Futility Closet - 251-Joseph Palmer's Beard

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a mountain-piercing prospector to some condoling bees. This is episode 251. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1830, Joseph Palmer created an odd controversy in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He wore a beard when beards were out of fashion. For this social sin, he was shunned, attacked, and ultimately jailed. In today's show, we'll tell the story of a bizarre battle

Starting point is 00:00:44 against irrational prejudice. We'll also see whether a computer can understand knitting and puzzle over an unrewarded long jump. The historian Stuart Holbrook points out that North America was largely explored by men with whiskers. We're not sure about Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, since we don't have authenticated contemporary portraits of them. But Cortez, Ponce de Leon, Cartier, Champlain, Drake, Raleigh, Captain John Smith, and De Soto all had beards. So did the pilgrims. But in the inscrutable way of these things, with time, American beards shrank to goatees and eventually disappeared. By 1720, American colonists had no facial hair, and the fighting men of the American Revolution were clean-shaven.

Starting point is 00:01:32 No signer of the Declaration of Independence had a beard or a mustache, and neither did any American president before Lincoln. Uncle Sam himself was clean-shaven until 1858, and facial hair didn't generally come back into fashion until the Civil War was well underway. Into this whiskerless epoch was born Joseph Palmer, an unassuming man who was destined to become a sort of walking parable of intolerance. He was born in 1791, one of 14 children living on a farm near the charmingly named village of No Town, Massachusetts, which was an unincorporated area between Lemonster and Fitchburg. The Palmer family had come of sturdy English stock that had arrived in America in 1730. Joseph's grandfather had taught school in Newton, Massachusetts for 20 years, and his father had fought in the American Revolution. Joseph himself had carried a musket

Starting point is 00:02:20 in the War of 1812, but after the war he'd return to his family farm in Notown. He seems to have been a quiet man who did not feel immediately constrained by the niceties of social convention. When he married the widow Nancy Tenney, rumors circulated that the marriage wasn't legal because he hadn't published an announcement at a meeting house as required by law. It turned out that Joseph had published the bans, though, in his way. Because Notown had no meeting house, he'd simply written them out in his own handwriting and tacked them to a pine tree. Palmer led a largely unregarded life until 1830, when, at the age of 42, he moved to Fitchburg, and the Fitchburgers were shocked to see that he was wearing a beard, a fine gray one, six or eight inches long. In 1830, this was an affront to decency. No man had worn whiskers with impunity

Starting point is 00:03:05 in almost a century. Why Palmer had grown a beard is not clear. Some sources suggest that he did it out of orneriness to provoke a reaction, but that doesn't seem to fit his character. He's described elsewhere as honest, kindly, a good citizen, deeply religious but tolerant, and having many intellectual interests. But he was also immovable when it came to principle. He was a staunch abolitionist and an early advocate of temperance and was well known in Fitchburg for refusing to serve rum to his hired hands. He may have grown the beard to emulate biblical patriarchs like Moses, or possibly he simply wore it because God had given it to him. But his tenacity of purpose extended to the beard.

Starting point is 00:03:41 Wearing it became a fixed idea with him, and as his neighbors determined to oppose it, he determined to defend it, come what may. I have to say that shaving is an odd practice if you think about it. Every morning I scrape all the hair off the front of my head for no reason. Someone asked Joseph Palmer why he wore a beard, and he said he'd tell them if someone could tell him, quote, why some men would, from 52 to 365 times a year, scrape their face from their nose to their neck. Apparently, George Bernard Shaw said that when he was five years old, he was one morning watching his father shave and asked him, father, why do you shave? And his father looked in the mirror for a full minute before he said, why the hell do I?

Starting point is 00:04:20 Certainly, there was no law in Fitchburg against wearing a beard, but Palmer found that the price of nonconformity was high. Everywhere he went, boys threw stones and called him Old Jew Palmer because beards at the time were commonly worn only by Jews, which is doubly strange because everyone knew that Palmer was a Baptist. Women crossed to the other side of the street when they saw him coming, and vandals broke his windows. Grown men jeered at him openly. One told him he should, quote, be prosecuted for wearing such a monstrosity. Palmer bore all this as patiently as he could, but he kept the beard.

Starting point is 00:04:49 Looking back on this in 1884, his son Thomas said, Everybody shaved clean in those days, and to wear whiskers in any form was worse than a disgrace. It was a sin. Father was hooted at on the street, talked about at the grocery, intimidated by his fellow men, and labored with by the clergy to shave, but to no purpose. The stronger the opposition, the firmer his determination. He was accosted once by Reverend George Trask, who said indignantly, Palmer, why don't you shave and not go around looking like the devil? He replied, Mr. Trask, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulfurous regions

Starting point is 00:05:22 with much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not unlike mine. Even 50 years afterward, the Boston Daily Globe recalled that Palmer was, quote, persecuted, despised, jeered at, regarded almost as a fiend incarnate who was known far and wide as a human monster and with whose name mothers used to frighten their children when they were unruly. The newspaper called him the most abused and persecuted man these parts ever knew. I've heard this story. I'd heard the story for a long time now, the story of Joseph Palmer and his beard. And it always assumed, what often happens in cases like this, if there was some belief that prevailed at the time to help to inform this prejudice. Some context that we just are missing today. Yeah, but it's disappeared from the culture since then. So this looks crazier to us today

Starting point is 00:06:04 than it seemed to people at the time. But that doesn't seem to be the case, having looked into it now, with Palmer. Stuart Holbrook is the historian who seems to have looked most deeply into this. And he says explicitly that neither race nor religion played a part in Palmer's case. It seems to be just a great ability to become incensed about almost anything and have a real intolerance for difference. Because this is such a small thing, it's not hurting anybody. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:34 He lost his patience only once, from what I can tell. Despite all these snubs, he never missed a church service, and one communion Sunday in 1830 he knelt with everyone else, but the officiating clergyman passed him by with the communion bread and wine. That incensed Palmer, who stood up, went to the communion table, took a swig from the cup, and said, I love my Jesus as well and better than any of you. A few days after that, he was delivering some food to the Fitchburg Hotel when he was accosted by four men carrying shears, lather, and a razor. They told him the town thought his beard should come off, and they were going to do the job. They threw him down on the stone steps, but just as they were about to set to work, Palmer

Starting point is 00:07:08 managed to pull an old jackknife from his vest pocket and struck out at them. He stabbed two of them in the legs. They weren't injured seriously, but it was enough to drive them all off. Palmer was left bleeding, and his back was hurt, but his beard was intact. To add insult to injury, the two men he'd stabbed swore out complaints against Palmer for what they called an unprovoked attack. A judge found him guilty and imposed a fine of $10, which Palmer refused to pay on principle. So they locked him up in the Worcester City Jail. Incredibly, he would spend more than a year there, persecuted for his beard by both the other prisoners and the jailers themselves. His son Thomas said, one day jailer Bellows came in with several men to shave him. He threw himself on his back in his bunk, and when they approached, His son Thomas said, On July 21, 1830, he had to share a temporary cell with two other inmates while his own was being whitewashed.

Starting point is 00:07:58 One of them told the other that if he attacked Palmer and cut his beard off, he would testify as a witness and swear it had never happened. Anyway, he said Palmer was so widely hated that if damages were charged, he could easily raise the amount anywhere on the street. Over hearing this, the jailer agreed with him. He said, and pretty quick, too. Then he began to curse and swear at Palmer, vowed that they would get his beard off soon, urged the other prisoners to cut it off in his sleep, and spat on him repeatedly. Louisa May Alcott, a friend of Palmer's, later wrote, This difficult period is carefully recorded in his diary.

Starting point is 00:08:27 God, in his wisdom, had given him the beard, Palmer said, and who was mortal man to undo the work of the Almighty? When Palmer asked for water on September 22, 1830, the jailer simply dashed a pail of water into his cell. He had been given no water in nearly a week. He had only a quart jug remaining. About 7 o'clock, he asked two of the jailers if he could pay them to deliver a letter. One of them said, yes, I'll take care of you. They grabbed him by the collar and dragged him through the door and down the stairs. He tried

Starting point is 00:08:52 to appeal for help, but the jailers took him by the hair and shook him furiously to keep him from speaking. When he objected that he only wanted water, they put him alone into a dungeon with a pail of water and shut the blinds. Eventually, the high sheriff ordered him returned to his cell. He wrote secret letters to the newspapers complaining that he was in jail not for assault, but because he chose to wear whiskers. His son smuggled these out while delivering his meals, and they were published in newspapers throughout Massachusetts. As people read about Palmer's story, they began to discuss the case, and the tide of public opinion began to turn. In time, the sheriff realized he might have a martyr on his hands. He told Palmer to go home and forget the whole incident, including the fine, but Palmer refused. While they'd kept him, he'd had to pay for all his food, drink, and coal for heating. He felt

Starting point is 00:09:33 they'd cheated him, so he refused to go. The jailer urged him to accept the offer, and even his own mother, Margaret Palmer, wrote to him not to be so set. But by now he was indignant, and I think perhaps realized that he had the upper hand. He became known as the bearded prisoner of Worcester, sitting stubbornly in limbo and keeping a careful journal of his persecutions. He told the officers and magistrates that they had put him there and they would have to take him out. He said, I won't walk one single step toward freedom. In the end, the sheriff and the jailers had to physically carry him out in his chair and put it on the sidewalk. By now his beard was famous as far away as New York and Philadelphia. He was still harassed in Fitchburg, but he had won the respect of the nation's reformers, and his experience had led him to sympathize with those

Starting point is 00:10:13 who were willing to suffer for principle. He became active in the abolition and temperance movements, where he met Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and William Ellery Channing, but he was still most famous for his beard. His son Thomas said later, I remember going with him once to an anti-slavery convention in Boston. As we walked up Washington Street, the people would stop, then run ahead, wait for us to come up, and finally the crowd around us was so great that the police had to come to the rescue. Why was it? Oh, it was the same old beard. It was so unusual to see a man wearing one, and especially such a one as he sported. Why, he was looked upon as a monstrosity. In November 1840, Palmer went with Bronson Alcott to the Chardon Street Convention,

Starting point is 00:10:49 a gathering of religious reformers. At one session, there was an outcry over Palmer's beard. Alcott rose and asked, in the first place, whether in the opinion of the assembly there was anything in the essential nature of a beard which prevented its wearer from becoming a Christian. And secondly, he wished to know if they had really come to discuss beards, or rather, as he supposed, certain other fundamental questions. In 1843, Alcott and his family started an experimental commune near Fitchburg. It turned out that Palmer was the only one there who knew anything about farming, and it quickly failed. But Palmer bought the land for himself, and he lived there with his wife for 20 years, widely known and never lacking for company. Emerson and Thoreau visited him there, and so did a succession of reformers and wayfarers.

Starting point is 00:11:29 The neighbors called it Old Palmer's Home for Tramps. The Palmers always had a pot of beans and plenty of bread. Anyone was welcome to stay, so long as they didn't drink alcohol. As it happened, by the time Joseph Palmer died in 1873, his arbitrary stand had brought an arbitrary vindication. Facial hair had come booming back into fashion, and practically every man in the country wore a beard. A saying grew up among young women that kissing a man without whiskers was like eating an egg without salt. It really does show you how arbitrary, right? I mean, it's so completely arbitrary. He's ostracized for something, and then all of a sudden now everybody's supposed to have

Starting point is 00:12:05 one. The story of his life is just underlined that perfectly. If Palmer had feelings about this, he kept them to himself. One day in his old age, he ran into George Trask, the preacher who decades earlier had told him that his beard made him look like the devil. Trask himself was now wearing a beard. Palmer walked up to him, stroked his own whiskers, and asked, know ye that thy redeemer liveth? Palmer's son Thomas eventually became a well-known dentist in Fitchburg, and perhaps in solidarity with his father, never shaved his own beard. In 1884, he told the Boston Daily Globe he could still remember the time when his schoolmates had shunned him and made his boyhood days miserable because his father wore a beard.

Starting point is 00:12:40 He said, He said, The paper added, Now the doctor looks back upon those days proudly, as he realizes that his sire was right and that the world has endorsed the ways and ideas of the old man instead of the old man bowing to the absurd whim of the world. Thomas paid for a stone monument to his father in Evergreen Cemetery in North Leominster, not far from Fitchburg. On its front is a medallion carving of Joseph Palmer's head with its principled fringe of facial hair. Beneath it is a legend, Palmer, persecuted for wearing the beard.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Futility Closet would not still be here today if it weren't for the generous support of our listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to make a more ongoing donation to our show, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to bonus material like outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extra lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, the premier podcat of Central North Carolina. You can learn more at our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of our website for the link.

Starting point is 00:14:11 And thanks so much to everyone who helps make Futility Closet possible. Mark Donner wrote, Dear pod people and podcat, I just listened to episode 243 and enjoyed the discussion of the Western movie script generated by early AI in 1960. The computer that was used for this was actually quite a famous machine. It was called TX0, see this Wikipedia article, and it had the distinction of being the very first computer built out of transistors. When it was first built, it was probably the most powerful computer on Earth.

Starting point is 00:14:48 The Lincoln Labs team that built TX0 then went on to start on TX1, an effort that was abandoned as too complex, and then the TX2. The TX2 machine is famous as the locus of development by Ivan Sutherland of his sketchpad system, recognized as the invention of what we would today call computer graphics. Finally, a microscopic correction. The TX0 was called either TX0 or TXO, but never TXO. So thanks, Mark. I apparently managed to trip up on pronunciation again.

Starting point is 00:15:21 I would really like to advocate for all written materials to provide pronunciation guides for all names. The Wikipedia article that Mark sent notes that the TX-0 was conceived partially as an experiment in transistorized design and was basically a transistorized version of the famous Whirlwind 1, an enormous vacuum tube computer released in 1951. While the Whirlwind took up an entire floor of a large building, the much smaller TX-0, completed five years later, was housed in a single room and yet was still somewhat faster than the Whirlwind. The TX-0 was still running into the early 1980s and was shown running a maze application in the first episode of the long-running PBS show Computer Chronicles in 1983.

Starting point is 00:16:08 So it went on to have quite a career after its brief foray into screenplay writing. After episode 243, David Kahn let us know about a recent article in the LA Times titled, Can a Computer Write a Script? Machine Learning Goes Hollywood. Times titled, Can a Computer Write a Script? Machine Learning Goes Hollywood. This article started with a discussion of a Lexus commercial that was directed by award-winning filmmaker Kevin MacDonald and was written, according to the article, using artificial intelligence that relied on tech giant IBM's platform, Watson. The article stated that the computer produced a script and several other articles echoed the idea that this ad's script was written by an AI. But as with the Harry Potter story that I discussed

Starting point is 00:16:51 in episode 238 that was also purportedly written by an AI, when I looked at several sources, it seemed to be that the script was at least somewhat of a collaboration between the AI and some humans. The description of whether it was written entirely by a computer or in collaboration with humans varied even within a given article. The ad introduces itself as a film written by artificial intelligence, is titled Driven by Intuition, and is said by IBM to be the world's most intuitive car ad, which is probably not what you'd be expecting from an AI-written script, though it does do a good job of playing on emotions. The ad shows a Lexus ES being tenderly inspected by a craftsman, who then emotionally watches it leave the factory and go out into the world to enjoy itself. It is then subjected to a crash test, in which it is being very dramatically

Starting point is 00:17:41 dragged toward a truck before it saves itself with its automatic emergency braking system, to the great relief of the craftsman and the viewer. You do get pretty emotionally invested in this car during the 60-second spot, though some articles noted the irony of a machine writing a story featuring a seemingly sentient car. Pretty soon they won't need us at all. The Watson-based AI was used to analyze 15 years of award-winning ads for cars and other luxury items, along with data on how highly intuitive people respond to car ads. The AI identified elements that were common to the different ads, and then, according to an article on the IBM Think blog, the AI informed the script flow and outline

Starting point is 00:18:25 from which the creative agencies built the story, which to me seems a little different than a script written entirely by artificial intelligence, a phrase which the same article also uses. Yeah, but the fact that we're even entertaining the possibility of an AI being able to do this is pretty amazing. It is, it really is.

Starting point is 00:18:45 And historically, it's just an eye blink after the whole Western thing, you know, a few decades before. Yeah, that's true. The AI was used to identify what would emotionally resonate most with consumers, such as particular visually appealing scenes, including one with a winding road that had water on one side of it and trees on the other. It took location scouts a few weeks to manage to find such a road, which they eventually did in Romania. And as a side note, it seemed to me that being a location scout must be a really interesting job. You know,

Starting point is 00:19:14 go find a road that looks just like this. Somewhere, anywhere. According to the LA Times article, machine learning is increasingly being used in Hollywood. Algorithms are being used to analyze large amounts of data and make recommendations to help color correct scenes, identify popular themes in book adaptations, or design marketing campaigns. Computers can crunch through mountains of data, such as audience surveys or critical reviews, to try to identify what makes a movie or TV show a success or a failure. For example, last year, the Entertainment Technology Center presented an analysis that showed correlations between a movie's story structure and its box office performance. So for example, films that

Starting point is 00:19:55 started with an action sequence, like the robbery in The Dark Knight or the battle in How to Train Your Dragon, performed an average of more than 13 times better at the box office than did films that started with a memory sequence. You know, they sort of feel that way now, sort of formulaic or like artificially determined. Is that just me? That maybe you sort of feel like there's a certain... I don't know. But I think it's been like that for a while and possibly longer than could account for

Starting point is 00:20:20 AI. I think humans have probably tried to do this too, right? You figure out what works and then you try to repeat it. It just feels kind of calculated. AIs are also being used to help create more effective movie trailers, predict what types of audiences would be most interested in a film,

Starting point is 00:20:35 flag likely stories for development into movies or TV shows, and determine which elements or characters in a story elicit the most audience response. But while AIs are being trained to analyze different emotional elements in scripts, understanding comedy seems to be one thing that is still beyond their reach. The director of the University of Southern California's Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory, who has been working on these kinds of issues, said,

Starting point is 00:21:00 What is funny and how to be funny, that is something technology is not ready for. That's interesting, because they're going to put everybody else out of work, I guess, except for comedians. Except for comedians right now. And like you were saying before, it seems to me what's so interesting about these kinds of stories of computers writing a script or a story is that we do seem to be on the cusp of computers being able to do something that until now has seemed so uniquely human. Computers can't quite do this by themselves yet.

Starting point is 00:21:28 And when they try, we sometimes get very entertaining results. So currently, they're just more of a useful tool. But you can kind of see that at some point, these discussions might end up seeming a bit quaint. If in the future, scripts or even whole movies are routinely produced by AI. And then it might seem a little funny that we were so skeptical about them doing that. And I guess if that does come to pass, we can expect to see a lot more mainstream movies that open with car chases and battles

Starting point is 00:21:52 and fewer that start with memory sequences and possibly not comedies for quite a while. But on the other hand, just like 3D printers might be on the cusp of providing us with a lot more personalized items, it seemed to me that maybe at some point we'll get movies that are written specifically for individuals or particular groups of people, and then they'll be able to see just what they would want to see.

Starting point is 00:22:12 That makes a lot of sense. I'd never thought about that. Why mass-produce these? Yeah, assume that everybody's going to enjoy the same thing. Yeah. Also on the topic of things that computers can't quite do by themselves yet, Mary Ann, a.k.a. Mary Mary Nitz Spooner wrote, Also on the topic of things that computers can't quite do by themselves yet, Mary Ann, aka Mary Mary Knits, Spooner wrote, Whenever neural networks are discussed on the show, I think of Skynet.

Starting point is 00:22:35 Someone fed knitting patterns into a neural net, then turned some of the resulting patterns over to some knitters in the LSG group on Ravelry, a knitting forum, to try out. The results were pretty interesting. Many of the patterns could not be knitted as they stood, often due to insane or incompatible stitch counts, but knitters are generally good at making adjustments on the fly, so they did the best they could. And Marianne sent a link to a post on Janelle Shane's blog. You might recognize her name as we've covered some of her neural net outputs before in episode 195, like recipes,

Starting point is 00:23:05 kitten names, and candy heart messages. Shane has used quite a number of data sets to train neural nets, but she says that knitting patterns turned out to be one of the toughest ones she'd tried. In collaboration with the LSG Forum, which she describes as definitely adult only, if anyone decides to check it out for themselves, they embarked on Operation Hilarious Knitting Disaster, in which Shane fed thousands of knitting patterns into a couple of neural networks that she nicknamed SkyKnit, and then posted the patterns for the knitters to check out. Shane said, this possibly marks one of the few times in history when a computer generated code to be executed by humans.

Starting point is 00:23:43 in history when a computer generated code to be executed by humans. Unfortunately, the generated knitting pattern code was rather buggy. Thus, Skynet patterns would repeat rows or omit them entirely. It could count the rows fairly well, up to about 22, but then after that would just start haphazardly using random large numbers. Counting seemed to be a chronic issue with it, and Skynet might, for example, assert that a row of stitches contained 12 stitches, when the number of stitches was actually quite different. The patterns were generally unknittable as written, but it turns out that knitters tend to be quite good at debugging patterns.

Starting point is 00:24:22 Shane said, not only are there a lot of knitters who are coders, but debugging is such a regular part of knitting that the complicated math becomes second nature. Knitting typically involves a fair amount of calculation. One forum user said, my husband said knitting is just maths. It's maths done with string and sticks. So needing to do a bit of debugging of a knitting pattern isn't that uncommon, as patterns may need to be adjusted or they can contain outright errors. And while newer patterns try to be more foolproof, older ones tended to expect a certain amount of interpretation by the knitter.

Starting point is 00:24:54 But the problems with the sky knit patterns tended to be a little more extreme than most knitters were used to. One described it as akin to code that won't compile. knitters were used to. One described it as akin to code that won't compile. Further, an article in the Atlantic notes that a core issue with the Skynet patterns was that knowing the intent of a design is a big part of how a knitter understands a pattern, but there just wasn't any actual intent behind the computer-generated designs. So the result was that working from the same pattern, different knitters ended up with fairly different creations, which was part of the fun of the project, it seemed. That and the really, really non-humanly weird patterns that the knitters got to try to wrap their heads around.

Starting point is 00:25:35 The forum knitter said of the patterns that they were a bit of a head melter, made my brain hurt so I went to bed, or Skynet crashed my brain hurt so I went to bed or Skynet crashed my brain. And one mused, I still have a lingering suspicion that I'm knitting a pattern that could someday communicate to an AI that I want to play a game of global thermonuclear war.

Starting point is 00:25:57 But I suppose at least I'll have a scarf at the end of it. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We really do appreciate your comments, updates, corrections, and feedback. So please keep sending them to us pod people or to the podcat at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange situation,

Starting point is 00:26:28 and I have to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from the national public radio program Car Talk, sent in by their listener David Johnson. An athlete in the Olympic Games makes a record-setting performance in the long jump. Not only does he make the longest jump of all the competitors, but he sets a world record as well. His jump is accepted in the record books, but he doesn't win a medal. Why? Okay, he set a record in the long jump? Yes. But he doesn't win a medal in the long jump? That's right. Was he participating in a different competition? He was not participating in the long

Starting point is 00:27:01 jump. I don't know what you mean. Like he was participating in a different sport, and somehow he set a new record for long jumping, but... In that sport? Yes. No. No. No, like he set a record for jumping, but he wasn't supposed to be jumping.

Starting point is 00:27:18 He was supposed to be running or something. Oh, I see. So he set a world record for the jump. Yes. No, that's not it. Okay. So I was thinking he set a record for a different sport than the one he was in. That's possible, I guess.

Starting point is 00:27:31 Okay. All right. So you said he was competing in the Olympics. Yes. Does this matter where it was? No. Or when it was? No.

Starting point is 00:27:37 Is there anything about his identity that I need to know? No, I don't. I think this is sort of a theoretical. I'm not aware that this ever actually happened, but in principle it could. So he set a record for something. Yes. But maybe not for the thing that you're judged on for winning the long jump. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:28:01 I'm looking physically at you. I'm not sure what you win the long jump for. You win the long jump for the distance you've jumped, let's say? Yeah. Okay. So maybe he set a record for something other than the distance he jumped. No. No.

Starting point is 00:28:13 He set a record for the distance he jumped. That's right. He jumped the farthest distance that anybody had at that point. Yes. Yes. But he still didn't win a medal. That's right. Because the next few people went even further.

Starting point is 00:28:25 Oh, good. No, that's not it. He had like a world record for five minutes. Right, yeah. Until the next guy went. That's a really good answer. No, that's not it. Okay. Was he participating in the regular Olympics? Yes. So not some special version or something by the regular rules that I would understand? No, just what you think it is. something by the regular rules that I would understand.

Starting point is 00:28:43 No, just what you think it is. And he set a record. Was there just some dispute about the record or the conditions under which he set it? No. So he set a world record. Was he not competing at the time? He was practicing. You're really good at coming up with guesses.

Starting point is 00:29:00 No, that's not it either. But it's very disappointing when they're not right. It's like, oh, that was a good answer. I should get credit. So he was actually participating in the Olympics when he set his record. Oh, was it a team sport? No. I don't know if they have team long jumps, like relay long jumping. No, it wasn't.

Starting point is 00:29:22 Okay. Because you could set a record and not win a medal then if your teammates did really badly. Yeah. And that's, you're thinking sort of in the right direction. Okay. He didn't win a medal. The team sport is sort of in the right direction. Well, I don't want to confuse you with that. Oh, oh, was there like multiple segments? It's like one of these things where you have to do multiple things, like long jump, and then you also have to do something else. I didn't even get to give you my hint.

Starting point is 00:29:50 That's it. You looked at me with this hint in your face. He was competing in the decathlon, which consists of 10 events. He did very well in the long jump, but so poorly in the other events that he didn't win a medal. I don't know my Olympic sports well enough, apparently. Well, apparently you do. We are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles. So if you have one you'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can find a donate button and a link to our Patreon page. At our website, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 10,000 trivia tidbits, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with the links and references

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Futility Closet - 251-Joseph Palmer's Beard

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