Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Cursing [contains explicit language]

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

NOTE: this episode contains explicit language throughout. That language is the topic, so we use it to talk about it. Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Rivers Langley ('The Goods From The Woods' podcast) and comedian Martin Urbano (Jimmy Kimmel Live, New York Comedy Fest) for a look at why cursing is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Cursing. Known for being rude. Famous for being bleeped here. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why cursing is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I have two wonderful guests today, Rivers Langley and Martin Urbano. Rivers is a wonderful stand-up comedian. He's also the co-host of a wonderful podcast called The Goods from the Woods,

which is a very, very funny and smart show and also draws on a lot of Southern experiences and background and everything there too. And then Martin Urbano is a very, very funny stand-up comedian. You might have seen him on the New York Comedy Festival or Comedy Central or Jimmy Kimmel Live. Martin Urbano is also the host of a very, very funny comedy game show. The name of the game show is Who Wants 269 with Martin Urbano. And I know you can't see the logo for the visual joke. It's called Who Wants 269 because it's $2.69. That is the prize of the game is $2.69. It's a quiz game. Very funny. Maybe my favorite comedy game show running right now. It's

just really great. I have plenty of links about that as well. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Martin recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. Acknowledge Martin recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. Acknowledge Rivers recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about cursing. That is a patron chosen topic. Thank you very much to Donna Milligan for the suggestion and to Jonathan Smukler for cheering

it on. It's also really fun in the context of this podcast because the public main feed there is rated clean. It is designed to be all ages. And so a podcast about cursing, oh, how do we do it? Well, we're going to curse a lot. It's going to be full of cursing and swear words. And I'm trying to make that clear in the title of the episode and make that clear right now, talking to you about it. We cannot discover what is fascinating about cursing without doing it, without being clear about what words we're saying to each other. I hope that's not shocking for you. I had a good time with it, but it is way more cursing than I usually do. Because, you know, we're being scholars, I guess. We're really getting into it. So please sit back or sit in excited anticipation of Alex saying something dirty like the C word.

And no joke, I say the actual C word in this episode at least once, I think a couple times. Again, anyway, this is your last heads up that actual swearing is coming, and it's an amazing show because of it. Please enjoy this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Rivers Langley and Martin Urbano. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Rivers, Martin, it is so good to have you both here. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it.

Either of you can start. But how do you feel about cursing? I think it's bad. I would never curse. It's one of my favorite things to do. I like it. I'm in favor. Okay. I actually only agreed to do this because I knew it was a clean podcast.

And the fact that now you're kind of you know pulling the rug under me i don't i don't i don't love it but you know i'm happy to be here i'm just happy to talk about the kingdom of jesus it's just what i'm here no it's not a religious thing it's just a personal choice that's my favorite just a personal choice i honestly wish i could do it less on stage on stage in particular because you know it seems to me the reason that you have these words is to add impact and to add meaning and i you as this was a quote from lewis black but he said i use fuck as a comma and that is and that's my thing too i'm just like i can't and so you know anytime i've ever had especially like family watch me do stand up it's like they're like damn you're like a really you know saying the fuck word a lot you know and and i don't but they say it but i don't

think of i don't think of my like i'm not like my subject matter is not that dirty i just can't stop myself from just you know adding it on everything but uh you know it's it would probably help as a comedian to be able to lessen it so when you do use it it's an actual impact point in your act as opposed to just casually tossing it off so it's something i honestly have worked on not not for any like morality reason but just for like a from a performance standpoint because those words can be very very effective but you know you got to kind of parse them out i get it but it's also a little stylistic thing right like what is your family's background? Like they don't swear like at all.

No, no, I just mean, you know, it's mainly my mom. Anytime she's ever seen me do a stand up, she's like, wow, that's a lot. No, we're not like, you know, I think they're the only like really religious member of my family passed away about a year and a half ago. So, you know, we're pretty much free and clear on on that the morality aspect of it curse words ever since just swear words yeah well i think it's like it's opened yeah yeah well it's just you know i think it's just something that moms notice more than anything and it's something that i've sort of like thought about where i'm just like yeah it actually is you know not like again not for some moral reason but just just for a lexical reason, because those words do add impact to certain things.

And if you can use them less when you do break them out, it's more impactful. I get that. For the longest time, I would avoid swearing so that way people couldn't have that easy pass to criticize the things that I was saying, if they were dark or dirty. I wanted to play with innuendo so hard that I would try to take swear words out. And then now, post-pandemic, I've included them in my act. Even though in my personal life, I never say them. In my act now, I sometimes will throw out a curse word because I don't know. It's just feeling more right for the material I've been doing lately. I would be making, let's say, pedophile jokes.

And so for that, you got to be squeaky clean so you can still get – people still get mad. But you got to be clean about it. If not, people will be like, it's vulgar and you're saying all this stuff. Yeah, that's true. Like it's vulgar and you're saying all this stuff. Yeah. And I'm trying to avoid that. Forget who, but somebody I know said that they like try to absolutely avoid swearing in a customer service situation.

Well, yeah. Because then as soon as you do that, they're allowed to bail. They don't have to help you at all. Oh, yeah. But if you, you could say like pretty aggressive things. And as long as they're calm, it's still like they still have to help you fix whatever it is. Yeah, that's true. I think that's a standing order in the kind of especially telephone customer service game. As soon as someone swears at you, you're allowed to just be like, all right, none.

We're done. And people, please check out both Rivers and Martin's stand up. It's awesome. And yeah, and I love getting an eye into the technical, almost musical use of it or not use of it. It's fascinating. On the last thing you just said,

on our podcast, I talk about I always talk to phone scammers whenever they call. I press one, I wait, I have nothing but time, and I always just mess with them. And it's, like, the funnest thing. I've done it so much that they now call me and ask my fake name, which is always Waylon.

It's Waylon Jennings. I always tell them my name is Waylon Jennings. And they'll always call and be like, is this Waylon Jennings? I'm like, yes, it is. Like, that's how much I've done this to these people. Wow. Do they just hang up like after they no no no my i'm saying my fake name has made it into the the spam system so they

don't even ask for my real name but but what i was gonna say is that that's the thing is they even you know even in whatever call center in whatever part of the world they're calling from even they have the if you cuss you know they'll hang up on you so that's that's always the thing is the way to mess with them is just drag it out as long as you can talk as slowly as you can and then uh you know and and as long as you don't swear they usually don't hang up until you say something really ridiculous like you're living in your stretch hummer and you need a loan you know know? Oh, yeah. I like the idea that they will even bail on scamming you out of your body or identity if you swear. Like, well, sir, I might be a horrible criminal on the other end of the phone, but you. Keep them on their toes.

Yeah, well, I had one guy go and for so long that, you know, I told him that there was a credit card company that had agreed to refund some of my debt if I beat, uh, their customer service representative in physical combat. Uh, and, and then I, I ended by at the end of the, you know, uh, at the end of calling him, I ended him by being like, Oh my God, he's here. We, the fight is happening now. And, uh, and the guy was on with me for like five minutes it's on our youtube you can hear it and it was it was so funny but then when he hung up was when i like pulled the mic away from my mouth and was like pretending to get into it with john from american express where i was just like hey motherfucker get out of my house you know and then they

that's when they hung up but i talked to that guy for like five minutes and he was asking me like is it going to be a death match like you think you can win and i was like i don't like my odds the guy keeps sending me pictures of his muscles he's pretty big and until and until that motherfucker got their clean content right just keeping them on the phone oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah talking slow you could have pretended to beat that man to death on on the phone and uh and it's they still couldn't have hung up as long as you didn't swear yeah yeah pretty much i i was you know i i guess i i guess i ran out of ideas i had to go to the to the cuss bag well and there's that that other thing that i uh again reference another uh comedian that patten oswalt pointed out where it's like if you replace swears with something that's pg it's

usually so much more messed up sounding you know oh yeah you know especially the sex stuff yeah the sex stuff yeah if you just like clean it up for like to where you could say it on tv you're like that is so much weirder that's a hundred times more weird you know like i i up for like to where you could say it on TV, you're like, that is so much weirder. That's a hundred times more weird. You know, like I, I had a, I had a bit about this cause there was like an old rock and roll song from like the, you know, the early fifties, uh, that was called shake, rattle and roll. And in the middle of the song, instead of, instead of just saying like, you know, we made, you know,

we made love or, you you know the physical act of coitus he literally says i'm a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store and you're like oh lordy that's good that's horrifying that's really good one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store is that what yes that's and yeah and this song is done by elvis it was done by big joe turner i think he wrote it uh bill haley in the comets like this is like a widely known kind of rockabilly Is that what you said? And this song is done by Elvis. It was done by Big Joe Turner. I think he wrote it. Bill Haley and the Comets. This is like a widely known kind of rockabilly song.

And just in the middle, I'm like a one-eyed cat peeping in the seafood store. And you're like, ah, what? No. No. I would so much rather you just be explicit. Like, I fucked her brains out. It's so much better. In a seafood much better in a seafood store in a sea the lobsters were watching it was upset i couldn't really i couldn't really do as well as i

there were too many eyes too many dead eyes just looking at me on the on the ice shelves now i'm thinking of i think it was wet ass pussy when that came out the radio edit was grosser like the radio edit was something like wet and gushy or something yes which is worse that's good it's worse actually yeah just let it be just let it be what it is leave it alone you know i think we can get get into some stats and figures and facts and stuff about this topic. On every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... Sing us some stats, you're the SifPod man. I'm not sure of numbers and scores yes he's sharing some stats

on the sif podcast and it's better than counting alone that was beautiful that was beautiful thank you very much now let's hear the uncensored version oh yeah well uh ween has that cover of piano man where they go you know much. Now let's hear the uncensored version. Oh, yeah. Well, Ween has that cover of Piano Man where they go, you know, sing us a song. You're the Piano Man. Put some coke on my dick tonight. Yeah. There is a dirty version.

Ween did that? Oh. Yeah. Live in Toronto. It's a record that came out in like 2000 or something. Oh, and that name was submitted by Tina V. Thank you, Tina. That was very fun.

And we have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Got some numbers and stats here about cursing. And the first one is a general one. It is two. Two is the general number of categories that English curse words fall into. And the key source here is a book called Holy Shit, A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Moore. And she says in general, English curse words either come from a religious context or a bodily function context.

And bodily function is usually either excretory or sexual. But that's where English and i guess many other languages it's usually either from the like sacred religious beliefs or body stuff or both yeah religious would be taking the lord's name in vain or that'd be like it'd be like god damn all right or just yeah god damn okay like saying jesus christ in a punchy way yeah not descriptively i think um so that would be technically a swear a curse to say jesus christ but out of anger yeah like if you stub your toe like jesus christ i do that all the time i didn't know i was swearing i thought i was doing something good actually and it also really varies with people's beliefs, too, because also Melissa Moore writing this, she says that in Europe in the Middle Ages, almost all the curse words were religious context.

And like the strongest curse word anybody knew was a phrase. It was by God's bones. Oh, that's cool. That was an incredibly powerful curse in in medieval europe was by god's bones you know wow i didn't know god had bones that's uh he must have some wicked osteoporosis by now lord i just did it yeah lord by god's bones that's a good one one. I'm going to use that. Yeah, take that home with you, folks.

You can shout it at people and they won't know. They won't get it. Yeah, you can say that one on TV. And next number here is another history thing. It's around 430 BC. This is a very long ago year, around 430 BC. That's the approximate date of the first performance of Oedipus Rex Oedipus Rex is a play

the birth of Motherfucker I bet right exactly that's why it's coming up they don't like say it in that but a few of my sources especially a book called In Praise of Profanity by Michael Adams professor of English language and literature at Indiana University. A lot of them talk about how motherfucker is an incredibly like common and consistent curse word in English, even though it's it basically never happens. Like the main touchstone for it is this Greek play from 2500 years ago.

Wow. You think it never happens? play from 2500 years ago wow you think it never happens uh well yeah like the because in the play it's the incest version and that seems to be real rare people have sex with people who are mothers all the time but that i don't know about let us know in the comments sound off yeah let us know in your comments what you do with your mom but yeah because in the in the myth it's a story of Oedipus unknowingly marrying and then having sex with his mother and apparently it's from a myth that's older than the performance but uh but yeah a remarkably common curse word and probably because it's so transgressive uh in a lot of ways yeah yeah well and it's you know as carlin pointed out in a lot of uh in the seven

dirty words bit like the hard k there is something about it where it's like it is i mean it's literally impactful you're you know yeah uh as they say uh what is it uh sound is uh touching someone without actually touching them like your mouth is bouncing off their eardrums so you are actually touching them and that like that actually is and it literally an impactful thing so motherfucker it's like you can really put some stank on it. It's it's it's useful. Yeah. Yeah, it's got force to it. And also the scholar Michael Adams, he points to motherfucker as a great example of the range of like meanings and valences that one curse word can have, because the word fuck can be an explanation or a command or just an exclamation. an explanation or a command or just an exclamation, but then you can also build it into this whole different word motherfucker that,

that usually isn't meant literally. It just means like, I don't like you usually. It's not like describing somebody's situation and relations so much. Right, right. Yeah. That it's funny.

Cause yeah, you have the shorthand for something very specific, but in order to describe that thing, you probably wouldn't use the shorthand. You would be like, no, he literally. It would take so long. You wouldn't just call him. Yeah, you're like, you're not going to believe this shit.

We're going to need about 20 minutes to explain what Brian did. The start of the real explanation is like, are you sitting down? Is this an okay time? I'm about to tell you some weird shit, man. Next number here, and it relates to the music we were talking about before. The next number is three. And three is the number of songs in the Billboard Top 10 chart in March of 2011 that all had the word fuck in the title

in march of 2011 three songs in the top 10 had fuck in the title all at once oh can i guess it's one of them's one of them's fuck you by silo right yeah that's correct wow yeah oh what else dude march 2011 I was on fire, man. I was I was I remember everything about it. I don't it's like a really weird name that tune. We don't have to quiz it if you don't want to. But what are the other two? Yeah, I need to know.

I'm yeah, I'm amazed you pulled one. It was Fuck You by CeeLo Green, Fuckin' Perfect by Pink, and then Tonight I'm Fucking You by Enrique Iglesias. Yes! We're all charting. I should have known that one. Oh, my God. That Enrique song is...

I'm having a life. Have you heard? You know that song. It is beyond lecherous. It is just really one of the fuck... fuck i mean to go from by lamos to tonight i'm fucking you like it's very come on let's just let the rhythm take you over enrique we don't need all this i'm writing it down because i gotta look it up i'm sure i've heard it before if it was charting that good but i can but i can't remember off the top of my head but what a good time 2011 and to our earlier point like the radio

edit is like tonight i'm loving you and they changed it to that which is pretty lame yeah and then uh fuck you became forget forget you forget you which i think ended up in a kids movie so like now more people know the Forget You version. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, the Forget You kind of works, you know? Like in that case. That's true. Hey, if you need to cash a check from DreamWorks Animation, baby,

you can make it work. Yeah. I'm desperate to. You can absolutely take whatever I write. That's like they did a Kidz Bop version of Despacito. Oh, wow. Kidz Bop is everything, man. Just Headstrong by Trapped.

That's a great one. It's a chorus of children going, Headstrong will take you on headstrong will take on anyone just butt rock done by children it's one of life's uh simple pleasures i love it they don't know what they're doing they don't know what they're singing those california girls kids about covered it so hot we'll melt your popsicle that's amazing uh and children listening like i've had my popsicle melt before literally this is very relatable wow i really super related when are those kids gonna get to the wet and gushy that's my question when are the kids getting gushy it's my question when when are the kids getting gushy just like just they think they're

singing about the schlitterbahn or whatever like no it's not a water park it's no uh my wet ass slippy oh god yeah there's also uh the other thing with this charting. So that was March of 2011, three songs at once. For some reason, that seems like it was kind of a leap into just going ahead and saying it because as recently as March of 2009, there had been a hit song that made the top 20 by Britney Spears. The title of the song was If You Seek Amy. And I'm trying to really spread out the words I just said. If You Seek Amy became notorious because it's like clearly code for fuck me.

It's just like if you say If You Seek Amy quickly, it spells out F-U-C-K-M-E, you know? But it peaked at number 19 on the US charts and was top 20 in a lot of other Anglophone countries. And MTV News talked about it being like a crisis for radio stations to figure out what to do. Because all of the words are technically okay. It's just that if you say them fast, it's a swear. That's cool. I like that.

Very nifty. That was like the interesting time of like people getting censored it's like look how dumb the rules are and then now i think now we're all now we're fine since march of 2011 we've been fine it's true the wall came down yeah yeah i think she would like she she seemed to find peak let's work around it and then everybody went for it is is maybe what happened whole thing and then the the next number here this is a tv one the number is 1.73 so 1.73 that is the average number of fucks per minute in the final season of the hbo television show deadwood oh the fans went and

counted per minute wow okay yeah that's good hell yeah i a quick very quick story i i that show is famous for they say cocksucker all the time uh and i went to deadwood uh south south dakota and just was you know walking around checking it out they had a huge T-shirt store that was like 90% Trump shirts and then 10% like just things that said Deadwood. But right when you walked in, there was a shirt that was just hanging up in the window right next to all the Trump stuff that had Ian McShane on it. And it just said cocksucker. That's awesome i was like i get it that in this town surely people know what that means but like let's be real like a lot of people haven't seen deadwood so like i just want to you know meet the you know weird republicans from south

carolina they're walking up like oh hell yeah they got all these trump shirts they got all the cocksucker what like like there have to be people that don't get it. Like, and Ian McShane is just on the shirt, and it doesn't say Deadwood. It doesn't say anything else. It's not even a speech bubble coming out. It's old-timey Western font. That's at least something.

There's that show that came out with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, The Undoing. Did you guys watch that one? There was Donald Sutherland was like Nicole Kidman's dad and had like a monologue that I love talking to his grandson's principal who was like trying to kick him out because of all the controversy. It was like, sir, you'll find that I'm a cocksucker. And I don't mean it in the way people use it now to mean gay i mean i'm an old fashioned cocksucker it's like my favorite thing i have seen on television in so long it's the best speech i've shown it to so many people oh damn yeah i gotta watch that now

that's a direct quote i normally again i don't, but as a quote, if I'm quoting. That's me this whole episode. Yeah. Like, hey, we're doing studies, you know, we're learning. I'm a scholar when I say that. Yeah. When I say cocksucker, I'm being a scholar. Yeah. And is that show HBO, too?

HBO, man. It is. I think they really pioneered a lot on U.S. TV. Oh, yeah. Oh, the damn doors have blown off the hinges now. I was watching my friend Roy Wood Jr. just aired his special at like 7.30 p.m. Pacific time. Just saying fuck. No worries on Comedy Central.

Yeah, there you go. He's so funny. He's so funny. Birmingham, 205,5 represent go ramsey baseball hey are you buzz marketing alabama hey hey i might be i might be there's there's dozens of us and uh and with deadwood people got really into like the realism the writers were going for and also as part of their realism they used modern curse words so that it would have that impact for us as a modern audience like it would actually feel like cursing and not like wacky old timey

speak right no one no one was calling anyone a puzzle wit which was a big insult back in those days yeah that's pretty good like no god's bones or nothing isn't that isn't that the opposite of what realism is to make it more fake so that we're more interested that's a very good point like i don't think people in deadwood that's not i don't look at that and i'm like oh that's real i'm like oh yeah this is like really good writing by professional writers i think in the actual time they would have been a lot less eloquent and full of like shakespearean talk you know i don't know that's true yeah i did look into the like when i got really into that show i did end up looking into this and apparently cocksucker didn't wasn't going on in 1870s that was a little bit later uh so that that that little bit the most

you know the word that people i guess apparently according to a t-shirt store in the town most associate with that show uh apparently that wasn't happening at the time or at least uh not not you know to that level not that way yeah yeah that's all right on whether or not it's real or impactful or what, like, fans got extra excited about just how often, in particular, the word fuck came up. Yeah. And so they did, like, a count of all the times someone said fuck, stacked it against the runtime, found an average of 1.73 fucks per minute. Also found that the previous season, before the last season, there had been a stat of 1.76 fucks per minute. Wow. So a per minute. Wow.

So a few more. Oh, so they... Went a little harder. They decided to tone it down a little bit. I mean, $1.76, that's the F of the U and the C, you know? That's just missing the K. Oh, look at that. There you go.

And then the next number here is four months. And four months is the length of the jail sentence given to comedian Lenny Bruce in 1964. Very, you guys are standups, you know, but this is a very famous thing. For people who don't know, Lenny Bruce performed two shows in New York in 1964. Undercover NYPD detectives attended, arrested him after both of them. It led to charges on obscenity and he was sentenced to four months in prison, which he never ultimately served because he appealed. But he also could not get comedy work because clubs were afraid they would get in legal trouble. And then in 1966, he was found dead of a drug overdose

yeah the the threatened jail sentence for lenny bruce for using basically just sexually explicit language was four entire months in jail i think he got off easy he deserved to go to jail and for longer yeah i i i believe at one of those uh one of those times that he got arrested george carlin was there and supposedly like told the cop like fuck you if you're gonna arrest him you have to arrest me too and they threw it through threw them both in the back of the paddy wagon and he was like it actually worked out good because i got to talk to him about comedy on the ride to the jail so it's like well that's that's one way to get facetime with your hero you know yeah it's just networking folks folks that's networking yeah yeah you couldn't just message him on instagram you gotta

yeah gotta get it gotta get in the damn cop car this is a business podcast now this is how you win folks uh yeah and uh and yeah rivers that's accurate yeah it was a chicago arrest in 1962 where they were both thrown in the same squad car and then yeah and bruce was also charged with obscenity in san francisco in 1961 and there were also some drug arrests along the way but he would go on to receive a posthumous pardon in 2003 and the republican governor of new york george pataki gave the pardon and said that it was a declaration of new york's commitment to upholding the first amendment end quote oh okay i'm glad they did that i bet he really appreciated it imagine getting arrested for obscenity in san francisco that's in night in the in the early

60s like that that seems uh yeah it seems like hard to do what did he say what did he say to get arrested do you have do you have that info alex oh it was some words that we see as curses now and also like some puns on coming like yeah it was coming making me laugh already it means cum coming i like it i'm into it yeah all right imagine going to jail for puns what are you what are you in for armed robbery what are you in for murder what are you in for making wacky plays on words hey do you want to hear one i i entered 10 puns into a pun contest did any of them and none of them won no pun intended and then he just gets shanked in the neck with a toothbrush. And you did this to people as a surprise?

No, they bought tickets to it. They showed up. They tried to see it. They paid for it. Yeah. They're really excited. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm scared.

We're headed in that direction again. People are going to get arrested for swearing. That is... Well, the slow creep had already begun. When I left San Francisco, because I lived there very briefly, the day I left to move to Los Angeles was the day they outlawed public nudity in San Francisco. So, you know, I was there at the the end of an era and it was just in

time literally like two nights before i was at brainwash cafe i was on stage and there's a big completely no better than that there's there was a there's a window right next to you where you're standing on the stage and uh a guy a naked man on the street just pushed his junk up against the window while i was on stage and i i had already gotten in the light so i was literally just like well i'm not funnier than that have a good night san francisco and like walked off because i'm not you have to like know this about yourself like i'm not funnier than someone's junk pushed up against glass that's the funniest shit ever there were undercover cops at that show, and they saw that guy. And they're like, we got to outlaw this.

We got to be able to arrest this man like Lenny Bruce. Yeah. I wish I knew a young comedian that could have jumped in the car with him, but I don't know. It'd probably be a TikTok-er at this point. Got nude in solidarity. Yeah. Yeah.

If you're going to arrest him, just take it off your pants you gotta arrest me too yeah yeah and then you're in the car like teach me and he's like i don't i don't have advice i'm just naked i i don't yeah yeah yeah he's just like there's catfish in my ears the government put them there okay man're like, okay, man. This was not a good idea. This turned out... Lenny Bruce, you are not, sir. Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne.

I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more

is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And there's two big takeaways for the main episode

and we can get into one of them very directly from this. Takeaway number one american tv pretty much allows all of george carlin's seven dirty words now nice there are only pretty specific circumstances and situations where you can't say them yeah and otherwise you know it's an old bit but it's still network television still though you can't really right network television's a old bit, but it's still network television still, though. You can't really write network television. Yeah, a little bit different. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah.

I think network is different. It's it's all about like Brock. It's about broadcasting and community standards. I worked in college radio and not we're a nonprofit station. And so if you're a nonprofit station, I think you you still have to maintain uh you know you can't you can't do the old can i do them shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker and tits those are the those are still because well well no and yeah they are they are specifically because of a supreme court case where someone played that bit on the radio and then the supreme court was like you can't say shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker andcksucker, motherfucker. And it's like it, it was a self actualizing joke, like, literally went to the

Supreme Court. And so when I was doing when I was like training for the to work on radio, that was the thing. Now, commercial stations in some places have what they call safe harbor laws where after 10pm, it's kind of anything anything goes which is where you get shows like love line which was based out of la and you know you can kind of be a little bit dirtier late at night uh in some places but uh in you know believe it or not non-profit radio in alabama they were still like no no no it doesn't matter so interesting can i get your your you' opinion? I'm trying to do a joke and try to tape it and stuff. Could I say anal on network television? Or is that a no-go?

I think it's clinical, right? But if it's used specifically to describe a sex act. I think that's still clinical. I want to do anal. I think that still technically counts as clinical because that was one of the loopholes, right? Was when they were telling us on radio is like, oh, you can, is the weirdest thing where you can, I, I, I believe you can say you can, they gave us a list. It was like, you could say penis, like you could just use the clinical terms for everything,

which made it so much again, our earlier point so much weirder but funnier uh like job i know john mulaney did have a bit where he was like talking about law and order svu and on it they were like they had ict say like anal contusions and so it's like yeah on svu you can kind of get away with stuff because they're being as you said clinical about it yeah well and there was this other weird one and i think this just applies to safe harbor stuff so but uh if i remember correctly you can call someone an asshole but you can't refer to your own body part right yeah you would have to call that your anus you would have to say anus, but you can be like that guy's an asshole, but you can't say my asshole hurts or whatever. George Carlin even knew that like in and this bit, it was taped in May of 1972, released on his album Class Clown.

But like there's even parts of the bit where he says, like on a baseball broadcast, they'll say he has two balls in the count. But then like you can't say, oh, I think that play really hurt his balls. It's so much of the words or context and use that really breaks down to that. And Rivers, that Supreme Court case you mentioned, it was the FCC versus Pacifica Foundation in 1978. And they found that basically the censors are right, the FCC could regulate from 6am to 10pm specifically, because kids might be watching was their logic. But there's also a thing where a lot of networks on TV, like legally, they can suddenly start having anything on the air after 10. But then for like satisfying advertisers and for their general vibe,

they will say like, ah, maybe don't do that. So the, the question is like fuzzy because it's both legal and like whatever ABC or CBS feels like makes sense to them. Yeah. Martin, that's a fascinating question. Yeah. Well, like even, you know, I'm a big wrestling fan and back in the nineties when they had uh monday night raw it was actually i was always like curious about that and then when someone explained it to me it made sense like right at the nine or i think it was nine o'clock central time so right at the 10 o'clock hour eastern time the credits would come up for what they called raw is war and then new credits would come up for war for war zone and it didn't occur to me that like

they split it in two for exactly the reason you're talking about like the first hour it would be like stone cold drinking beer and then the second you know the second hour that's when like sable would come out and they'd have like the bikinis and you know like it got like really you know really dirty and they did that for exactly that reason they could like technically they didn't advertise this but they technically divided the show in half so it was a new show at that point even though it was all marketed as monday night raw i wish they made stone cold do something corny like this is a new show now like in the ring you know it just pops up like a toasty guy in mortal combat no show give me a hell yeah if you want to see a new show it's past 10 we can kill someone now

on live television oh it's worse than that dude i mean you know there was there was a segment where you know uh triple h revealed that kane had had sex with a dead body you know like i mean it was it was fucked up dude like talk about a war zone war zone yeah yeah i feel like also part of it is which network things are on uh but because like main network tv they'll still be pretty careful any hour of the day but cable is outside of these rules they'll each kind of brand themselves based on what they do and based on my sources all seven of the carlin words are are on cable and have been on cable and i found a variety article that said that in 2017 the fx cable channel show feud betty versus

joan is probably the first time a character said cunts on television or at least that they had like recorded on american television and and you know so landmark there we like crossed the final carlin barrier in 2017 and it was weird just in the middle of the show somebody stared at the camera said it and then went back to it it had nothing to do with the story it was an ad for cheerios between the scenes of the show i really was really upset actually yeah and that and that carlin bit too like i think people don't understand how path-breaking it was because like i i'm amazed you knew that rivers i didn't know until researching that he was arrested with Bruce in one of those shows. But then, like, when Carlin was doing this bit, it was perfectly legal to release it on a record.

But he proceeded to perform the bit later that summer in Milwaukee, got arrested, like, very luckily didn't get charged with anything. charged with anything and then was arrested a few more times for doing this like really seminal piece of someone finally pointing out how stupid a lot of censorship is in american broadcasting well yeah what we were saying earlier uh about clout chasing it's like that was that's how he kind of got you know i mean not not to say that his material wasn't good, because it definitely was, but everything he did was absolutely... It's the NWA effect. You're a somewhat successful rap group based out of Los Angeles until the FBI sends you a letter. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, to the moon, baby, to the moon. Tell everyone this happened to me.

Yeah, 100%. know tell everyone this happened to me yeah yeah yeah 100 yeah that that was uh i i was watching uh they released some of the uh uh footage from uh let it be the last uh beatles uh movie uh where they were performing on the roof and john lennon was they were like asking like is someone is someone gonna call the cops and he was like oh that would be awesome if we got arrested for playing loud on the roof absolutely let's have someone call the cops? And he was like, oh, that would be awesome if we got arrested for playing loud on the roof. Absolutely. Let's have someone call the cops. That would be the perfect ending to this whole Beatles thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Jail. Yeah. Take me to jail. Tell everyone. Like the Beatles and like Seinfeld. It's the same cell.

They're all just sitting there. Yeah, it's the same ending. What's the deal with the walrus george is getting upset calm down george harrison the famous beetle calm down george is getting upset he doesn't like yoko hanging around george is very upset oh fuck um but yeah and the as far as what words you can't say on tv it pretty much has to be a broadcast network during those those regular hours for it to be fully illegal. And otherwise, there's a bunch of gray area and a bunch of ways you can say it. And also, there's been a gradual societal thing where certain words started out just not kind of being said on TV because of general standards and then bled their way in. There's one article I found that talks about the Grey's Anatomy writers room where in the in the 2000s, they were told that they could say the word penis, but could not say the word vagina because vagina was more transgressive to them because because of't say vagina, like the term for what that is.

And then I guess later since then, an ABC spokesman confirmed that they now can say vagina on Grey's Anatomy. It's allowed. So before that was the doctor just walk in like, Margaret, your hoo-ha is deplorable. Yeah. Your hoo-ha is. But like, really, though? Yeah. your is uh but like really though yeah like they apparently grays partly coined the slang term vajayjay because it was a censorship workaround because they weren't allowed to say vagina like that's for real yeah

ma'am i'm sorry your is very very infected that's really good folks whoever has a real slide whistle that wasn't uh it wasn't me one of our listeners sent that to me and it has been i keep it right next to my desk it's the handiest fucking thing of all time i i basically during during the pandemic uh any zoom show i did i turned into a slide whistle comedian it was uh i've i've nearly learned how to play free bird on the slide whistle i'm i'm losing my mind here oh my god uh well the and then the like last thing with TV censorship here is there's also weird phenomenon where you had like the list of words nobody can say. Oh, scary. And then there's been a thing where once a word is in the gray area where you can kind of say it, then shows like say it a bunch because they want to be like as hardcore as they can within limits. bunch because they want to be like as hardcore as they can within limits.

And then the, the most recent phenomenon of that was in the, in the two thousands, the word bitch like took over network television. There was a parents group and you know, they have an agenda, but they probably counted, right? There's a parents group that claimed that from 1998 to 2007 the use of the word bitch on primetime network shows tripled and happened on more than

six times as many shows in that time and by 2012 abc premiered two new shows all at once one was called good christian bitches the other one was don't trust the bitch in apartment 23 damn yeah yeah and they would they put a letter b instead of the whole word but like and it rhymes that way you know like don't trust to be in apartment 23 like that's that's a workaround i like oh and then there was also that's there was also that spinoff of dora the explorer uh diego is a punk ass bitch that was terrible i agree with the christians on that that was that was not good of Dora the Explorer, Diego is a punk ass bitch. That was terrible. I agree with the Christians on that.

That was not good. And Diego's cool. I mean, his monkey is cooler, but Diego's cool. But yeah, so that's the weird state of curse words on TV. And there's one other takeaway for the main episode here. Let's get into it. Takeaway number two. A loose handful of studies suggest that curse words can be a form of pain management. And there's not there's not a ton of study of this. I wouldn't say it's been like proven by science or whatever. But got a few sources here where people did loose studies that suggest that like it really

helps your mind and body tolerate pain if you curse oh okay but like i would like to see that study measured against like people who say like jeepers creepers and like you know weird stuff like you know oh gosh let's say g golly gosh or golly or gd you know right does it feel better if you you know if you fall down and you scream gd it i i think i assume that it's just like a that's what you say in that moment so yeah whatever feels comfortable for you to shout in the moment you're just purging your own emotions. I feel like it's such a natural impulse to go to that. And it seems like basically no one had studied it until the last like 20 years or so. The main source here is a book called Swearing is Good for You by science writer Emma Byrne. And she says one study kind of sparked her to write this entire book. But it's a study done by Dr. Richard Stevens of Keele University in Staffordshire in the UK.

In 2009, he took a group of 67 undergraduates. He had them stick their hands in ice cold water for as long as possible to see how long they could take it. And he had one group do it while saying a curse word and another group doing it while saying just a neutral random word but but what even is a curse word in the uk oh you know they just let that shit fly man yeah i mean not to upset people but pish posh i know i know i'm really going for it uh but uh, no. I was going the other way with it, man. Maybe drop in C words like it's, you know, familiarity there. The queen says it.

Yeah, they're fast and loose with the with the cursing over there. I love it. When also, I guess in the study, they let people pick their own curse word. So they like like before they people knew what the study was going to be they said like if you harmed yourself by accident what are five words you would say and then they had them write a list and then use one of those give me seven i have seven words that i have to say yeah yeah uh well yeah well for the for the uk i was i was either thinking fanny or you know something derogatory they scream at a shopkeeper from the Middle East.

That would be their top two. But yeah, so they did this study, and then they found that the volunteers who got to curse could be in the water one and a half times as long, which is a pretty big difference like they lasted you know like three three halves as long as the other people because they were allowed to like distract themselves or something we don't know exactly how it helps they just had their hands in the water cheerio cheerio cheerio cheerio and then and emma burn says from there there have been a few more like related studies that that same group did a similar study and this sort of relates to the the tame words we're joking about actually because they did a study where they had some people use the curse word fuck while they held their hands in the cold water. Other people said shit. And other people said the even milder word bum, which also feels very British to me.

Bum. Bum. But they actually found a stronger effect from the stronger curse words. Like people could last longer if they could, you know, speak more vulgarly while they were doing it. What if they were allowed to sing bum? So they just had a bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. You know, that might be more distracting. And then they formed a band, Folks the Beatles.

It's an amazing group that you should learn about. And yeah, there's also been a study that claims that people's pain tolerance increases when they're in an aggressive mood. And so that that fits with cursing, like if you're cursing angrily, you know. And another team at the University of Queensland in Australia had a group of people recall memories of times they were excluded socially, like just talk about a time they were left out of a social situation. And they had the subjects either curse or not curse in retelling the memory. And they claimed that the study suggested that cursing decreased the emotional pain of the memories. And I find all these studies very fuzzy. I don't know if it's like proving much, you know, but it's an indication that cursing can one way or another help us with stuff that

hurts when were they from when were these studies from they were from it's the last few years that was the 2010s that the university of queensland one was yeah the oldest one here is like 2009 i won't soon forget the day that brian didn't invite me to the water park or should i say the fucking water park? Yeah. Right. They also all had funny accents. Who knows what they were saying?

I don't know. You know, we can't study it. Well, and the one other thing with this, there's two more studies here, and they suggest that there might be a gender difference in the phenomenon where this actually helps men but not women so much there was a team at the university of huddle huddersfield in the uk they did research on men who have testicular cancer and found that

the men found it more cathartic to get together and curse about their condition versus like a more traditional support group where you're not allowed. What, what, what did the women do when they got testicular cancer? Did they? Wait a minute. This all falls apart. Hold on. Hold on.

Yeah. And then the, the other study was at the University of Arizona on women with breast cancer. And they found that women who tended to curse about that situation when they described it, those women actually found themselves more depressed and more isolated from their social networks. And yeah, it's all fuzzy, but they think it might be something with us, like judging women when they curse a lot more than we judge men like men seem to have kind of more license to do it at least in in the u.s and in other cultures have been in no way we treat everybody equal always have always will

i did i asked i asked the guest to please end patriotically. So I'm glad we're doing that. Folks, USA. Oh, good, good. USA number one. The star spangled dismount. Here we go. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Rivers Langley and Martin Urbano for a fucking awesome episode. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week

where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the curse words of ancient Rome and the curse words of science fiction. Two all at once. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost six dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Cursing with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways.

big takeaways. Takeaway number one, modern American TV pretty much allows all of George Carlin's seven dirty words. And takeaway number two, a loose handful of studies suggest that curse words can be a form of pain management, especially if you're male. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Rivers Langley is a wonderful stand-up comedian, and then his wonderful podcast is The Goods from the Woods. Very funny, lots of forgotten pop culture, lots of stuff about the South and life there and culture there, and so much more. And then Martin Urbano is another very, very funny stand-up comedian, and then his comedy game show is called Who Wants 269 with Martin Urbano. 269 is a dollar figure. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great book titled Holy Shit! A Brief History of Swearing. That's by Melissa Moore, who's a writer and also

holds a PhD in literature from Stanford. Another great book titled In Praise of Profanity by Michael Adams, a professor of English language and literature at Indiana University. And then tons of online articles from there, in particular stuff from the First Amendment Encyclopedia, which is a project of Middle Tennessee State University. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.