so many things, I mean, and that's what I think,
thinking about like the arts and sciences and mathematics is
just like what weird amazing time. So we're gonna go fat,
We're gonna fast forward a little bit in history so
far we've generally been hanging out in the uh fourth, third,
(29:13):
second century BC. Here, we'll take a few hundred years. Now,
we're gonna go to the nineteenth century, right, We're gonna
go to Um the Antibellum South, which is where, surprisingly,
the term cakewalk came from. Yeah, and this was remember
when we used to blog. Yes, this is a blog post.
(29:34):
I don't need to tell you that because you wrote
it and then send it to me yesterday. But I'm
telling everyone else out there. We used to blog like
everyone else did in the early two thousands. And uh,
this is one of Josh's post And I had no
idea did you read the blog post that I wrote?
The Sorry, but this had has weird racist roots. When
(29:59):
you hear term cake walk, everyone uses it now to
say something that's super easy to do, absurdly easy. Yeah,
that was a cake walk, Like you just basically show
up and you you win the pride. It's a cake walk. Right.
It turns out that that's actually extremely denigrating to um
anti bellum slaves in the nineteenth century because cake walks
(30:20):
used to be an actual thing. Yeah, this is distressing
and weird to me, it really is, and especially that
you can trace the evolution of the word for once. Yeah. Alright,
So here's what would happen on a plantation and how
often did this happen. I would guess it was annual.
It seems like something like that. So let's just say
(30:41):
once a year every so often at the plantation, the
white folks would get together and they would throw a
big ball, like they would throw for themselves, but they
would have the slaves played the part of the white people,
and actually it was a ball for the slaves. Yeah,
but it wasn't you know, like here, let me reward
(31:03):
you with something nice. It's hey, dress up as us,
and we'll all sit back and laugh at how you
think we are right, and you do your best impression
of of slave master and kind of entertain us right
in a mocking, jeering way. Like have you heard of
I know you have Saturnalia, which is like again a
(31:25):
Greek I believe it was Greek maybe roman Um, this
festival where social conventions were turned upside out and the
masters became the servants and the servants became the masters
for like a day, and the whole point of this
was culturally socially that had actually reinforced social norms, because yes,
(31:46):
these slaves in Saturnalia and then the slaves at the
cakewalk were mocking the social conventions that they had to
live in the other three hundred and sixty four days
a year, but they were doing it within a socially
prescribed framework that was really overseen by the people in charge.
So yes, they were forced to do it, but they
(32:08):
were allowed to do it, I think, is you know so,
so actually in a really weird roundabout but very very
real way, reinforce the social norms that that kept slavery afloat. Yeah,
and I don't think we mentioned the reason cake comes
into it to begin with is whichever couple uh in
(32:29):
the cake walk did the best job and was able
to mimic the white people the best got a cake
as a as a prize. So the cake walk was
an actual thing. And the story actually continues on a
little further and it gets even worse to tell you
the truth. Um, those cake walks they happened on plantations
(32:52):
in the South, and so if you went to a
cake walk, you were probably one of a very few
number of people, especially outside of the South, who had
been to one of these things. But the minstrel shows
that led to the vaudeville shows in the nineteenth century.
UM they would actually very frequently perform a cake walk,
but the cake walks they did were basically making a
(33:16):
mockery of even the mockery that the the slaves were undertaking. Right,
So at the very least you could say of the
cake walks that the real ones the slaves were most
likely they meant the mockery that they were doing right.
Even though they were allowed to mock it, they still
meant it. The reason the minstrel shows were so horrible
(33:39):
is that it was a cakewalk. It was a a
staged version of a cake walk, making fun of the
cake walks, so it even removed and robbed from the
slaves that little bit of agency that the cake walks
gave them because it was white minstrels in black face. Yes, right,
(34:00):
so the but the the whole premise of the minstrel
show version of the cake walk was not that the
black slaves were mocking white society, but that they were
actually doing this because they really wanted to emulate white society.
But we're failing miserably at it. So it's a really
despicable and disgusting change, conversion or perversion of the original intent,
(34:24):
which is already pretty messed up to begin with, just
just one of the many problems of minstrel shows. Right, So,
the idea of cake walk, since more people saw minstrel
shows than actually we're at a cake walk, this was
the idea of the cake walk. So when people said
this is a cake walk, the idea was that even
if you were just clumsy and inept and could never
(34:44):
hope to succeed at what you're trying to do, you
could still win the cake That was the original usage
of the word. So what I can't gather is is
this a term now that like people just shouldn't use
or has it changed such that it's not like a
genuinely offensive thing. I don't know. I don't think there's
too many people out there that take offense to it.
(35:06):
But I wonder if that's because a lot of people
don't know what the origins of the worlds are. Not
many people probably know this. Who knows? But you can
also make the case that the use of it today
is actually agi because cake walks are normally found in
nursing home. Really, yeah, I never heard that, And the
the couple's promenade is replaced with musical chairs. And even
(35:28):
even in even in these these competitions of musical chairs,
everybody's still basically a winner. I wonder if piece of
cake comes from cake walk. Yes it does. So that
piece of cake interesting, I think we just covered it.
Maybe I'm gonna start saying it was a total piece
of pie. Right there you go, easy as pie. Well
(35:49):
there you go. Where did that come from? Uh, it's
probably somebody who knew what cake walk meant and wanted
to change things a little. Or I wonder if that
came from the fact that pie is generally easier than
baking a cake. I don't know if that's true, is it?
I think so, because there's not chemistry like you can
bind some apples and cinnamon and stuff and throwing an oven.
He got a pie. There's a pie maker just like
(36:11):
through their iPod across the room, Like a pie is
not gonna fall because you didn't put just the right
amount of That's a good point. You know. There's no
Lady Baltimore pile. I'll tell you that. I think what
I'm saying is pie makers you need to step up
your game. Try a cake. Try making a cake United
take over. I love pie. We've had this talk. I
(36:32):
like it all. I don't see any reason to to
choose no, have both? Um, should we move on? Should
we do Kafka esque? Yes? Sure, all right. So Franz Kafka,
very famous writer. This is I did not know that
a lot of most of his works were published after
his death. I didn't know that either. But he had
(36:54):
a knack for writing books. And I read The Metamorphosis
in high school. But it feels like to his books
had a central character that was going through some kind
of like walking through molasses, some really hard struggle that
they have no control over, probably have no hope of solving.
And a lot of times it was a an I guess,
(37:17):
an allegory for an oppressive government. Yeah, almost always right.
So the person is being there, their forward progress of
their life or whatever it is they're trying to do
is either interrupted or um being opposed by some faceless,
immutable yeah entity, typically in the form of like a
(37:39):
government or an office or something like Yeah, like the
movie the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil is probably accurately described
as cough esque. I would guess that's absolutely right. But
the Kafka, Um wrote, he's very well known for the
Trial of the Metamorphosis. Um, but he wrote a lot
(38:00):
of a lot of the different uses of kafka Esque
actually work because they definitely touch upon some of his
different work. Right. So one of the uses of kafka
Esque that came into fashion supposedly in the nineteen sixties
and Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain fell. Um, well,
the Iron curtain fell before that, but as as the
the faceless centralized government bureaucracies like really kind of put
(38:27):
their stamp on on the lives of all millions and
millions of people. Apparently the word cough gaeste came into
use then to kind of describe having to deal with
these absurd bureaucracies that made zero sense but still could
just shuffle you around for days on end if it
wanted to. Yeah, And then the article uses a good
example that it started getting misused and that somebody might
(38:49):
say that they uh race to catch a bus and
then got to the bus stop and they made this
great effort to get there, but then they find out
there's a bus driver's strike and said that that was
kafka esk, when in fact that's just bad luck. It is.
It's it's if that's the worst thing that happens to
(39:09):
you that day, you're probably doing but just life. But
that's not cough gask. No, it's not so um that that.
But but that's not to say that there is a
central definition of cough gask. It is a pretty wide um,
widely defined, a multiply defined word. This guy does a
good job of describing. And I thought it is an
(39:31):
author named Frederick Carl with a K, and apparently in
the New York Times he said this, what's kafka esque
is when you enter a surreal world which all your
control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which
you have configured your own behavior begins to fall to pieces.
When you find yourself against a force that does not
lend itself to the way you perceive the world. You
(39:52):
don't give up, You don't lie down and die. What
you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment,
with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand
a chance. That's tough, Gask, especially the last part two.
It's like you don't stand a chance, but you still try,
You still try, because yeah, what are you gonna do?
Is just be like, Okay, well I guess I'll die.
(40:14):
You still try to save yourself for to to to
follow your self determination, but you're never going to win.
You're doomed from the outset. That is super tough. Gask that.
That dude, he was his biographer, so he's kind of
an authority on him, right, you know, so doomed. In
other words, you want to take one more break, Yeah,
(40:35):
let's do it. Okay, we're doing that right now. All right, Chuck.
(41:05):
Now it's time for one of my favorites on this list. Yes, blood,
I got called this a few years ago by my
friend Scotty Scott. Come on, this is more than a
few years ago. But I'm ashamed to say I had
never even heard the word I used it. Yeah, I
can't remember what I was complaining about. Really, you hadn't
(41:25):
heard the word ludite? Huh? Had never heard it? I
mean this wasn't like six months ago. It's like five
or six years ago. But he called me that. I
think called me that, or maybe Emily did you go
what I think? I was like, well, I'm no luddite,
and then I like raced over and looked at him
on my smartphone problem. Uh. Yeah, So people throw that
word around to mean anyone who's anti technology basically, right, Yeah,
(41:51):
a lot of people throw it out apparently. Um. Prince
Charles railed against g m os famously he was called
a ludite. I know France and UM just talk mad
trash about Twitter. Yeah, I think on Twitter even I
can't remember, but he was called a luddite. I don't
remember how it played up, but I'm pretty sure it
(42:11):
was on Twitter. Um. But yeah, any anybody who is like, um,
like like we used I was just getting used to
like Google docs, and all of a sudden, we're using
base camp around here. And I think you called me
a lot I didn't you or an old man one
of the two. Non, okay, but you could have also
said you're a luddite. The thing is is this is
(42:34):
one of those words that has evolved to basically mean
the exact same thing as a technophone, Right, somebody who's
afraid of technology, either because they don't understand it or
their words going to lead to the end of the world,
whatever the reason. New technology makes you nervous, Right. That
is such a generally accepted definition of this word that
(42:57):
for all intents and purposes. It is um. It is
the definition of blood. The thing is is, if you
dig back in history, is totally wrong. Yeah Bloodyes, were
people from ancient Greece. They were they were from Nottinghamshire.
I love that word England and they were weavers. So
(43:21):
what was beginning to happen and you can see how
it got its roots here is automated looms came around
the early nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution, and they
were like, wait a minute, this puts our jobs at risk,
so we're not gonna take it. Like twisted sisters will
eventually say we're not gonna take it, and they would
go like, trash these looms. And they named themselves real
(43:45):
they took the name or they were they were named.
I'm not sure how it panned out, but they were
called Bloodites because decades before, and I think seventeen seventy nine,
a guy in the same area named Ned Blood had
trashed like asie hose reframe yeah, ned lud too many
too many d's and too few other letters. Um. He
(44:05):
trashed to hosiery frame and became kind of a hero,
working class hero for doing that. And the thing is is, yeah,
you can get the idea that these people were afraid
of these automated looms, and it was they were really
afraid of technology. No, that is has zero to do
with it. It turns out that looms had been in
(44:26):
use for hundreds of years already. This is not really
new technology, which is a kind of an ironic thing
about the whole thing. What they were were it was
class warfare is what they're engaged in, not anti technology.
Um terrorism, Yeah, they were. They wanted to keep their jobs. Uh,
there was a ban on trade unions, so they had
(44:47):
no well, let's say they had no choice. They felt
like they had no choice rather than to go out
and riot and trash these looms. Um. But they they
they used all sorts of technology to do so. Well.
I saw that the the to these people, to the Latites,
the looms were they symbolized the concentration of wealth because
(45:08):
they didn't own the looms. Somebody they worked for own
the looms, and that they weren't seeing anything from They
weren't reaping any benefits from these looms. So when they
were destroying a loom, they were striking at the loom owner,
this this wealthy person, which is why it was such
class warfare rather than anti technology rioting. Yeah, and that
wasn't I think until the nineteen seventies that bloodite became
(45:31):
kind of the more modern usage. Is that right? So
I found so this this thing the seven says the seventies.
There's actually an article in New Scientists that used the
word in nineteen seventy. But apparently there was a famous
essay called the Two Cultures by a scientist named CP.
Snow and he basically said, we have a problem here
(45:52):
because literary intellectuals and scientific intellectuals are beginning to diverge,
and you literary intellectuals, you guys are basically nothing more
than luddites. This is nineteen fifty three, and I think
he might have been the first person to use it
to mean technophobes or in this case, I think he
was saying, like, you don't understand what the importance of
(46:12):
the industrial revolution. Two people sat on that for seventeen years,
and then New Science is like, the time is the right,
let's bring it back, all right. That's a good one.
That's that's my favorite. These are kind of like I
think a few of these you can throw around your
next dinner party and either make people think you're interesting
(46:33):
or that you're an obnoxious jerk. It depends on how
you present it. Agreed. You know, so what else we
got here? I don't know. You want to do two
or one? Let's do well, let's definitely do nim Rod.
How about that Nimrod. This one confuses me because that
Pixie song Nimrod's son. Oh yeah, so Nimrod actually did
marry his mother. He had a mother wife for a queen,
(46:57):
but he was That's not what he was known for.
No that was a real Nimrod in the Bible, and
Nimrod was if you've ever heard of Noah from the Bible,
this Noah was the great grandfather of Nimrod. So he
had quite a pedigree. He was Ham's son Ham. Yeah,
if we don't use that as a first name enough
(47:17):
these days. Yeah, here it is a last name occasionally,
but John Ham. Yeah, with two m's, but you never
hear like, hey, I'm Ham Johnson, good to meet you.
That would be a great name for a sportscaster or
a weather person. Ham Johnson casters the Ham Cast with
Ham Clark and Ham Bryant. That's not bad, that's good.
That's our spinoff idea and we threw around that word
(47:39):
a lot in our ham Radio podcast because they're called hams.
Maybe that's what our ham Cast could be about, how
nice ham radio operators are as well as bad comedy. Right,
and then every once while we review a ham that
we eat on air. Dude just figured it out. Look
at that, I mean you predicted shark Nato. Alright, The
(48:00):
ham Cast coming soon iTunes where if you get your podcasts.
Somb his hams Son. He is a biblical figure. He
was very well known as the founder of Babylon. Yes,
I didn't realize that. I'm not much of a Bible
scholar myself. No, not really, um, but he was. He
was the founder of Babylon and one of the big
(48:22):
features of Babylon was the Tower of Babel. Yes, this
one I did know about. Yeah, the Tower of Babel
is what he was credited with constructing, and that was
a structure on top of a temple with the idea
that you could reach God ultimately and destroy God and
push him around. Yeah. So not a good thing for
(48:44):
ancient Christians. No, So God was like, um, I can
kind of see into the future, so I'm not gonna
let that happen. And he goes um different languages, she's am,
And all of a sudden, the people who are building
and constructing this tower Babbel can no longer speak to
one another because they all speak different languages. And this
is supposedly the origin story of different languages, foreign languages
(49:08):
in the world. So everybody, since they couldn't really communicate
with one another, went off their separate ways. And this
is another one where they don't know for sure where
it made the switch eventually to be like a dumb
dumb but I think this Bugs Bunny. I think this
holds water. It definitely has some legs. It tracks, uh
Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny nineteen forties, shout out to our
(49:33):
friend Jessica. Oh yeah, whose grandfather was Noah? Was Chuck Jones?
That's right? Greater so, uh, Bugs Bunny. In one of
the Elmer Fud episodes, who was a hunter? Um called
him Nimrod in an episode, And I don't think we
said Nimrod was known as a great hunter. Yeah, I
(49:54):
guess that the irony was lost then, right, Yeah, They're like,
I get it it. Yeah, So I don't know if
they put Nimrod in there, because Nimrod was a great
hunter if it just worked out that way. But it
had to have been had to mean because that was
the thing that was Fudd's whole thing. He was just
terrible at hunting, but that's what he was always doing,
(50:14):
was hunting, right, So we called him a nimrod, right,
and I saw that it became into use of slang
among teenagers in three. Yeah, that seems about right, does
it really? Oh it feels like a very eighties I
heard that a lot growing up. Really to me, it
seems really square in like fifties. Oh no, I'm thinking like, yeah,
I hear Nimrod and I think grody to the max
(50:37):
and like pop callers and the cost alligators. Did you
ever pop your collar? Sure? I always I never felt
like I could pull it off. That was a bit
of a prep I was too, but I just I
don't know it. Never I tried it. I looked at
myself in the mirror a lot. Well that's the key.
He's popped the collar and go out the door. Yeah,
I didn't have that kind of collar. Still, don't you
(50:58):
get the get done with your flow, be cut poper
collar and go Yeah. Yeah, as the other confidence, it's
just foolishness. I was thinking the other day, how I
haven't touched a hair brush since like seven or eight.
Oh yeah, I literally have not put a brush or
comb in my hair. Did you have one of those
Goodies tortoise shell brushes from the eighties? Remember those? Now
(51:21):
I had a Goodies and it wasn't tortoise shell, but
I think it's probably the same thing where yeah it
had it been, or the burnout come where you had
it sticking out of your back pocket and every I'd
never really used combs. I was a brush guy, but
to get my wings down. But ever since high school
is I've just been a finger comer? Yeah? Same here
(51:42):
these these these five fingers. Yeah, to get out of
the shower, just gonna spike the hair up and it
stays there. Yeah, it's nice. It's very lucky. You don't
use product. No, man, that's insane. Are you kidding? Man?
My hair won't stand up. It's just limp and lifeless.
Well minus too. I don't wash my hair much. How
(52:02):
often do you wash your hair every day? Oh, well
that's your problem. Well, there's your problem. Here's your problem.
Get a little get a little little funk build up.
I need a little funk. I guess product is natural funk.
Go party with some farm animals. And I think that
was a George Clinton album. My product is natural funk.
It's nice. Should have been, it's it definitely should have been.
And now because of the Sharknado thing again, that's his
(52:24):
comeback album. Uh, you got anything else? Well, if you
want to know more about George Clinton, you can type
his name into the search part house to works dot
com and it'll bring up something. And since I said's something,
it's time for listening to mail. I'm gonna call this
vaping backlash. Oh yeah, we're hearing about it. Yeah, it's
(52:45):
nice to hear the vapors stand up and be like, hey, dudes,
to heck with you. Yeah. So, in retrospect, I think
we kind of made fun of them a little too much. Think, yeah,
in retrospect. Sure, so this is from Peter, So this
is a mea culpa? Then, well sort of. Hey, guys,
usually enjoy your work, which is that's always a great start.
(53:09):
But the vaping episode, come on, guys, the whole episode
reeked of mockery and belittled all vapors, even the ones
who are simply using it. As a harm reduction method
or to quit smoking. I'm fifty one and use the
cigrettes to quit smoking instantly and permanently. Mind you, about
eight years ago. It's the only thing that worked for me.
All I can do all day is puff flat fat clouds.
(53:29):
Your research was seriously lacking in this one. You would
have been much more informed if you actually talked to
a vaping advocate. I I wanna. I want to interject here.
Our research is not at all lacking. We did a
ton of research for this episode. Please go on. Well,
we tried to get in touch with vapors, but they
are all out on the sidewalk blocking backglouds or at
(53:49):
least someone on the local scene. Guys from this century, preferably,
things have come a long way in the last ten years.
Some of the facts he uses in quotes you were
citing based on seriously flawed research. For example, the vapor
vaporized metals particles portion was brand new. Nobody, nobody, he says,
would vape at the temperatures needed to replicate that in
(54:11):
the real world. Um, but as usual, people see the
headline and don't dig deeper. Uh. This guy is starting
to really upset me to really. Yeah, we've researched just
as much as we ever do. Buddy, what's this guy's name.
We'll get to that. Okay, we did get called out.
(54:32):
A couple of other people said that those temperatures, like,
you don't vape at those temperatures. No, but you can
and some people do. And I, if I remember correctly,
the leaching metals thing was not about temperatures. It was
about the newness of the coil. Okay, I feel like
I'm a I'm refereeing, uh calling people stupid and dummies
(54:53):
for vaping at zero nicotine levels. Smack my head. There's
more to cigarette addiction than the nicotine issue. I think
aping could potentially eradicate smokers from our society the very
least safe, thousands of lives and millions of dollars in
medical and pharma. To paint it all with the idiotic
foolishness brush is playing wrong in a real disservice to
your audience. I'm pretty piste off. As you can tell.
(55:16):
There are only I'm sorry, sure, there are people who
vape that make us all look silly, but man, this
is the only smoking cessation method that works for many people.
You just turned a lot of people away from it
who could really benefit possibly not die disappointed listener here
that it's from Peter Joett in Vancouver. Peter, Peter, I
(55:37):
will totally agree with you. Our mockery was way over
and be above and beyond. We yucky. Um, totally for sure,
and I apologize. I want to make a couple points here.
We definitely definitely did our research. We don't just phone
episodes and it doesn't matter what we think of the topic. Yeah,
we still do our research. And then secondly, I really
(56:01):
don't feel like we turned people off of vaping and
onto tobacco, because if I remember correctly, we definitely made
it clear that you were even dumber if you smoke tobacco.
The tobacco was far, far worse. I think the whole
point of that episode was that vaping was not necessarily
as good for you as it's been portrayed in the
(56:21):
same media that you railed against earlier. I would agree
with that. I don't think we I think we po
po all forms of nicotine and definitely did there you go.
But I mean, if you're using it to get off
of tobacco, that's great. Step two is getting off of
the baking. Uh. Well, if you're like Peter and you're
pod about something you want to get in touch with us,
(56:42):
you can tweet to us. I'm at joshum Clark, Chuck's
at movie Crush uh, and we're both at s Y
s K podcast, Chuck's on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know and slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Uh.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff works dot com and has always showed us
her home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(57:07):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff Works dot com. M
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and uh, let's see, we've
got a couple of producers out there. We're in a
new studio. We've got Will and man Guesh from Part
(00:24):
Time Genius. It's like we all have our pants on.
It's a that's weird. That's the weird part. It's a
it's a just a big family fest. Stuff you should know. Yeah,
welcome you guys. Thank you. Guys were in this brand
new studio. Isn't this exciting? From from the fromale the hide.
It's a lot like a science class And yes, yes,
(00:46):
I think that's what happens in here at night science class.
There making extra money to pay for this new studio
to fill everybody in. We're just doing like in joke
frenzy right now, Stuff you should Know or I'm sorry,
How Stuff Work says um expanded. We've got so many
podcasts these days, and so many coming down the pike
that they've built out new studios and we're using this
(01:07):
is our first time, but you guys have used this
one before, right, yeah, it's an awesome studio. So Chuck,
let's introduce these guys. Huh, okay, well, will is who
you've heard speak? Man guesses who you've heard laugh? I
would say you do have a great laugh uh, and
they are the we should have a laugh off at
some point you and me laugh. Right, I've been told
(01:28):
I don't know all right man, guests, you go oh wow. Yeah. Uh.
So these guys are the hosts of Part Time Genius,
and they just let us know that it is your
and co founders of Mental Plus many years ago. But
today is your one year anniversary. We have been at
(01:48):
house stuff works for one year. Congratulation. Hopefully Jerry will
work in some sort of post production sound effect or
applause or the fanfare button. Right, yeah, well, congrat um
and you guys. So you guys have been doing Part
Time Genius? Has it come out like three times a
week from the get go? No, it was two times
a week at the beginning, and then and we decided
(02:10):
we didn't have enough work. Right there was it was
around the time of the eclipse, and we thought, you
know what we should have done in eclipse episode and
let's just share some fun facts and then the next
week we were like, you know what, there's been some
really bad news, as there has been frequently recently, and
so we thought, you know what, let's do an episode
on nine things to make you smile. And so most
(02:32):
of our episodes are big questions where we ask a
question like, you know, will we ever be able to
live without sleep? Or something like that, and so we
decided to start throwing in these bonus episodes where we
do nine things about whatever. It might be, facts about
Mr Rogers or house plants. Yeah, you know, house plants,
the usual. But there's still pretty robust episodes of like
twenty minutes basically. Right. Yeah, so three times, three times
(02:53):
a week. My hat is off to you. I'm also
vaguely threatened by that because I'm worried, like, did you
guys put out three a week? Yeah? We were running
at the Classic. I don't know if that counts because
it's not extra work, you know what I mean. So
I'm a little a little nervous, but still it's pretty awesome.
We're so building up to get the Classics Wednesdays, Thursdays
and Fridays, right, that's right, So how did you guys
(03:14):
end up at housetuf works because Chuck said, you're you're
the co founders of mental floss, Like, I feel like
that's worth saying a couple more times. Yeah, Mental Flaws magazine. Ye,
like a site we used and still use all Ye,
actually we don't use anymore now that you guys, that's
not true. I emailed them about a bug. I found
a bug where like if you went to go put
(03:35):
the like the like easy reader format or whenever I'm Firefox,
it would bring up a different article. So I let
them know I did, but I was like one degree
separated from the dev team mental Floss. Yeah, Josh emailed me,
and of course we reached out to them, and they
were very much appreciative like that. It's a great team there.
(03:55):
It's still obviously a great site, and uh, we love
all the crew at mental floss. And we were just
excited about what's happening in the world of podcasting. We've
been big fans of you guys for a long time,
thank you, and just knowing how much is happening in
this space. Um, we were eager to try something new
when we were approached about the idea of coming here
and and we've been doing mental Flass. We've been talking
(04:16):
about Mental Class since we were nineteen, you know, like
like it's been a long time and and we've done
like so many fun projects, so many things. But by
the end of it there we're just managing so many people,
you know, and we weren't getting to do the creative
stuff as much. At least that's how I felt. And
when we started, like you know, thinking about podcasts, it
(04:37):
just really felt like how Mental Class started, where it
was conversations and it felt like intimate and the way
you have to build such an amazing community of people
who care and are so invested, and and somewhere along
the way I felt like, um, you know, mental Class
was such a massive site that I didn't know the
readers anymore. Too many and somehow, somehow, even the a
(05:00):
podcasts are huge, Like you know, you guys have millions
and millions of listeners, like they all feel like they
know you, and we sort of missed that connection. Is
truly in the cradle, guys. Very sad with the Silverspoon. Well,
I'm glad you guys are here. I know Chuck is too,
so welcome, Welcome to the family. After a year, Well
(05:22):
on our first day here. Were talked about this previously,
but like we we went around the house, works offices,
we met everyone. We're in these meetings and stuff. Everyone
went home early and and and yeah that's a staple.
It's amazing. I mean, everyone works hard, but they also
get to spend time with their families. And uh, when
we got in the elevator, We're like, where did they
(05:43):
keep the jerks? Like there don't seem to be any
in this company. It was just so not did you say,
are we the jerk? That's what I said, We're here
at the jerks. Yeah, that's one of the really cool things,
Like we I think we differ from a lot of
podcast companies in that way, and that we have all
(06:03):
this great like talent on the roster and we're also
going out and developing cool stuff. Yeah, very cool. So
so enough about all this, Let's talk about the show
some more. All Right, you guys have like quizzes typically
you have lots of guests on what are some of
the best um questions that you've asked and some of
the best guests that you've had so far. I mean,
that's been one of the most fun parts about this
(06:25):
is getting to reach out to experts in different things,
and even experts in areas that we didn't realize there
were experts. You know, we got to talk to America's
only certified water Somali A. I mean, we always hear
about in the world of wine and that there's an
expert in the world of water that these fine restaurants
reach out to and getting me hear the ins and
outs of that. But it was Antarctica's poet in residence
(06:46):
right right, So it's wonderful or she's not allowed to
leave the hu Well she eventually left, but we didn't
get to take a lot of hot showers, don't you.
I can imagine, And she probably swam away made her getaway.
We had a a guest on recently that an author
of a book called When, and it was about the
science of perfect timing. His name is Daniel Pink, and
he was teaching us about, you know, how much time
(07:08):
of day affects all of us and helping us learn
the uh, the disturbing fact that we're all a little
more racist than the afternoons. And it was just weird
things like that. He was talking about staging these court
cases where they have these kind of mock jurors and
they put them together. This was not on a real trial,
that would be an unfortunate way to test this, and um,
they would test their behavior and whether they were more
(07:30):
or less likely to convict someone um in certain scenarios.
And they looked at what happened in the morning and
what happened in the afternoon, and had people of different races,
and they were more likely to come down more hard
on on someone of you know, a different race in
the afternoons. Yeah, I mean it really does have to
do with our our body clocks are circadian rhythms, and
(07:54):
it's honestly that's that's that's part of it. But yeah,
the the science of that perfect timing, and uh, we
learned we've changed our behavior around this. A different fact
that came out of that one was that they've done
a statistical analysis on teams that do more high fiving
and chest bumping, and it said head slapping. I'm not
sure exactly what that dangerous mango slaps my head before
(08:16):
every episode and they are actually shown to win more frequently.
It might be because they're winning, so they're high fiving.
Probably not high fiving, but it's just a lot of
fun to have these people on that have studied such
fascinating things. You know, we consider them the experts. Were
not experts, but it's a selfish thing for us. We
get to sit back and learn from people who know
so much about so many interesting things. Yeah, we we
(08:38):
had we didn't show on rudeness and and whether there's
a rudeness epidemic. And there's this guy at Danny Wallace
who wrote this great book, and one of the facts
he was talking about was that this mayor in uh
Cortina or somewhere in Columbia he uh he fired the
corrupt police force and hired a bunch of mimes to
(08:59):
mock people as they were jaywalking. And it basically shames
the into being more polite. It was amazing or annoyed
them into being either way. But I mean, I feel
like minds are underused career. They really are, especially as
civil servants arise in mind violence. That's right, there's another
(09:22):
study being done about how that could have happened. Well,
everybody out there, if you haven't picked up on the
idea that you would love Will and Man guests show,
all you have to do is go to their website.
It's part time Genius dot Com. Right, part Time Genius
dot Show. We decided to check it to another lot,
right Yeah, yeah, Um that's really really um forward thinking
(09:42):
of you or dot com was, but we were really
thinking about it. Yeah, Part Times Genius dot Show. You've
got the podcast archives on there, so everybody go check
it out, yeah, or of course iTunes or where we
get your podcast. That's right, and that what we say.
I think we say those things all right, fis bumps, guys,
no head slaps, Thank you so much. All right, thanks guys.
(10:10):
It's always a joy to hang out with those two. Huh.
I love those guys. They are truly good guys. Um, so, Chuck.
We are talking about words today, Yeah, specific words, historical
words that people may or may not be using correctly,
correct that people may or may not have really defined
(10:33):
some of these instances. There's really no problem with them,
but they're fun to talk about, right. It's that whole
descriptive ist prescriptive ist thing, you remember, that whole thing
we used to get into. Boy, it's a trip down
memory lane, isn't it. Thing? So so like descriptivists are
kind of like language is constantly involved. Just go with
the flow. Prescriptivists are like, no, no, that languages language,
(10:58):
and you're if you're using it wrong, you're wrong, right, Um,
Like David Foster Wallace was a prescriptivist, like basically, grammar
nazi is another way to put it right. Yeah, And
I want to go ahead and this is not on
our list, but let's go ahead and throw decimate in there,
because um, that is a word that we used to
hear from a lot when we said something was decimated,
(11:18):
and we would have perse script which one is the
yes email us and say decimate means you know, desa
is by tin, so reducing by ten percent is what
it means, guys. And eventually I had just started writing
people back and saying, you know, the modern dictionary even
(11:39):
says that it has now come to learn decimate can
just mean you know, yeah, later waste wiping out like this,
this bush mails decimated me last night. It well reduced
you by probably more than ten percent, depends on how
But anyway, that's always been a grete for me. Like
even when it's officially changed its stephan and over time
(12:01):
and recognized as such, people will still get their hackles up.
And I'm like, dude, it's usually dude. Yeah, but that's
a prescriptive ist railing against it. Well yeah, and it's
also like, come on, man, like I'm sorry, we're not
using the fifteen century usage of the word. So yeah,
decimate they got their tunic in a twist, no tunics technically,
(12:26):
So I guess this one is. I think this episode
is kind of for the prescriptivists if you think about it,
I still don't know who's who. Prescriptivists are the ones
who are who you're talking about the what are we
prescriptive ist pennant? So we're not that, no, no, okay,
we're definitely we go with that to each each their
own motto. Yeah, and this is, of course another we
(12:47):
haven't done a top ten in a while, but as
everyone knows, our top tens are never ten U And
it kind of occurred to me that's usually because some
of them we just think are dumb, and also because
of because the way we go these things would be
a way we're an hour long, we decimate the top
ten lists. Actually, yeah, alright, so let's start. Man, we're
(13:10):
talking again. I don't know if we got this across
yet or not, but we're talking about historic words that
come from history that are either used wrong or not
fully not not. They don't really get across the original
intent necessarily. They're just kind of evolved over time, right,
and the first to kind of pair together quite well,
(13:33):
like a nice like a nice wine and a shot
of bush mills. Right. Oh god, I'm not even on
a bush mills kick. I don't know where this came from.
We had bush mills and a long time. Yeah, and
it's not something you would normally shoot it either, oh yeah,
or dropping a glass of cabernet. Right, yeah, I think
people shoot bush mills. Yeah, you probably shoot anything. You
(13:56):
know who do headonists? Very nice, thank you, very clever.
So that's so that's the first word is hedonism, right yeah.
So uh, most people think of the word hedonism as
and and they do mention in this article that there
is a nudist resort in Jamaica called Hedonism, which I
and there's hedonism too. I think there's more than one. Well,
(14:19):
there's a lot of nudists crowded on the island. I
remember remember when we did our nudist episode. Um, I
ran across an article about like a swingers resort. I
think it was hedonism and it was just like it
may have been immense health article or BuzzFeed or something
like that, but it was like, I want to a
(14:40):
nudist swingers resort and basically never want to have sex again.
I'm so grossed out with myself humanity. Yeah. Yeah, not
to say that that's hedonism, because they may eventually be
a sponsor one day, that's right. But hedonism is most
people use that throw that word around to equate with
just the ultimate in like sexual slash uh party, debauchery.
(15:07):
Debauchery is a great word for it. Drinking fornicating orgies
or find uh scented oils and silken linen's being completely ruined. Yeah,
so that is that's basically what most people think of
with hedonism. It's like giving into your every desire, especially
(15:29):
carnal desires um even at great personal risk and without
much foresight. Right. Apparently that is not at all the
case of what hedonism meant originally, but you can kind
of see how it evolves over time because hedonism stems
from the Greek word for pleasure, right, hedonia, And the
(15:51):
idea is that originally the Heatonist it was an umbrella
school of philosophy. I think We kind of touched on
it in our Stoicism episode, but it was an umbrella
philosophy where I basically said, there's two things in life
that are that you need to pay attention to, and
everything else falls into place if you are maximizing pleasure
(16:14):
and avoiding pain. Yes, those are the two things, pleasure
and paint. Maximize one, minimize the other. Yeah, But the
whole thing is they don't say. Nowhere in there does
it say and by the way, this involves um orgies,
um charcooterie trays, which is weird because we're talking the
Greeks here. You know. Well, I mean, I'm sure hedonism
(16:37):
it also meant that, but it didn't exclusively mean that,
you know what I'm saying, so like, it could also
mean delights of the mind, intellectual pursuits, stuff like that.
It even says altruism, which is it's kind of funny
to think about someone saying like I brought I bought
groceries from my elderly neighbor and it was a pure
(17:00):
hedonistic sensation came up from So you're such a hedonist.
But technically back then that could have been the way
you might use that word. Yeah, And and even more
to the point that hedonist said, there is there's something
you really want to pay attention to here. Yeah, you
want to experience pleasure, but it is really easy for
(17:23):
pleasure to turn into pain or degradation or addiction. And
you have to bear this stuff in mind or else
you're you're you're going to pursue pleasure at your own expense,
and then you're not doing it right. Um, there's actually
this guy in the I think the eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham.
I can't remember if he was at Cambridge or Oxford.
(17:45):
Were five million emails, surely we have. But he was
a fellow or a dawn or whatever of philosophy at
this university that's still around, and every year at one
of their annual banquets they bring his mummified head out
and put it at the head of the table. I
think on it like a wax dummy. So he's dressed
(18:07):
as himself and they've got the guy's mummified head. That's
how much of a revered philosopher he was. He came
up with this thing called philosophic calculus. It's basically a
an equation an equation, right, This is pretty dry, but
it's the whole point is is to pursue pleasure as
much as possible and to avoid pain. And he said,
(18:29):
you have to consider things like the duration of the
pleasurable event, the intensity um, how certain it is, the
fecundity like is it going to spawn more pleasure afterward? Um,
the purity will it actually devolve into pain? Um? The
extent of it, which means how many people are are
affected by it um. And if you take all these
(18:51):
factors into account, you can you can run any experience
or any decision you have in life through that and
decide I'm not gonna do this, or yeah, I'll have
that bite of cool whip out of the fridge. Is
anyone still use that? I'm sure there's a few people
out there that do. They're very exacting, I mentioned so,
(19:11):
so that's hedonism. Yeah right, we took all the pleasure
out of that pretty quick. But that leads to another
word that's misused frequently, epicurean. Epicurean. Yeah, that's the thing
that nowadays you hear people use the word epicurean. There
are probably a lot of restaurants that have a name
on some derivation of this word, but it's tied into
(19:33):
food and drink, like really fine food, top shelf wine
and food. If you have epicurean tastes, then you were
someone who concerns yourself with the finer things at in
the dining room specifically, right, And it's not quite as much,
it's not quite as much identified with overdoing it as hedonism,
(19:54):
But there's um I think more than anything. It's like
you said, it's it's the finer things, but you might
overindulge here there. Yeah, and if you use that word
about yourself then you are probably pretty obnoxious. Yeah, it's
people like you who are needed at parties for other
people to avoid. But the word, once again from Greek epicure,
(20:16):
came from the philosopher Epicurus, and people, if you don't
know much about the root of the word, you probably
think that his whole deal was about food, and that's
not necessarily the case. But he was a a hedonist
in there, right. Yeah, he was like one of the
great hedonistic thinkers, but in the ancient Greek sense of
the word. Right. So his whole his whole deal was
(20:38):
at our axia, which was inner tranquility, and that you
should pursue pleasure by just being content rather than going
off and getting like wasted or eating a bunch or
something like that. That and that if you did have desire,
it was better to eliminate it than satisfy it. But
it was. But if you did satisfy it, you should
do it thoughtfully your mind. So really he was kind
(21:01):
of the opposite of what people who consider themselves epicureans
or Yeah, but also didn't he have a lot to
say about following your own path when it comes to that.
It's like it was very, very centered around the self.
So you do whatever you whatever is best for you
in the moment, and not necessarily what someone else thinks
(21:22):
might be the best thing for you. Right. But again
the point is his virtue um like value hedonism, like
doing things that are actually good and that produced good
rather than um, I'm going to shoot this heroin even
though my my significant other doesn't want me to. That's
that's not what it was about at all. It was moderation.
You have to find what gives you pleasure in life
(21:45):
rather than looking to other people, look inward to yourself. Right.
But yeah, moderation was a huge part of it. Yeah,
And what I couldn't find and that was the case
with a few of these is where it got all
wrapped up in food. I couldn't either, Um, I think
it was people like food. So we just sort of yeah,
that's all I can think of. I couldn't find. I
(22:05):
was really hoping that there was like a turning point
where it was like, this is where it happened. And
there are a few places where I couldn't find that
kind of thing. It's just not out there, is lost
to history. All right, So we're disappointed. So we're going
to take a break, go put our heads together, pull
ourselves together, and turn our attitude around. We'll be right back.
(22:51):
All right, we're back. We're gonna stick around in ancient
grease for a little while long. Why not? I mean
they've produced a lot of misused words. Frankenstin's all open here?
Do you like frankinsense? I don't even know what it is.
It's a it's a resin based incense. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think Have you smelled it? Sure? Yeah? I
mean I was raised Catholic? Oh is that a Is
(23:13):
that a thing? Have you ever been to a Catholic mass?
M Nope? So there they'll go through with like this
big incense burner and just stink up the whole church
with frankinsense. I've seen that in movies and they're well,
that's what they're doing, is burning frankinsense, and it's actually
pretty pretty good smell. Now, the only Catholic jams I've
been involved in were sadly a couple well wine tastings now,
(23:36):
a funeral, uh, and a wedding or two maybe maybe four, Well,
it seemed like four four weddings and that was close. Uh.
So cynic is the word? Did you already say that? No?
I didn't, Okay, cynec is the word, and this is one.
I kind of like this word as we use it
(23:57):
today because I try to abandon cynicism in my own
life and I'm pretty turned off by cynicism as a whole, okay,
which means in our usage is like a cynic to
me is someone who's uh, who's always suspicious, suspicious of
(24:22):
what's going on, Like yeah, like that person is doing
something seemingly pure, but um cynical, So I wonder what
that's all about. It can't be true. I saw a
great um definition of cynicism and the modern usage a
cynic as a person whose faded belief or kurdled trust
had left him unfit for attachment to others. That's a
(24:45):
like a that's a deep cynic definition. Yeah, that's pretty heavy,
but yeah, it can be a little lighter than that.
It could just be somebody who's not willing to just
kind of go with the flow and take things at
face value and be happy about things. Trust other people. Yeah, trust,
I think has a lot to do with it, right, agreed.
So this is one of those words I actually kind
of found where this one turns, which we'll get to
(25:07):
in a second, But it's based on so cynicism again
is a is an ancient Greek philosophy, and the cynics
were not like the hedonists at all. They actually thought
that pleasure was to be avoided, that if you're going
to lead a virtuous life, you basically need to needed
to be um, take a vowid poverty, um issue any
comforts or pleasures, just basically be a bit of a jackass.
(25:31):
Really kind of the idea of like, you know, the
guys who like walk around and whip themselves self flagellation, right,
that would have been a very cynical thing to do.
In the original sense of the term. Yeah, and our
own article brings up this guy. Apparently he was a
pretty notable cynic diogenous. I think diogenes diogenes of sinope.
(25:55):
I don't know if it's sinope or signope. I bet
a snope. Okay, we'll go with that. Sounds nice, So
diogenesis connected dianetics of Elrond Hover. Uh he was. He
was one of these guys that would, uh and they
the example he's in here. He would he would go
barefoot in the cold weather just to like acclimate his body,
(26:17):
and his friends would just watch with their arms crossed
and shake their head like what. Yeah. But he would
also bark at them right and said that you need
to be doing this stuff like you and your luxurious
things need to be more like me. You like that wine,
You're a loser for drinking that wine. You're a loser
for enjoying it. That was his thing. Yeah, you should
be a cynic, right, And he was definitely not one
(26:37):
of those go along and get along types. Right. Doesn't
sound like it, So maybe that is a little bit
where it evolved from it. Certainly, he certainly seems to
have taken cynicism to the extreme. One of the one
of the legends of this of cynicism is that, um,
he was at a banquet once and he was I think,
kind of telling everybody what jerks they were for enjoying themselves.
(26:59):
No idea who invited this guy, but they yeah, but
they threw bones at him like he was a dog,
like here, eat these bones, enjoy yourself for once. Uh
maybe they were saying, I'm just paraphrasing, but um he said,
all right, I'll show you I think your bones and
hempeate on them. Which this whole thing is just taken
(27:21):
like a violent, weird turn violent. And we still haven't
gotten to the root of where cynicism came to be understood,
as as how we how we use it today. The
best I could find was that it lies in the
eighteenth century with Russo, who was a critic of the Enlightenment,
(27:42):
who was, from what I understand, the embodiment of modern cynicism.
He couldn't just trust that the Enlightenment and rationalism were
the way to go and that it led to good things.
He's a huge vociferous critic of the Enlightenment, and I
think was either self labeled the cynic or label the cynic,
and that was the modern use of the word. Haven't
(28:04):
seen it everywhere, but that's the closest I've found man
ancient Greece. How'd you like to hang around there for
like a week. I don't know that I would. It
just seems like such a crazy time, and that all
these deep thinkers and philosophers and then hey, let's go
(28:25):
he's fourteen people in a room with some farm animals
and some feathers, and see what kind of party we
can have. Yeah, I mean, I guess I want to
take that back if I ever got the opportunity to
travel anywhere in time for a week. Since I mentioned
the farm animals, you're like, I hadn't thought about the
farm animals. It just seems like a really crazy time
in our history for man, almost like it's like it
(28:47):
took place on a different planet. Yeah, you might as
well have been, like Asian Greece is on Pluto. Actually, yeah,
but so many things, I mean, and that's what I think,
thinking about like the arts and sciences and mathematics is
just like what weird amazing time. So we're gonna go fat,
We're gonna fast forward a little bit in history so
far we've generally been hanging out in the uh fourth, third,
(29:13):
second century BC. Here, we'll take a few hundred years. Now,
we're gonna go to the nineteenth century, right, We're gonna
go to Um the Antibellum South, which is where, surprisingly,
the term cakewalk came from. Yeah, and this was remember
when we used to blog. Yes, this is a blog post.
(29:34):
I don't need to tell you that because you wrote
it and then send it to me yesterday. But I'm
telling everyone else out there. We used to blog like
everyone else did in the early two thousands. And uh,
this is one of Josh's post And I had no
idea did you read the blog post that I wrote?
The Sorry, but this had has weird racist roots. When
(29:59):
you hear term cake walk, everyone uses it now to
say something that's super easy to do, absurdly easy. Yeah,
that was a cake walk, Like you just basically show
up and you you win the pride. It's a cake walk. Right.
It turns out that that's actually extremely denigrating to um
anti bellum slaves in the nineteenth century because cake walks
(30:20):
used to be an actual thing. Yeah, this is distressing
and weird to me, it really is, and especially that
you can trace the evolution of the word for once. Yeah. Alright,
So here's what would happen on a plantation and how
often did this happen. I would guess it was annual.
It seems like something like that. So let's just say
(30:41):
once a year every so often at the plantation, the
white folks would get together and they would throw a
big ball, like they would throw for themselves, but they
would have the slaves played the part of the white people,
and actually it was a ball for the slaves. Yeah,
but it wasn't you know, like here, let me reward
(31:03):
you with something nice. It's hey, dress up as us,
and we'll all sit back and laugh at how you
think we are right, and you do your best impression
of of slave master and kind of entertain us right
in a mocking, jeering way. Like have you heard of
I know you have Saturnalia, which is like again a
(31:25):
Greek I believe it was Greek maybe roman Um, this
festival where social conventions were turned upside out and the
masters became the servants and the servants became the masters
for like a day, and the whole point of this
was culturally socially that had actually reinforced social norms, because yes,
(31:46):
these slaves in Saturnalia and then the slaves at the
cakewalk were mocking the social conventions that they had to
live in the other three hundred and sixty four days
a year, but they were doing it within a socially
prescribed framework that was really overseen by the people in charge.
So yes, they were forced to do it, but they
(32:08):
were allowed to do it, I think, is you know so,
so actually in a really weird roundabout but very very
real way, reinforce the social norms that that kept slavery afloat. Yeah,
and I don't think we mentioned the reason cake comes
into it to begin with is whichever couple uh in
(32:29):
the cake walk did the best job and was able
to mimic the white people the best got a cake
as a as a prize. So the cake walk was
an actual thing. And the story actually continues on a
little further and it gets even worse to tell you
the truth. Um, those cake walks they happened on plantations
(32:52):
in the South, and so if you went to a
cake walk, you were probably one of a very few
number of people, especially outside of the South, who had
been to one of these things. But the minstrel shows
that led to the vaudeville shows in the nineteenth century.
UM they would actually very frequently perform a cake walk,
but the cake walks they did were basically making a
(33:16):
mockery of even the mockery that the the slaves were undertaking. Right,
So at the very least you could say of the
cake walks that the real ones the slaves were most
likely they meant the mockery that they were doing right.
Even though they were allowed to mock it, they still
meant it. The reason the minstrel shows were so horrible
(33:39):
is that it was a cakewalk. It was a a
staged version of a cake walk, making fun of the
cake walks, so it even removed and robbed from the
slaves that little bit of agency that the cake walks
gave them because it was white minstrels in black face. Yes, right,
(34:00):
so the but the the whole premise of the minstrel
show version of the cake walk was not that the
black slaves were mocking white society, but that they were
actually doing this because they really wanted to emulate white society.
But we're failing miserably at it. So it's a really
despicable and disgusting change, conversion or perversion of the original intent,
(34:24):
which is already pretty messed up to begin with, just
just one of the many problems of minstrel shows. Right, So,
the idea of cake walk, since more people saw minstrel
shows than actually we're at a cake walk, this was
the idea of the cake walk. So when people said
this is a cake walk, the idea was that even
if you were just clumsy and inept and could never
(34:44):
hope to succeed at what you're trying to do, you
could still win the cake That was the original usage
of the word. So what I can't gather is is
this a term now that like people just shouldn't use
or has it changed such that it's not like a
genuinely offensive thing. I don't know. I don't think there's
too many people out there that take offense to it.
(35:06):
But I wonder if that's because a lot of people
don't know what the origins of the worlds are. Not
many people probably know this. Who knows? But you can
also make the case that the use of it today
is actually agi because cake walks are normally found in
nursing home. Really, yeah, I never heard that, And the
the couple's promenade is replaced with musical chairs. And even
(35:28):
even in even in these these competitions of musical chairs,
everybody's still basically a winner. I wonder if piece of
cake comes from cake walk. Yes it does. So that
piece of cake interesting, I think we just covered it.
Maybe I'm gonna start saying it was a total piece
of pie. Right there you go, easy as pie. Well
(35:49):
there you go. Where did that come from? Uh, it's
probably somebody who knew what cake walk meant and wanted
to change things a little. Or I wonder if that
came from the fact that pie is generally easier than
baking a cake. I don't know if that's true, is it?
I think so, because there's not chemistry like you can
bind some apples and cinnamon and stuff and throwing an oven.
He got a pie. There's a pie maker just like
(36:11):
through their iPod across the room, Like a pie is
not gonna fall because you didn't put just the right
amount of That's a good point. You know. There's no
Lady Baltimore pile. I'll tell you that. I think what
I'm saying is pie makers you need to step up
your game. Try a cake. Try making a cake United
take over. I love pie. We've had this talk. I
(36:32):
like it all. I don't see any reason to to
choose no, have both? Um, should we move on? Should
we do Kafka esque? Yes? Sure, all right. So Franz Kafka,
very famous writer. This is I did not know that
a lot of most of his works were published after
his death. I didn't know that either. But he had
(36:54):
a knack for writing books. And I read The Metamorphosis
in high school. But it feels like to his books
had a central character that was going through some kind
of like walking through molasses, some really hard struggle that
they have no control over, probably have no hope of solving.
And a lot of times it was a an I guess,
(37:17):
an allegory for an oppressive government. Yeah, almost always right.
So the person is being there, their forward progress of
their life or whatever it is they're trying to do
is either interrupted or um being opposed by some faceless,
immutable yeah entity, typically in the form of like a
(37:39):
government or an office or something like Yeah, like the
movie the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil is probably accurately described
as cough esque. I would guess that's absolutely right. But
the Kafka, Um wrote, he's very well known for the
Trial of the Metamorphosis. Um, but he wrote a lot
(38:00):
of a lot of the different uses of kafka Esque
actually work because they definitely touch upon some of his
different work. Right. So one of the uses of kafka
Esque that came into fashion supposedly in the nineteen sixties
and Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain fell. Um, well,
the Iron curtain fell before that, but as as the
the faceless centralized government bureaucracies like really kind of put
(38:27):
their stamp on on the lives of all millions and
millions of people. Apparently the word cough gaeste came into
use then to kind of describe having to deal with
these absurd bureaucracies that made zero sense but still could
just shuffle you around for days on end if it
wanted to. Yeah, And then the article uses a good
example that it started getting misused and that somebody might
(38:49):
say that they uh race to catch a bus and
then got to the bus stop and they made this
great effort to get there, but then they find out
there's a bus driver's strike and said that that was
kafka esk, when in fact that's just bad luck. It is.
It's it's if that's the worst thing that happens to
(39:09):
you that day, you're probably doing but just life. But
that's not cough gask. No, it's not so um that that.
But but that's not to say that there is a
central definition of cough gask. It is a pretty wide um,
widely defined, a multiply defined word. This guy does a
good job of describing. And I thought it is an
(39:31):
author named Frederick Carl with a K, and apparently in
the New York Times he said this, what's kafka esque
is when you enter a surreal world which all your
control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which
you have configured your own behavior begins to fall to pieces.
When you find yourself against a force that does not
lend itself to the way you perceive the world. You
(39:52):
don't give up, You don't lie down and die. What
you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment,
with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand
a chance. That's tough, Gask, especially the last part two.
It's like you don't stand a chance, but you still try,
You still try, because yeah, what are you gonna do?
Is just be like, Okay, well I guess I'll die.
(40:14):
You still try to save yourself for to to to
follow your self determination, but you're never going to win.
You're doomed from the outset. That is super tough. Gask that.
That dude, he was his biographer, so he's kind of
an authority on him, right, you know, so doomed. In
other words, you want to take one more break, Yeah,
(40:35):
let's do it. Okay, we're doing that right now. All right, Chuck.
(41:05):
Now it's time for one of my favorites on this list. Yes, blood,
I got called this a few years ago by my
friend Scotty Scott. Come on, this is more than a
few years ago. But I'm ashamed to say I had
never even heard the word I used it. Yeah, I
can't remember what I was complaining about. Really, you hadn't
(41:25):
heard the word ludite? Huh? Had never heard it? I
mean this wasn't like six months ago. It's like five
or six years ago. But he called me that. I
think called me that, or maybe Emily did you go
what I think? I was like, well, I'm no luddite,
and then I like raced over and looked at him
on my smartphone problem. Uh. Yeah, So people throw that
word around to mean anyone who's anti technology basically, right, Yeah,
(41:51):
a lot of people throw it out apparently. Um. Prince
Charles railed against g m os famously he was called
a ludite. I know France and UM just talk mad
trash about Twitter. Yeah, I think on Twitter even I
can't remember, but he was called a luddite. I don't
remember how it played up, but I'm pretty sure it
(42:11):
was on Twitter. Um. But yeah, any anybody who is like, um,
like like we used I was just getting used to
like Google docs, and all of a sudden, we're using
base camp around here. And I think you called me
a lot I didn't you or an old man one
of the two. Non, okay, but you could have also
said you're a luddite. The thing is is this is
(42:34):
one of those words that has evolved to basically mean
the exact same thing as a technophone, Right, somebody who's
afraid of technology, either because they don't understand it or
their words going to lead to the end of the world,
whatever the reason. New technology makes you nervous, Right. That
is such a generally accepted definition of this word that
(42:57):
for all intents and purposes. It is um. It is
the definition of blood. The thing is is, if you
dig back in history, is totally wrong. Yeah Bloodyes, were
people from ancient Greece. They were they were from Nottinghamshire.
I love that word England and they were weavers. So
(43:21):
what was beginning to happen and you can see how
it got its roots here is automated looms came around
the early nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution, and they
were like, wait a minute, this puts our jobs at risk,
so we're not gonna take it. Like twisted sisters will
eventually say we're not gonna take it, and they would
go like, trash these looms. And they named themselves real
(43:45):
they took the name or they were they were named.
I'm not sure how it panned out, but they were
called Bloodites because decades before, and I think seventeen seventy nine,
a guy in the same area named Ned Blood had
trashed like asie hose reframe yeah, ned lud too many
too many d's and too few other letters. Um. He
(44:05):
trashed to hosiery frame and became kind of a hero,
working class hero for doing that. And the thing is is, yeah,
you can get the idea that these people were afraid
of these automated looms, and it was they were really
afraid of technology. No, that is has zero to do
with it. It turns out that looms had been in
(44:26):
use for hundreds of years already. This is not really
new technology, which is a kind of an ironic thing
about the whole thing. What they were were it was
class warfare is what they're engaged in, not anti technology.
Um terrorism, Yeah, they were. They wanted to keep their jobs. Uh,
there was a ban on trade unions, so they had
(44:47):
no well, let's say they had no choice. They felt
like they had no choice rather than to go out
and riot and trash these looms. Um. But they they
they used all sorts of technology to do so. Well.
I saw that the the to these people, to the Latites,
the looms were they symbolized the concentration of wealth because
(45:08):
they didn't own the looms. Somebody they worked for own
the looms, and that they weren't seeing anything from They
weren't reaping any benefits from these looms. So when they
were destroying a loom, they were striking at the loom owner,
this this wealthy person, which is why it was such
class warfare rather than anti technology rioting. Yeah, and that
wasn't I think until the nineteen seventies that bloodite became
(45:31):
kind of the more modern usage. Is that right? So
I found so this this thing the seven says the seventies.
There's actually an article in New Scientists that used the
word in nineteen seventy. But apparently there was a famous
essay called the Two Cultures by a scientist named CP.
Snow and he basically said, we have a problem here
(45:52):
because literary intellectuals and scientific intellectuals are beginning to diverge,
and you literary intellectuals, you guys are basically nothing more
than luddites. This is nineteen fifty three, and I think
he might have been the first person to use it
to mean technophobes or in this case, I think he
was saying, like, you don't understand what the importance of
(46:12):
the industrial revolution. Two people sat on that for seventeen years,
and then New Science is like, the time is the right,
let's bring it back, all right. That's a good one.
That's that's my favorite. These are kind of like I
think a few of these you can throw around your
next dinner party and either make people think you're interesting
(46:33):
or that you're an obnoxious jerk. It depends on how
you present it. Agreed. You know, so what else we
got here? I don't know. You want to do two
or one? Let's do well, let's definitely do nim Rod.
How about that Nimrod. This one confuses me because that
Pixie song Nimrod's son. Oh yeah, so Nimrod actually did
marry his mother. He had a mother wife for a queen,
(46:57):
but he was That's not what he was known for.
No that was a real Nimrod in the Bible, and
Nimrod was if you've ever heard of Noah from the Bible,
this Noah was the great grandfather of Nimrod. So he
had quite a pedigree. He was Ham's son Ham. Yeah,
if we don't use that as a first name enough
(47:17):
these days. Yeah, here it is a last name occasionally,
but John Ham. Yeah, with two m's, but you never
hear like, hey, I'm Ham Johnson, good to meet you.
That would be a great name for a sportscaster or
a weather person. Ham Johnson casters the Ham Cast with
Ham Clark and Ham Bryant. That's not bad, that's good.
That's our spinoff idea and we threw around that word
(47:39):
a lot in our ham Radio podcast because they're called hams.
Maybe that's what our ham Cast could be about, how
nice ham radio operators are as well as bad comedy. Right,
and then every once while we review a ham that
we eat on air. Dude just figured it out. Look
at that, I mean you predicted shark Nato. Alright, The
(48:00):
ham Cast coming soon iTunes where if you get your podcasts.
Somb his hams Son. He is a biblical figure. He
was very well known as the founder of Babylon. Yes,
I didn't realize that. I'm not much of a Bible
scholar myself. No, not really, um, but he was. He
was the founder of Babylon and one of the big
(48:22):
features of Babylon was the Tower of Babel. Yes, this
one I did know about. Yeah, the Tower of Babel
is what he was credited with constructing, and that was
a structure on top of a temple with the idea
that you could reach God ultimately and destroy God and
push him around. Yeah. So not a good thing for
(48:44):
ancient Christians. No, So God was like, um, I can
kind of see into the future, so I'm not gonna
let that happen. And he goes um different languages, she's am,
And all of a sudden, the people who are building
and constructing this tower Babbel can no longer speak to
one another because they all speak different languages. And this
is supposedly the origin story of different languages, foreign languages
(49:08):
in the world. So everybody, since they couldn't really communicate
with one another, went off their separate ways. And this
is another one where they don't know for sure where
it made the switch eventually to be like a dumb
dumb but I think this Bugs Bunny. I think this
holds water. It definitely has some legs. It tracks, uh
Looney Tunes. Bugs Bunny nineteen forties, shout out to our
(49:33):
friend Jessica. Oh yeah, whose grandfather was Noah? Was Chuck Jones?
That's right? Greater so, uh, Bugs Bunny. In one of
the Elmer Fud episodes, who was a hunter? Um called
him Nimrod in an episode, And I don't think we
said Nimrod was known as a great hunter. Yeah, I
(49:54):
guess that the irony was lost then, right, Yeah, They're like,
I get it it. Yeah, So I don't know if
they put Nimrod in there, because Nimrod was a great
hunter if it just worked out that way. But it
had to have been had to mean because that was
the thing that was Fudd's whole thing. He was just
terrible at hunting, but that's what he was always doing,
(50:14):
was hunting, right, So we called him a nimrod, right,
and I saw that it became into use of slang
among teenagers in three. Yeah, that seems about right, does
it really? Oh it feels like a very eighties I
heard that a lot growing up. Really to me, it
seems really square in like fifties. Oh no, I'm thinking like, yeah,
I hear Nimrod and I think grody to the max
(50:37):
and like pop callers and the cost alligators. Did you
ever pop your collar? Sure? I always I never felt
like I could pull it off. That was a bit
of a prep I was too, but I just I
don't know it. Never I tried it. I looked at
myself in the mirror a lot. Well that's the key.
He's popped the collar and go out the door. Yeah,
I didn't have that kind of collar. Still, don't you
(50:58):
get the get done with your flow, be cut poper
collar and go Yeah. Yeah, as the other confidence, it's
just foolishness. I was thinking the other day, how I
haven't touched a hair brush since like seven or eight.
Oh yeah, I literally have not put a brush or
comb in my hair. Did you have one of those
Goodies tortoise shell brushes from the eighties? Remember those? Now
(51:21):
I had a Goodies and it wasn't tortoise shell, but
I think it's probably the same thing where yeah it
had it been, or the burnout come where you had
it sticking out of your back pocket and every I'd
never really used combs. I was a brush guy, but
to get my wings down. But ever since high school
is I've just been a finger comer? Yeah? Same here
(51:42):
these these these five fingers. Yeah, to get out of
the shower, just gonna spike the hair up and it
stays there. Yeah, it's nice. It's very lucky. You don't
use product. No, man, that's insane. Are you kidding? Man?
My hair won't stand up. It's just limp and lifeless.
Well minus too. I don't wash my hair much. How
(52:02):
often do you wash your hair every day? Oh, well
that's your problem. Well, there's your problem. Here's your problem.
Get a little get a little little funk build up.
I need a little funk. I guess product is natural funk.
Go party with some farm animals. And I think that
was a George Clinton album. My product is natural funk.
It's nice. Should have been, it's it definitely should have been.
And now because of the Sharknado thing again, that's his
(52:24):
comeback album. Uh, you got anything else? Well, if you
want to know more about George Clinton, you can type
his name into the search part house to works dot
com and it'll bring up something. And since I said's something,
it's time for listening to mail. I'm gonna call this
vaping backlash. Oh yeah, we're hearing about it. Yeah, it's
(52:45):
nice to hear the vapors stand up and be like, hey, dudes,
to heck with you. Yeah. So, in retrospect, I think
we kind of made fun of them a little too much. Think, yeah,
in retrospect. Sure, so this is from Peter, So this
is a mea culpa? Then, well sort of. Hey, guys,
usually enjoy your work, which is that's always a great start.
(53:09):
But the vaping episode, come on, guys, the whole episode
reeked of mockery and belittled all vapors, even the ones
who are simply using it. As a harm reduction method
or to quit smoking. I'm fifty one and use the
cigrettes to quit smoking instantly and permanently. Mind you, about
eight years ago. It's the only thing that worked for me.
All I can do all day is puff flat fat clouds.
(53:29):
Your research was seriously lacking in this one. You would
have been much more informed if you actually talked to
a vaping advocate. I I wanna. I want to interject here.
Our research is not at all lacking. We did a
ton of research for this episode. Please go on. Well,
we tried to get in touch with vapors, but they
are all out on the sidewalk blocking backglouds or at
(53:49):
least someone on the local scene. Guys from this century, preferably,
things have come a long way in the last ten years.
Some of the facts he uses in quotes you were
citing based on seriously flawed research. For example, the vapor
vaporized metals particles portion was brand new. Nobody, nobody, he says,
would vape at the temperatures needed to replicate that in
(54:11):
the real world. Um, but as usual, people see the
headline and don't dig deeper. Uh. This guy is starting
to really upset me to really. Yeah, we've researched just
as much as we ever do. Buddy, what's this guy's name.
We'll get to that. Okay, we did get called out.
(54:32):
A couple of other people said that those temperatures, like,
you don't vape at those temperatures. No, but you can
and some people do. And I, if I remember correctly,
the leaching metals thing was not about temperatures. It was
about the newness of the coil. Okay, I feel like
I'm a I'm refereeing, uh calling people stupid and dummies
(54:53):
for vaping at zero nicotine levels. Smack my head. There's
more to cigarette addiction than the nicotine issue. I think
aping could potentially eradicate smokers from our society the very
least safe, thousands of lives and millions of dollars in
medical and pharma. To paint it all with the idiotic
foolishness brush is playing wrong in a real disservice to
your audience. I'm pretty piste off. As you can tell.
(55:16):
There are only I'm sorry, sure, there are people who
vape that make us all look silly, but man, this
is the only smoking cessation method that works for many people.
You just turned a lot of people away from it
who could really benefit possibly not die disappointed listener here
that it's from Peter Joett in Vancouver. Peter, Peter, I
(55:37):
will totally agree with you. Our mockery was way over
and be above and beyond. We yucky. Um, totally for sure,
and I apologize. I want to make a couple points here.
We definitely definitely did our research. We don't just phone
episodes and it doesn't matter what we think of the topic. Yeah,
we still do our research. And then secondly, I really
(56:01):
don't feel like we turned people off of vaping and
onto tobacco, because if I remember correctly, we definitely made
it clear that you were even dumber if you smoke tobacco.
The tobacco was far, far worse. I think the whole
point of that episode was that vaping was not necessarily
as good for you as it's been portrayed in the
(56:21):
same media that you railed against earlier. I would agree
with that. I don't think we I think we po
po all forms of nicotine and definitely did there you go.
But I mean, if you're using it to get off
of tobacco, that's great. Step two is getting off of
the baking. Uh. Well, if you're like Peter and you're
pod about something you want to get in touch with us,
(56:42):
you can tweet to us. I'm at joshum Clark, Chuck's
at movie Crush uh, and we're both at s Y
s K podcast, Chuck's on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know and slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Uh.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff works dot com and has always showed us
her home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(57:07):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff Works dot com. M
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