Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Spurs

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why spurs are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Spurs, known for being cowboy stuff, famous for being jangly stuff. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Spurs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there folks. Hey there, Cipelopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name's Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of Spurs?

Howdy? As a cow girl, I like them because I use them in the way that cow. boys and girls do use them, which I know because I am one, and I use them myself on my horse, unless that is not what you're supposed to do, in which case I don't do that. I do the thing that you're supposed to do with the spurs in the way that a real life cowboy or girl would do. you're such a white hat cowboy very rule abiding and orderly i get a little stinky with it sometimes i throw a little i throw a little stink on it sometimes sometimes i ride backwards or with a sasperilla and sometimes i litter uh i litter oh oh yeah the lighting was funny in your room now i'm seeing

that the hat is slightly gray yeah slightly off white Anyways, Alex, I don't actually know that much about Spurs. I know the saying to Spur on, I know that in Bugs Bunny cartoons, if one wanted to be a cowboy, you would have the spurs and the little doohickeys at the back that would like, you could like kind of turn them around. They'd rotate like a pizza cutter. But yeah, that's about it. They do really look like a pizza cutter to me in the modern day here. Yeah. And we'll talk specifically about how that all happened.

Yeah. They're almost just pop culture, I feel, too, most of us. Most of us just know them as a trope. And I've never worn them or touched them or anything. No, I mean, I assume they have something to do with riding horses. Yeah. Which I don't do. I don't ride horses.

I do watch a lot of videos of horses getting their nails did. So, like, when they get their hooves taken care of by, I think they're called ferriers. It's so satisfying. I love to see horsey manicures happen because it seems like it probably feels really good for the horse. And I want horses to be very happy too. Yeah.

And probably the one thing we can't really break down on this episode is whether spurs are fundamentally harmful to horses. Because it seems like the modern ones really aren't. It's more of a signal than a kind of harm. But we'll talk all about why or why not. Right. Like, I, I, I'm not in favor of doing something that hurts a horsey, but I also don't, I don't really know a lot about it. Because I know that, like, for instance, my dog, like, if you slap her back, she loves the heck out of it.

Like, and, like, she wants you to really, like, give it a good smack. Like, she's, she's like, yeah, like, because sometimes I feel like, I worry, it's like, man, if someone saw me just slapping back out of that. talk like are they going to think i'm being i'm bullying her um so anyways my point is that animals their sensitivity is different right like depending on the species uh depending on you know uh where you're poking at them i've never cuddled a horse i've never like you know tickled a horse in the ribs so i don't really know what is up with horses and their Right, because horses, they vary too. The other thing is I have two different times been on the back of a horse, but we did not use spurs because, as we'll talk about, they are an optional tool.

You don't have to use them to control or ride a horse. Right. And then the other other spur connection is I married into fandom of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. Nice. My wife, Brenda, who is a whole person, she is from San Antonio. And they love the Spurs. They're great. Go Spurs.

Yeah. Hey, there you go. And also, I tried to find out why they're called the Spurs. It seems like it's just a fun name that starts with us, but also one of the guys who moved the original team from Dallas to San Antonio and changed the name to Spurs is from a small town in North Texas named Spur. So that might be part of why. But it seems like it's just fun, country Western stuff. I just thought, because Texas, like that's where my questioning of naming your team. team the Spurs ended at like it's in Texas, so. It's very appropriate.

It starts with ass like San. You know, it's good. Sure, yeah. So we'll get it to the actual item, though, because it's a mascot or prop or trope in most of our lives. And on every episode, we leave with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called, I've got stats that jingle, jangle, jingle, as I go count and merrily along.

Nice. That name was submitted by Kathy. Thank you, Kathy. And we have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them the silly and wacking band as possible. Submit their Discord or to siftpot at gmail.com. That's very appropriate one. Yeah, Gene Autry.

And then also there's a version in the Fallout games. Oh. If people have played that. Yeah. I love the cowboy kind of thing going on in Fallout. That's great. Yeah. And like upbeat mid-century or early 1919.

Of then there's weird bugs attacking you and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's great. And there's a quick number section. It's mostly years and timelines because spurs exist because of horse domestication. So the first big number is a little more than 4,000 years ago. That is a new theory of how long ago humans domesticated horses.

Only a little more than 4,000 years ago. We have a pretty long history of domesticated. But, yeah, it's certainly not like, I guess when you compare it to the amount of time that humans have been on Earth, it is relatively recent that we domesticated most animals. It is. And if this theory is true, it's multiple thousands of years after some other livestock like goats and sheep and also after a lot of crops. So it is kind of a late-breaking innovation and tool. I mean, is there a distinction between like sort of domesticating horses and like when we first started riding sort of wild, the wild horse ancestors? Excellent question.

It seems like we really needed to domesticate them to start consistently riding them. And then also there's an interesting step where we might have domesticated them for milk before we domesticated them for riding them. Right. It's like, man, I got all these heavy things of milk to carry. How am I going to get them over there? Oh, damn, wait a minute. I have this horse. Yeah.

This is like surprisingly still recent in terms of being debated and figured out. And one key source this week is writing by William Taylor, who's assistant professor and curator of archaeology at University of Colorado Boulder. He says that as recently as this century, like the 2000, thousands a.D. We've been debating where and when horses were domesticated. And the recent theory that has been pushed back on is a theory called the Kurgan Hypothesis, K-U-R-G-A-N. A Kurgan is a burial mound among the Yamnaya people of Western Asia and the Black Sea. And then when people did digs in those burial mounds called Kergens, they found stuff that made them think we domesticated horses

six or seven thousand years ago. But that's been pushed back on recently because the whole theory is really riding on one thing, which is that the bones of ancient equines and the mounds had some jaw marks that suggested bridles, like a bridle where it's rope or straps and you put it around a horse's head and mouth. So like would it be that the wear of the bridle

would actually like make an imprint on their actual skulls? yeah so that can happen and then in this case that's probably not what happened which is why the the theory was good but it seems like maybe not true one reason it's probably not true is that we've since found the bones of ice age ancestors of horses that also have similar jaw marks and nobody domesticated ice age horses so we think oh maybe horses when they eat or bite each other to play you know it just makes marks right it's not human stuff okay Yeah. But it seems like you could just like compare it to a modern horse that does wear like a bridle and look at their skull and see if it's like the same sort of marks on like a more modern horse's skull. You know for a fact that they wear bridles. That's true. And apparently they've done that and it was similar but not similar enough to hold water on its own. I see. Okay. And the other big issue is that these horse remains in the Kergens when we've done genetic testing when that became a cool, became a tool. They're not actually... A cool fad, genetic testing.

All the cool kids were doing it. Pucci was doing it before he went to his home planet. Yeah. Really cool. Really cool. Yeah. Recent genetic testing says the horses and the Kyrgyns are different equine species from modern domesticated horses. It's not the source of our domesticated species.

Right. They're more genetically similar to Persiavalski's horse, which is a wild species to this day. There could have still been some attempts to tame horses, right? So the difference between tame and domesticated is that tame is like within just one lifetime of an animal. You grab it, you make it get used to you, and you can hang out with that animal, usually without it biting your face off, whereas domestication is over many generations of the animal's life. you have selected for animals that are more gentle or less aggressive or less skittish, and then they are genetically more likely to exhibit sort of like behaviors that are easier for us to get along with.

So like pet wolf, not recommended, that would be tame, whereas like a pet dog is a domesticated animal and a much better pet than a wolf is probably going to be. Yeah, and that fits how we think there were like two different steps of bringing horses into our lives because we think relatively tame horses were first brought together for milking. Because you can milk a horse and drink it. You're allowed. One source there is a book called Raiders, Raders, Rulers and Traders, The Horse and the Rise of Empires. That's by non-fiction author David Jaffetz. And he says that when we started milking horses, we had herds of many more females than males a lot like. dairy herds of cows today. And also those farmers probably tended to cull the females that did not

produce very much milk and also cull the most unruly horses because in a dairy situation, you don't want that. And then after some time, just more and more familiarity builds up and it's easier to domesticate horses for other stuff like carrying a person. Right. And then there's also a fun extra theory there that the very first people to consistently ride on horses might have been kids goofing off? Makes sense. Kids were just probably trying to hop onto the backs of all of the livestock. Yeah.

And then the young horses tolerated it more than sheep or cattle or goats. Yeah, I mean, put a toddler with any dog larger than like a golden retriever or even the same size as a golden retriever. And it's going to try to get on that poor animal's back. So it's possible a horse domestication for riding started with surprised rancher parents being like, Billy's still on that pony. Like, it didn't throw him. Weird.

Is that theory just based on we know what kids are like? Or is there any evidence other than that for kids being the first ones? That's why it's just a theory. It's entirely kids are like this. So probably, yeah. The other truth could be that it's adults instead, yeah. Yeah. I feel like the same logic could be applied to cave art where you could

like kids were probably the first ones to do it because you ever give a kid a crayon and a wall and privacy and things happen to that wall. Yeah. And kids are creative, you know. It could be a nice thing in the early development of all sorts of stuff. Could be. So yeah, we in the last couple of years have kind of a new dominant theory that makes the horse domestication timeline 2,000 years more recent than we previously thought. And either way, we think west or central Asia was the first place where this happens. We know for sure that domesticated horse species weren't in the Americas until the Columbian Exchange and also places like Australia and Hawaii sailors brought them there. We think breeds of domesticated horses reached Africa after spreading from West Asia

through Egypt, starting about 3,500 years ago. And then there are Celtic burial sites as old as 3,300 years ago where rich European Celtic people are buried with bits and harnesses for horses. So when West Asia started this, it probably spread very rapidly and also east to China and places like that. That's really interesting, especially because I feel like the more modern, really strong perseverance of horse culture. Like that is still in West Asia. Yeah, a lot of the places where it kind of began in these steps around the Black Sea and the KSPNC, it's still a huge thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And then basically every other culture, when they've been presented with domesticated horses, immediately builds a huge riding tradition and enjoying it. Yeah, because it's like, oh, I don't have to walk. Yeah. Because it's awesome. I can get somewhere much faster. I don't have to walk.

You know, I'm going to do slam dunks from my horse. I'm taller now. Yeah. Boom. Yeah. It's easier to do that. Yeah. Give the horse a little basketball with his teeth.

He can dunk. There's nothing in the rules that says a horse can't play basketball. That's how the Kyrgyn hypothesis comes apart. Like the teeth marks are not from bridles. It's actually from sick dunks. It's from basketball. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was a horse-only league. So it was not human intervention. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we have the game horse, right? Exactly. It's all there. Science. Yeah.

Facts. Yeah. So, and yet for our topic today, if humans began riding horses about 4,000 years ago, then spurs are less than 4,000 years old. And in terms of exactly when they're invented, it's amazing and interesting why it's vague. Because takeaway number one. There are three kinds of spurs across history. history plus one potential prototype made of a plant thorn. Huh.

We have evidence of three different kinds of spurs. It's kind of surprising there's only three broad kinds in 4,000 years. And then there's an additional theory that the first ever spurs might have been people like attaching a plant thorn to their leg. I see. And seeing what that does. We're pretty messed up because it's like, man, what's it going to be like if I put this plant thorn on my leg and then like kind of shove it against the horse what will happen then

yeah also there's no like noble scientific montage of testing of spurs work right because they just do end in an obvious way like yeah you're poking a horse and then it feels it you're poking you're annoying the horse right at the very least you're annoying the horse you're not beautiful minding this situation no you're just poking a horse. Right. And like again, I don't like I like I look at some of these spurs. Like you showed me some, some images. And some of them I'm like, well, yeah, obviously that seems pretty mean because like some of it's just like a big pokey point that seems kind of mean. Other ones are maybe less obvious because it's like I might actually put that on my back and give it a nice roll

because that sounds pretty good. So I don't I don't know. Oh, seems kind of dependent on the type of spur and the amount of force you use for it, whether it's like something that is annoying them or urging them on or actually painful and upsetting. Yeah, and that rider element and also spurs being optional, that's part of why there have only been a couple kinds in a way that really surprised me. I thought there would be, you know, a hundred different spurs adding up to the best modern kind. or something. Not to say this is going to be a fun experience for the horse, but I am looking at these California spurs and this like Starburst spur thing, it does look like if I rolled

that on my face, I would be having a good time. But also I'm not a horse. We like stop the show to tape a bit for the beginning where we clarify that we are not horses. We have to, disclaimer, I know you think of me as a man. Mr. Ed type figure, but I'm actually not a horse. Right. I just have to admit that, and I'll be, speak my truth about it.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a big shock, I know, to people to hear that, but here we are. Yeah, and for ancient examples of spurs, we have a lot of digital resources from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have a lot of ancient metal spurs. Also records from the Oregon Historical Society and from South Dakota State University's Agricultural Heritage Museum. because spurs are a tool and other tools can do that job too. The main purpose is to direct a horse forward or to direct them to go faster. And apparently some riders can also train a horse to steer left or right with specific spurring.

But that's kind of secondary. So like do nudges with the feet just not cut it? Like why the spurs? Because it seems like you could just kind of like tap the horse with your foot. Like, all right, this way. Because, like, when I'm, I know dogs aren't horses, don't write to me. But, like, when I'm walking my dog, I don't need to, like, I don't need to use a spur to tell her which direction to go in. It's like a gentle tug of the leash, like this way, that way.

And she gets it immediately. It does fit because there's so many other ways we can direct horses. And our bodies are one of the biggest ones. Like, yeah, your feet can do spurring without a spur. Right. it's just not also poking them or rolling a rowl over them, you know. A row. That's what that thing is called that I want to rub on my face.

I didn't know until researching. Yeah, the spinning star shape or many little points. That's called a rowel. Right. I have to like specify the points look dull. Like they do not look like they will stab. Otherwise I would not be. I don't know.

Is something wrong with me? Am I just like fundamentally broken in terms of like? Hey, here's this spur. I want to just like roll that on my face. I don't know. Or back for the back pain. Some horses could like some of these spurs, yeah, because if they're dull and it's a nice feeling, then that's like a positive kind of spurring. Sure.

And there's all kinds of ways humans can direct a horse. Right. We think the very first tool for it might have been just a piece of rope where they run it through the horse's mouth like an early bit or bridle. Then we developed better versions of that, also saddles, stirrups, chaps. And so there are entire flourishing traditions of horseback riding where they didn't develop spurs. Right. As a thing they used. Like they probably thought of it, just didn't do it.

So when you would use it, like the concept is just like you're poking the horse with this thing on your heel. Where are they delivering the pokes? Like, is there a specific area of the horse that is getting? Yeah, across spur tech, it is always on the heel of the human rider, so it's always where that lands pretty much, because it's just hard to put your legs a lot of other places from horseback. And we think that these first spurs were probably for relatively militant purposes where you don't just want to tell the horse to go fast, you want them to charge and, like, fight, you know.

I see. I see. So, yeah. Because if they're just like pulling something, they'll go. as fast as they're going to go and it's not like an emergency on your end but if you're fighting you want that extra edge the one i'm looking at maybe is is that one because it's i'm not going to lie it looks bad like this looks like a torture device it looks like sharp spike not like like the end is a little blunted so it's not like a needle type thing that looks like it's going to break skin but it looks you know yeah this is not something i would want to try to to work out a muscle knot with.

Yeah, just a big jab because the thing that most historians call this first kind is a prick spur. Yeah. And we'll link a few examples from ancient Greece and from the Roman Empire and also from Celtic communities. The oldest ones are from about 2,200 years ago. And it's basically just one metal point. And then there are two handles off of it.

And you would put a strap of leather. or hide or some other more biodegradable thing than metal, which is why we don't have it anymore. But that's how you fastened it to your leg. And this first version of that kind of spur, the rider just wore one of them on one leg. I see. So it was just about getting the horse to go forward, not necessarily to communicate with it in terms of direction. Yeah. It seems like it was basically a way to, if it was a car, put the gas pump.

paddle all the way down. Like, I've already told you to go fast and you do some of the things I ask for, but now I'm just going to prick you to make you go even faster. I mean, it makes sense that it's used for military purposes because if a horse sees something scary and you're like, go over their horse, the horse is going to be like, no, no thank you. Just based on like what their use was, I would assume this is not comfortable. You're trying to get the horse to go forward when it does not want to go forward. Yeah. Yeah, you're just trying to force it to do more things. Yeah. Right. And apparently this kind of spur was relatively specific to what's now Europe. And in especially a lot of parts of West Asia, Jason Chaffetz's book says that the go-to tool for

this was whips rather than spurs. Like crops. Like if you, imagine some racehorse jockeys, sort of like that. Right, right, right. And then even after they wanted to have their hands being more occupied with weapons, they just used other training to spur the horse instead of literal spurs. Right. Like, you see that guy over there? Yeah, he peed in your oats.

So you've got to go stomp them. Horses are so what we think of as intelligent. There's so many ways to train them and command them and guide them. Spurs are truly optional. You don't have to do it. And also, it worked for what it is. That's why a bunch of different cultures in what's now Europe did it. Right.

I mean, like it does take time and effort to train a horse. So if this is a short cut, that would make sense that people would still use it, even if it's not necessary. Yeah, that too. Yeah. And also some of these cultures, it was just a more brutal time. right? Like if they had different values about all sorts of life, then you do things differently. Like they were mean to the horses and they were also really mean to people.

Yeah. So they probably figured, yeah, this is just one of the many things I do. Right. And then they put their Greek helmet on and shattered at their slaves and went out there, you know. One of the many living creatures that I poke with a metal barb. The whole first version of spurs was just one prick spur on one leg. and then the entire second innovation, which again really doesn't sound like an innovation, is a prickspur on each leg. Ah. You have two prickspurs.

Mm-hmm. That's it. Hey. Now you can annoy the horse from both sides. Yeah, so like maybe this helped with steering or maybe this was just I want to double push the gas pedal of the car down. Right. But that was, it's, it doesn't sound like an innovation because it almost isn't. But that's the second idea.

Sure. And then the third and final really innovation, because there's all kinds of details they improved and the craftsmanship and little technical things, but the third idea was revolutionary. It's in the mid-12-100s-D. about 800 years ago. Mid-12-100s AD and what's now France, the very rich people and night-type people developed pretty much what you think of today. The technical name is the Rowell Spur. Right. And so instead of just poking the horse with one big point, you have a round, spiky wheel. Some of these had a lot of pretty sharp points. Others, as Katie said, it's a very dull sort of wheel. Right. But either way, there's a metal neck or frame that holds it so it rolls and it gives when it strikes the horse and hopefully less painfully.

I imagine the irritation or discomfort is going to be deterred. determined by the sharpness of the points and then also the force with which it is applied. Most of this really depended on rider skill. Right. Even the Prickspur, you could do that. Like he said, it was very blunt because they don't want to harm their horses. And according to the mat, some unknown French blacksmith or trendsetter got this rowel spur idea going. And within 100 years, it completely replaced Prickspurs across Europe.

Yeah. It was just obviously better in every way. Yeah. I mean, it's got a better name. You can, like, do some fidget spinner stuff with it when you're bored. It is, and this is what I think of when I think of a spur. Me too. Yeah.

And that's probably what you're imagining, too, out there. If you're imagining a cowboy spur, it basically looks like this, but with different craftsmanship slightly, but the principle is the same. There's still usually a leather or hide or other material that gives to attach it to the rider's foot. And it was still kind of mostly a military thing because even then you're spurring a horse for that extra oomph. Right. If you're fighting more than if you're like pulling stuff or just going somewhere. And also I mentioned the San Antonio Spurs before.

The other famous spur name in sports is a London soccer team. It's called Tottenham Hot Spur. They're named after a knight who was nicknamed Hot Spur for his eagerness to charge a horse into battle. Like the spur was seen as a masculine bravery sort of item. So we, the term like hot shot, like before that we had hot spur. I guess before that like hot club or something. Yeah. A bunch of confused ravers show up.

Yeah. So those are really the three generations of spurs. We really haven't totally improved spurs since the 1200s. They're still the rowel shape and everything. So do people still use spurs today? They can and we'll talk in a later takeaway about their use in equestrian sports maybe ending soon. Okay. Because horses are not used so much for battle that has decreased spur use quite a bit.

Yeah, like where's the fire, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unless it's a fire horse, do we have those like firemen, but they're not? their horses? I guess there's those Clydesdales that pull fire wagons or a Budweiser conveyance. Also, if my local fire department was still relying on horses, I would be upset. I would be at the next city council meeting asking us to get some vehicles, please, that are powered by gas and we'll get to my house faster. What if the horses have EMT training, though? Oh, that's true. I would accept chess compressions from a horse if they knew how to do it gently. They would probably just

destroy me, but, you know. Well, chest compressions are meant to be pretty tough where they might break ribs. I imagine a horse would have no problem with that. Yeah, it's a matter of finesse, yeah. Right, right. Much like spur use, right? It's all a big circle. It all fits together. Like, we did get the heart pumping for a while, but now there is a hoof-shaped hole in this man's chest. And with the development of spurs, the one kind of mystery is from before all. three of those versions because the progression was one prick spur and then two prick spurs and then a pair of rowels spurs. But before all that, it might have been thorns. According to the met, people probably just took a sizable thorn from a plants like a tree, attached it to the back

of the heel or ankle and tried that on a horse because that's a much simpler prototype than smithing something. Sure, yeah. And we may never prove or disprove that because thorns biodegrade and also we might not recognize its purpose, digging it up. Why did it become a theory just sort of spitballing? It's sort of like the possibility of children being the first to ride horses. I see. We just figure based on how people act. So just spitballing.

Basically, yeah. We might have done this. This sounds like an us thing to do to irritate a horse with a thorn. And the modern era of Rowell Spurs, gets us into a whole other takeaway number two. Spanish colonizers sparked the entire cowboy tradition, including a safety accessory that makes Spurs jingle. All right. This is what I want to know.

Why does the jingle jangle of the cowboy so that you know when the cowboy is coming so that you can have an intense standoff with them before drawing your firearm? Yeah. My husband's playing Red Dead Redemption 2 right now. So it's actually really impressive the graphics. There's a lot of horse mechanics in it as well. They've lovingly crafted the horse pooping. And they've also lovingly rendered the horse testicles. So it's all there in 4K horse stuff.

Okay. Yeah. So I don't need to acquire a mod for those things I desire. No, no, no, no. No, it's all, it's all baked in there because they know when you play a game, it ruins the immersion if your horse isn't pooping every so often. I'm assuming it's all very realistic and tells me exactly what it means to be a cowboy. I feel like the biggest way I knew Spurs, like when I learned they existed as I would be watching a Western cowboy movie from the U.S. And guys walk toward each other and it's like chink, chink, chink, chink, chit.

Like, every footstep is interesting and musical. Right. Yeah. It turns out that existed, but for basically everything but gunfighting. Like, it actually makes you less sneaky as a gunfighter. You wouldn't want that. What? What do you mean?

You stare each other down in the middle of a dusty street. Yeah, most of these guys snuck up on each other and shot each other in the back or something. But they really didn't shoot each other at all. I think we've talked on a past episode about just there was much less gunfighter. fighting in the Old West than pop culture says, and people probably know that from using the internet. Also from using the internet, folks might know a few elements of vaciros. A person from the Spanish colonial era that led to countries like Mexico who did a lot of ranching in these vast grasslands in what's now Mexico, also everywhere from Texas to California. They really

brought about spur culture at all in what's now the United States. Hmm. Weird. So, you're saying the country that were directly next to, that also used to be actually part of this, like this country used to be part of that country, that there might be some cultural diffusion there of things that we consider to be American culture might also actually have come from Mexico. Yeah, Spurs got here really from Spain. And that timeline we described before is super relevant, right? because the Rowell Spur takes Europe by storm in the 1300s. And then within like 150 years of that,

Spanish people invade most of North and South America and kill and ravage and so on. And also set up ranches for livestock. And when they came, they said, of course we should use these Rowell Spurs. They're like still relatively exciting technology on our timeline of developing stuff. I mean, have you ever spun one? It's delightful. Yeah, yeah. And so like as Spanish people, both terrorized native populations and combined cultures and created La Rasa and so on, you end up with huge nations with huge grasslands where Spanish and native and mestizo people are doing large scale ranching, especially using this new technology that was popular in Spain, the Rawell Spur. And then the specific workers managing the livestock were called Vaceros, partly because Vaucer. Baca is the Spanish word for a cow, U.S. English speakers turned that into the word Bacaru

and also borrowed every element of it to generate U.S. cowboy culture. Like the gear and the lifestyle and the bringing cows from place to place. It's all from Baccaros in Mexico. Man, I'm really trying to go from Vokero to Baccaro. Bacero. Yeah, okay. I guess I see it. It's really vague. And then they did an even vaguer. naming thing with an accessory for Spurs. Like we were saying that they were still

Rowell Spurs are still kind of the dominant design, but until a few centuries ago, they did not make the jingle sound from Cowboy movies. Right. Where does that come from? I'm looking at it. And it's just like, I don't see what's jingling against what and how you get a jangle out of these because like there's not, the thing spins,

but that should not create a jingle jangle. Exactly. I think Katie especially a picture of mid-1800 spurs. And apparently most of the best spur crafts people in the colonial United States and Mexico were Mexican. Like they all learned it from Spanish people and really made it excellent. And then they did a lot of tinkering. Like Texas-style spurs had fewer separate strap parts than California spurs. But like Katie said, a California spur of the mid-1800s, it's a leather Strap metal, a rowel, there's nothing that would jingle loudly and consistently. The real jangling came from an accessory. Okay. It's still a ral spur, but Mexican people... Like a pop socket type thing? It's almost that logic, but more of a safety element.

Because, right, you can just have a phone without a pop socket, and also you might want a pop socket. Sure. And Mexican people said, hey, you can have spurs without any jingling sound, but what if you add this accessory that we call pahados. And pahados were small extra bits of metal attached near the rowl in order to make a clinking or jingling sound. So it's like intentionally jingling. Yeah, you had to add an intentional accessory to get a jingle. Otherwise, the spur was not built to make noise. So that's like a baseball card in your spokes. Perfect example. Yeah. It's like that. And then Mexican people made excellent versions of this, everything from little pieces of metal to entire little bells

that kind of ring on their own even without hitting the rest of the spur. Hmm. And English people turned Vaccaro into Buccaru in a loose way. In an even looser way, they turned Pohado into Jingle Bob. It has nothing to do with itself. I can see the journey from Vaceros to Buccaro. Yeah. Say the other one again.

Pajado becomes Jingle Bob, you know. No, no it doesn't. Because they're totally separate words. So that makes sense. Yeah, all right, all right. Pohado, Jingle Bob, no. I found like bloggy claims that American cowboy named Bob helped develop this, you know? Like it really became a lost element of cowboy culture coming from Mexico.

Right. In the United States. Yeah, jingly Bob is just that, that came from the top. up with someone's head. This element of Spurs became popular in real life, but for none of the cowboy movie purposes, partly because they were not professional gunfighters. They were professional gatherers and herders of cattle. Right.

They were farm workers. Oh, so, like, was it, because, like, you don't want to spook cattle. Exactly. You sneak up behind a steer and you're like, peekaboo, you are at the very least getting kicked pretty hard. Exactly. The purpose of pahos and why they were popular was a signaling device. It was so that cowboys could signal to the animals that they were riding up.

They could also signal to each other to not run each over with their horses or smack into each other. It reminds me of like turn signals and the signaling use of a horn on a car. Like it's entirely for navigating the world more safely. I mean, is that why there were sleigh bells, like, to prevent collisions? I don't know, but that would make sense. Right. Because you don't necessarily want to hear a jingle all of the time also.

It's kind of annoying. Sort of like how the little sound of the turn signal in the car is not something I want to hear all the time. Yeah. But it helps me, like, move safely. So I tolerate it. Yeah, I feel like the spur sounds are pretty nice, though. They're not too annoying, at least to my ears. And to me too. And yeah, they're going for a happy middle ground where it alerts your cows, you're coming so you don't spook them. And also it's a pleasant enough sound to you. It's not like some kind of claxon that's bothering you all day.

It's not like they didn't put horns on the bottom of their feet. So it would go, wha, wah, wah, wah, every time they walk. Like a clown boy, I guess. Yeah. I had sneakers as a kid that lit up and made sounds when you. you would stomp on them. That's cool. Yeah. The makers of those sneakers had no regard for other adults. Like, I'm convinced that this was designed to terrorize parents and teachers. And some, like, this is a deeply bitter person who invented it, a torture device to weaponize children against their own parents.

That's also kind of the end point of these. Bahados and Jinglebobs. Like, they went from being useful signaling devices for working ranchers and farmers to being more of a style thing. Like, especially in the U.S., it was partly the movie thing of it makes these footsteps more dramatic to have the sound effects. But also, like, as cowboy stuff became more of a dandy and dude and tourist kind of thing, people wanted fancy jingle bobs and bahados to, like, show off their approach.

along with making the whole rest of the spur fancy and decorative too. Right. I mean, it is incredible to see the sort of like more symbolic and decorative endpoints of cowboy culture. The incredible hats, the incredible cowboy boots that are not necessarily all of that practical. Right. It can get really peacocky in the pickup artist sense. Yeah.

But it had origins and beings. incredibly practical. Like, I'm sure these saved the lives of some Baccaros, you know what I mean? Like they didn't get thrown off of a horse by a cow spoofing. Sure, yeah. But now they're goofy, you know. Yeah. It's wild.

And folks, that was two big takeaways and our numbers about spurs. We are going to take a quick break, then do a couple more takeaways about everything from Britain to the wild world of equestrian scandals. We're back, and we're back with two more takeaways about spurs these days, starting with takeaway number three. The British crown jewels include a fancy pair of golden spurs, and queens receive them differently from kings. Yeah, I've been looking at these fancy spurs. It's got velvet. It's got. gold. It's embroidered. Yeah.

These are, uh, this is how to very fancally annoy a horse. Yeah, I always just imagine crown jewels as being a pile of rubies and gems, like some sort of snow white and the seven dwarfs mine. Sure. But there's an item called the golden spurs of St. George that are part of the British crown jewels for coronations. Did St. George wear them? That's like the.

Man canon, I guess. You know, like, definitely not. And also conceptually, they're supposed to represent the guy. Was there even really a St. George? Because, like, obviously there wasn't dragons. If there were, they were aliens. But, you know, was there actually a guy? Yeah, like, there's roots of St. George involving probably some kind of soldier in the Roman army

and Christian Roman Empire times. But so not a English guy. killing a dragon. They've made up most of it. Right. And key sources here include pictures of them, like the one Katie's looking at. It's from the UK Royal Collection Trust. There's also a feature about it for Horse and Hound magazine. It's a magazine I'd always heard of, and I finally get to use it as a horse. It's very fun. Horse and Hound. It's a real British magazine that's exactly what you think. It's about fancy people on horses. Tooting on your trumpet, taking your hounds out on your horses to go chase down

a unicorn yeah yeah it's real and it's doing good work actually so right oh really you know just on their subject you know it's not like it's not like bringing down a Nigel Farage or something but yeah I thought this is like I thought the hat like they're like

and now we chase after war criminals for we like the fuck right now we're humanitarian and we don't we don't chase after foxes anymore we chase after war criminals. That'd be great. It's not like teen vogue trying to sustain our democracy by itself. Yeah. It's just like doing good reporting on what it's supposed to do. Yeah. This is what should happen to war criminals. We dress them as foxes. And then the good people at horse and hound get to, you know, go and have a little hunt. Just snaring an adult dictator

in the woods. It's really funny to me. Yeah. It's great. Because, you know, it's the perfect kind of humiliating exercise. Yeah, so the golden spurs of St. George, they started doing this nearly a thousand years ago. In 1189, the coronation of King Richard I, they presented him with golden spurs as part of the ceremony. Now, gold is a soft metal, so is this like pure gold? Is it an alloy? And is it, I imagine if it's like pure gold and you're like poking a horse with it is gonna like dent the gold because you know soft yeah excellent question and it seems like these are pure gold and unusable and it seems like no royal has ever worn them in a riding situation makes sense but also the

the current ones used in current coronations are newer than Richard the first spurs the modern set is from 1661 oh it's still pretty old yeah And also there's a new pair partly because England briefly completely overthrew the monarchy and beheaded the king. Yeah. And so they made a new set for King Charles II. When he took the throne, it was called the Restoration because his father, Charles I first, was executed. And there was a whole English civil war. Yeah.

Well, you got to change out your spurs after your dad gets his head chopped off, I think. it feels like a time to freshen up everything you know sure new rug maybe get a haircut change out your spurs oh nervous haircut like no axes right no axe it's just scissors right just if there's an axe i'm out wait wait lower your like like nod towards me Alex is that a spur on your hat yeah it's a san Antonio spurs hat yeah wow I just I just noticed that. Yeah. You gestured, and so now I can see it incredible.

He's wearing the hat, folks. I'm doing it. I'll put a picture on his name. Yeah. Go spurs. And yeah, and these golden spurs of St. George, oddly, they are the prick spur design because the concept is old enough that it's before rowell spurs. Right.

Of course, it plays into knighthood, especially King Richard I first. He was nicknamed the Lionheart, did a bunch of military operations. So the symbolism is that the monarch is sort of the top knight. Right. Like the leading knight of the country. Even if he's definitely not an inbreeding has meant that he cannot even fit on a horse. Yeah, I mean, I can see that because actually like for these ones, it's like a kind of

interesting looking flange coming off of the back of the spur that at first to me looked like it was supposed to be shaped like a horse haunch, although now I'm not so sure. But then at the end of it, there's like a little teeny tiny little almost like metal nipple, which seems to be the spur part. Yeah, it's very stylized, yeah. It's just meant to be a fancy design though, maybe. I don't know if it's actually meant to look like a horse leg.

I think it's just fancyness, yeah. Yeah, because it doesn't, it does not end in a hoof. if it ends into sort of like flower design and then the little metal nipple. Also in the 1660s, they added Tudor roses everywhere they could on these because they wanted to tie it to that royal house, yeah. Right, right. And yeah, and then the other odd thing about how they're used, beyond them being completely ceremonial and odd.

Sure, yeah. Is that because it's supposed to indicate that the monarch is the leading knight of the country, they do a different ceremony for a king versus a queen. Based on the concept that a queen regnance, even if this queen is totally ruling the country, they're not a knight, you know? Like ladies can't be knights is their claim. Well, you know, I've always found it funny that like women, the horseback riding isn't something that's more clearly easy to do for women. Because like we don't have certain things that I'm going to say seem like to me not ever having had this. anatomical feature, seems uncomfortable on a horse, but women don't have that. And yet,

they're, you know. If you're curious what anatomy, Katie's talking about, ask your parents or play Red Dead Redemption 2. Right. Where they've really rendered it on the horses. They've really rendered it. So apparently in the earliest coronations, the new king would put on the golden spurs of St. George. Right. And then in later ceremonies, they said, we can just hold the spurs to their ankles. They don't need to wear it for the rest of the event or whatever. But also, if it's a queen regnance instead of a king who will rule, they do not have the spurs

held to their ankles because that would imply a woman could be a combat knight. Instead, the spurs are simply shown to the queen and then placed on an altar. And she said, yeah, that there's a couple of spurs. It's ceremony on ceremony on ceremony. It's so silly. Right. Right. Yeah. And my favorite odd thing about that is the most recent Queen of England, Elizabeth I second, amazing equestrian.

It was truly her biggest passion and hobby other than maybe raising dogs was riding horses, we'll link all about it. But then at her coronation, they were like, truly a lady could never ride a horse and just showed her the spurs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but to be fair, she probably didn't really, I mean, I don't know, did she use actual spurs or did she not need them? I couldn't find out, yeah. And that kind of gets us into our last takeaway, because she's mostly doing equestrian sports. And takeaway number four, spurs are a hot-button controversy in equestrian sports and the center of a high-tech performance enhancement scandal.

Uh-oh, they're juicing the horses. In the electricity sense. Oh, what? In 2020, one of the top show jumpers got caught using spurs that electrocute the horse. Okay, well... Which is obviously horrendous, and then they were banned from the sport. Right, yeah. I mean, like, because, so, like, if it's like, if it's a little zap, like a tins unit, you know,

I could see like, all right, you know, but that doesn't seem like that would be the thing that makes the horse move. And that's kind of what everyone else said. That's part of how this person didn't get caught for a while. Right. Because if you're any good at equestrian sports, you don't need to electrocute your horse. And apparently this unit gave them a pretty solid jolt. Okay, yeah, that's not good.

A lot of these horse pestering methods, it's like, it's like on one end of the spectrum of use it's like hey that could be relaxing like the row or like a tins unit like that could actually give you a nice back massage um except for when it doesn't and it's used as an implement of torture exactly and yeah you would think like top top equestrian athletes can just train the horse like come on just do the entire sport like get it together that seems like the actual point yeah that seems entirely the point of of that That whole thing is that is what it is. The key sources here include Horse and Hound magazine.

Like I said, they're doing excellent journalism on their field. Like, they're really breaking it down. And other sources are a Guardian feature by reporter L. Hunt and reporting from Chronicle of the Horse, which is another trade journal of this. Horsenhound says that in 2020, a show jumping scandal rocked the whole sport. An American named Andrew Cocher was the leading U.S. show jumper. He represented us at international events across the 2010s. And then the International Equestrian Federation received a tip from a whistleblower. They said that, hey, Andrew Cocher is zapping his horse with electric spurs.

And you should check. And then they proceeded to turn up enormous amounts of visual evidence and witness testimony that he was definitely doing this. Oh, boy. Retroactively disqualified him from eight major competitions and banned him for 10 years. And then in an appeal to a tribunal, it was upheld in 2023. He definitely did all this stuff. So, like, why are spurs not allowed in equestrianism in general so that he was trying to sneakily use spurs by having it not clear that he was using them? Or was it like, is it that getting an electric jolt is more effective than just poking them with a, with a rowl or something?

Perfect question. It's the latter thing. It's basically the logic of steroids. Okay. Like everybody's using a baseball bat. And if I use steroids, I go beyond the weightlifting and eating well. I can get. Right.

It's also sort of the military logic of like, I need that extra edge to destroy other humans in this thing. So I'll torment my horse Cool Yeah So I'll do horse cruelty Is the logic, yeah I'll be like Listen horse

I've got your horse wife She's in an undisclosed location I've got I've got a gun to her head And if you don't Your horse wife who is a full horse in her own right Right Right

And so you know You got to jump real good Or you'll never see your horse wife Or your foals again This was a like very bad in real life. Apparently, the witness testimony included this guy, Andrew Kocher, like, showing off the system to people in his team and like encouraging them to do it too so their team could win more competitions all over. Oh. One witness described

coacher showing in the entire system, which is that there was like a homemade clicker button in coacher's hand, which then the International Equestrian Federation found in pictures from all sorts competitions. And then that was connected to a device with a set of wires that was inside of his boot. He homemade cut holes through the boot to send electricity through the metal spur because these competitors do have ordinary metal spurs that within what we consider acceptable spurs the horse. Like that part's not weird. Maybe this sounds kind of silly of like of course you don't want to electrocute a horse that should be self-evident. But, But it's like this is a home brew.

Home brew, I'm just going to electrocute this horse. There's no, I mean, I'm going to come down on sort of a controversial opinion, which is that I'm not pro electrocuting horse. Right. Right. Like everybody in the sport does have metal spurs and that conducts electricity. But like part of how he got away with this is that it was so shocking and out of left fields that nobody was looking for it.

Like, everybody agreed not to shock horses. It was, it was very shocking, wasn't it, Alex? Yeah, yeah, there we go. I'm sad about it. And then one of these witnesses, apparently, when Coacher was showing him the system, the witness accidentally zapped themselves with it. Because it's so, like, homemade. You don't know how it works and stuff.

Sure, yeah. And the witness says the shock, quote, felt like a knife all the way through my body. Oh, no. Yeah, that's not... Like horses have bigger bodies, but still, it's really bad. It's not like a little boop. It's like torture, shocking. Yeah, that is not like a tins unit.

Because like... Yeah, yeah. Because the reason I brought that up is that, like, electricity is not inherently necessarily, like, super painful. Like, and so, like, when in use in humans, right? Like electroconvulsive therapy where it's like... Yeah, yeah. Like, it is... We have a nightmare version of it.

which is just like in our heads of like people like shocking patients like but that's in order to like make them averse to something that's like aversion therapy and that's bad and discredited and awful but there's like actual use of electricity in some therapeutic settings that is you know it's not torture it's not meant to be torture it's meant to be therapeutic yeah yeah the home brew horse torture boots. That's a, that's a fascinating. Exactly. If you're like running copper wiring through holes you cut in your boots, you are not

doing equestrian sports properly. I wish, it's not okay. I hope that the guy who made them like got like accidentally shocked himself at some point. I'm, you know, like it doesn't fix things. It's plausible. It doesn't fix things. Or like stood in a puddle and just like cartoon style.

You can see his skeleton like he's doing an x-ray, just zapped by standing in a puddle. Yeah, that's awful. Poor horse. The silver lining is that this story might help play a role in shifting the entire world of equestrian sports. And there are a few different sports, not just show jumping, but this and another couple scandals around the 2024 Olympics are sort of leading to a reckoning. In the run-up of the 2024 Paris Games, footage leaked of a leading British equestrian just hitting a horse way too much with a whip. And that led to an immediate ban on Charlotte Dujardin's participation in the Paris Olympics.

But she'd previously won three gold medals. She and other leading equestrian human athletes have been either caught or accused of various abuse of their animals. And then in 2023, shortly after the electric spurs, judgment against Andrew Kocher was upheld, Horsenhound published an editorial by a leading show-jumping commentator and judge named Adam Cromarty. And Cromarty just predicted that by the 2030s, all equestrian competitions will ban whips and ban spurs. Because it's a bad look, and there's too much risk of human athletes harming the horses. Sure, yeah. And if you're any good at the sport, you can train your horse other ways.

So we might end up with a blanket ban because of stuff like this electric spur psycho, you know? Yeah, like as a non-professional, it would be hard for me to tell the difference between like, oh, this is a nudge for the horse that is not causing it pain versus like you are tormenting this horse. Exactly. So if you kind of just need to get rid of all of it to prevent any of the abuse from happening. happening. Yeah, that makes sense to me for entirely voluntary hobby, sport. Yeah. The last just, like, amazing example of not needing them is a celebrity horse named Trigger was not controlled with Spurs at all. And if people don't know that name, Trigger was one of the most famous entertainers in the world in the 1900s because Trigger was the horse of Roy Rogers. a Rogers' country musician and a cowboy in movies

and allegedly taught Trigger 150 different commands that were almost entirely based on gentle, specific touches with Rogers' hands. And then like a few verbal cues, which are mostly for when Rogers is not on Trigger's back and then Trigger like runs over amazingly, you know? Yeah. Trigger start in 92 movies and TV shows.

Rogers never made a movie without Trigger, gave quotes about Trigger being most of why Rogers is famous. And Hollywood is different from competitive equestrian sports, but if you train a horse, you can do amazing things with no spurs at all. Yeah. And so that might be the end of spurs as time goes on, and they're no longer a military item, and spurs are maybe banned from sports.

I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, because it seems like horses are fairly sensitive and responsive. Again, I've kind of made the connection between horses and dogs in the beginning of the show where they have a similar sort of social structure their ancestors did, right? So like with dogs, you really do not need to ever hurt them in order to train them. Like, and you should not. They take direction really well. Seems like it should be the same thing with horses.

Like you should not have to scare or hurt them in order to train them. That just doesn't seem like at all necessary. Yeah, and I guess dog shows are a good example of nobody's spurring the dogs or like hitting the dogs. Everyone would stop the show and it seems like horse sports are going that way where people say whether this is hurting the horse or not, it looks brutal. Like just stop. Don't do that. Yeah. Now, I have my problems with dog shows not in terms of the show itself, but the sort of like, yes, let us breathe this dog until its lungs are in its nose.

And when it sneezes its eyeballs shoot out like ping pong balls. Like that's that's the problem with dog shows. Not that the dogs are being electrocuted into performing. Yeah. And so like broadly as society changes and shifts, it seems like spurs may eventually become obsolete. But it took a few thousand years. Right. It's amazing.

I mean, could we at some point mind meld with the horse? So like you put on VR headset with the horse. with the horse and you put on a VR headset and like we've got we'll probably all get musk chipped at some point but then you sort of mind-milled with the horse where

lawn mar man stuff yeah yeah long mar man right where you spur them on not with physical spurs but like emotional spurs where you're like listen horse your horse wife is your horse wife is being held in an

undisclosed location. Sprint to your horsewife in the undisclosed location. Can we, let's shift from physical torment to psychological torment in the future with technology. No, I love horses. I would never. I would never put a horse in a matrix. I'm going to say that in a horse matrix. Folks go to the new SIFPod store, which is Sifpod. Store, and most of the shirts are hashtag lawnmower, horsewife, hashtag I would never put a horse in the Matrix by land Katie Golden. It's all incredibly specific horse virtual reality merchandise. Then I can wear that shirt and then people will stop asking me if I would put a horse in the Matrix. I wouldn't.

Because all the questions are answered by your shirt. Right. I respect the horse's autonomy. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, there are three kinds of spurs across history, plus one potential prototype made of a plant thorn.

Takeaway number two, Spanish colonizers sparked the entire cowboy tradition, including a safety accessory that makes Spurs jingle. It's all those vacaros and then their pahados. Takeaway number three, the British crown jewels include a fancy pair of golden spurs with different coronation rules for kings than for queens. Takeaway number four, spurs are a hot button issue in equestrian sports and the setter of a high-tech performance enhancement scandal that might make competitive spurs obsolete. And then numbers to start about the entire domestication of horses,

including milking them before riding them, and moving up that timeline by 2,000 years. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode, because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members 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 Bonespurs and reasons you might have them.

Visit sifpod.f.f fund for that bonus show for a library of more than 22 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at Maximumfund.org. Key sources this week include a lot of horse scholarship, in particular by William Taylor, assistant professor and curator of archaeology at University of Colorado, Boulder. Also, Barry Cunliff, the professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford. And then a book by non-fiction author David Chaffetz. It's called Raiders, Rules and Traders, The Horse and the Rise of Empires.

We've also got a lot of museum resources this week, in particular from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, also the Oregon Historical Society, the South Dakota State University Agricultural Heritage Museum, the Smithsonian, the UK Royal Collection Trust, and then journalism from The Guardian, the New York Times, and the surprisingly solid source for all sorts of things like this. Horse and Hound magazine. That page also features resources such as native dash land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lanoppe people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here.

That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the Free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people in life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 112. That's about the topic of drive-thrues. Fun fact there, the first McDonald's drive-thru was built by one franchise that wanted to serve soldiers who weren't allowed to get out of their vehicles off the base due to scandals involving a red light district.

That's how we got McDonald's ride-thrus, so I recommend that episode. There's lots more there. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshavened by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners.

I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network Of artists-owned shows Supported directly by you.