Good Job, Brain! - 48: Sports Trivia for Non-Sports People

Episode Date: February 4, 2013

SPORTS: you either love it or it makes you groan. Fear not! We SERVE up intriguing sports facts that you will lurve... so heads up! We finally learn why football is called "soccer," the hotly contested origin of tennis, and what sport is awesomely known as "flutterguts." Chris bats a home run sports anagram quiz, Colin tells us the nightmarish tale of being a professional sports accountant, and Dana gives us some "English Pleasure." ALSO: DO DOGS REALLY DREAM?, Puzzle Music Round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Welcome Super Super Civilized, not superfluous, nor superficial, superhuman and superhero, superfans post-super Bowl. This is good job. Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. Today's show is episode 48, and of course I am your humble host, Karen, and we are your seminar of semi-aquatic and semi-sweet semi-prose who semi-talk about semi-colons and seminiferous tubules. We do talk a lot about it. I'm Colin. I'm Dana.

And I'm Chris. Well, as our constant listeners know, I was out sick last week for the sleeping episode. However, this did not mean that it didn't do my research for the sleeping episode. And far beyond reason you're allowed you back. Yeah. I definitely do not want to let this go to waste because when I thought about sleeping, I was like, okay, I want to answer a very important question. Do dogs dream? We always see, it was recently like I was sitting at my computer probably thinking about good job brain and I heard like Yelps from the other room. You know, I heard a little dog Ricky going like, which are noises that he doesn't make, you know? And I'm just like, oh my God, he's, oh, he's just dreaming. He's like on his side. His paws are kicking. Yeah. This is so funny. That's what we say.

We say, oh, you know, just imagine he's chasing something. Like, yeah, he's chasing rabbits or whatever. Like dream hunting, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but then again, it's like, well, is that really happening or not? There actually is an answer, so let's go in. You know, typically when I research good job brain subjects, I'm like doing it with the utter dispassionate attitude of a scientist, like, okay, all right, I'm going to research something and I want to see if it's true or false. I'll see you with a back to me. This one I was really pulling for it to be true.

I really, really wanted dogs to dream. So let's find out. So this all starts, as all great experiments do, with rats running in a maze. Apparently, like, it doesn't even matter what it is you're trying to figure out scientifically. You always have to get some rats and make them run around in mazes to whatever end. What's the rat and maze industry, really? Yeah, you're in the pocket of big rat. Yeah.

So a researcher at MIT a few years ago measured the brain signals of rats as they were running around on a track. And then it measured the brain signals of rats, but little, you know, tiny little electrodes as they slept that night and found that the signals that were coming out of the rat's brains during REM sleep, during the rapid eye movement portion of sleep where you dream, were basically identical to the signals that he was getting when they were running around in the track. They were so similar that he could essentially point the data and say, I'm pretty sure that at this point, the rat is dreaming about being in this particular part. of the track and whether or not the rat is moving or standing still. So at that point, the scientists who were looking at this were like, these rats are dreaming about running around in the maze. They're rehashing the day's activity because it's so close. It's so similar.

So, dogs brains being much awesomer than rat brains. That's a scientific term. If the rats can do it, clearly we imagine that the dogs might. Okay. So if you want more proof than that, fine. There's a part of your brain stem, which is, oh, by the way, I'm going to go back into the brain, which is always really tricky for us on the show, because I always screw something. As it turns out, the brain, kind of complicated.

So I apologize to any neuroscientist listening in, and please leave comments on the website, if I'm wrong. There's a part of the brain stem called the Pons, and the Pons releases a chemical that not only does it put you into REM sleep, but it paralyzes you while you're sleeping. I know you guys talk about sleep paralysis, right? You actually want to be paralyzed when you are sleeping because if you're not paralyzed while you're sleeping... They're just walking around doing weird stuff. You will act out your... Exactly.

So the comedian that we like, Mike Barbiglia, right, has rapid eye movement behavior disorder. He doesn't get paralyzed when he goes to sleep. So he gets up and acts out his dreams, which might involve jumping out a window and almost killing himself. So if you want to know what your dog is dreaming about, you can just take the ponds out of your dog's brain. Now, they don't do this anymore. But they did. But they did. They took the ponds out of some brains of some dogs.

Guess what happened? They did stuff. They did stuff. The dog would go to sleep and then go into REM sleep and then just get up and start acting out all the stuff they did during the day. Just like taking out the inhibitor. If you had a hunting dog, the hunting dog would flush out imaginary birds out of imaginary. bushes um and and and they and they would go on point you know how dogs yeah yeah yeah they would they would do that in their sleep 100% no question dogs are dreaming about activities that they are

doing oh yeah but don't take out parts of your dog's brain don't do that no don't do that yeah i'm sure ricky was happy to hear that was not on your agenda i let him know that i was not about to do that oh yeah dear dog i would not take parts of your brain out of Just to see what you were dreaming about. All right, thanks, Chris. And without further ado, let's jump into our general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. Damn, right.

All right, and I have a random trivial pursuit card here. And you guys have your buzzers. Ready? Let's go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What Italian City claims to be the birthplace of pizza? Chris Culler. Not bully.

Is that true? Naples. Naples. Oh, Mr. Italian. Yeah. That's two points. I got an extra point. Pink Wedge for pop culture.

What alias did Stephen King pen novels under because he was writing so many books his publisher worried about over-exposure buzz to her. Dana. Richard Bachman? Correct. Richard Bachman. I was really trying to time it at the end and the question just kept going. All right, yellow wedge. What soft drink?

Does George W. Bush usually gulp when toasting guests at the White House? Colin? Just because he's from Texas. I'm going to guess Dr. Pepper. Incorrect. That would be my guest, too. Ginger ale. Incorrect.

Mountain Dew. No, the answer is 7-Up. Huh, okay. Array Purple Wedge. What book besides the Bible are you likely to find in your Marriott? hotel room. The script is the Bible? Is it the

Book of Mormon? Correct. It is the Book of Mormon. Founder John William Marriott was a devout member of the church. Of course, and Mitt Romney just rejoined the board of Marriott

hotels. Did not know that. Yeah. Greenwich for science. These words are used to describe shapes of what natural item. And there's a list I'm going to read. Elyptic. Ames, palmate, spear, or trifoliate? Are those clouds?

Incorrect. Those are leaves. Correct, those are leaves. I think the palm one was probably... The trifoliate, I suppose. Yeah, folioleet. Leaves of three. Orange Wedge, last question.

What carmaker made the aspire, probe, and tempo? Colin. I'm pretty sure that was Ford. Correct. Probe. The probe. The Ford Probe. So we are currently recording this episode right now, hours before the Super Bowl,

the Grand American Football event of the year. Yes. So by the time you're actually listening to this, it should be the day after, and the game will be over. Hopefully. Yeah. With the power of prophecy or rather sound editing, congrats to the winning team. The Baltimore Ravens. Go, team go.

Oh, that's great. You guys did awesome. absolutely say no question that the Baltimore Ravens are my favorite favorite football team it was really impressive the way they footballed much better than the San Francisco 49ers footballed and to all fans of the San Francisco 49ers don't worry you'll get them next year so today we are talking about sports you all ready for this I think the goal of this episode should be sports for non-sports fans. I think it should be like even if you don't care at all about who is playing in the Super Bowl or maybe you've never even heard of the Super Bowl, there will be something in this show for you, hopefully.

Cool. Otherwise, I don't know what I'm doing here. Very divisive among trivia nerds. There are like kind of two camps. There are the people who like sports trivia and people who don't think that sports trivia belongs in proper trivia. So I'm probably in the second camp, but maybe I think it's overrepresented in proper trivia. I think sports is overrepresented. I think the problem is that all people just aren't sports fans. It's kind of binary, isn't it?

I mean, you're either like a sports fan and know a whole lot about sports or you really just don't know very much at all. Yeah. At the same time, though, sports is great for trivia because there are these indisputable numbers and records and they scored this many points. And not only that, but it just generates trivia on a constant basis. Right, exactly. It's just so hard to care about it. I think that's really the rub, yeah. But, like, sports, if you don't care about football at all, you're not going to care about

who scored, yeah, the first touchdown in Super Bowl 11. That's right. Colin is our sports guy at trivia. And as we often say, Karen and I, the only time ever scored a perfect zero on a round of trivia was Karen and I trying to do sports by ourselves. It was sports general. It was general sports. So since it's the Super Bowl, I want to talk about football.

Yay. And by football, I actually really mean soccer. There have been so many times in my life where, you know, I would say, oh, soccer. And they're like, oh, you mean football. And I was like, well, no, there's American football. So why is this? Why do we call soccer, soccer, and why does almost the rest of the world call it football? Here's the skinny.

Soccer is actually a British term, which is weird because they call soccer football. They're real jerks about it, too. I know. Some of them are. Throughout history, there's been a lot of various games in sports simply called football. They're not the same, but it's very straightforward. You have a ball and you kick it or you do something with your legs. Yeah, you don't need to convene a linguistics committee to come up with a name.

Ball. A lot of these games are similar, but they all have different rules, maybe different equipment, maybe different number of people playing it. In the mid-1800s, a group of athletes and officials set out to actually standardize the rules of this sport so they can play their matches under consistent regulations. So it's not like, oh, wait, we play it this way, and we play it that way. And this is a common story in the history of a lot of sports. There were 18 different ways to play until we first agreed and standardized. And so they named this type of football sport, association football. That's right.

So this way it won't be confused with other types of football, like rugby football and other games at that time. Association football doesn't really roll off the tongue so easily. And so it was very popular in the British culture to shorten certain words. I see. I see where you're going with this. It's ER, the sound er, at the end of the word. So, like, potato becomes tater, right?

So a lot of little nicknames. And rugby becomes rugger. And association football becomes a soccer. Right. Oh, my God. Which eventually soccer without the A. The SOC. You can see it's right there.

Yeah, there it is. And at that time, soccer was kind of a, soccer, soccer was kind of a sport for, like, the upper echelon of society. and as the popularity of association football spread to the lower classes, they just called football football. And that became the more popular name. So soccer was kind of a more of a highbrow name, but it spread so quickly people just called it football. So that's why it went from soccer back to football.

I love that. But we kept soccer. And as you say, like they really, rugby and American football and soccer and all these games really all sort of had the same proto game. You'll hear a lot in the media. what we call soccer and the rest of the world calls football. And like, that always kind of rubs me the wrong way because it's an oversimplification because it's not true. There's American style football. There's Canadian rules football.

Australian rules football. There is association or soccer football. There's rugby. There's 11 rugby. I mean, there's all these different variations. So I don't know. I'm just, I'm standing up for us as Americans. You know, it's, yes, we call it football because it's American rules football sounds silly to say. Okay, I have another soccer titbit for you guys. What person in a soccer match moves the most in a single game? Ah, you mean like covers the most distance? Chris. The goalie.

It sounds like a trick question that it's going to be a goalie, right? Like maybe he's just like constantly running back and forth. I don't know. I'm going to guess, I don't know, the striker. So these are people who are on the team or is this a trick? Is it like the referee? It is a trick. Because I was like, I don't know anybody.

It is the referees. Oh, okay. So according to data from the U.S. Soccer Federation, refs tend to run 12 miles during a game, which is five more than the players. It's amazing because referees can be almost twice the age of the actual players and can keep up. And I was reading an article on CNN about a guy training or wanting to be a FIFA, a World Cup referee. And it is insane, insane, because they have to go through a set of like really, really crazy tests to test your speed, to test your stamina and crazy training schedule. They have to eat like athletes.

Basically, they're on a schedule to be like athletes. Right, right. But the crazy thing is they have day jobs. These are regular people. These are people who work at Visa, who work at different companies. American football is the same. American football refs. Oh, really?

They work during the week. But, yeah, NFL reps, many of them are lawyers, and they have weekly jobs, yeah. And to add on their day job, they have this ridiculous super athlete training schedule so that they can ace these FIFA tests when it's time to apply to be a ref. And one more quick soccer fact. Do you guys know what the name of the classic black and white soccer shape? Round. Is it a – is it some sort of –

Oh, give you a million dollars. You mean the name of the pattern of the, what are they like, hexagons? The name of the shape. It's a 3D shape. Yeah, it's a, it's a duodesa hexade something on. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's one of those. I don't know.

I know it's made about two different shapes. Is it natiform? It is called a truncated icosahedron. Yeah, okay. It co-sahedron. Yes, and it's made out of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. That's what I'm okay. Yeah, I knew it had two different shapes in there, yeah.

So there is C. 60, which is a molecule, and it's 60 carbon, and it's like a little cage. It's like a little ball. It looks exactly like a soccer ball called the Buckminster Fullerine. Oh, Bucky Balls. Yes, the Bucky Ball name was inspired by the Buckminster Foolerine. I don't think they actually use that soccer construction in the World Cup anymore. I think they switched to a two or three panel construction.

They have some high-tech alien-looking balls. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that classic that we kind of grew up with. They don't use that anymore. They don't use that at the high levels of competition anymore. I don't even know how you'd even call that soccer now. All right, well, I have a question for you guys here about some famous professional athletes. Okay. And I tried to pick some that I'm pretty sure that even as non-sports fans, I hope you guys have heard of these people.

Hey, great, calling. Can you guys tell me, what do the following people have in common? Oh. Tiger Woods. Okay. Maria Sharapova. Okay. Alex Rodriguez.

Shaquille O'Neal. Aside from being enormously successful in their respect. in sports. Tiger Woods, Shaquille O'Neal, Maria Sharapova, Alex Rodriguez. They all are spokespeople for products. Oh, that's true. They are. And they that's actually, that's not the answer

I was looking for, but I'm glad you said that. Their love lives all appear in tablets. Oh, they all breathe oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Oh, good boy. No, in addition to all being humans and receiving endorsements, they are all residents of the state of Florida. And

one of the reasons that they all choose to live in Florida, aside from the nice weather, is that Florida has no state income tax. Oh, okay. And so it seems fairly obvious. Okay, yeah, make a lot of money. You want to live in a state where you have to give up as little of it as possible. And this isn't, this isn't limited to athletes. Of course, many business people will choose to live in a state that has a lower tax rate and commute in, for example. This is particularly attractive when you make millions and millions and millions of dollars on endorsements in addition to your regular day job. There are nine states with no state income tax, but Florida overwhelmingly draws most of the athletes there to live there.

Well, it's nicer to live in than like New Hampshire, for example. Right. Well, so, I mean, it has to be a state that has no state income tax and a pro sports team. So that limits it really to Florida, Texas, Tennessee, state of Washington, and then D.C. There's a weird quirk, too, like athletes in New York. New York City has a separate New York City tax. So there's New York State and New York City tax. So a lot of New York City athletes will live in New Jersey. Now, here's where it gets interesting.

Now, have any of you guys heard of? of the jock tax. Do you know what this is? Do they, do athletes have to pay stadiums or something? No. So in the early 1990s was really the birth of what we call the jock tax now. So in 1991, Michael Jordan and the Bulls beat the Lakers for the NBA championship. And after they won the championship, it was really publicized how much extra bonuses Jordan got for winning the championship. And this is common. A lot of athletes have incentives. And the state of California basically said, wait a minute, look at all the money that he is earning. And he's doing work in our state. So in 1991, state of California essentially enacted a law that would allow them to recoup

taxes from people doing work in that state. And they sent the Bulls a bill essentially for the taxes that they owed for the three days they were playing in California during the finals. In pretty short order, a lot of other states caught on, you know, as happens a lot. If California does something, other states are like, well, shoot, we can do this too. This is the birth of the jock tax, which essentially is states billing pro athletes for all of the work they do in that state. Now, imagine you're LeBron James, okay? You play for the Miami Heat. You go on the road. You might play in 20 different states over the course of a year. And what that means is, unfortunately, you need to file taxes in all of those states. And all of those states are going after money.

And here's where it gets really complicated, because every state has their own tax laws. You basically have to figure it out state by state what you do. You know, some states, you can choose between the higher rate and the lower rate. Some states, you have to pay it. Some states, there's no tax. So if you're an accountant for a professional athlete, you're really earning your money. Yeah. Well, I'm sure, I mean, this creates these jobs of accountant to the professional athletes

because, like, they need someone who's familiar with all of these different states and all of the different loopholes and everything. Each sport's a little bit different. Baseball has a concept of duty days. So if I fly into town on Monday, play a game on Tuesday. and Wednesday and then fly back out on Friday, some states, they'll want to charge you for each of those days. Some states charge you by game.

That is the jock tax. So if you think your taxes are complicated, imagine having to file in 25 different states every year and having a different amount in each one. And as you might imagine, the state of California makes millions and millions of dollars by claiming these taxes. Sounds like a nightmare. So I have a quiz about sports. Being a non-sports person, I couldn't tell what was an easy question.

question or a hard question. And so I decided to take it in a different way. This quiz is called What's You Talking About Sports? So I will give you alternate names, possibly obscure names, of sports that are very familiar. And I want you to tell me the common name. The common name of those. What you're talking about sports? What are you talking about sports?

Instead of buzzing in, I'll have you guys write down your answers and we'll see what you think. Got it. Number one. Corf ball, slam ball, netball are all variations of one. What sport? I know netball from Flight of the Concord. Yeah. All right.

Everybody says basketball, yes. Yay. They are all variations of basketball. Netball. Netball is the one, right? It's like basketball with no backboard, right? It's just like a rim on a pole. Oh.

And more women play that one. Yeah, yeah. Fistball, Hooverball, boss a ball, are all similar to what sport? Bossa ball. Fist ball. Basanova. All right. Cullen says tetherball.

Karen says baseball. Chris says volleyball. It's volleyball. Wow. I just thought of hitting a ball with your fist. Oh. Poppinjay, gung-dough, and target and field. What?

Poppin jay. Gung-dough. And what, target? Target and field. We got Colin and Karen say archery. Chris says, shooting. It's archery. That's the more obvious answer to the institution. I'm like, well, there's a target out in the field. Yeah, that's exactly. What would an eight-year-old think?

That was, yeah, that was my thought process too, but it just led to the wrong place. Duck pin, candle pin and tin pin. Oh. Bowling, bowling, bowling, it's bowling. Yeah, bowling. We used to go candlepin bowling in New England. I think you still can. That's a real easy. I think it's an East thing like duck pin you basically the pins are really thin and they're just basically like cylinders and then the ball you small when you hold it in your hand it's like the size of like imagine like a big soft ball so are the lanes smaller not sure haven't done no wow it's like it's still down i was i was smaller i was like eight years old so lanes appeared larger all right flutter guts friskey derango boot and goltimit goltimit let me see the oldtimit yeah oh

Karen seems awfully confident. Yeah. Let's see. Colin says horseshoes. Karen says frisbee. Chris says soccer. It's frisbee. Yes. I mean, I thought that was a trick question because I'm like, well, it sounds like ultimate.

I know ultimate. It is, but it was with gold. I've never heard of goldimate. Okay, what do these have in common? Pyramid, Blurns ball, ambo jitsu, and gie ball. Karen knows this. She's like, oh, I totally know this. I have no idea.

This is a little bit of a different question. What do they have in common? pyramid blerns ball ambo jitsu and gie ball they all share something in common okay Collins says imagine fake Karen says Futurama Chris says beer

so they're all from TV shows Pyramid pyramids from Battlestar Galactica Blurns Ballers from Futurama Ambo Jitsu is from Star Trek next generation Oh that's right That was the one where they freeze the person and then do their move and then unfreeze them, right? No, it's the one where they're fighting with blindfold next level.

Right, right. And then Gie Ball is from Green Wing. I don't know if you guys. I don't know that one. Oh, my God. Of course, pyramid. All right. All right.

This is a real sport. We're back to real sports. Camp drafting, English pleasure, tent pegging, and eventing. Whoa. What they have all in common is urban diction. Camp drafting, English pleasure, tent pegging, and eventing. Colin says jelsting, Karen says croquet, Chris says croquet, no, they're all equestrian events. Close, old-timey.

Alpine, cross-country, Nordic, and Speed. So skiing, skiing, skiing, yes, skiing. Oh, you're going to just throw us a bone there. See, I can't tell how hard any of these are. All right. Full bore target, cowboy action, metallic silhouette, and bench rest. Full board target, cowboy action, metallic silhouette, and bench rest. Colin says target shooting.

Karen says rodeo. Chris says shooting. It's shooting. All right. Good job, you guys. Cowboy action. I like so many of those names. Fletter guts.

Full bore. Cowboy action. What was flutter cuts? That was frisbee. You get hit by a frisbee and your guts are fluttering. It's like dodgeball with frisbees. Yeah. Cowboy action and English pleasure.

Tick begging. Oh, you kids. All right, let's take a break. A word from our sponsor. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca.

This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed, walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways. We're not going to find it in the news because the police covered everything all up. On August day.

This is where the story really starts. Weapons. And you are listening to Good Job, Braden. Today, we are talking about sports. Here is a fun word play quiz for all of you who like word games and words. words and all that kind of stuff. So I am going to say some relatively funny anagrams, and you will just tell me what sport. That is an anagram of.

All right. I have given you guys some pens and paper to help your brains, and if you're stuck, I'll give you some clues. So we'll start with an easy one. Sent in. What you got, Karen? A tennis. Yes, it's sent in as tennis. Okay, great.

Okay. How about hear cry? H-E-A-R-R-Y Dana Archery It is archery, yes Oh, you might target in field Okay, try this one on for size

Blotloaf Colin Yes, football So quick Karen is still thinking of blotloafs I just think of like I'm a visual thinker When you say something I picture it

And I just think of a local blot, but I don't even know what blot is. That is why this is difficult. Okay. On that same note, tall kebabs. Oh. Colin? Basketball. Basketball.

That's good. That actually has some meaning. Not bad, right? I like that. Tall kebabs. Okay. How about Blasee Lab? Colin again.

Baseball. Okay. All right. Let's get a little harder. Shall we? Let's go with Alto Power. What a chorus leader might say.

Water polo. Water polo. Whoa. Drops the buzzer. Yes. Altopower. Water polo. How about this?

Sing my scat. Whoa. Scooby-d-d-oo-D-B-D. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, S-I-N-G, M-Y, S-C-A-T, Colin. Gymnastics. Colin is proving to be in the hero of the anagram round right now. Yes, gymnastics.

Okay, then, how about this? Here's another one that's popular in the Olympics. Twig nightlife. Karen now picturing sticks at a disco. Twig nightlife. Colin. Weightlifting. Wow.

Oh, my God. It's like Rain Man. I don't, I can't think of any sports. Dana normally kills at these anagrams. Finally, I didn't think this was going to go so quickly. Finally, this is maybe more of an outdoor game, you can call it a sport too. Buffalo herds. Buffalo herds.

Everyone furiously writing on their pads of paper. Listener, can you do it before the good job brain cast? The two Fs are together. in the final answer as well. Shuffleboard. Shuffle board. Forgets to buzz in because she gets it so, so quickly. Yes.

Yeah, great job. Oh, man. That is your sports anagram quiz. That was good. I hope you enjoyed it. That was good. I especially like the ones where there's, yeah, like, a twig, tall kebabs and buffalo herds even kind of.

Blotloaf. I imagine like a Dalmatian-looking meatloaf. All right, well, the very first one there, in was a tennis. So I want to talk a little bit about tennis. And this was something, when I first started researching this, I was like, oh, this is going to be really contentious. And then I researched a little bit more. I'm like, oh, no, this is pretty straightforward. And then I researched it some more. And I'm like, no, this is even more contentious than I thought. And what I'm talking about is tennis terminology. There's so many words in tennis and the tennis scoring. A lot of this, I should

warn you, is hotly, hotly contested and debated. So we're going to go just a quick run through. A preemptive um, actually. I did not know that it was... A lot of this, yeah. I will try and set straight as much as I can, but a lot of this will be my opinion based on the evidence at hand. Wow. So do you guys know where tennis comes from in terms of the sport?

You may have heard of a earlier game called Jue de Pomme. Have you heard of this? It is French. It is French. The French are sort of the unquestioned... Wait, Jue de Pum. Jue de Pond. Game of Apple?

Game. Not P-O-M-M-E, but P-A-U-M-E, P-A-U-M-E, P-A-U-M-E, P-A-U-M-E, meaning like the palm, the palm of your hand. It was called the Palm game. An Apple game. Originally, you didn't use rackets. You would serve it with the ball with the palm of your hand, and you would play back and forth. And this was a medieval French game. This was really sort of what evolved into a lot of our racket across the net games.

So coming through medieval times, Judea-Polm was very popular, with royalty in particular, because you needed a big area to play. They would string a net up, and this was an indoor game primarily. So you'd set up a net up across a hall, and you would bat the ball back and forth. It wasn't until the late 1600s that rackets actually really became standardized and part of play. So this game was around for a long time, just using your hands. Once rackets were involved, the game developed into what we would call real tennis or lawn tennis. So it kind of moved outdoors and sort of started more closely resembling the game that we have today. Were rackets like the performance-enhancing drugs?

You know, like you just, you sort of show up. It's not technically in the rules that you can't use this. The word tennis comes from the Anglo-French word tenet or tenets, which really means like the hold or to take. Oh. You know, so like a word tenable. Like tentative. Yes, right, exactly. And specifically where it comes from is when you were serving the ball, you would shout out tenet, which, you know, more or less means heads up.

Like, be prepared to take the serve. Be prepared, you know, it's coming at you. So you would shout out tenet or tenets. That really etymologically came into tennis. So, as I say, so the game moved outdoors, kind of gradually changed a little bit, simplified. By the late 1870s, it was really pretty close to the game that we know today. The guy who first published the rules was a man named Major Walter Wingfield, and he suggested the name spheriastique from the Greek, meaning skill at playing at ball.

Now, Sferi-stique didn't catch on. Really tennis kind of stuck, and we still obviously called. call it tennis today. I bet he was so proud of that name, too. That's about all that we can agree on in terms of tennis. Everything from here on out is going to be to some level or another disputed. All right. So now tennis, when you score in tennis, the score goes zero or love, 15, 30, 40, and then

you win the game. And a lot of people are like, where did this crazy scoring system come from? Why isn't it just one, two, three, done? And so there is a very common story that goes that, well, in the early days of Judea Palme and tennis, you would use a clock to keep track of the score. And you would advance the hand to 15 for one to 30 for another, to 45, and then to 60 for a complete game. Okay. Okay. Well, why is it 40 instead of 45? It's like, oh, well, at one point, you know, they realized you had to win the game by two. So instead of advancing it to 45, you advance it to 40, and then there would be another stop at 50 before you would get back.

to the top of the clock. This is most likely a nonsense explanation. It's just backwards explanation. Really, the most likely origin of it being 60 is that you got to keep in mind in medieval period, 60 was really considered a very kind of good, perfect number. It was just round, you know, again, divisible by a lot of numbers. And the French in particular really embraced this notion. So the same way that we might pick 100 today is a nice round number.

It was perfectly normal just for them to pick 60, is that's what you play to, 60. based on the research I've done, the most likely explanation really is that the score never changed from 45 to 40. It was always 15, 30, 45 done, but that in French, it was a lot more euphonious to say 15, 30, 40, that you kind of just stopped saying the 45. You stopped saying it. It was just simplified. Instead of saying Carant-San, you would say 40. Instead of saying Caron-San, you would just say Caron. And everybody knew what you meant.

And everyone knew what you meant. That's right, because you were all agreed on the same rules ahead of time. Yeah, French numbers are long. They are, yeah. So they involve math. Zero in tennis is love. Where does love come from? All right.

Now, there are a lot of people who say, I know, it is this. So let's go ahead, Karen. Where does love come from in the tennis? Well, because love is zero. Zero looks like an egg. And so love is actually luf, which is the egg in French, and then becomes love. That is absolutely one of the eggs. explanation is quickly. Again, this is probably a back-solved sort of thing. We're like, well, let's

see. That was what I had heard before. Yeah, that was what I had heard also. I had always heard that one growing up as well, right? And I have to say that as a kid, it seemed a little, I'm like, what, really? The egg, you know? And we say goose egg. So we do. That's right. So that is one explanation that love comes from love, French. The other explanation is that it comes from the idea of you're playing for love, playing for honor instead of playing for money. And if you, If you had zero points, then that's really all you had left. Right. And the love, honor, one always sounded really straining to me.

This is the one that the Oxford English Dictionary cites. They cite most of their support that it comes from love and honor money. Huh. There's another explanation that goes out, that there is a Dutch word, love, L-O-F, that means praise or honor or glory. And again, there's a theory that, well, there were a lot of Dutch immigrants in France, and they took the word love, meaning playing for honor. All right.

I have to say, despite what OED says, I do believe that it comes from the egg, enough. And as Karen, you alluded to, there are another examples here. Like, we talk about a goose egg. You know, in English, we say, oh, he put up a big old goose egg. That's a zero. There's a term in cricket. You talk about a duck, a batter who's out with no score, zero. And the duck comes from duck's egg.

And you'll still hear it called a duck's egg. So I have to say, looking at those two explanations side by side, knowing that it came from French. And not a more. If it was a more. There is a well-established tradition of eggs being used to stand for nothing and stand for zero. I believe that that is the etymology of love in tennis. But just to warn you that you'll see both of those explanations out there. All right.

And finally here, in terms of the tennis etymology, we'll wrap this up. Do you guys know where the word racket comes from? The racket. A little rack. The little tiny rack. Was it a French word or a... So we have the word racket. And they're, you know, the French and Italian and Spanish words are all very similar.

There's raketa or rakhet. And those words, in turn, they all come from an Arabic word. Oh. Raha or rahat, which means palm of the hand. Oh. To bring it all full circle. Wow. Cool. Longbandy Twizzler's candy keeps the fun going.

Keep the fun. going. Twizzlers, keep the fun going. All right, and time for our last quiz, and it's a music round. I have clips of songs that I'm going to play, and you guys need to identify the artist, and also, you know, hopefully the song title as well, that'd be helpful, because there is a theme. Of course. And the theme, you might think, oh, I know it.

It's pretty easy by this. second song. It's not. I'm looking for a very specific thing. Absolutely not sports related. All right. Here we go. First one. You have this look on your face. Like, I'm going to mess

with you guys. So good. You guys aren't going to get any of these. I'm going to eat it. All right. 10,000 words swarm around my head. 10 million more in books written beneath my bed.

I wrote or read them all when searching in the swarm Still can't find out to hold my hands I'll take a stab at it Okay Is it Willie Nelson? Incorrect God, I know that song, who was that? Is it Jeff Buckley?

Incorrect? It's somebody like that, though. It's not Jeff Buckley. It's not Elliot Smith. It's not... It is a band. It is the Avet Brothers. Oh, okay.

Here's the next one. Sugar pie, honey, but... You know that I love you. I can't help myself. I love you and nobody else. It's in it up my life. Chris, which one is it? I believe this is the temptations.

Oh, no. This is Sugar Pie Honey Bunch by the Four Tops. This is the Four Tops. Can't help myself by the Four Tops. Isn't it parentheses, Sugar Pye Honey Bunch? They get partial credit. So you can remember they can't help themselves, but it's not the temptations, which is about... That's a terrible mnemonic.

I know. That's why I failed. horrible nomadic it's like I can't help myself so I'm tempted it yeah it's the opposite oh Jesus it is not about temptation oh man what are the three bands we always get mixed up temptations for tops foundation the OJs oh j's like oh man all right here's the next one This is the perfect drug You are the perfect drug Is this nine inch nails?

Yes, nine inch nails The Perfect Drug. All right. And here's the next one. Yeah, everyone else but you. Baby you light up my word like nobody else. The way that you with your hair gets me overwhelmed. But when you smile at the world.

It ain't hard to tell You don't know Oh You don't know you're beautiful You're only you So what I call it Is it one direction? Yes, it is one direction

I'm bootstrapping here Because I think I'm onto the theme All right Last song But the line is your name is all that the theme is 16. No, I'm going to know what the theme is. I know what the theme. I think I do.

So first I think it's numbers, because there's numbers and everything. There's 10,000 books, four tops. nine-inch nails, one direction, 16. So then I added them up, because it seemed like a very caring thing to ask. Is it 10,030? No. Oh, I thought you really nailed it. No, it's not.

Well, it's something with numbers. It has to be. Something with the numbers. So 10,000 words by Aver Brothers, a perfect drug by nine-inch nails. What makes you beautiful by one direction? I can't help myself, parentheses, sugar pie. by the four tops and 16 by no doubt what are those numbers have in common oh they're divisible by or well no four no one four six oh they're squares yes they're square

they are square numbers that was good one was good four was good nine was good then after 16 it was like there weren't any popular or songs that's like 25 36 49 eight one And so I just kept going up and up and up Until you found a song that matched the number And I was finally like 10,000. Wow. You could also done a song by 10,000 Maniacs, right? Oh, yeah.

Good one. I like those. I like the ones where you can kind of get onto it and as I established, think you know it and not know it. I was like number. That's so easy. That's not careful. Well, that's what I was thinking there's some other Karen twist to it.

Yeah. All right, great. And that's our show. Thank you guys for joining me. I thank you guys for listening in. Hope you learned a lot about flutter guts, I think of our new favorite word, how to do your taxes, if you're a professional athlete, and why soccer is called soccer. Yay! You can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website, which is good job,brain.com.

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