Good Job, Brain! - 133: That Old Time Rock and Roll

Episode Date: November 8, 2014

Darn you whippersnappers, get off our lawn! This week we celebrate the old, out-dated, and obsolete things in the past. Meet the mysterious saltpeter man from the days of yore whose job totally....stinks. Old name quiz, and what happened a year ago? What about 50 years ago? Journey through time with Dana's year span quiz. Beep, beep, beep- the riveting rise and fall of beepers and pagers. And revel in modern music in old prose with the return of William Fakespeare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, gang of gallant, Gabby, gallivanting, galloping gadflies in gazebos. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 133. And, of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your very vocal volunteers who vomit vocabulary while vogueing. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

And I have a quick listener shout out. And as a kind of a disclaimer, we don't do shoutouts that often when people write in just because we get a lot of requests. It would be the whole show. Yeah, exactly. Nice humble brag there. Yeah. Because we would just be flooded. We kind of get a lot of requests for this.

Right. You know, if I do one, then everybody else. That's fair. But I do have a soft spot for kids who, kids who write in. And I think, especially because our show is basically educational. And the fact that kids listen to it is very cool. You can stop going to school, I think. This counts as homeschooling in seven states.

Oh, that'd be good infomercial. Like the good job brain learning system. And with 60 discs. Yeah, and then we get shut down by the federal government. You can pass any federal test about poop for sure. That's right. Yep, there are P-sats are very high. The poo stats.

The poo stats. So this one is from listener Ben, and Ben says, Hi, JJBcast. I am a 12-year-old fan slash major listener who absolutely loves good job brain. I would love it if you would give me a shout out in the next episode. I also would love it if you guys would give my friend Milhorn a shout out as He listens to GJB and introduce me to the show. Whoa.

His friend, Millpool? Milhorn. Thanks, Ben, and thanks Milhorn for your lovely email. I've got a fun, weird, in the news segment. We haven't had one of those in a lot. Bizarre headlines? Yeah, bizarre headlines. There we go.

Funny story. This seemed something I read this and I had to share this with you guys. Did any of you guys read about The Hibernator? This was just surfaced on the Internet in the last week or so. No. The Hibernator is a meal. served at a cafe in Manchester, England, and

I hesitate to say meal because this is one of those massive breakfast things. That's more of a PR stunt than a meal, in fact. So the hibernator contains eight strips of bacon. Okay. Doable. Eight pieces of

sausage. Yeah. Doable. Four hash browns. Four fried eggs. Separately, a four egg cheese omelet. Okay. four waffles Okay Now we're getting

The carb Four pieces of toast Yeah Okay Four pieces of fried bread What? Four serving It's British

You know Sure Maybe like French toast Four servings of black pudding Oh Two ladles of beans Two ladles of tomatoes Okay

Mushrooms A large serving of Chips French fries Uh huh And a two pint milkshake Delicious

Has anybody have they done it? Nobody, as of the time of the article I read, had completed it successfully. I don't think your stomach is big enough. I don't think you could, yeah, physically. I mean, professional leaders could probably do it if they can, if you dunk all the waffles in water, you know, that sort of those ways. Yeah.

It's doable. It's a downright bargain, though. It's only, uh, it's only $32. Oh, really? Yeah, for all that food. It is like for breakfast. Yeah. Yeah, you really could. You could feed a family.

Yeah. Can you order it and share it? I think you can order it. and do whatever you want, but you don't qualify for the prize. There's no team competition. The prize, incidentally, you get, of course, a free meal.

A t-shirt. You get a t-shirt, presumably saying I survived the hibernator or something like that. And 100 pounds. Well, I mean, yeah, you'd gain 100 pounds by having that. Good chunk of change there. So this served at the Bear Grills, G-R-I-L-S, Cafe.

Yes. So if you are the... Where is this? This is in Manchester. Oh, okay. So if you are passing through and happen to eat a hibernator, please let us know. Yes. Let us know if you live, first of all, and then let us know how it was.

It is very pretty. It's so golden. It's like fried. It was made for gods, not for humans. To eat the hibernator is to be possessed of terrible knowledge. It looked like Midas touched, like a terrible curse and a gift at this. I stared into the abyss. And the hibernator stared back.

All right, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. And today is the leftover Halloween candy edition. Instead of a random trivial pursuit card, I have a random handful of leftover Laffy Taffy's. Nice. And we've mentioned this on the show before. When we play Pub Trivia, in our old Pup trivia place,

we used to just get the Laffy Taffy from the candy bucket, and we read each other the riddles, the crappy children, riddles in the back and then try to guess the answer. I feel like crappy is a little harsh. I'm sorry. They're published, Karen. They are published comedians. Well, we'll see. Sometimes it's like...

How about we'll just say amateur comedy? How about that? These amateur jokes. Okay. So here we go. You guys have your buzzers. Alfred C. from Des Moines, Iowa asks, what is a parasite? What is a parasite?

Uh, like binoculars. Someone who lives in Paris. Something you see in Paris. Oh, Paris site. All right. Sure. Yeah, Chris, you're pretty close. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arthur W. from De Plains, Illinois, asks, what do you get when you cross Noah's Ark and a bug? Noah's Ark and a bug? And a bug? This is kind of just a bad portmanteau. Oh. A buggy No. Arc sect

In arct. I don't know. You're very close. Arctic. Which has nothing to do with cold or something. This segment has gone down really quickly. All right. Carrie B from Utah asks,

when does a doctor get mad? Oh, when does a doctor get mad? When he loses a doctor get mad? patience. Yes. Yes. There we go. Andrew H. from Everson, Washington, asks, Mississippi, how do you spell it?

I.T. Yes, correct. I.T. Okay, last one. This is kind of clever. Sunil J. from Alabama asks, what starts with tea is full of tea and ends with tea?

A teapot. Great. Yay. That's good. That's good. I like that. I like that. Right. Good job, guys. That was our sub in, our leftover Halloween candy edition of Pop Quiz Hot Shot. We have a giant, um, actually, but I'm still getting mail about it. We apologized on, like, this is like a, like we needed to apologize because people were so heated about it. We had to do it on Twitter. We had to do it on Facebook.

Man. And it is because. At least we know they're listening. Colin, do you remember what this is? I can guess. Is this about the library, where the library is located? Yes. Wait, what was that again?

So how would you guys pronounce B-E-X-A-R county? Bexar. Bay-S-R? You'd be wrong because it is Bear County. Bear County. As we have been repeatedly educated online. We can't stop here. This is Bear County.

Yes. They put an X in there. I said Bexar because that's what it looks like. Because it looks like it, duh. But it's Bear County. There's a trap in there. They marked it with an X. Actually, you know, like, I suggest everybody go read up on the actual origin of the name.

It's very interesting. But on Twitter, we actually had the official Bear County Twitter account. Of course we did. You know, saying, it's okay. Everybody pronounces it wrong the first time. Sorry about that. All our Texan brethren's. Yes.

So it's just a silent X. Yeah. Wow. Bear. weird. Like, roar. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Well, we don't, like, put an X in the middle of good job. Braxton. And then people were like, oh, good job, brachshund. They're like, no, it's brain. You should apologize. Retweeted. All right.

One of the episodes in the past, we talked about new things. And, you know, we live in the Bay Area. There's, like, a lot of new fendangle technology and new stuff always on market. And we decided, you know, instead of talking about now, let's talk about then. So today we're going to focus on things that are outdated, obsolete, old, things that are in the past. Just take those old records off the shelf. I said to listen to them by myself. Today's music ain't got the same song.

I like that old time of rock and roll. Don't try to take me to a disco. I will start us off here. I have a quiz for you guys called names from days gone by. So these will be people, places, things that once had a different name than they do now. And I will give you a little bit of a hint as to what they might be. So, for example, we'll start us off with an easy one here. Get your buzzers ready.

This will be the first question of the quiz. This is not an example question. Sure, sure. It will be an admittedly easy first question. How about that? Jay Murray Spangler called his early 1900's invention

the electric suction sweeper Chris The vacuum There you go What we would call a vacuum cleaner Vacuum cleaner Yes Electric suction

The electric suction sweeper Yes It was renamed after he went into business With a savvy man named W.H. Hoover Indeed. Oh! I thought he said WH

vacuum William Lord Vacuum And I was like, I think it was a word This popular frozen treat debuted in 1921 And was originally named The I Scream Bar Karen

Fudgecicle? You're on the right track Chris Popsicle? You're on the right track. It is The ice cream bar The What is? What is What is the original? What's the, what's the, what's the brand?

Is this a brand? It's the square one, yeah. The York, not the York peppermint. I'm looking for the, Eskimo pie. That's all, yeah. The Eskimo pie. That's what I was thinking.

I couldn't. Is it just a block of ice cream with chocolate? Yes. Is there a stick? It has a stick. Don't have a stick. Don't have a stick. Which is super messy.

No stick. Yeah. Well, it depends on how good you are. It's a good quiz. Stick no stick. Stick no stick. No stick. All right.

Let's bring it back here, guys. Sorry. Let's not plan other quizzes in the middle of a quiz. This quiz is also good. Yeah, we're still balling for the future. Until 1983, this car company was named Dotson. It's not called that anymore? What did Dotson turn into?

Was it Hyundai? It was not Hyundai. It is not Hyundai. It is a Japanese company. Kia? No, they're Korean. No. What did Dotson change its name to?

What did Dmitzich? It's one of the major Japanese. It is Nissan. Nissan. Oh, wow. Yes. Dotson became the Nissan Corporation. What was World War I called before World War II?

Oh. It was called the Great War. It was called the Great War. Yeah. That's a small window. Yeah. They called it World War I because they were just figured. They knew.

It was like a franchise. They were laying the groundwork for like the Avengers or something. Yeah. All right. Last one. Here we go. In 1957, the Gold Coast declared independence from the United Kingdom, establishing what modern nation?

Karen. Australia? Incorrect. The Gold Coast declared independence from the United Kingdom Estabst. Chris. Tripoli? No, they are an African nation. Karen.

Ivory Coast? Is not Ivory Coast? God. I am looking. Madagascar. I am looking. I'm going to let you name them all. I'm looking for.

Ghana. Ghana was Gold Coast. The first modern nation to declare independence from Europe. Modern African nation. All right, days gone by. Not that. Nice. I would like to quote one of the great thinkers and really lyricists of our time. I'm rolling like a playboy. Beep, beep, beep, just another page, just another freak. Sir mix a lot. Beepers, 1980. Oh, right. Oh, the song was called Beeper. The song was called Beepers. Yes, yes, yes. You know, rap stars never get trusted.

Baby, want to get so I put it on vibrate. How does Mix a lot communicate with Beepers, baby. So the Pager or the Beeper is an idea whose time has come and gone. Oh, yeah. Would you like to guess? So, by the way, the pager or the beeper being a... Yeah, I think we need to explain it to some piece. I'm sure we have listeners who are at too young.

I bet a lot of... Yeah, many of you, exactly. For the kids out there who have never heard of this, and will never hear of this, a primitive wireless device used by primitive peoples of the 1990s, which could receive very limited, essentially, wireless messages. Sometimes they could send also. Sometimes they could send, you know, alphabet, you know, like text messages.

But sometimes they could only simply receive numbers as a... Yeah, most of the time it's just numbers. And it was to alert you, this is the phone number that you need to call right now. If you are a doctor or a lawyer or whatnot, you know, call your office. Right, or a board high school student. Drug dealer. Yeah. Exactly. Or a drug dealer.

Would you like to guess when the first pager, what is considered the first pager, was launched as a commercial product that was available for people to buy this? I'm going to guess it's going to be way earlier because, I mean, like, it would have been for, like, C. Earlier than what? I'm going to guess like 1965. Does anybody else want to? 70s. 70s?

89. 89. 150. First pagers in 1950. So the way that they worked was fascinating and wonderful. So it was the service was for doctors in New York City.

They had one transmitting radio antenna that was up on a hill that could reach all of New York City. Okay. Every pager, all the, the pager just received one radio transmission that was blasted out to all of the pagers that doctors were carrying around. And it was just, it looked like an old, old mobile phone, you know, sort of a bar, you know, with a speaker on it that you could listen to. The radio audio channel that was blasting out was just a bunch of codes.

And you knew your own code, your own three-digit code. And that meant if you heard that code, that means go to- of the office. You would listen in like once an hour because they would just broadcast everybody's code to the channel. So you'd hear everything else, but you're just listening for yours. Now, how did they broadcast the code? So there's a popular science article from 1950 that had pictures of the process.

They would use 16mm film. They'd use like movie film, which of course, which you could record sound onto, too, right? Right. So they'd record sound onto the soundtrack of the film. then they'd just cut that sound part out. Then they would take that little clip, which was a voice saying Dr. Number 300, Dr. Number, you know, 627.

And they'd have just that little clip of them saying, of, you know, somebody reading that voice. They'd take that clip of film, put it into a plastic stick, and then there'd be an operator, basically, who had all the sticks saying, with little clips of them saying the numbers. And there was a machine with a conveyor belt.

Oh, my goodness. And the conveyor belt had little pegs that you could hang the stick on. And the conveyor belt would take the stick that had a little bit of sound recording on it. And the conveyor belt would run. And then the sticks one by one would pass underneath the soundhead. Just loop them all together. They'd go underneath the sound reader. And then the sound reader, which was the same thing off a film projector, would read the clip of the voice saying,

Doctor number so-and-so. And then that, just the output of the machine is what got broadcasted on a loop. That's awesome. It was a real voice because it was just a record. recording of a voice saying that number. It just, it seems so elegant and yet so elaborate at the same time. Manual.

You don't have to, you don't have to have somebody sitting there reading off the numbers all night. You could just automate the process. And it's 1950. Then it just uses the sort of the radio technology that was already in use of the time and the film technology that was already in use of the time and just combined them together in a very

clever way. So basically by the early 1990s, you know, a lot of doctors, a lot of business then, we're using them. But what's really interesting is that beepers went from doctors, lawyers, et cetera, to fashion statements for teenagers. Yeah. Yeah.

It was a fad. Yeah, everybody had, like, a different color case. I didn't have, but my sister and all her friends. I had a clear purple one. All had pagers. The thing is, if you think about it, like, my first got one, I was like, oh, my God, I'm so cool. And then you realize what it's for, and it's for my dad to, like, page me a number.

and then I have to go to the school's pay phone put in money and then call my dad so really it's like not that cool it's like texting yeah it was proto texting right well that's the thing so all it was really able to do was you're just supposed to send a phone number to somebody and they call the phone number

but you could tweak it and do you know different stuff with it right hello boobs or the numerical it was like proto elite it was yeah it's great right right well so it kind of came from you know using calculators, which had the same

just numeric readouts to say funny things. I have a word for that, for a calculator words. Oh, yeah? It's called Begillos, or B-E-G-H-I-L-O-S, yeah. B-E-G-H-I-L-O-S. Those are all letters you can put in there. In the calculator.

Begilos? Yeah. Begilos! Those are the letters that you can use. The letters you can use, Begillos. Then you can spell big boobs, or big boobies. You can't do a space, unfortunately. One word.

Big goobies. It's a user name. Or a decimal. Yeah. Yeah. So, beepers did not immediately, you know, kind of get picked up for use by teens. Like, there was a bumpy process because, so the L.A. Times was reporting in 1991. The L.A. police originally figured, like, if you saw a teen with a beeper, then they were, like, a drug mule.

Because they were, like, drug dealers use these. So if a kid has a beeper, he must be running runs. You know, they must be, right. You know, they must be, right. But then they kind of had to change their presumptions once they realized, like, lots and lots of kids, were wearing them. If you wanted to seem like you were important, you know, you wear this thing.

Oh, it was conspicuously placed. Oh, yeah. I mean, you could put it in your pocket, but they had little belt clips on this. The LA Times said, this is a quote now, so coveted are they, wrote the L.A. Times, that Seattle-based rapper Sir Mixalot recorded Beepers, which praises the devices.

Note, by the way, this is me editorializing. This was prior to the release of Baby Got Back. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ellie Times, so fashionable that some teenagers don't mind that the beepers don't actually beep. A lot of them have beepers that don't even work, said Officer Tim Harris of the Los Angeles Police Department. I'll open it up and it doesn't have batteries or it's all rusted inside. New York Times.

A lot of guys think that girls will think they're hot because they have a beeper, said Sheila Gamble. Some have even taken to reportedly wearing small plastic boxes that look like beepers but are not. I was going to say that. There were candies that look like beepers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can clip it to your belt. Yep.

People would wear garage door openers. It does look like everything. So, 1991 really was the year when I went from early, early 91, you have the stories, the first kind of stories that are hitting, like, L.A. Times, New York Times, about, like, this is the new thing. And then Christmas, 1991, that is when Motorola started releasing fluorescent pink and yellow. because Motorola at this point is selling their devices, their stodgy

devices. Yeah, they're like gray and charcoal-colored, you know, to like professionals, to like rich professionals, but now they're like, oh man, youth market, you know, we're a fat, everybody. So, you know, pink beepers. And then as you say, the rise of beeper code, because

so many beepers were numbers only. So I have some more examples. Oh, okay. Well, 911 was emergency. That was what you're supposed to. You know, you put in nine. I always remember, like, my sister and her friend 911 just meant, I really need you to give me a call. It doesn't mean it's an emergency. It's to separate it from all the other pages that you get.

Some people use 811 as the, I'm not dying, but like I really want you to call me. But just, um, 143 is typically, uh, I love you. I love you. Oh, you know that. I knew that one. Okay. Because it's the number of letters and I love you. Oh, man.

Yeah. There's a lot of math. 07734. 773. Oh, 77734. Hello. That's hello. Yeah, exactly.

Do you know what 50538 is? It is, this is another upside down one. 305.3. Bezos. It's Bezos. It's kisses. In Spanish. 04, 04, oh four, oh four.

Oh, ho. Yes, as in happy holidays. And 9-9 was often used as night night. Oh, okay. The transition from pagers to cell phones was fast and it was harsh. Yeah, yeah. That was all of the circle. Real fast.

I remember I had a couple friends, and again, this would have been early 90s, and this was, again, so pre-cell phone, pre-internet, they had dedicated sports score pager service. Oh, yeah. So all the, all the pager got was just, it would just push sports scores, baseball updates for them. It's like the doctor stuff. Yeah, it's just, not only was it hard to decipher in English, we had Chinese numerical codes. Oh, yeah. Crack, mixed in with English. Yeah. So it's like, it's like doing math and trying to decipher two languages. Oh, so stressful. There's like the... Yeah, there was something I came across where somebody said, oh, you know, there's a certain code that when you read out the numbers in Korean, it sounds like Korean for hurry up. So that's what we use for hurry up, that kind of thing. Yeah. For us, it was 8181, which means goodbye because it's, because pronunciation is ba'i, ba'i, so you say bye-bye.

It looks like bye-bye, though. It does. Oh, that's true. That's true. Man. Yeah, days gone by. The only time that I really hear people talk about pagers these days is people in IT talk about being on pager duty. Yeah, you're on pager duty. It's like, ah, the site's down. I'm on pager duty tonight.

I've got to fix it. It's not that, it's not that like there's no more pagers because obviously it's still a more efficient thing with big institutions and hospitals. Well, first of all, I mean, we use pagers all the time. We go to restaurants. And, I mean, oh, this will beep when your table is ready. That's a pager? That's pager.

It's just, it's beeping you from a radio. Oh, cheese cake factory. Right, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And a lot of hospitals still use them because, because wireless, you know, they don't want to rely on cell phone service in the hospital. Yeah. Okay, I have a quiz for you guys.

It's about things in the past, but I structured it a little differently. So I'll start with a question about something that happened a year ago and then five years ago and then 10 years ago, 50 years ago. So we'll try to get to 100. thousand years ago. Wow. It's like a survivor, trying to survive through the ages. That would be interesting to do an elimination one.

Yeah. Elimination, good job, right? If we had more than three quizzers. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So one year ago in 2013, what was the number one song on the Billboard end of year top 100? Wow. Colin.

Blurred lines. No, that was number two. That's a good guess. Oh, God. I can give you guys a hint. It included the lyric, dressed. in all pink except my gator's shoes those are green. I mean, is it

Royal Cyrus? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, must be it is thrift shop by Macomore and Ryan Lewis. Well, the number one, okay. That's, yeah, wow. I thought that was like two years a year's blur. When you hear us from 500 times,

yeah. Yeah, you stopped being able to hear it, I think. Okay, five years ago in 2009. We already failed. I mean, everybody's out. You're back in now. Well, that was the loser's bracket. Right. We've established.

All right. What film won the best picture in 2009 at the Academy Awards? Colin? I believe that was the Hurt Locker. No. Chris. Crash? No.

That's too early. Slumdog Millionaire. Yes. Oh, hey. That was our... Because that movie came out in 2008. Correct. Yeah, 2009 Oscars.

Yep. All right. Ten years ago, in 2004, had Operation Red Dawn, the capture of Saddam Hussein? Had that already happened in 2004? No. It was yes. Oh, okay. It was December 2003 when they captured Saddam Hussein. Oh, my God, that was ten years ago?

Yeah. A spider hole. Yeah, it was ten years ago. Yeah. So 50 years ago, 1964, during the 1964's New York World's Fair, which invention was not presented, was it, It's a small world. It's a small world attraction at Disneyland. The Smell of Vision, the picture phone, or Belgian Waffles.

What was the year? 1964. 604. Smell of Vision, picture phone, Belgian Waffles. Small world. Small world. Well, was not? Yeah.

Belgian Waffles. Nope. Belgian Waffles were introduced 50 years ago. Chris? Picture phone. Picture phone was introduced. Oh, man. Small world.

small world was introduced 50 years ago it was smell of vision that was actually the 1939 world oh okay that was yeah that question is that really what i think that question was already asked and answered before the 60s do we want smell of vision and they were like no is it really just what it sounds like smell like tv that pumps into the air we talked about yeah we've talked about not just tv but like a movie yeah yeah yeah yep and it didn't catch on but everything else kind of caught on picture phones took a while they were before their time yeah yeah yeah yeah 100 years ago, in 1914. So in this year, Nevada and Montana joined 12 other states to grant what?

Nevada and Montana joined 12 other states to grant what? What happened 100 years ago? 14 to grant the states did it together, so it can't be suffrage. Is it not? Is it women's suffrage? It is women's suffrage. Yeah, yeah. It was like, you gave it away.

Yeah. Why assume that that was national? No, I mean, I think it was just like, you know, these things sometimes they happen on a state-by-state basis until there's a big, yeah. What was the first state to grant women suffrage? Yeah, this has come up in trivia. This is a good. They're very proud of it, rightfully so.

Some hippie state. New Hampshire? It's not a hippie state. No, no, it's for sure. I forget. It is Wyoming. Wyoming. Yes, that's right.

That's right. Wyoming. They granted it as a territory, and then they, became a state and they were the first to woman Wyoming women in Wyoming yeah 500 years ago so 1514 so was

1514 was that before or after the Mona Lisa was painted oh that no yeah before yeah no I think that was after this was the trick sorry you guys it was during it took several years

I know I know oh what it took it took several years for him to finish So the year 15, 14 was in the middle of the painting of the Mona Lisa. It was finished in 15, 17. Man. When did he start? 1511 or something. Took him that law six years from him?

I don't know when he was up to it. Was he billing by the hour? Like, what is this? Painters would do that a lot. They would start and come back to paintings. That happens a lot. So it's not like he's working on it every day. A lot of paintings will find maybe even been reworked and painted over before they decided it's done.

He did all those studies. You've seen all the like Mona Lisa-ish paintings. Yeah. Okay. All right, a thousand years ago. Actually, that's a really good thing. Like, that's a good icebreaker to say 500 years ago today, you know, Leonardo da Vinci is in the process of painting. He was still working on the movies.

Right, right, right. That's pretty cool. At what kind of party would I say that? A nerd party. I don't know. Party with the four of us. With some really super cool people. A Mario party.

And they're like, that's a great story, Chris. Sir, how did you get to the Oval Office? a thousand years ago so in 1014 this was near the peak of the holy roman empire can you guys name four modern countries that were completely encompassed by the holy roman empire so i'm not talking about ones that you know there were a lot of countries that were touched by the holy roman empire but i'm talking about ones that were completely subsumed by there were a lot that were punched right in the face by the holy roman empire too yeah Italy That was just a part Just northern Italy Like current modern day The way they draw the borders now

Okay Where is it? The United Kingdom? No It was Germany Uh huh It was Netherlands Belgium

Luxembourg, Switzerland Austria The Czech and Slovak Republics Man Yeah it was like right We had a lot to choose from Yeah And we bombed it

But it touched parts of France, Italy, Slovenia, and Western Poland. So like, those were the edges. Why is it called the Holy Roman Empire? Well, they, I mean, they ran it from Rome. Yeah. Oh, okay. It kind of, it's funny, you can see it, like, evolve over time. It lasted hundreds of years. So you see it, it kind of starts in the Italy area, and then it, like, moves up, and it goes to Germany, and then it gets small. Like, and it goes away. That would come up in trivia. Now where, know where the Holy Roman Empire was. All right. Five thousand years ago, so about three thousand, B.C. or before.

Give or take. Yeah. So was this the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age? Oh, man. 3,000 BCE. Yeah, 5,000 years ago. Chris knows is rock. This is not the Stone Age.

Three thousand, no, that's two, yeah. Bronze. Bronze Age. It's the Bronze Age. All right. Yeah. When people just started using metal work or doing metal work. Now we're moving on.

We're going to 10,000 years ago. There was the Quaternary extinction event. That's where the I.C. animals went extinct. A lot of the Ice Age animals went extinct, including Sabretooth Cats, the mammoth went extinct in Eurasia and North America. So

in the movie, Ice Age, the cartoon, who played Manfred? The documentary, animated documentary, Ice Age. Who played Manfred the mammoth? Karen. Raymond? Everybody loves.

Oh, Ray Romano. Yeah. Yeah. Ray Romano. And who voiced Sid, this Sabretooth Tiger. Dennis Leary. Nice. Wow.

I never saw it. I mean, neither. I just know it. The trailers get played a lot. Yeah. I can go more. Nope. That's okay.

Okay. It's all right. Okay. Okay. Fine. This is just a yes, no question. 50,000 years ago, were there people in Australia?

50,000 years ago? Yeah. I'll say yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it was about 50,000 years ago when they got there, right around $50,000. Yeah.

They signed the guest book. We can see. Yeah. I was here in Australia. Welcome to. See, they wrote it right there. All right. Last question.

This one, even though I took a class in it, I still forget the answer sometimes. So this was really just for me to remember. Were there still Neanderthals 100,000 years ago? Yes. Yeah. Yes. There were. They died out about 40,000 years ago.

Yeah, because the overlap between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals actually not as short as people think. Yeah, they did overlap for a while. Yeah, you could find them. Like, you'd have to go to certain bars, you know? Yeah, yeah. And they're fake pagers. A little, just a rock.

Yeah. They're rock pagers. Yeah, yeah. Man, that guy looks so cool. I went to school with some, but you only had gym class again. You're like, that doesn't even work. That thing is totally fake. I can tell.

It's full of rock. It should be like two rocks because you can beat them together. Right. That's just a cave door opener. That's totally not real. Good job, you guys. All right, we're going to take a quick break. A word from our sponsor.

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Feel free to send that there is no deadline. More free content, please. During the course of research for the show, I often come across little nuggets that aren't quite on topic, but I file them away because I'm like, oh, I'll find a way to use this in some future episode. So I think in the course of researching occupations, for some previous quiz, I came across a job from days gone by. And so I'd like to tell you a little bit about this awesome job. Okay. That no longer exists. Ron Burgundy? Um, so it involves gunpowder.

So gunpowder, also known as black powder. We've talked about that before. It is, it is human, humankind's first artificial explosive, uh, very old, many old societies, uh, new gunpowder made gunpowder. This is a good trivia question. This may come up. There are three ingredients in gunpowder. Do you guys know what those are? Nitrogen. Decomposing animal. Are you close on that one? We'll come back to that.

The three ingredients and gunpowder... Wait, no, no, wait, wait. Hops. Water. Barley. Barley. And gunpowder. And gunpowder. Drink, then, boom. The three ingredients in gunpowder are sulfur. Oh, okay.

Charcoal, and saltpeter. And salt Peter is the old-timey name for potassium nitrate. So, Karen, you're correct. It is a nitrogen-based compound. And these are things that you can find in the natural world. These are naturally occurring in different amounts. You can also manufacture potassium nitrate, which is salt Peter. So I want to talk about salt Peter.

Oh, thank goodness. Yes, yes. I was hoping we could say it over and over a little Peter. Not salty Peter. Not Salty Peter, salt Peter. Salt Peter. Salt Peter is one word. So you'll see it spelled P-E-E-T-E-R or P-E-T-R-E-T-R-E, but one word, Petra. Petra. Petra. Very European.

Salt Petra. It comes from Latin. Sal Petre. Salt. Salt of rock. I knew a guy named Sal Petre. Sal Petra. Yeah. It is called salt of rock, because in its naturally occurring form, it looks like little crystals, you know, like salt. It might be crushed it on a rock. Very, named after what it looks like. So sulfur and charcoal are sulfur is pretty abundant. It's an element, obviously. Charcoal, extremely easy to come by charcoal.

Salt Peter, in quantity, is a little harder to come by. It does occur naturally in environments that are really high in nitrogen. Makes sense. And you know where there's a lot of nitrogen that occurs in nature? Farts. In poo. Hoops. Animal waste.

Urine. Pooh. Right. It's very high in nitrogen. hydrogen, and in fact, guano, bat guano, was an early and abundant source of making salt peter. People notice that potassium nitrate would tend to occur in caves where there's a high concentration of bat guano would be either on the walls, or you could just harvest the guano directly and reduce it down and make your potassium nitrate that way. People also used to eat

bat guano too. Oh, you know, it's got a multitude of juices. With this invention, I can control the entire world. as the bow and arrow sort of was getting phased out and replaced by the musket, so gunpowder obviously got to be really important. I mean, you know, the Chinese used it in fireworks and things like that. But once it became an element of weaponry is when gunpowder started to get really, really important. If you are a government or a king or a queen or a crown ruling nation, right. You're anybody. You had to have some gunpowder. And so this was really particularly into the like the 16th 17th century is when muskets cannons were really kind of just becoming this is the way you fought war enter the saltpeter man this is a job that I want to talk to you guys about the salt Peter man okay I just imagine him in driving the car around the neighborhood turkey and the straw is playing uh huh let's uh let's put a pin in that thought there Chris and we'll come back to that that may not be quite as ridiculous as you think um so in English

in particular, sort of like, as I say, in the late Tudor period, in the Stewart period, into the 17th century, the crown, they really recognized the need for a controlled pipeline of saltpeter to make gunpowder in massive amounts. And as I mentioned, you know, the raw ingredients are very high

in places where you find animal waste, urine, dung, even just animal parts, rotting, you know, anything high. And so, the crown basically issued special permission and dispensation to people to harvest and create saltpeter that they would sell to turn into gunpowder and on a large scale. Oh, anybody could do it as long as they had the reason. If you had the right permission,

Salt Peter Man in those days, they had the right, they could come to your farm or your chicken coop, harvest the dirt where your animals had been peeing and pooing and take it away, basically. And, you know, this is on authority of the crown. I'm selling this. I'm selling this, right. A lot of people got pretty put out about this. There were many stories of, you know, farmers or whatever. It's like, hey, the Salt Peter man dug up my chicken coop, took all this dirt off, and then there's left, you know, and then I'm on my own to sort of reassemble things. Can you guys think of one other obvious source for urine aside from farm animals? House.

Human beings? Human beings. That's right. Yes. That's where I get all of my urine. Like a reverse milkman, one of the things that a Salt Peter man to do was come around and collect a jars of urine. Yeah. That you could leave out for, you know, a small token or a small amount of money.

And you would put the jars of urine out on the doorstep. It was like a reverse milkman. No turkey in the straw playing. But yeah, you would come by in the morning, pick up your bottles of urine that you'd laugh. That's right. Any source you can get with urine the business of making salt. We need it. Yeah.

Do you know the urine man, the urine man? Eventually, they discovered more efficient and more laboratory-based ways of generating large amounts of potassium nitrate. The thing is, with these saltpeter dudes, like, when they collect all this stuff, like, is it helpful? Is it, does it yield a good amount? Oh, well, so, I mean, you know, you can get, obviously, obviously, you can get raw urine and raw dung. But it was, it actually worked really well to have it be contained in the dirt because it would get concentrated, having it sit for a while, you know, I mean, like it would develop a very strong

smell, but part of that is also the nitrogen and the, yeah, getting concentrated. Yeah, that's how you know it's working. That's, yeah, smells like salt Peter, smells like victory. In addition to being able to generate it artificially, obviously gunpowder eventually gave way to other explosives over time. So today, there are no more Salt Peter men running around collecting jars of urine. So please stop leaving bottles of urine on your front porch. No one's coming to get them anymore. And if somebody could make us a like a propaganda poster that's like the smell of victory, turn in your manure today, order of the crown. I'm just asking this, not because I'm expecting an answer, but I'm probably going to research this. For four races

that I do or in parks and stuff, they have porta-potties. What do they do with the leftover stuff that is accumulating they have to process it I mean those are like you know it's they'll have chemicals in some of those yeah they'll have the chemicals

in some of them right right right right yeah would they incinerate it and make it into something like a new energy make a plastic out of it I don't know

I don't know you know what I mean yeah I'm not sure I do not know I think they process it yeah and then what and throw it away

yeah like your water supply I'm not sure I'm sure there's something they do oh that is fascinating right I would like to know

I think it's whoever fills it up has to deal with it. Yeah, yeah. As soon as it crests over the top, it's like taking out the trash. It's like whoever, you know, yeah, right, right, whoever puts the last thing in there. It's your problem now. And gross. Are you dreaming about becoming a nurse or maybe you're already in nursing school? I'm Nurse Moe, creator of the straight A nursing podcast, and I want you to know that I'm here for you.

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All right, and here I have one last quiz, and when we talk about days gone by, going in the past, of course, I love old, literature. Primarily, I love Shakespearean language. So here I welcome back our friend, William Fakespeare. Oh, yeah. And again, he is going to attend a house party. So what I've done is I've written lyrics to very famous party songs as if they were in a Shakespeare play. So very flowery language. I try to make it rhyme, try to make the pentameter kind of happen. Not all of them

stand back i'm making pentameter happen and then i of course i have william fakespeare uh read out these lovely songs and sonnets i'm going to play the clip and after the clip buzz in and tell me what song what artist and maybe what are the the words that lurks that he is all right parodying i guess right parodying here we go number one one of my faves Tis the manner we brethren manage Tis the evening of Frigg The carousing shall takeeth effect On the edge where the sun sets

Dana This is how we do it This is how we do it Yeah, Montel, Jordan Yep The lyrics are, this is how we do it It's Friday night So tis the manner we brethren manage

tis the evening of Frigg Frig is an old Norse God yeah Norse God Friday Venus So the trick is with these I don't use the same words Like I will go out of my way So you translate every possible word

Yeah because then it kind of is unfun And then the lyrics are The party is here on the west side So the carousing shall takeeth effect On the edge where the sun sets Wow, that's beautiful Frigg is also a euphemism for a bad word.

Yeah. It's the night of Fring. Right. It's the evening of Fring. What is it? Well, it works as well. Yeah. That's what I thought he was talking about.

And I was like, oh, maybe doing it. It's a bad word. No, this is how we do. Yeah. That's true. That's true. It's how we do it. It's like a riddle. Yeah.

Next one. A sense I possess. Even Tide shall be a prosperous affair. Yay. Even Tide shall be a prosperous affair. Even Tide shall be a prosperous affair. Even Tide shall be. a prosperous prosperous affair even tide tonight prosperous writ but it's not just night it's

okay i'm gonna play it in the clue is probably the third the last line there's a double of words oh okay all right yeah yeah okay a sense i possess even tide shall be a prosperous affair yay even tide shall be a prosperous affair. Even Tide, she'll be a prosperous, prosperous, prosperous affair. Chris. I got a feeling that tonight's going to be a good, good night. Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. Black eyed peas. I got a feeling. Next one, I'm sure all of you guys will get this one. Perennial favorite. The Cottage of Passion is one Leputian seasoned estate where in

We can convene. Everybody's a love shack. It's a little old place where we can get together. Cottage of passion. Cottage of passion. Nice. Yeah. I like how he said it very whimsically.

Yeah. I said, can you please be more bard-like? Yeah. Can you barred it up? Just barred it up. All right. Next one. I am thine vassal.

My servitude cannot be contained, cannot be disciplined. I am thine vassal. My servitude shan't be rebuffed, shan't be concealed. Dana. I'm a slave. Brittany Spears. I'm a slave for you. Four is the number four and you is the letter you.

Sorry, we're emphasizing it because we're trying to say the numeral four. Yeah, not for. Not for. For you. Right. I'm a slave for you. I cannot hold it. I cannot control it.

I'm a slave for you. I won't deny it. I'm not trying to hide it. All right. Last one. Here we go. Mine. Mine.

Mine melody hath strucketh with excess vigor. Hence I have chanted. Oh, mine maker. I made this one rhyme. I was so proud. My, my, my, my, my. Music hits me so hard. Makes me say,

Oh, my Lord. Yeah. Thank you for blessing me with a mind to rhyme. And two hype feet. I thought I always think he's saying two gold teeth. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm doing the hammer dance. I can't touch this. No, no, no, no.

Master chief. Master chief hammer. Oakland's own, MC Hammer. Awesome, good job guys And, well, that is our show But before we close the show Who's got something to plug? Who's got something to plug?

If you've ever been to a video game convention, you've probably seen a big booth From a company called Fan Gamer They do all kinds of like merch and shirts They do like, it's all inspired by cool old video games So like shirts for, you know, like, It's super well. Very, very designy, like, Zelda shirts and things like that.

And, like, they do a Mario pipe mug, like a coffee mug that's shaped like a green pipe from Super Mario Brothers. Oh, okay. They do an oven mitt that looks like a power glove. So they're doing a Kickstarter right now that is a whole bunch of stuff all themed around the old Super Nintendo role-playing game, Earthbound. So basically, I'm not getting any money from this, but they interviewed me. They did a huge interview in my video game collection. all about the history of the Earthbound series and, you know, just about like Nintendo and stuff in general.

It was like three, four hours of, you know, interviews. But it'll probably be like, you know, five minutes of the movie. You know how it is. You know how it is. So, but anyway, I'm going to be in this documentary and it's getting Kickstarter now. The Kickstarter is called You Are Now Earthbound. And it's for like a guidebook for the game, a CD of music, you know, that they're redoing from the game and this documentary and other stuff too.

So that's happening if you, it's actually already been funded. So at this point, it's just sort of like piling on and doing stretch goals and stuff like that. But you're going to be a part of it. You're officially like a part of the documentary. I'm officially in the documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the documentary is not going to be out until 2016 at the earliest. So, you know, hopefully I'll make the final cut.

Yeah. And you'll get to see Chris's a menager. You will. Yeah, yeah. That's impressive. I don't know if people know this. Like, I didn't know this when I first met you. It was like, oh, Chris from trivia.

And he works out wired. Right. Like, oh, that's cool. Some of my coworkers were like, Chris wrote a book about Nintendo. Oh, yeah, that's true. Chris Kohler. You know, Chris Kohler. And so I don't know.

I bet most people who listen to this kind of know, but maybe not everybody. Like, Chris wrote a book about Nintendo, you guys. He actually is an expert in Nintendo. Yeah, of course, somebody also just wrote to me saying, hey, I really like your book, but there's this fact in there that I can't verify with other sources. So can you tell me what's not going on with this? And I have to write him an email soon telling him that I just, you know, screwed up. So, you know, books okay.

Books are. It's an un-actually IRL. That's right. It's tough to edit books once they're out there. Yeah, download the patch. Yeah, I have something to plug, too. It's my words are so weird Twitter account. I post a weird word every day.

It's awesome. There are two people. And a cool picture. And a cool picture. I want to give a shout out to two people who always write me funny sentences or comics, and that's Anna or at Puppy Diggs. She drew our fonts frozen. She's the one who drew our...

Anna's awesome. Elsa. Yeah, Fons Elsa. Yeah, Fonzels. No, no, no, it was... Fonzin? No, there was another listener on Facebook who said it was Princess Frosarelli. Oh, that's perfect.

Hey, let it go. What was the cold never bothered me anyway? Oh. Yeah, Anna. Anna. Anna is really funny and awesome. And then Amber Ward also writes very funny sentences. So anyway, I just want to give a shout out to them.

It's getting some traction. So the best word of the last week, I have to share it because I love this word. I was so proud of finding it. It was apocalo scintosis, which means turning into a pumpkin. Or pumpkinification. Like, apocalypse? Apocalo. Apocelosis.

Centosis. It's a Greek word, I believe. Use it all the time. So I was like, man, life must have been so magical. a long time ago where they needed words for that actual words to describe it's turning into a pumpkin yeah yeah it's like a metamorphosis

or an apocelocinthosis like I ate too much and I'm slowly becoming to look like a pumpkin it was it was a play about this politician and they were making fun of them and it translated directly to pumpkinification or gortification and so and then it was a word once they invented it very nice very cool all right and that is our show thank you guys for being here

thank you guys listeners for listening in hope you learned a lot of stuff about old tiny jobs like collecting poo and pee and old language and old beepers and of course you can find us on iTunes on Stitcher on SoundCloud and on our website, goodjobbrain.com and thanks to our sponsor Squarespace and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. This is Jen and Jenny from Ancient History Fan Girl, and we're here to tell you about Jenny's scorching historical romanticcy based on Alaric of the Bissigoths, enemy of my dreams. Amanda Boucher, best-selling author of The Kingmaker Chronicle, says, quote, this book has everything, high-stakes action, grit, ferocity, and blazing passion.

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