How To Do Everything - Sir Patrick Stewart, Pricklouses and Root Beer

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

On today's episode, how to defoam your root beer and how to insult someone, medieval-style. Plus, one listener has a question about British cows, and Sir Patrick Stewart offers his services.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! featuring exclusive games, behind-the-scenes content, and more. Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org.How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Heena Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Hey, this is another one of our resuscitated episodes, which we're bringing you every other week. You're probably used to the cadence at this point. What I'm saying right now is probably unnecessary. Just know this episode contains one of our favorite segments with one of our favorite guests ever, Sir Patrick Stewart. And I'm just going to say he performs the role of a lifetime.

Hey, Rachel, what can we help you with? I was wondering if you could find out how do cows moo? Well, how would a person moo in a British accent? I think the place to start would be, how do you moo? I moo with an American kind of Nevada accent going moo. That's pretty standard cow. Yeah. How long would you say that you've been

wondering about this? It's been a couple months. You run into cows as part of your daily life? Not so much. Just kind of pass them. Okay. You pass them by. And do you ever try and engage them in conversation? Nah, they're too far away, usually. I mean, it's possible that cows you're passing are British, but you've never talked to them. Maybe. I hope so. That'd be really cool. Or maybe they're looking at you going, I wonder what one of those sounds like with a British accent.

All right. Well, we are going to find you an answer, and we'll talk to you soon. Well, this certainly seems like something Sir Patrick Stewart, star of Stage and Screen, could help with. Hi, Mike. Hi, Ian. Hello. So, Patrick Stewart, you heard Rachel's question. And you'd like me to answer that question, which I'm happy to do.

It's not a straightforward, simple answer. Unlike probably many other countries where a cow's moo is a cow's moo, in England, you understand, we are dominated by class, by social status, and by location. So, for example, a cow that is in a field next to my house in West Oxfordshire would move in one kind of way. And a cow in a field in the semi-industrial town I grew up in, in the north of England, would moo in another kind of way. Am I clear so far? Yeah. Well, if I were at home in West Oxfordshire right now

and I walked down my lane and there are always cows in the field and I say, hi, good morning good morning cows and they would move me like this now that's a very conservative move you must understand that I live in the constituency of David Cameron who is a Tory and and I assume these cows voted for him I don't actually vote there I vote in another place in London. But if I were at my home in Yorkshire, where I grew up, and I went out, and not that there are many fields left where I grew up, but I would find one, and I would find some cows.

What you'd hear would be something like this. I'll do that again. Blah! You can hear the difference, can't you? That is a stark difference. Yeah. Well, this is all to do with environmental and cultural conditioning. Now, then, and I know we don't have time really to go into this in detail.

We'd need the whole afternoon. But what you're understanding is that the English moo changes from location to location. Well, our caller who asked this question is from Nevada. I wonder if you're familiar with the sounds of American cows, if you want to give us your impression of that. Well, you know, it's very funny you say that, but my wife is also from Nevada, so I have some experience of Nevada cattle. And if you like, I can give you my impression of a Nevada cow. Mwah! Wow. It's a much higher pitch. Here's the cow. Wow.

It's a much higher pitch. There's a difference. Yeah. Yeah, much higher pitch. And it's much more nasal because, of course, that's the way you people talk. And, of course, the cows are influenced by how you talk. You are influenced by the cow. One of the things we know about English culture is that breeding is so important for people.

And it's something we talk about also with cattle. So what would a cow that is the most well-bred, how would that cow move? Well, this is a very interesting question, and I really don't have time to go into it in detail, but we had a prime minister many, many years ago called Alec Douglas Hume. And one of the wonderful things about Alec Douglas Hume,

including his name, by the way, and you would think that his name was probably spelled H-O-M-E-H-U-M-L or something like that. His name was actually spelled H-O-M-E, home, but it was pronounced Hume. And we do that mostly to confuse America, you know, like Leicester Square and Leicester and all of that. Oh, yeah. Anyway, the thing about Alec Douglas Hume. And we do that mostly to confuse Americans. You know, like Leicester Square and Leicester and all of that. Anyway, the thing

about Alec Douglas Hume was that he didn't move his lips when he talked. I'll give an example. They didn't actually move their lips because moving your lips is terribly rare to a gun family. So

if Alec Douglas Hume had cattle, and I'm sure he did, he must have been a landowner, because I think he was actually Scottish. His cows would have moved something like this. Very refined, very sophisticated.

Well, Sir Patrick, thank you so much for your time. You're very welcome. I enjoyed talking to you. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. On today's show, we'll tell you how to insult people properly. But first...

Hey Casey, what can we help you with? So I actually called to see if you guys could help me find a better way to pour root beer. Okay. I love root beer, and I always, I'll pour it, and it foams up to like, you know, there's just a tiny bit of root beer at the bottom, and it foams up to the top of the glass and, you know, floats over, and I just am looking for a better way to do it. Yeah.

Well, what have you tried? So I've tried a lot of stuff. You know, I'll put it in the fridge for a while so it's nice and cold, or, you know, I'll pour it over ice or pour it at room temperature. I've actually tried to get it really close to frozen because I don't know why, but I feel like it's going to do a better job when it's cold, but nothing seems to work. I actually poured a cup of root beer earlier today, and I had to sit and wait 15, 20 seconds for the foam to go down, just because nothing works.

And that's your missinvaluable root beer time, when you're waiting for the foam. Yeah, these are seconds I'll never get back. Do you have a root beer with you right now? I actually, I can go grab one right now, yeah. Let's see if we can hear your technique. Alright, let me go and get a cup real quick. I'm a little worried that Casey might have a root beer problem. Yeah, it's the addiction that we need to address before the phone. Oh, hold on. That could be something also that we

need to address, but that's a difference. That did the whole different thing. Yeah. All right, so let me see. I'll go ahead and I'll pour and I'll put the phone near the cups so you guys can hear. Thanks. All right. I just poured it, and it's like three-quarters foam and a little bit of soda at the bottom right now.

Just sitting there. Huh. We are going to try and find some help for you. That sounds great. I can't wait to hear what you guys find out. All right, we've got Guy Crosby on the line. He's the science editor for America's Test Kitchen. Guy, can you help out Casey?

Oh, there are a number of solutions that should at least mitigate, reduce the amount of foaming. So when you think of sugar, the more you... Guy is talking now and he's saying a lot of scientific things that might be hard to absorb, so we'll just try and sum it up quickly. The colder

a liquid gets, the higher the concentration of gas you can dissolve in it. So colder root beer has more carbon dioxide in it. And also the pressure of the bottle keeps the gas in the liquid. So when you pour cold root beer into a warm or room temperature glass, the gas comes rushing out and you get even more foam. It's even worse because there's no longer pressure holding it in. Okay, now we're going to go back to Guy. The other thing I would say is that when you pour the beverage, the root beer, into a glass, the thing that really triggers sudden release of all this gas are what's called nucleation sites. And these are places when the gas bubbles can develop and then suddenly release.

And these are things like a little bit of lint or imperfections in the glass, like little teeny tiny scratches you can't even see. So does that mean the more irregular the surface that you're pouring the root beer onto, the more foam you're going to get? Yes. Okay. So that's one thing you can do. Another thing is, of course,

you could chill down the glass. It's going to help to maintain the temperature of the liquid and maintain the greater solubility that the gas has at lower temperatures. Okay. Oh, well, the other thing you can do is, and this comes back to sort of the art of champagne, when you have a high surface area glass like a goblet, it's going to trigger the more release more rapidly of the gas versus a tall, thin glass that he had chilled down in the freezer, and one that was really, really, really clean, maybe even almost new, then you'd have a good chance of having much less fizzing. It makes the daily drinking of root beer a lot more festive in a flute, though. Yeah, it would. How much do you think it would cost Guy to get a champagne flute fitted with a handle?

Well, that's a good question. I don't know that I know that. I do know I went to, gave a lecture at the University of Toledo, and it was in their chemistry department, and they have a glassblower there, and he makes special mugs. They gave me one to take home, which was tall and narrow with a handle on it. So I think it would work out just right. You have reached Steve Mulder at the University of Toledo glass shop.

I am either out of the office or I have my hands full of hot glass. Please leave a detailed message including your name and phone number, and I will get back to you as quickly as I can. Thank you. Hello, Steve. This is Mike and Ian from NPR. We got your number from Guy Crosby. We want to talk to you about... Hello. Hello, Steve. Just walked in. What's up? Hey, it's Mike and Ian from How to Do Everything at NPR.

All right. How's it going? Good, good. What's going on there? So we got your number from Guy Crosby, and we were talking to him, and he told us about

the mug you made for him. Uh-huh. And so, well, we had a special request. We have a listener who really loves root beer. Uh-huh. And he doesn't like that when he pours his root beer, it creates all this root beer foam. Uh-huh.

And Guy said that there's really no better glass to minimize your root beer foam than the type you made, the skinny with the handle. Uh-huh. What can we do to get our hands on one of those? Yeah, I can put a mug together for you. Tell me what you want. The mug will probably be around $10. That's great. We can handle that. Yeah, we can cover that.

Okay. Thanks so much. Uh-huh. If you have any questions, feel free to send them to us. Send them to our email, howto at npr.org. Maybe you have a question about your cow. Maybe you have a question

about root beer. Maybe your have a question about root beer. Maybe your cow refuses to drink the root beer you're offering her. If that's your question, send it to us at howtoatnpr.org. No matter what your question is, we guarantee we will find a knight of the British order to answer it. This message comes from WISE, We'll be right back. T's and C's apply. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Fresh Air, Up First, NPR News Now, Planet Money, TED Radio Hour, ThruLine, the NPR Politics Podcast, Code Switch, Embedded, Books We Love, Wildcard, are just some of the podcasts you can enjoy sponsor-free with NPR+. Get all sorts of perks across more than 20 podcasts with the bundle option. Learn more at plus.npr.org. If you're black or brown

or a person of color, you know that stories about race in the news can sometimes feel like they're made for a different audience. At Code Switch, we're not about that. We're interested in how race and identity shape your world in real and sometimes funny ways. Come work it out with us together on the Code Switch podcast from NPR. The week we first ran this episode, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu had just referred to the government of South Africa as a, quote, lick-spittle bunch. We hadn't heard that term before, so we called up Ammon Shea, co-author of the book Depraved and Insulting English. So, Ammon, lick-spittle, is this a term you're familiar with? Yes. A fawning sycophant, a parasite. Someone who licks the spit of another,

I imagine. You would have to be pretty fawning to do that, I guess. So are there any other kind of old or archaic insults that we should bring back? Yeah, there's one of my personal favorites is a cacanator, which is a word for somebody who either laughs too much or laughs too loudly. A cacanator. Yeah, who's very closely related generally to the syloquent, who's somebody who actually spits when they speak. I mean, we just call them spitters, I guess, but syloquent has a kind of more noble ring to it. But I think my all-time favorite insult is probably a bayard, B-A-Y-A-R-D, because it's so applicable in so many areas of

life. And a bayard is a person who is armed with the self-confidence of ignorance. Like a confident idiot. Not just a confident idiot, but somebody who is confident because of their idiocy, I think. One of the things that I think is delightful about English is how ridiculously specific it can be in so many circumstances. You know, pricklaus was not what it sounds like, fortunately. Pricklaus was a derogatory term for a tailor in the 17th century.

A rapin, R-A-P-I-N, was a word for an unruly art student. I'm not quite sure why we needed such specific words for these things, but they came up and somebody filed them away for future use, I suppose. So, Ammon, when you're driving, what do you yell at the people who cut you off in traffic, knowing that you have this arsenal of insults at your fingertips? I don't. I'm sorry to say. Come on, really? Well, first of all, I live in New York City, so I do very little driving.

Right. Well, let's say, though, let's say someone from, I don't know, the 1600s, 1700s was transported into the future and suddenly became a cab driver in New York City. What might they yell? They would yell probably Jehu, which was a very archaic insult for an unruly, ferocious, or unreasonable driver. Jehu comes from the Old Testament, and I think Jehu was the son of Nimshi, and he was known in the Old Testament in those circles for being a particularly reckless charioteer. And so Jehu kind of extended himself into the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries as a synonym for a reckless driver.

So, like, can you believe this, Jehu? Something like that. Well, Ammon, thanks for telling us about this stuff. All right. Well, thank you for having me. You're a real pricklaus. That's exactly what I was. I've heard that before. Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn, Ian? I learned that the perfect vessel for drinking root beer is actually a champagne flute.

What it means, though, is that you could have a situation where you have a root beer float flute. You could have a root beer float flute. The key is to make sure you regulate the root beer flow when making a root beer float flute. Because the overflow in the float flute could end up on the floor. I learned that a caconator is somebody who laughs too much. You know, yeah, when you think about it, like imagine how different the Terminator would have been if it was the caconator. I'm a friend of Sarah Connor.

I'll be back. How to Do Everything is produced by Jillian Donovan with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Jeff Bartle. PhD. Our artist-in-residence is Justin Witte. You can get us your questions at howtoatnpr.org. Our website is howtodoeverything.org.

I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. This message comes from Grammarly. Back and forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their

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This Hispanic Heritage Month, Code Switch sits down with Mexican-Cuban-American journalist and author Paula Ramos to discuss the rise of U.S. Latinos to the far right. It's a small but growing shift in American politics. Paula Ramos thinks she knows what's behind it. Listen on the Code Switch podcast from NPR.