History That Doesn't Suck - Bonus: A Chat about Southern Accents w/ Jeremy Collins from "Podcasts We Listen To"

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

History can touch on present-day issues, and rather than duck away from such discomforts, Greg has always been stupid enough to try to hit them straight on. Indulging that stupidity today, Greg sat down with born-and-bred Southerner Jeremy Collins from the podcast, "Podcasts We Listen To," to discuss the South; particularly, Southern accents. Whether you've never been south of the Mason-Dixon Line or are as Southern as Jeremy, we hope you learn from and enjoy this honest, candid, and jovial chat. ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette  come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We're Jen. And Jenny. From Ancient History Fangirl. Join us to explore ancient history and mythology from a fun, sometimes tipsy perspective. Find us at ancienthistoryfangirl.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. Hello, my friends, and welcome to a bonus episode of History That Doesn't Suck. I am your professor, as always, Greg Jackson, and today I'm joined by my dear friend, Jeremy Collins from the podcast, Podcasts We Listen To. Jeremy,

you want to say hello to the fine people? I'm not used to being on this end of the conversation. I know you're not. Yeah, this is a little flip around. You know, that is part of where you're perfect for this bonus episode. The storytelling format of History That Doesn't Suck doesn't really lend itself to this, well, peeking behind the curtain. Even when I do some discussions with Josh and Ciel, we're still talking about history. We're not talking about production and decisions that are made and so forth. So anyhow, as we're talking about the South and we're going to talk a little bit about Southern accents and choices on the production side of things, there's no one

better to have this conversation with than you. You talk to podcasters about what they do. Well, that's my thing. I love podcasts. So there are a lot of podcasts out there, yours for example, where it might not fit into your format to talk about yourself and how you got started and all that kind of thing. So I noticed people in my Facebook group, Podcasts We Listen To, wanting to know those things and getting all excited when a podcaster would actually answer those questions. So I thought, why not just do a podcast where I ask podcasters those questions? And I've asked you those questions on the show, too. You have. It kind of blows my mind when I pause and think that we did that two years ago. That was a while back now.

That is crazy, man. It's been way too long because we have great conversations and we got to figure out a way, a good solid reason to sneak you back on the show. You just say the word. We'll do it anytime you want. So that is your podcasting cred. But as I said, we're going to talk about Southern accents and your Southern through and through. So I appreciate you coming on to help the Westerner here who lacks that cultural immersion and experience that you bring. So thank you again for that as well. Thanks for having me on, man. It's a subject that's near and dear to my heart.

Like you said, I'm Southern through and through. Well, perfect. I actually want to start with something of a public apology. This is to Lucy from Tennessee, who kindly sent me an email last week, I think it was. It was very recently. I reached out to you probably a day, maybe two days after she had written me. And I won't quote her whole email. Again, it was really kind, very complimentary. And I'll also just add right here, I'm really grateful to

all the listeners who've sent me great feedback and kind words over the last two and a half years. But Lucy was listening to an episode where I affected a faux southern accent for a historical person. And she said, and I'm quoting her, why make us sound illiterate? And did she say, I didn't, that's just the way you sound. I did not respond with that, Jeremy. Now look, before Lucy loses her mind about that comment, I have to say, I'm from Louisiana. I was born in Georgia, grew up in Louisiana, spent my high school years in Mississippi, and lived in Tennessee for several years, too. So it's just a friendly southern to southern jab.

Appropriate for you to make. I'm not going to make that one. I'm just going to keep shoveling. Right. Here I go saying I want to apologize to Lucy and jerry you just go throw some fuel on that fire kicks the door open you know i uh you've experienced this jeremy when when you get into the podcasting world you of course are going to get some people who don't like a or b about what you do. And you have to learn to, one, accept good feedback and two, realize that if, well, if you changed everything that someone doesn't like,

well, you wouldn't have a show at the end of the day, right? You certainly wouldn't like doing the show as much as you do. Also true. I mean, my personality bleeds into the podcast just as your personality does into yours. But all that said, I realize that it's entirely possible I have hit a nerve unintentionally in the South. And I do want to just kind of talk through what we do, what I do here on History That Doesn't Suck, the evolution, right? The peeling back the curtain part that I hinted at. And then you and I, let's nerd out on things Southern. Okay, that sounds good to me, man. All right.

So to, you know, the different voices, a challenge that I found back in episode three, that's the first time it came up. As I'm looking at this script that I found back in episode three. That's the first time it came up. As I'm looking at this script that I have written, I realized that I've got dialogue in there, which of course is going to happen. There are different historical figures and they're having conversations and there's this heated scene. It's at the dock in Boston. There's a British officer who's upset at the colonists on the wharf. And well, I somehow have to have these people be able to yell things without me breaking up the story, just destroying

it with an interjection of, and that was so-and-so, and that was so-and-so. And so I... Right. And sometimes that works, Sometimes it doesn't work so much. So I developed some different voices for different characters, kind of going off of of a sharper tone, almost a, I'm condescending to you sound of voice, as though he knew he's smarter than you. It doesn't matter that you haven't opened your mouth yet. That's kind of how I picture you being. He was brilliant. And it's not hubris when you're right, I guess. True. So, you know, I kind of brought that to him. Benjamin Franklin, I kind of would slow down a little bit. You know, he's the aged statesman. Wasn't Benjamin Franklin kind of a player?

So that's a fun subject. That's a sidetrack, I know. Good old Ben. He's big around here. He's also pretty big in France. They think he was one of our finest presidents. Yep. Just going to go ahead and clarify for my listeners.

I'm sure they know this, but he was not one of our presidents. But he's beloved as one of America's finest presidents by the French that's great I'm trying to remember what library it was there's a public library in Paris with his statue out in front of it he is beloved the time he spent there in Paris

definitely left a mark on French memory and they just kind of assume the guy had to be president right? he was the face of the nation over there so it would stand to reason that they would think that worse people to assume so there you go oh i won't even go let's just yep moving on moving along yes please okay so you know the podcast continues along as i get into the 1800s, one particular figure that was an interesting choice for me was Napoleon Bonaparte. He appears in the story as we have foreign relations with France, particularly as we get to the Louisiana Purchase. And I quoted him a couple of times. And you know, I speak French. That definitely comes out in the podcast. Sometimes I've spoken French in the

podcast. And it almost felt weird to not turn on my French accent when I'm doing a French character, when I've already used it speaking in French. It just, it felt like it needed to be there. That is a great French accent, by the way. I appreciate that. And you know, the thing there is, I've had the chance to think a lot about accents in the last little bit. And it's because I know what the vowel sounds are. I know the intonations of the language. And basically, I can reverse engineer the sounds of the French language into English.

So I'm not just kind of loosely going off of what my ear hears. If I can really nerd out on you for a second, Jeremy, the brain starts to shut down its ability to hear distinct sounds by the time we're six months old. And it completely shuts it down. See, now we're into my graduate work on, you know. Really? No, I'm fascinated by this stuff, man. So it totally shuts down about the time we hit puberty. And that is why if you learn a language as an adult, it's really hard, if not impossible, to learn a new language and avoid having an accent. Because your brain basically, by the time you hit puberty, goes, okay, we're done acquiring language. Let's move on to developing other things. So you might speak French, but with an American accent.

Right. And the severity of an accent, you know, how quote unquote bad someone's accent is often has to do with how much overlap there is between their native language and the second language that they've learned, because that influences what sounds their brain can still audibly detect. So, you know, that's where you'll hear an accent and you can sometimes even distinguish, oh, that person must be French because that's a French accent when they speak English. Oh, that person's native language is Spanish or Chinese or what have you, because they similarly, you know, they're missing the same sounds everyone who comes from that same language group when they hear english they're not hearing certain sounds that

you and i as native english speakers our brains tuned in on when we were kids and so we have that same experience when we learn foreign languages it's funny you should mention that because I was talking to my wife about a show that we were watching separately, but both watching it. You know what I mean? We're not in sync with our episodes. Yeah. Talking about one of the characters. And I love IMDB, by the way. So I'm watching this show and I'm going, I think that dude's Irish.

And so I went and looked and sure enough, he's from Dublin. And the reason I picked up on that was because Irish people tend to use a T sound instead of a TH sound. So he said something along the lines of, tink or I talk and I was like that's an Irish accent. That dude speaks with you know he's speaking English on a Which the Irish are usually. He's speaking with an English accent but his pronunciation of the words was a – every once in a while, you'd hear that Irish pronunciation creep in.

Yeah. Right. You couldn't quite suppress it, which totally makes sense. And there is a difference between pronunciation and accent, but it's a fine line that gets confused often, but there is a difference. It is indeed. So here's where things got interesting with Napoleon, though. He had an Italian accent. What?

Hold on now. How do I not know this? No one does. Look, everyone thinks Napoleon was short, which he wasn't. And they also figure because he was the emperor of the French Empire, that Napoleon Bonaparte would be, you know, a native French

speaker. He was born Napoleon de Bonaparte. This interview. From the island. The show is over. You have just blowed my mind, man. You're welcome, sir. This is gonna take me a minute to get over here i grew up in new orleans okay it's okay take it in take it in napoleon is a big deal you know what i mean

i'm sorry i just messed with your senses. You just skewed my whole reality here. And you're like, yeah, okay, moving on. No biggie. What? Oh, my God. You just blew my mind. I don't know. On that note, we'll just keep talking, right?

Wow. I'm sorry for that. Fun curveball the french had actually uh they conquered his home island about the time he was born so yes he grew up french but you know the uh the island was still kind of converting over if you will uh from being natively italian to to being French. And his officers, obviously, you know, they, as far as I'm aware, at least, they didn't say a thing to his face, but they absolutely snickered behind his back as the emperor would go around with his Italian accent, you know, speaking in French and trying to be as French as he can be.

And yet, you know, and yet there it was. It still crept through throughout his life. Because again, back to that whole how your brain picks up language, etc. But clearly he was trying to be as French as he could be because most everyone thinks he is French. I mean, he followed history. Wow. Well, you know, I mean, history is full of funny things, right? I will. Don't worry. I will don't worry i will it's

okay it's okay hey you know we can we can pause this we can come back to this in three months let you recuperate we might need to man i love little tidbits like that but that one just really, really threw me for a loop. Sure. I get it. I get it. But I did choose as anyone who's either listening to those early episodes or anyone who's recently listened to those might recall, I went with a French accent when I did Napoleon. Not because I'm trying to show historical shortcomings in there, but I knew that if I threw, first of all, French is my jam. But second of all, exactly your reaction, right? Like that is mind blowing. And I didn't want to disrupt the episode with a two paragraph explanation on Napoleon's

linguistic, you know what I mean? That just- Not the thing to do. And if you had just thrown it out there with an Italian accent, everybody would have been, well, probably not everybody. I'm sure you have some listeners that know that little tidbit that just blew my mind. But a lot of people would have been going, does this guy not know that he's French? The irony of, you know of some of the emails I might get after that, right? Yeah. Go learn your history, that sort of a thing. So, I came to appreciate that we're creating a world for the listener and that sometimes I need to lean into spaces that's going to help the general listener more than necessarily represent the actual sounds of that historical figure.

It's a part of the art of storytelling. It's why we do voices when reading kids. In fact, I've had parents thank me for doing voices because it helps their kids follow the podcast better. Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, I listen to podcasts more than the average bear. Yeah, I think that is a very fair statement for you to make. I mean, I essentially listen to podcasts for a living.

And there are a lot of times where I'll be listening to a podcast and they're talking about a conversation or they're retelling a conversation that two people have had and i might be driving or i might be cooking doing whatever you know woodwork i don't know whatever it is that i happen to be doing at that time and i'm like, hold on, wait a minute, who said that? And I have to rewind to hear that person say, and Bob Jones said. And so I think that's where doing those voices comes in handy. You know, it's not just the kids that can benefit from that. I'm 47 years old and I can still benefit from that. Well, thank you, sir. Well, and so, you know, I've done that with a few Irish characters that have shown up. And as we hit the 1830s or so, I realized that as I'm giving voices to people, I had to face down the difficult task of American regionalisms. Now, during the revolution and in that earlier phase, it made no sense to do anything with it because we don't know what English really sounded like. What we do know is that there really weren't as strong regionalisms because there was so much migration coming from the UK at that point that kept English as close to uniform as this language ever has been between the Americas and England. And that held into the early 1800s. And that's where, as some of my listeners will know from the War of 1812, the British pressed thousands of Americans into the British Navy. And they could get away with that because the accents on both sides of the Atlantic were still so similar, you couldn't necessarily tell a Yank and a Brit apart. But the

accents are so dramatically different today. You would never mistake a New Yorker for a Londoner. That is true. I knew I then had to deal with these regionalisms. So as I got into the Civil War, I hoped and thought and obviously, you know, I think of Lucy and my soul hurts a bit. Someone's from the South and someone's from the North, partly to help break away from the false idea that all Southerners were Confederates and all Northerners were Union. You know, that really came out, for example, in episode 50, where we had David Farragut, a New Orleans kid, now growing up an admiral in the Union Navy, attacking New Orleans while it's being defended by Johnson Duncan, a Pennsylvanian-born Confederate. That's a pretty amazing concept to me, that what you would think of as a Northerner is defending a Southern city from a Southerner. Right. I mean, that's what I, I don't know, maybe I've utterly failed at it, Jeremy.

I don't know. But it's, these are the sorts of things that, you know, in my attempts, my imperfections, these are the things that I've been trying to go for. Hoping that as is what I try to do on History That Doesn't Suck, try to be nuanced and honest and careful and try to tell everyone's story, you know, the whole broad American story that I'm helping people see some of those greater nuances. But for reasons that you and I can dissect and that you can really get to far more so than I, obviously, I've hit a nerve with Lucy and possibly others who haven't expressed that to me. Well, not to rain on the parade, but I've read somewhere that for every one person that complains,

there's 10 that haven't. I know it. 100% know it. And that's even part of why I want to do this episode, because I know that if Lucy's writing it, then there are some other kind good people that you know just just haven't bothered to write in they're still listening well i want to say to lucy that first off i think she did the right thing to reach out in not necessarily an aggressive way but in a conversational way and say

you know these are my concerns and i think that approach warrants a response because as a podcaster if somebody comes at me a lot of what you've said has made sense to me so far. You have to do a show that you enjoy doing because if you don't enjoy doing it, listeners aren't going to enjoy listening to it. And if I get an email from somebody that's full-on attack mode, I'm probably going to listen or read the first couple of sentences and go, ah, get out of here. Because I just, it's not worth it to me for my personal mental health, I guess. But if somebody approaches me in a reasonable fashion and says, hey, these are my concerns, even if I don't necessarily agree with their concerns, I'm going to listen and I'm going to really seriously consider them. So good for her for taking the right approach about her concerns. Absolutely.

Completely. Yeah, everything you just said there, Jeremy. Anyhow, I think I have yacked way too much in the primary seat. Let's shift to you, man. We need to take a quick break, assuming I have ads to run currently, but then we'll jump into your experiences

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Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And again, we're back. That is, if we left. When you open your mouth, what are some of the things that you've experienced I clearly haven't and that Lucy's probably thinking of when she wrote me that email? Well, first off, when people hear my voice, they may not hear a lot of a Southern accent, maybe not as much as they would expect to hear from somebody who was born in Macon, Georgia, moved to Knoxville, and then down to Louisiana, went to high school in Mississippi, then back to Louisiana. And the reason for that is because for the last 25 years since I left the South, I've made a real effort to lose my accent. And I keep hearing, especially for some reason over the last six months or so,

that people can hear my accent. And the reason I've tried to lose that accent is because of those stereotypes. You're not necessarily going to hear somebody else from Louisiana say, you sound like a moron. You sound like you're uneducated. But once I left the South, that's exactly what I heard. Maybe not directly, but it was certainly conveyed that that was the image. Right. Well, I mean, there's more to communication than words, right? And you are not a moron, so I'm sure you could pick up on the social cues or whatever the case may be.

Yeah, I spent my career in forward-facing businesses. So dealing with customers directly and managing those businesses, learning how to read people, what's this guy really after? What's this guy really thinking here? And so you pick up on the fact that if you're from the South, specifically if you happen to be a white're from the South, specifically if you happen to be a white person from the South, you are seen as being dumb, racist,

homophobic, and any number of other things that really, to me, are holdovers from yesteryear i think back before the civil rights era there was a lot of racism in the south i mean clearly that's why we had the civil rights movement. Fair point. And so I think that those stereotypes come from a place of history. But a lot has changed since the civil rights movement. I'm 47 years old. Anybody my age that's from the South, they're not dropping in bombs they're not dropping out of school any earlier than the rest of the country they're you know it's just so many things have changed

i grew up with friends who held different preferences and partners than I did. A lot of them. Yeah, I just, there's so many things. And it really is because of the way that people outside of the South see Southerners. That's why I changed the way that I sounded. Now I'm kind of looking back on it going, that's me succumbing to that stereotype. Sure. In my exchange with Lucy, as we kept emailing, she mentioned

a group of business students at University of Tennessee. That feels like a university that exists. I think that's what she said. That is a university that exists. Okay, good. And it's probably awesome. I'm sure it's very well ranked and all that exists. I think that's what she said. Okay, good. And it's probably awesome. I'm sure it's very well ranked and all that jazz. I'm just showing my very Western experiences here. I've lived in New England. I've lived in California, Utah. I've traveled quite extensively, but living in a place. Honestly, yes. Yes, it's true. I've passed through the South. I have had the pleasure of eating some delicious food in your hometown over the course of a very fast weekend for a academic conference. And I've been to Florida. We can talk about that.

The northern state of the South. Right, right. As I know you were going to say. And I've been to D.C. and made the trip down to Mount Vernon. So I technically set afoot in Virginia. So, you know, I wish listeners could see how you're nearly falling off your stool laughing right now. You know I've been to Virginia. I do. We're going to let the people know in a minute too, I think. So I've definitely tried to point out, I've never set foot in Tennessee. I want to someday. But Lucy, to get back on track, her point was, she mentioned that there were business students

who as they've graduated, had talked about trying to drop their accents, just like you're saying. Do you feel like this is a very, this has got to sound like just a stupid question for a lot of Southern listeners, but I think this is really valuable for those of us from the rest of the country and abroad. Is that a pretty common thing? Not that you need to put like a percentage on it, but you feel like that's something most of your friends from childhood would be like, yeah, I head North, I try to cover up the accent.

Most of my friends from childhood are still down south, honestly. Okay. I have friends that are still in Mississippi. I have friends that are in Louisiana. But I have friends that I have trouble understanding because I've been away from it for so long. Oh, really? But when I decided to try to get rid of my accent it was

because i was in i can remember it now it was like i could see it like it was yesterday i was in the house of blues in new orleans and i was trying to pick up on a lady and she looked at me after i started talking and said oh you're a yat and i was horrified can you expound on what a yat is i was horrified that she had called me a yat by the way and i had no idea that i was one but a yat is jeremy i'm sorry is that a pejorative term or i guess it depends on how you look at it i'm sure there are some people that'd be like yeah that's me and now looking back on it i'm i have no problem saying yeah i was a yet but it's just a phrase a term i guess for people that have a certain accent in New Orleans, the term comes from us saying,

where you at? And it's just a quick way of saying, where you at? You know, or which can mean a lot of things. How's it going? Where you at? You know, it's,

but the French, if you're, I mean, well, with the Louisiana connection, they have a phrase. Yeah. Yeah. It means if you're, I mean, with the Louisiana connection, they have a phrase. Yeah. Ça va?

Yeah. It means everything. Absolutely. You know, it's, you can have a conversation with those two words. Well, you know, the New Orleans accent is so different. When I went to Mississippi for school, one of my teachers came to me and said and i have never by the way sounded british but this teacher came to me and said where where did you grow up and i said i in new orleans why and she's like because one of the other teachers was asking who that kid was that had the british accent in my class and she pointed at you and I was like she's never heard a British

person speak has she because that's not me but well and and look this is this is certainly fair to you know to throw it uh at me and many other Americans where we would say the, or rather the Southern accent, right? This massive region full of different accents. That's kind of how I hear it when that teacher says British accent, which sounds just as ludicrous because of course the British, you're talking about Scottish, Irish, or Northern Ireland, the Welsh, and then the English, all of which not only have their own accents, but there are accents within each of those regions, right? So the idea of like a British accent, there's a British accent in the same way that there's

a Southern accent, in that there isn't. And I think the reason she had said that was because of that Yat accent, because we tend to say things like dropping our THs and they become a D. So we would say dem dat der does these instead of them that though, you know. And we're going to go over there and do that with them over so we also tend to and maybe it's part of that french and then you get the spanish all these different cultures coming together we tend to shorten a lot of things and two or three words might become one word which is yep there's nothing more french than making three words sound like one so yeah so that was the yat accent it was very i had it going back and listening very strong

and i actually okay it comes out when i drink and and when i get around it. If I start speaking to somebody that has that accent, then it starts getting stronger. I went back for my 10-year reunion, got off the plane onto a bus, driven by a guy from New Orleans with a couple of other people from New Orleans on there, and we all started a conversation, because it's an airport shuttle. You're just talking.

And by the time we got off, my wife looked at me and said, what language are you speaking? I'm like, I'm speaking English. Why? She's like, I've never heard you talk like that. That's because I tried to hide it. Which state is your wife from again? The wife at that point.

Oh, okay. Fair enough. My ex is from Wyoming. Okay, okay. She has, to my ear, virtually no accent at all. And it's funny because when I moved out there, a friend of mine from the 9th Ward in New Orleans said, you know, it's all right if you want to move out there, but you better not get that funky accent. And I said, what accent?

And, you know, she's talking with that heavy accent. You better not get that funky accent and i said what accent yeah you know she's talking with that heavy accent you better not get that funky accent i said what accent they don't have an accent she's like that's what i'm talking about you better not start sounding like him i'm like okay but you know even as even as you say that and i know the idea that kind of the more Western United States doesn't have an accent, which I think we could say is probably more that we hear it so much coming out of Hollywood films and the news tends to have more of that sound. concept of what English is supposed, quote unquote, to sound like. But when I go back to Southern California, might not be some sort of strong accent, but when I talk to my childhood friends, I've had, you know, whether I was traveling with a friend who wasn't from California, I think maybe my wife's pointed this out to me a time or two, but suddenly I have to begin or end or begin and end my sentences with dude and bro. These little regionalisms that they drop off as you professionalize or, you know, you move away.

Because, of course, that's not, you know, could you imagine if I was walking into class, you know. Dude. Using bro, right. Yeah, we have. Dude. Using bro, right. Yeah, we have those in Louisiana too. I mean, we say bruh a lot. Right, right. I know you've heard Cher. Yep.

How you doing, Cher? Of course, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Lacing that French in. If I walked in and said that, you know, what up, bruh? At one of my professional meetings, they'd be like, what is going on here? If I started calling people Cher like we do down home, I'd be faced with sexual harassment charges.

Right, right. But you mentioned movies, and I think in movies the typical american accent is no accent at all they minimize it as much as they possibly can and it's so funny because really america is made up of hundreds of different accents even Even in New Orleans, you can tell what neighborhood of the city somebody's from by what accent they use or what accent they have, I should say. That is mind-blowing for someone coming from the Western states, just so you know. There are accents out here. There are accents that people don't think about. There is a Utah accent, but wow, it definitely does not change the paint on the city block you're on you and i have talked in the past about this utah accent and i think

it's fantastic and i know you could do at least one or two words in that utah accent it's true let's hear it cough it up all right all right, so we have two towns here in Utah that have the word fork in it. There's Spanish fork and American fork. And whatever that's said by someone who is really, you know, born and raised in rural Utah, you're going to hear Spanish fark, American fark. Yeah, it's no longer fork. Now it's fark.

And we talked about, about you know privately we've talked about this and because to me it's not i mentioned to you that it sounded irish or you know celtic in some way because of their that little twang that they put on an or sound right and you said it's because and i I didn't know this, there was a large Mormon movement in the UK at one point. There was, yeah, in the 19th century. And I mean, that's just me as a historian kind of putting pieces together. I would imagine that, especially a lot of that more Gaelic sound, because there was a lot of Welsh that ended up joining the Mormon faith and heading out, immigrating to the United States and just continuing right along out to Utah territory as it was at the time. So, you know, this American founded faith,

you know, it was in many ways kind of its success came from the success in the UK that kind of kept things going along. In fact, Brigham Young University down the road from me teaches Welsh, or at least I know it did a few years ago it is one of the very few universities in the united states that teaches welsh but it also has a welsh collection of books that you know i don't know all the details on what's in the collection and what have you but it goes back to some of that 19th century connection. So, yeah, I think there's very solid rationale to think that Fark, you know, is Welsh. And then, of course, Creek is Crick.

That is something that drives me up the wall. I lived in Wyoming for close to 20 years, and they say that in Wyoming, too. You know, we went down to the Crick and i'm like the way because to be a crick is like a pain that you get when you slept the wrong way and your neck's hurting you i got a crick in my neck sure but not a body of water but it all underscores your point, right? That there are countless accents, accents that if you're not from a part of,

if you're not from that part of the country, you're just not even going to realize that there's some local pronunciation, local words that are used, you know, the regionalisms. It's funny to me because it's always people from outside of the South that I hear say, I didn't realize there was a stigma with a Southern accent. But it's always people from outside of the South that use the Southern accent to emphasize someone's stupidity or someone's racism and there are a lot of southern people who are very sensitive to that there's a lot of southern people that don't care but there are a

lot that are like man sure you better watch what you're saying because you know if you're talking to somebody from anywhere outside of the south and they want to make somebody a character, for example, say, sounds stupid. They'll throw that Southern accent on there and be like, well, I'll be darned. And I think Southerners aren't immune to that tendency either. When Southerners talk about somebody who's italian or anybody does they automatically go to a new york accent if they're italian american you know we all have those accents that we use to i guess put into someone else mind, this is where this person's from. Does that make sense?

It does. It does. Because even when I, as a southerner, am talking about somebody that's southern, I might drop into that southern accent. And it's not to make them sound dumb it's to emphasize this person that i'm referring to is supposed to be from the south and i'm trying to set that tone in your head well and while that's of course you know what i've been going for i can certainly see though where i can see where someone might get upset about it in my opinion this is me saying this not you if they're overly sensitive

because i've heard those episodes and it didn't take me out of the episode it didn't really even it didn't phase me to hear you kind of slip into that. And to me, it was very subtle. And I think that's the key. If you're going to do a Southern accent and you're not Southern, keep it subtle. Because when you start leaning heavily into that and you do start doing that whole twang kind of thing and you know then that's when people are gonna go this son of a bitch is trying to say i'm stupid you know sure and i sure well and i think i know i think i've said this to you before i think there are

episodes where you know i do that better and episodes where I don't do it as well. You know, I can, I can sit back and look at that and go, okay, you know, I've, uh, this has been a new experience, you know, and I've, I've learned, uh, I've learned some things podcasting and I've had to think about voices in ways I never did. To me, there's a lot more important things to be getting upset about, and I don't mean to minimize or in any way down feels. I've listened to podcasts before, some very large podcasts where two women were talking about a specific person. I don't even remember who they were talking about now, but it was a podcast

everybody has heard of everyone has, you know, I hear so many people talk about how wonderful this show is. So I thought I'd give it a listen and I'm not going to name them, but I listened to half of what episode and I heard them say, well, they're a white person from the South. So of course they're racist.

Click. Yeah. That's what i'm like i've done and and i got livid pissed about that and i i would absolutely expect anybody from the south to get really upset about that but But just putting on a Southern voice to emphasize that someone is from the South, to me, isn't offensive. And I know that you're not the kind of person that's ever going to be like, watch me make fun of this group of people. Sure, and I hope this episode doesn't come off watch me make fun of this group of people. Sure. And, you know, I don't,

I hope this episode doesn't come off as like the trying to make excuse or like the, the, man, I don't even know what I'm going for here. You know, I just, I guess you're right. That is the type of person I am. I just really want to ensure that I haven't, you know,

if I have at any point overdone an accent or, you know, to where not someone who just is super nitpicky about accents, you know, that person, well, you know, I'll never please them. But I think it was how, you know, Lucy said illiterate, you know, the sound illiterate. That's what made me pause more than someone who says, I don't like that. We'll take one more quick break, maybe. And then, Jeremy, we're going to talk about what you define geographically as the South. comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had. But once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve?

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Can we maybe shift gears just a little bit? Your take on what is the South? We kind of touched on that just a little bit earlier. So define the South for me, Jeremy. I think because I grew up deep South. And I mean, like deep south. You don't get much more deep south than New Orleans. To me, it's Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

I love how you paused on North Carolina. You're like, maybe, maybe. Just the fact that it has North in the name makes it questionable. But the big thing for me is, and I know there are going to be people that go up in arms, raise the pitchforks and the torches about this. Florida is not a southern state. It is a northern state today because so many people retire there from the north. And why wouldn't they? It's a warm year round. It's got fantastic weather.

But it's slowly been turned into a northern state. And the one I know you get a kick out of. To me, Virginia is not a southern state. Yeah, that blows my mind. I know it's south of the Mason-Dixon line. I know that they fought with the south in the civil war and by the way i am not picking sides on the civil war here i'm just saying i know that it is a fact that virginia was considered part of the south at the time of the civil war but to me it's way too north to be considered a southern state and

i know a lot of southerners who think that way interesting you may notice i also did not include texas in there i did indeed is a weathered western state man and really texas is texas you know they have western states like wyoming colorado mountain west states utah and texas is texas you know they have western states like wyoming colorado mountain west states utah and texas is just texas so what about east texas which is kind of its own special part of texas okay so east texas has its own special dispensation of sorts someplace like houston katie texas even some of the more northern areas of eastern texas it's like being in louisiana but then you get into a place like dallas or austin which i love the city of Austin.

And they are a total different feel, man. San Antonio is the same way. It's a totally different feel than eastern Texas. I'm kidding. I know that eastern Texas is eastern Texas. But it feels an awful lot like Louisiana. No, I get what you mean. I mean, state lines are not necessarily the same as you know the less tangible um yes exactly i will tell you exactly right now i live in philadelphia

and my i guess not paying attention to geography in school they started talking and i not trying now that i'm saying this i'm not trying to feed into that stupid southerner stereotype i had no idea when i drive for a living right so at this point and my boss says hey we're gonna need you to go to new york and i'm like jesus christ man how far how far is this how long is this gonna take and he's like it's an hour and a half away like oh well okay then so at this point i'll i mean these little tiny states that are up here blow my mind, man, because I might hit starting in Pennsylvania and hit, you know, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and back to Philly in one like eight to 10 hour shift. And I'm like, this is crazy. And each one of them has a different accent.

All right, we've talked accents, we've talked regions. I mean, long and short, the South is much more varied than a lot of us non-Southerners probably realize. I think areas outside of the South are a lot more varied and diverse than people in the South realize in terms of sound. And I guess... This is just just we know what we experience right we recognize the rich variety that's in our corner and of course we're going to fail to grasp those nuances without having lived in whatever other corner yeah and i guess i notice it more because I've lived at this point kind of all over the country.

I realize more that there are all these different sounds, not just sounds, all these different foods, all these different cultures. There are people from all over the place that also tried to hide their accents because of the way they sound. My wife tries to hide her Philadelphia accent because of the same thing. She is a public speaker. She's a podcaster. She's high up in a certain company's corporate ladder and tries to sound as generic, I guess, as she can. And it doesn't mean that you don't love the culture that you grew up with. It just means that maybe it's easier on other people's ears. Sure. You're trying to fit into this larger, massive thing that is the over 300

million populated 50-state United States. When I was living in denver i actually had to translate for my boss what a fellow southerner was was saying really yeah we had a pepsi guy coming to the restaurant at one point and he said uh hey man could you go talk to this pepsi guy and i was like okay sure why it's like i can't understand a thing he's saying man and i walked in there and sure enough it was a dude from the south and he had to tell me what he was you know he says what he says i turn around to the boss and go he's asking where you want these cokes to go where where you want the Pepsis to go. He's like, oh. Well, Jeremy, tell me, man, is there anything that you think non-Southerners in general,

just in your experiences, you've lived out of the South quite a bit, you've mentioned a number of places from Philadelphia to Denver, things that non-Southerners should be more aware of, if you were to kind of condense that in terms of having a better understanding of the South. Which completely does not include Florida and most of Texas or Virginia.

I would say that the South is not your parents or your grandparents South anymore. And things were very different back in the 60s, early 70s, and earlier than that. Once that civil rights movement happened, it really changed the South. And look, I'm firmly in the camp of everyone should have equal rights.

That's how I was born and raised. of any persuasion, any color, any, you know, there's nothing about anyone that makes me think that person shouldn't have the same rights that I'm afforded. Right. And I think, well, I know in my experience, that is the way Southerners think. And it's easy because the Civil Rights Movement was such a huge moment in history that people who weren't aware of what was going on in the South became aware of what was going on in the South worldwide. And because of that, that idea stuck that all Southerners are like that, and it's never changed. That was cemented as this is the South. But what it really was was a moment of change for the South where people

generations, every generation after that has been completely different than the generations before that. It was that light switch moment for the South and they're still racist in the South they're still homophobes and stupid people in the South. But those people exist in the North, in the West, in the Midwest, in other countries. I mean, it's everywhere. As much as you hear judge a person on their actions and not on the color of their skin, you should also be judging a person on their actions and not where they come from. Or their accents.

But I think it's because of that that of the country needs to change the way that they think about and treat people from the South. I think it's also that people from the South need to be a little less sensitive than they are about that. And I know I have lived outside of the South for a long time, and I know that some people are going to tell me I'm full of it for saying that. It's just my opinion that, you know, sensitivity can lead to interpreting, misinterpreting the way someone acts. I'm struggling with the right way to say it, but I guess your sensitivity can lead you to make assumptions. Just because someone puts on a Southern accent doesn't mean that they're saying that the South,

they're perpetuating any stereotypes about the South. You know, like I said, it's helpful to me when you do that because it helps me if I'm doing something else and I come back in, like, into focus halfway through a sentence, I can think, oh, that's this voice, that's this voice he's taught, that's this person talking. You know? Whereas if you use the same voice all the way through,

I might have to rewind that a couple of minutes to catch on to what's going on. I'm pretty tough to offend. And I think it's because I just don't – I don't know if I want to say that. I was going to say don't place that much importance on the opinion of others. But that's not true in all cases. So, I don't know. I just, I tend to let things slide off my

shoulders and kind of assume that if I heard something and thought, that person, that was kind of rude, then I just kind of assume, maybe I misunderstood it, maybe I heard it wrong, maybe I misunderstood it. Maybe I heard it wrong. Maybe I'm thinking the wrong way. Unless it was blatantly offensive, like those two people saying they're white and they're from the South, so they must be racist. Right. That's blatantly offensive.

But I give people the benefit of the doubt when it's something as light as I was using an accent and again i don't mean to say that lucy's opinions or concerns or anyone else's for that matter are invalid i understand i totally understand why they yeah might think that i've thought that myself in the past. And again, of course, if I didn't think that there was validity to her concern, we wouldn't be doing this episode right now. When you got a hold of me,

it was, I think I might have offended someone and I'd like to understand why that is. And that's another thing that you have to consider is that sometimes people say things or do things that you might take offense at. And it's because that person didn't realize that it was something that you might take offense at. Like you, not being from the South, not having experienced the things that someone from the South has experienced would have no reason to realize this might be offensive

unless you were actually trying to be offensive. Whereas me, I might say something about farks and not realize that that could offend somebody from Utah. You know, there's just all kinds of things that if you don't grow up there, you don't know, and I think we just need to. As long as you don't knock our fry sauce, you know, no one will get offended here. My kid loves fry sauce.

It is a staple in Utah. Quick question then, because I've had this debate. Sure. And this is a total sidetrack. How do you make your fry sauce? I mean, it's ketchup and mayo how do you make your fry sauce uh i mean it's it's ketchup and mayo man that's fry sauce i'll get the angry but a little bit of mustard those are the basics yellow yeah exactly i mean you mix to taste from there and there are different fry sauces my ex

told me there's no mayo and fry sauce i'm sorry what and i'm like no there's there's no mayo in fry sauce. I'm sorry, what? And I'm like, no, there's always mayo in fry sauce. There may not be mustard. Now I know why that marriage didn't work out. I mean, I'm sorry. That is exactly why that marriage did not work out, because we couldn't agree on fry sauce. Like, no, there's always mayo. There may not be mustard mustard but there is always man

well i apologize man talk about a derail right fry sauce good grief hey man you know the derailing is what makes conversations fun so it's true it's true all It's true. All right. So, I mean, long and short, we're to wrap this thing up. Jeremy, I want to thank you profusely for talking Southern accents, talking what on earth the South is. And, you know, again, I'll go ahead and say that I hope as listeners go through history, that doesn't suck. As you enjoy these stories that I'm telling, in my mind at least, even if it doesn't always come across, maybe in some voice I affect or whatever the case may be, to me, despite these divided, polarized times that we live in, I see America, as cheesy as this might sound, I see it as my big,

incredibly diverse, beautiful family. I'm a sappy patriot who just cannot stand the idea of bigotry, period. And take that for whatever it's worth. So I want to tell all the stories that I can about every region of the country, every little corner, every nook and cranny, and bring it all together in a way that we can enjoy and better get to know each other across these imagined lines that we have, whether that's region, race, sex, religion, you name it. I think there's a lot of value in us hearing and knowing each other's stories. And of course, I will have some limitations when I'm telling the stories of my fellow Americans who, you know, I haven't had the privilege of living in that state or, you

know, coming from as great approximation of that background. So forgive me when I step on toes, it's certainly going to happen. And the Civil War episodes are what they are at this point. They're recorded, even if I move this episode, you know, to precede it. And of course, I wouldn't want to mess with the characters for a lot of the kids. And as Jeremy, as you pointed out, for many adults who now know that this voice is Jefferson Davis or this voice is Stonewall Jackson and so forth. Well, he's dead at this point in the story. Yeah, I hope that this little bonus episode was a useful discussion about some sensitivities that endure to the present and perhaps some stereotypes that it benefit. It sounds like if I may say, Jeremy, just riffing off of what you've been articulating, some stereotypes that all Americans, Southern and non-Southern, would benefit from trying to move past. Absolutely. And if I can say, I think that the only appropriate response when someone tells you that they're offended

is to try to educate yourself about how you might have possibly offended that person. And that's what you've set out to do here is just reach out to someone who you know has had experience with that and figure out what it is that you could have possibly done that may have offended someone. And all I can really say is thank you for letting me be a part of that educational experience for you, because it means a lot to me to know that you're the type of person that wants to know, okay, I may have offended someone. How can I improve rather than just blowing off their concerns? Well, I appreciate that very much, Jeremy.

And, you know, as I go forward with episodes that are, at this point will be pretty much post-Civil War, maybe I can bug you from time to time and, you know, I'm never going to nail these accents, but I'd be absolutely happy to get a little instruction from you so that I can maybe hone in a little bit more on- Anything I can do to help, man. Thank you, sir. little little instruction from you so that i can maybe hone in a little bit more on anything i can do to help man thank you sir and uh i will go ahead and and plug you because you do a great

thing people can if nothing else then go listen to my interview on your show if they're interested go check out podcasts we listen to find some new shows especially since you know this is being recorded amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Depending on how you're feeling that time, you may have plenty of time to find some new shows. So, all right. On that, join me in two weeks where I'd like to tell you next time. Beth Chris Jansen, Bob Drazovich, Brian Goodson, Bronwyn Cohen, Carrie Begill, Charles and Shirley Clendenin, Charlie Magis, Chloe Tripp, Christopher Merchant, Christopher Pullman, David DeFazio, David Rifkin, Denki, Durante Spencer, Donald Moore, Donna Marie Jeffcoat, Ellen Stewart,

Bernie Lowe, George Sherwood, Gurwith Griffin, Henry Brunges, Jake Gilbreth, James G. Bledsoe, Janie McCreary, Jeff Marks, Jennifer Moods, Jennifer Magnolia, Jeremy Wells, Jessica Poppock, Joe Dovis, John Frugal-Dougal, John Boovey, John Keller, John Oliveros, John Radlavich, John Schaefer, John Sheff, Jordan Corbett, Joshua Steiner, Justin M. Spriggs, Justin May, Kristen Pratt, Karen Bartholomew, Cassie Koneko, Kim R., Kyle Decker, Lawrence Neubauer, Linda Cunningham, Mark Ellis, Matthew Mitchell, Matthew Simmons, Melanie Jan, Nick Sechender, Nick Caffrell, Noah Hoff, Owen Sedlak, Paul Goringer, Randy Guffrey, Reese Humphries-Wadsworth, Rick Brown, Sarah Trawick, Samuel Lagasa, Sharon Thiesen,

Sean Baines, Steve Williams, Creepy Girl, Tisha Black, and Zach Jackson.