Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Letter X

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters/writers David Christopher "Nunchucks" Bell and Tom Reimann (Gamefully Unemployed, 'Fox Mulder Is A Maniac' podcast) for a look at why the letter X is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Folks, hello! It is Alex, and I am so excited for this weekend, because this Saturday, December 18th, is going to be the first ever live episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. I have never done a live one before. I also have amazing guests worked out, because this is going to be an internet live stream show. It's not in a theater or whatever. We're doing it online so all of you can come, all of you can make it. And also that lets me gather an just incredible guest lineup of Katie Golden, Adam Todd Brown, and Andrew T. All at once. Katie Golden, Adam Todd Brown, Andrew T. All on one show. And again, that live episode is this Saturday, December 18th. This live episode is patron

exclusive. You have to be a backer in order to see the live show. Also, if you are a backer, you get to just go ahead and see the live show. You don't have to buy tickets or anything. You're already somebody who makes this entire thing possible. So obviously you are invited to this party. That's going to be a really fun live episode like never before. So thanks for listening, and happy holidays, and I'm hoping to see you at the live show. The letter X. Known for being rare.

Famous for being X-shaped. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the letter X 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. Two amazing guests return this week, David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman, our comedy makers, podcasters, live streamers, and so much more. They make a bunch of that stuff, in particular one podcast that is very relevant here called Fox Mulder is a Maniac,

but they make a lot of that stuff under the shared name Gamefully Unemployed. Also, Tom is an associate editor at the entertainment website Collider.com. He's a new columnist for the incredible comedy website 1-900-HOT-DOG. Dave is a writer of films and a writer of scripts for the Some More News YouTube channel. These guys are multi-talented and very busy, and I'm so glad they made time to return and be awesome on this podcast once again. 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 Dave and Tom each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielina-Wartongva 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 the letter X. That's the top patron chosen topic for this month. Many, many thanks to Vivek Radhakrishnan for just a fantastic suggestion. Thank you, buddy. Very exciting.

This is the first episode of this podcast that has ever covered a letter, which is such an amazing angle. I hope we do more. In the meantime, please sit back or sit with a stack of children's alphabet books and try to find one that doesn't fill out X with the xylophone. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Dave, Tom, it is so wonderful to have you back. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. I think I also have one guest for you guys here.

But what do you think of the letter X? Oh, man. X is a very important letter to me, particularly in the 90s. Yep. First of all, everything's extreme. You got to have that there. Sure. You started the 90s strong with X-men uh and the x files um

like really from from like 1992 to like 1996 x was like a big deal for me yeah easily my favorite letter i'm gonna have to agree here also later in life i i discovered the band x which i also really like so yeah uh everything you're saying, Tom, there's a lot of X in my life. Yeah, the band X is great. Great band. Are they different from the XX, which is another band? I guess so.

I didn't know there was a band called the XX. I know the XX. The XX is a punk band. I saw them once live. It's different. I think they're very old. They were around in the 70s, 80s. And I don't think they tour anymore. They were in the X-Files soundtrack as well.

Wait, really? That soundtrack being songs to the key of X. Yeah. That's just good branding. That's just smart. Yeah. They were in the episode episode three tom the one where molder hunts vampires yeah sure yeah yeah that one my guess for one connection was obviously

the x-files because you guys do an amazing podcast called fox molder is a maniac everyone please check it out gamefully unemployed and it's uh thank you it's like i've never i still have not actually watched that TV show. I've just consumed it through you guys talking about it. And it's the best. You should. You should. You should definitely watch it now that you've listened to all these episodes that we've done.

Because it changes the show. Like, it's a different show. It really is. And I don't do great with some horror. And so I never watched it when it was on because it seemed like horror and I was afraid. But I like learning how nuts it is. It's great.

Yeah, it seems like horror. I wouldn't say it is horror. It does have some grotesque, some creepy moments. And in point of fact, it has an episode called Grotesque, which is about gargoyles that is that is true where molder loses his mind over gargoyles i'll look and fold and the reveal is that he wasn't possessed yeah yeah no it's a it's a listen we're just going to talk about this now it's an episode where they imply that he's been possessed by a gargoyle spirit the reveal

is that someone else has which means that all the weird Mulder was doing was just him. Was just him. Just him. Yep. Those are just decisions he made. Right.

That's just Mulder vanilla. That's just standard issue. That's him having a regular week. It's this behavior. So, yeah, I guess that sums up our experience yeah i feel pretty strongly about the letter x i have i have the most feelings for x than any other letter it's also in in my opinion the coolest looking letter while somehow being the simplest letter the laziest letter uh because it feels like the first letter you would come up with when you're designing an alphabet. I mean, honestly, if we're going to start splitting these hairs, technically I and O are the laziest letters.

Yeah, that's true. But it's up there, right? Yeah, X is up there. It was definitely in the first hour of inventing the alphabet. right? It was definitely in the first hour of inventing the alphabet. I assume it was a brainstorming session, wherever a bunch of people

got together. And I assume X was in the top five first letters that they figured out. Because it's just and you're done. Yeah. That's great. That is the sound of drawing an X. That's incredible. It's what X sounds like. Everybody knows it. is the sound of drawing an x that's incredible yeah that's what x sounds like everybody knows it sounds like somebody's drawing an x over there

and and tom i think your 90s oriented experience of a lot of it is very true for a lot of people like i i remember a lot of things like that and then for me also i have an x in my name unless you short it all the way down to Al. Oh my God, you do. That's true. I have an X in Alex. But I remember we were learning cursive in second grade. And for some reason, the teacher that I had in second grade made a big point of like,

and we were going one letter at a time. And they were like, and now that we've learned these letters, this student can write their whole name in cursive and this student can. And so they did it that way. But they saved X because it's rare. And then so like I was one of the last kids in the class who was considered able to write their name in cursive, even though I could clearly see how it was written. I was like, can I just jump ahead? I could do that one.

They were like, no, no, no. You haven't learned it. No, I can do it. You were being discriminated against. Yeah. That's awful. That's right. For your name.

For your ex name. You were being exed out. Yeah. A second ago when you proudly announced that you have an ex in your name, it truly threw me for a loop for a second. I was like, is Alex's middle name Xavier? I just didn't. Well, yeah, it sneaks in there at the end yeah i mean my middle name is charles xavier actually that's the entire yeah so it's pretty cool uh

charles xavier professor x the leader of the x-men all of that is alex's middle yeah i just blow out online forums that's they're destroyed oh man i i feel like congratulations on the x yeah honestly congrats on the x it's a real achievement having an X in your name. Hey, thank you. It's cool because it starts with an A. So you're almost at the end of the alphabet, too. You got the start of the alphabet, end of the alphabet. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it feels good. Yeah, all the components really come together because it does swing through like that. Yeah, it's great. I love it. I love saying it yeah people often ask me why i say my name over and over again and it's because it's just it's it's it's it's just a winning name it's a real winner's name and i love to say it while we're celebrating i think from here we can get into the first main chunk of the show here. Because 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...

Mommy does math. Daddy does math. They count, add, and subtract numbers. Statistics. Statistics, statistics. But don't multiply away. Way, way. Oh! Nailed it. Thank you. Beautiful.

Beautiful. I think I was legitimately fueled by excitement about my name. I think that really made it by excitement about my name. I think that really... I think that made it happen. Good. Let it out there. It's pure. Yeah, it's organic.

That's what we like in our podcasting. It was like a big ramp. I just took the skateboard off it. And that name was submitted by Spencerencer dedrick hey spencer thanks man we have a new name for this segment every week please make him as silly and wacky as and bad as possible submit to sip pot on twitter or to sip pot at gmail.com uh numbers about the letter x here the first number very easy to get into it is 26th out of 26 last last in the order 26 out of 26. Last. Last in the order. 26th out of 26. That is the letter X's ranking for frequency as the starting letter of a word in written English.

It is the least used starting letter. That makes sense. If someone asked me what is the least frequent starting letter, that would be my answer. Yeah. Not surprised. Yeah, I wouldn't immediately guess it. Yeah, I wouldn't immediately guess it yeah i wouldn't immediately guess it like i would think maybe it was like a trick and maybe it would be something

wacky like i don't know like i even though i probably starts a whole ton of letters right right no yeah man even z beats it out that's yeah there's tons of z words that's true zebra that's one yeah and that's the only one but that's more than x zeppelin that's two oh yeah yeah yeah no it is that sort of thing where it feels too simple it does feel like if someone asked me the question point blake i would assume it's a trick but it is yeah of course i just of course it's x i want x to know that I thought better of it before I learned the truth about it. That was just, no, it's what you assumed about them. I didn't want to believe the worst about you, X.

Yeah. She'd given me no choice. That stat is coming from a book called Language Visible by classic scholar David Sachs. He goes through all 26 letters in order. Is it Sachs with an X? Like, is it David Saxophone? Oh, that would be amazing. Yeah, right?

It's not? Oh, my gosh. Man, that's a shame. It's S-A-C-K-S. It would be so much better if it was the instrument. Right, it's just Sachs. If you're listening, you know what to do. Yeah.

You can be the hero in this. Like, where's baseball great Steve Sachs from that Simpsons episode? Right? When's he going to write a book? Anyway. About the letter X. Yeah. Nothing to do with baseball.

This gentleman went through every letter and just like looked up all the words and he is that is that he's just citing people who've studied like corpuses of english language writing but uh got it but in the x section he says that it's the least common starting letter and then the next number here is 25th out of 26 because depending on how you measure it it's at least the second least common letter in just general english writing the least common is z z is at the bottom there yeah that's where it belongs so you have x is more in the middle of things that makes sense i mean i i don't know i have this like it's not true, but I have this misconception that if you're later in the alphabet, you use it less, which isn't true at all.

That's not true at all. But you got X, Y, and Z right there next to each other, and I think it gives Y a bad rep because I feel like Y is used a lot, but it's right there hanging out with those do-nothings, X and Z z kind of bringing its reputation down yeah y got its application deferred because of x and z yeah yeah yeah they're a bad influence on association with those two miscreants it really does feel that way though like because of those bottom letters yeah probably all three of them are lame and y is like i'm almost a vowel i'm very common yeah what are you talking about stop lumping me with these two losers yeah

it's like though it's like the one good song on the b side of an album yeah exactly it's weird because like z and x we don't it doesn't feel like we need them that much like a ck will do it just fine with an x and like a z is just like an s that needs more zest to it you know like it's just a it's a spicy s and and like we could probably replace it with s yeah if we wanted to but like there's yeah there's those little occasions where it's like we just we kind of need them. So I don't know. I guess I don't hate them. But they do they do feel like redundant. you count sometimes it can be a little higher in the rankings okay and if it's higher it'll also be above q and then possibly the next letter it's sometimes ahead of is j which shocked me i thought j is way more common than that that's a real upset that's a real upset for sure yeah yeah i guess it depends which set of text you're looking at, but sometimes X can be as high

as 23rd in the rankings above Z and Q and J. I'm not buying it. Yeah. I don't buy it. Yeah. I think that's a mistake. I think that's Big X trying to push its X agenda on the world. I think X is greasing some palms there.

Yeah. of push its X agenda on the world. I think X is greasing some palms there. Yeah, I think it might partly be because the letter G can do J sounds a lot, you know? Like, it actually makes it less common than we think. But either way, it's very surprising. Yeah. Yeah. And the next number here, there's a lot of years in these numbers this week. The next number is 1952. And 1952... The2 your ex was born a little weird baby so 1952 is the year when the former malcolm little was released from prison

after serving a six-year sentence upon release he changed his name to malcolm x and he also joined the nation of islam movement and encouraged other people in it to adopt the x last name as well because the x was meant to signify an original lost tribal name that's separate from american names that spring from slavery for a lot of black people oh i didn't know that that's really interesting yeah it's it's funny i never even yeah i never even thought about the meaning behind it which is kind of my fault but like that yeah that's that's really cool yeah i think my brain until this moment was just like yeah cool last name i like yeah that's a cool cool yeah x that's that sounds great uh but the fact that it has a meaning behind it yeah makes a lot

more sense now it does feel just sort of generally hardcore beyond the actual meaning he chose and yeah yeah it's undeniably hardcore yeah yeah what if he was like i'm malcolm x now because i'm straight edge like what if that's right yeah did it? Yeah. He used to do the straight-edge X's on his... I'm cutting out sugar. Yeah. And the other thing I didn't know until researching is that Malcolm X also changed names again and actually dropped that name. In 1964, he renounced the Nation of Islam completely, a lot because of its violence and also other issues with it.

And then later that year, he took a pilgrimage to Mecca. And after the pilgrimage was inspired to adopt the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. And so the press still kept calling him Malcolm X, I think partly because they just weren't comfortable with like Arabic and Islamic names. But he was not named Malcolm X at the time of his death. He had moved on from it after a little over a decade of being called that i didn't know that either yeah same i think part of it's like you ever have a friend who changes their name and it's like like to like a cool

nickname or something like that like yeah um and it's always hard to remember them by their yeah their new name or something like that i I had a friend who insisted on being called Blackheart. And I knew him as Blackheart. But then there was a bunch of people who just called him by his old name because it's like, yeah, I'm not going to call you that. I get it. I get it. But I don't think that's the case with Malcolm X. No.

There are kind of two levels of name change, I feel like. There's where it's really deeply personal to you, and then there's just like, I don't know, what if we called me Lightning? And you're like, all right, I guess. I want to be called Razor. All right.

I asked to be called Nunchucks for a while. No one did it. If you'd have asked me asked me i would have thought about it thank you yeah no problem nunchucks but yes it is it is uh different than what we're talking about yeah yeah right also if anyone hears me typing very loudly i am changing the podcast description my guests are nunchucks and tom thanks for peter i'll come up with something yeah it'll be cool by the end of this podcast you will come up with something well i'll have new names yeah when the next number here another year it's 1968 and 1968 is the year when the motion picture association of america introduced its film rating system which we still have today

but from then until 1990 they had an x rating the letter represented the word extreme it turns out The letter represented the word extreme, it turns out. Hell yeah. Which is deeply 90s to me, even though that's not what happened. It's weird that it ended in 1990 because it should have thrived in 1990. Yeah, it was completely in keeping with a time it skipped. I don't actually know the answer to this. What are some of the bigger x-rated films out there uh scarface right really yeah i believe the first cut of scarface was rated

x i mean that makes sense i also i oddly know from the jimmy carter episode of this show because he screened it at the white house but midnight cowboy had an x rating all the way through and is like the rare movie to be shown in movie theaters and win best picture even though it was rated x very funny because that's like a pg-13 nowadays it feels like yeah it's yeah it's like when orgasmo got an nc-17 yeah and it's like that's adorable okay like yeah and and speaking of NC-17, that is what replaced the X rating in 1990. Apparently, the MPAA decided that the X had pretty much just become censorship. It shut down the distribution of the movie. It's partly because pornographers discovered there's no law against just calling your movie x-rated or triple x-rated you don't

actually have to have the mpaa tell you and so it became associated with pornography they switched to nc-17 to try to get like a different adult rating going and now we don't use it anymore the x-rating oh here's i just looked it up real quick just to see here's a couple more uh clockwork orange uh sweet sweetbacks badass song oh wow uh yeah and uh the evil dead oh yeah that makes sense too really and uh and robocop robocop had to be edited 11 times before they gave it an r rating that actually makes sense uh what does nc-17 stand for do we know it's no children admitted under age 17. That's the general meaning.

But then R is restricted to 18, right? Well, R is 17. Like no one under 17 is admitted without a guardian. Got it. And so NC-17. NC-17 is nobody under 17. Right. NC-17 is not like, it's cool.

I got this like 40-year-old dude with me. I got this dude to save my dad. It's like, no, that actually feels worse. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually way worse. I feel like we're promoting a worse thing by instituting this rating system. That makes sense still.

X is such a cooler rating. That's a real shame. Sounds cooler. It does seem more dangerous. Yeah. It has a real shame it's it it does seem more dangerous yeah like it has a dangerous connotation to it yeah nc-17 is too much explanation on there or it sounds like more official like it sounds like it's it on like truly and i'm sure this is probably a part of the reasoning behind it is it sound it sounds less severe yeah this is i think it definitely is because it's x also just sounds sexier which is

probably why pornos were like yeah we're x like pornos don't want to be like oh we're nc-17 baby it's just like yeah that is not appealing so i think that that does feel like the where they are like they're using it wrong they like the X. We got to make it something bland and boring so that movies don't want to be X. Wow. We got to make it sound like a form you have to fill out. Right. Yeah, it does sound like a tax form.

Like X just sounds like it rules. Like you want to see this X-rated movie? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Like there's probably that Simpsons joke where there was kids going to see this x-rated movie yes absolutely yeah like it's there's probably that simpsons joke where there was kids going to see an x-rated movie and it was midnight cowboy and like they're like oh okay i mean i guess oh like when they're chanting barton fink because

it's r-rated and they're excited yeah barton fink or naked lunch they do that gag a few times they walk out and Nelson. I can think of at least two things wrong with that title. Solid gag. Next number here, it's a range of years. It is 1965 through 1980. It is 1965 through 1980. And 1965 through 1980 is, according to the Pew Research Center, like the official set of birth years for Generation X.

To be part of Generation X in the United States, you have to be born sometime between 1965 and 1980. And before that is boomers, after that is millennials. That's so weird. Because, Tom tom you and i were at the cutoff right yeah you too alex right we're all more or less on the cutoff i'm like into millennials but i always think i am not it always sounds wrong yeah that's how pretty we're we're on the old end of millennia yeah i was born in 84 i think i think my sister was born in 81 and it's that thing where like i think we remember gen x stuff in the pop culture a lot more vividly so it like yeah i remember growing up and thinking like am i gen x i feel like i'm gen x

and then learning i was millennial uh is kind of a shocker yeah millennial is officially 1981 all the way to 1996 yeah and i was born in 88 and feel no connection to people born in 96 right they're i think tiny children don't correct me no one check no they're all still seven years old right yeah yeah 96 was like 10 years ago yeah yeah the only thing that unites us is that none of us have any money uh and so that's it yeah we're all we're all bitterly united by that yeah that common factor we have x dollars exactly doesn't quite work Every time I look at my bank account, it's just a bunch of Xs. It's X-rated. Like Xs streaming down that code in the Matrix. Like, no, no, stop, stop.

Please. Too many. I have no more money to X out. Next, this is a more fun range of years here the next one is 1977 through 1981 1977 through 1981 is the years when it's considered that the x-men series of comic books really became a hit heck yeah that's chris claremont years i believe exactly right that's why yeah yeah that's like dark phoenix and stuff yeah apparently yeah apparently the the first x-men comic book came out in september 1963 but according to bradford w right the author of comic book nation he says that x-men comics did

not sell well and by the early 1970s marvel was just reprinting old ones. They weren't even making new ones. And then from 1977 through 1981, writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne took over. Claremont and Byrne, quote, transformed X-Men from a second tier bi-monthly series to the best selling title in the industry, end quote. Yeah, most of the good X-men storylines you've heard of are probably written by chris claremont yeah it's i i mean you guys both know comics real well and that's really cool you knew that name because yeah i i didn't really i'm just like i think he wrote a wolverine book i read and that was kind of all i'm sure he did yeah before that i'm sure he did. I'm sure Jeff is listening to this episode and just shouting at us right now.

But mainly the popularity was because of Cyclops, right? People couldn't get enough Cyclops. Everybody was like, this is a Cyclops nation now. Everything was built around our love of Cyclops. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, you're saying that facetiously but no it's it's true it's that's all true they briefly considered changing the name of the company from marvel to cyclops comics yeah right too many letters in every title yeah yeah too many c's

let's put an x in one of those c's yeah, and yeah, this Claremont and Byrne team, apparently they introduced multiple distinctive female characters, including Phoenix, like you mentioned, also Shadowcat and Rogue. They also brought Wolverine over from originally being a side character in Hulk comics. Yeah, he was a Hulk villain. And then also just wrote really good stories. And so that made X-Men like a thing we have heard of today. They're not a like random forgotten thing that never became a Marvel movie.

Yeah, if I may be speaking at a turn. And again, like I said, Jeff's probably listening to this and shouting at the speaker. Yeah, Jeff May. He doesn't like sports. Jeff May, yeah. It's pretty tough. He hates them. He hates sports. He also hates the X-Men. the uh speaker yeah jeff may he doesn't like sports yeah it's pretty tough he hates them he

hates sports he also hates the x-men but yeah i'm pretty sure like x-men was marvel's only book that sold like all the way up through the 90s it was like it it remained its best-selling book it was like since then oh wow yeah it's definitely the first thing i ever heard of with marvel you know like me too yeah obviously the animated series like i remember when they were like they're making an iron man movie and i was like i don't know what that is uh like i like for the longest time it was just yeah it was just the x-men that's it that's literally it yeah i think i remember knowing the name iron man from ghostface killer but also i think i think i thought iron man was colossus from x-men like oh yeah that guy made out of metal right oh yeah

he's not not iron man that's true yeah yeah he's the big metal dork yeah next number here is another pop culture thing but it's november 15th 2001 specific day november 15th 2001 that is the north america launch date of the first xbox video game console oh yeah sure so like marginally over 20 years ago the xbox rolled out i think they they just did a promotional thing with with dwayne the rock johnson because the rock i'm pretty sure uh was part of the event where they debuted the xbox where they like revealed it to the public like he was the presenter really i mean that makes so much sense yeah yeah that yeah i mean it makes sense 2001 2001. I can picture that. Yeah. The height of The Rock's WWE career. Even, aren't there a bunch of X's in wrestling names?

Like NXT and stuff? They do that all the time. It's extreme. X-Pac. Yeah, because it's extreme. Extreme, yeah. It's extreme. It's so extreme. It's very extreme.

Is that what the X stands for? Is it Extreme Box? I assume so. I've never had an Xbox. I had no idea and found out. So there's an amazing article from VentureBeat.com that was so good it became a book about the Xbox. So Microsoft developed the Xbox because Sony made the PlayStation 2. And Sony was advertising the PlayStation 2 like so amazing it's basically a computer

they called it revolutionary computer entertainment microsoft became concerned the ps2 was going to try to replace pcs completely oh that's cute uh and it didn't but microsoft proceeded to i get i get the fear at the time because they don't know what the future is they haven't learned about tablets and iPhones yet so yeah that makes as much sense as anything does but it's still adorable in retrospect yeah it's very cute and they and then Microsoft's plowed four billion dollars with a b into developing their own video game console. And part of why they were confident it would be okay is they already had a team that had built their own proprietary graphics system that they thought would be this amazing new graphics system. And that was called

DirectX. And so they decided, hey, we'll do like a console based on direct x like it's direct x in this box and then you got the name xbox from that that is that is the funniest thing i think i've ever heard or at least this afternoon hold on hold on what is the x in direct x stand for oh great question i don't It might be Xavier. It could be Direct Xavier. Yeah. But, like, if I may interject here, nunchucks. Like, you have to, like, DirectX is one of those goober little programs that it's, like, you have to have the latest version of DirectX installed to, like, run some kind of, likequential thing yeah it's a pest right it's a pest it's like pest wear so the fact that they designed this system around like it's gonna be the direct x system so we're gonna call it the xbox yeah one-stop shop for direct x oh man we think some dumb things about the future oh yeah yeah we're not good with that

no we're pretty bad at it yeah especially i feel like every tech launch either burrows into every aspect of our lives or is funny in hindsight you know like it either becomes the dominant thing that will eventually be a chip in our brains or we're like microsoft zoom was really funny what a funny attempt because it's always it's always these massive swings it's google glass remember google glass right funny almost became all of our faces extremely funny it could have very easily become all of our faces yeah i don't know my my opinion is that it never could like that's how it works is that they introduce this thing and on the like on paper it's a toss-up but then when you put it into the wild like we either

reject it immediately like google glass never had a chance we were like look you can put it on your face and record people without their consent at all times and it was like uh no i think we're good with that and like that was that like it was just so like it's just funny how these things work it's a real virtual boy yeah virtual boy oh sweet bend your neck at a weird angle and shove your face into this red hellscape it's like no we absolutely don't want to do that yeah they're like hey you like virtual reality well we can't actually do that so this is like that and it's like absolutely no here's a terrible screen pasted to your face you'll only ever see this as a display model in blockbuster video that's the only place i ever saw a virtual boy i ran okay into a virtual boy recently at one of those cool places that you can play video games and they have all the consoles.

I don't believe you. Well, it was like a cool place. They had indoor mini golf. You know what I'm describing here. Tell the truth, Nunchucks. Is this real? Tell the truth, Nunchucks. It is real.

I feel like you're I feel like you're I feel like you're spinning a tail like you're weaving a weaving a web my point my point is that like you get very excited and then you bend down and you try to use it and you instantly get less excited because it's yeah it's terrible there's not there's not even like a retro like appeal to it it's just bad I think what the google glass and virtual boy touched upon is that we don't generally like technology that has a physical component to it like unless it's really good right right but like me in general meaning like something we have to like wear or hold or like strap to ourselves we're just generally not into that. Anyways, that's the story of DirectXbox.

Yeah. Well, the... There's two big takeaways for this main episode, and the last number takes us into them. Last number is over three quarters. And over three quarters is the fraction of the world population

that writes using an alphabet of some kind. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. 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. Which brings us into takeaway number one. The letter X got its shape and its sound from separate parts of a Mediterranean alphabet evolution. And I know that's long, so I'll say it again. The letter X got its shape and its sound from separate parts of a Mediterranean alphabet evolution. Huh. We're going to get into where the whole Latin alphabet came from, the one we're used to in the English language, and then also the where it came from so someone had like a sound and they're like i really need a shape for this

and someone else had like a shape and they're like i really need a sound for this because i don't want to get rid of this shape and they like met and it's like uh it's like reese's where it's like you got your sound stuck in my shape uh and then it was this beautiful marriage dude that's like exactly what happened yeah uh that's awesome alphabets yeah yeah that's pretty much like the history of a lot of written language it turns out yeah sure sure that's wild yeah and there's there's two main sources for this they're both books one is called language visible by david s, mentioned it before. The other is called The Letter and the Cosmos by Lawrence DeLuz, who is a languages and literatures professor at the University of

Western Ontario. But that figure over three quarters of people that comes from David Sachs, it turns out that almost all alphabets in the world have a single root, which was a language written in Egypt in the 2000s BC, and it led to the whole range of alphabets in the world. The most popular one is the Latin alphabet, the one common in English and a lot of other languages. Over 30% of the world population uses it. But it's also where we got Arabic script, Cyrillic script, Devanagari script, Bengali script.

Almost everything except Chinese characters and Japanese characters come from this alphabetical system that was originally in Egypt about 4,000 years ago. Yeah. So it's like everything else is fanfic of this one alphabet? Like this alphabet is Twilight and everything else is 50 shades of gray kind of thing yeah where they like split off and did their own thing that's cool yeah yeah yeah that's that's insightful nunchucks yeah thank you yeah the it turns out the the big exception as alphabets go not like character-based exception as alphabets go, not like character-based systems, but alphabets, is that the Korean monarchy developed the Hangul script in Korea in the 1400s, totally separate from this. But otherwise, you have branches of Semitic and non-Semitic alphabets coming from this one in Egypt.

alphabets coming from this one in Egypt. And there was one that's very key for a lot of the Latin alphabet and a lot of European alphabets that came from Phoenicia. And Phoenicia was an ancient civilization in modern Lebanon. It was a set of independent port cities that did a lot of trading and colonizing all over the Mediterranean. And as they spread, they spread their version of that ancient alphabet from Egypt, which had 22 letters in it, including the forerunner of the letter X that was there. Wait, so it was a, explain that it was a port that was like, yeah, it was a whole group of people came in and out of there and like buying stuff and doing stuff. They would get, they would get spread out. Like they were like, yeah, like yeah they're like we're gonna sell you these rugs and we're gonna throw in this alphabet as well and like you can use it if you want you don't have to we're just

saying it's a really good alphabet so give it a shot yeah kind of yeah like i think phoenicia is not that famous like it doesn't come up with the Romans and other ancient peoples like it talked about a lot. But it was a set of port cities that shared a culture and shared a language. And the original ones were cities called Sidon and Tyre and Byblos. Then they also built a lot of colonies, and one of the colonies was Carthage.

So the whole Carthaginian civilization that went to war with the Romans, that also sprang from this culture too. Okay. Hmm. And it was a culture that a lot of people had to deal with, right? Like that makes sense that it's like a culture that's just very central

would spread their language because it's people would want to communicate with that culture. Yeah. And then all these people trickling through Phoenicia would have, would have looked at X and been like, that's pretty sweet. Yeah.

That's a sweet letter. We need that letter. I want to amend my comparison. It's like half-life, right? Like all the half-life mods. Like that's what happened. Like this is half-life and everything else is counter-strike.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Where it's like, well, we have this system that works. We're going to take it. Everything else is Garyary's mod everything else is gary's mod yes we're no we're gonna take it and we're gonna play with it we're gonna do other things with it yeah a little bit yeah isn't portal portal also

yeah portal is yeah oh really yeah you guys know more about this than i do but that that might be because the because like most of us never think about Phoenicia, but according to David Sachs, they had this 22-letter Phoenician alphabet. And we're going to talk about the jumps that led to the Latin alphabet and the one we used today. But that 22- letter Phoenician alphabet is the direct source of 19 letters in our alphabet. Wow. That's most of the letters. Like these people that maybe have never heard of, like, format a lot of our alphabet, even though we don't speak their language.

Right. Huh. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's most of the alphabet right there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so the way the jumps happen then is basically other cultures met the Phoenicians.

The other cultures said, we already have a spoken language. We should just take the Phoenician alphabet and start writing our language using it. And we'll also modify it a little bit as we go. So a bunch of other cultures just grabbed it and stole it, but didn't start speaking Phoenician language. They just said, this is useful for what we say. And so that was what happened. Oh, so they made their own sounds for the different letters?

Yeah. They were like, well, this is T. Like T may not sound like T to the Phoenicians, but we're going to use this for our T. Exactly. Like they would maybe keep a sound and a shape if it was convenient to the language they spoke, but otherwise they would put new sounds on existing letters and also maybe come up with a few new letters too. Did we find, was there any letters that stayed the same for everybody?

Like, cause I think that would be amazing. Like if they all looked at an O and they're like, that's an O. Right. Cause that's the shape your mouth makes when you say it. Exactly. And they all just agreed, like, simultaneously without checking with each other. Like, was there any, like, what's the perfect letter? The letter that everybody saw was like,

nope, that's what that is. It transcends all cultures. What letter? Yeah. Yeah. That's a really cool question, and all I know is it's not X. X did not do that.

Yeah. Damn. I feel like M might And all I know is it's not X. X did not do that. Yeah. Dang. I feel like M might be it. Because you look at an M and that just feels like a mmm. Like a mmm. I feel like M is definitely not it. Because it's not that in the Cyrillic alphabet. It's not?

I don't think so. Man, I could never look at an M and think like tuh. Or something like that. Like it's mmm. It's always that because also that surprises big uh big sif listeners may remember the mayonnaise episode and remember that at like the end of it we found out that tom knows at least a little bit of russian like i don't want to put you on the spot and claim it's a lot or something but you you like

knew some cyrillic and i was like oh that's neat yeah i took the i took russian in high school so i remember the alphabet do you know how to say nunchucks it's nunchucks nunchucks is the same and it's both spelled the same and said the same in every language it's the one word that transcends all all human culture is nunchucks oh i mean that does make babies are more knowing it um yeah makes babies are more knowing it um yeah yeah nunchucks were invented before fire but uh the the the key change for our alphabet that we use to do english today is that the ancient greeks borrowed the phoenician alphabet and so the ancient greeks already spoke a greek language and they had had some previous writing systems. But around 800 BC, the Greeks took it. David Sachs says this was a huge leap. He says that ancient Greek and Phoenician were about as similar as modern English and modern Arabic are today,

just completely different backgrounds and sounds and situations. But the Greeks take the Phoenician letters, shoehorn their entire language into it. And also the resulting alphabet had 24 letters and was used to record stuff like Homer's Iliad and Homer's Odyssey. That's way more efficient. That's exactly two letters more efficient than ours, right? Yeah. So we're doing it wrong. Uh, Dave, I have, I, I i i nunchucks i have to apologize to you uh uh m is is m in the Cyrillic alphabet i was thinking of n n in the Cyrillic alphabet looks like an h oh oh boy and backwards n is an e oh no depending on whether or not there's a little accent above it it can be a different kind of e but But anyway, we can continue.

I mean, that's fine. Yeah. So we've got the Greeks take Phoenician letters, and then they, from there, do some of their own colonizing, and Greek people colonized what's now Sicily and southern Italy. And so they spread the Greek version of theoenician alphabet to the etruscan civilization in northern italy the etruscans shoved their language into it and then the romans took that alphabet from the etruscans and shoved their latin language into that what is it about this alphabet where everybody's just like yeah i get it because i don't want to invent an alphabet. Right. Like, yeah, like all the work's already been done.

Yeah. If someone else has an alphabet, it's just, yeah, let's grab that. And like, if, yeah, if our words are slightly different, we'll, we'll add a few letters in there. And if we need it, like, I don't know. It's like, it's like when students like, just like plagiarize Wikipedia. I get it. Yeah.

You change a couple of words. Yeah. But mostly. I wonder, numerals must be like a similar, similar story then. Mm-hmm. like just like plagiarize wikipedia i get it yeah you change a couple of words yeah but mostly i wonder numerals must be like a similar similar story then because we all just use the same numerals right arabic numerals have definitely for one reason or another just been determined to be super useful right they're just the correct ones like not everyone uses them but but they're super super super common and i think especially with technology requiring you to kind of line up on numbers yeah oh for sure as things get more global in general like there's just certain things we have to that was the whole principle behind

like the latin name of things but like that's not useful anymore but i get this with language is that like i i wouldn't if people tell me like all right this is your alphabet and this is how you say it i'm not gonna fight them i'll say okay cool i'll learn that like i don't know it it's easier that way i get it i'm sorry i'm still thinking about giving everything latin names that's like the real direct xbox of yeah oh yeah of academia surely we will all speak latin so let's just make sure this will never outlive its usefulness it really is yeah google glass surely everybody will like this like it's sort of an older style of education in Britain and America and Canada. But, like, I feel like learning Latin was the having to update plugins.

Like, I have to do more of this again. Again? Why? Can't I just live? Like, come on. Right? Can't I just exist? Yeah.

Well, it was a requirement in, like, seventh grade in my school. And then the next year we got to take whatever language we want. So like their logic was, well, Latin's the building block to so many languages. And then, of course, I took Russian. So it was like, this is useless. Well, not that. Except that. Yeah.

Yeah. Pretty separate. Yeah. It's a building block to some languages. Not all of them. Norfolk Collegiate High School. Oh, way to call them out. Hell yeah, I did.

Dang. So I shouldn't go there? Is that right? No, you definitely shouldn't go there. They know how I feel. So that's the evolution, and very separate from Cyrillic. But that's how we got from the Phoenicians to our Latin alphabet. Because, you know, then the Romans spread it across their empire, including England and Wales.

And so it got there. But within that process, the shape and the sound kind of separately happened. that process, the shape and the sound kind of separately happened because the Greeks had a letter that they took from the Phoenicians that looks like our letter X, but the name of it sounds like Chi. It's usually spelled C-H-I in Latin alphabet. And so that was how they said that and used that. But when the Etruscans took it on, they said, okay, this letter is changing sounds completely. And so they started using it to represent the sound X, like the one we're used to and that influenced Latin. And so in English, then not only does the letter X kind of come along shape and sound wise separately, but that's part of why X sounds like a bunch of different things in English. Because if a word has Latin roots, X sounds a lot like that letter X most of the time. Like a great example is the word exact.

That sounds X-ish. But then in like Greek based words, it'll sound like something else. Like in xylophone or xenophobe or a lot of other Greek-based words, X is doing a different thing. Right. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. It also, like, it feels like a filler letter, too, so I don't mind. Where it's like you just have a sound and you're like, oh, we don't really have a, let's just put an X there.

Right. That'll, you know, that'll do the sound. It feels like X is one of those people that gets hired to do one job. That's really three jobs, you know? Yeah. That's exactly what company that's trying to cut corners on hiring. So like,

yeah, we'll just get one person for this. It's like, well, this is really two letters. Right. X is doing a lot of work. We just need the one letter.

Yeah. Yeah. Our, our, our language is, um, not great, is it? It's pretty tough. Yeah. The English language is very dumb.

Yeah. We're sort of flying by the seat of our pants here. Yeah. And another dumb language, Latin. Last thing about the letter X's background here is that if I'm reading my sources right, thing about the letter X's background here is that if I'm reading my sources right Romans were both using the letter X as a letter and using an X shape to be their number 10 if you know Roman numerals and X is a 10 yeah and so they were just that's why it all fell apart yeah the Roman yeah that bugs me to no end where it's like what if we make our letters also our numbers? And it's like, what if you don't? What if you take one moment to think up some new shapes and not confuse us? Sorry, go on, go on. I'm just very upset about those.

on that, like a less famous thing about Romans, because they're known for speaking Latin, is that kind of the whole eastern half of the empire and also a lot of the rich people spoke just as much Greek, if not more. Like Greek was the language of the east and the language of fancy people and a lot of administration and stuff. And so that meant a lot of Romans of that type were like using a latin letter x and a roman numeral x and then also still using the greek language and using that chi letter that looks like an x uh i think simultaneously in their lives all of the time yeah this is a problem yeah yeah this is the those dummies what were they doing real fools real fools the whole well the whole point of a letter is you shouldn't need clarification right you shouldn't read something and go okay so i have like six questions um which one is which one is that one which one is that one okay is that 10

or is that okay all right which one is that one like that's that defeats the purpose of language right it's so so just don't yeah i'm very upset i love that like movies were like married to using roman numerals to date their films it's just like guys let's stop being let's cut cut the just just use the real numbers yeah right at it like in in america we can only manage to use roman numerals in a couple incredibly specific contexts where the context clues will be very easy like if we tried to do more of that we'd fall apart and the romans just did this all the time it'd be chaos yeah and why do we do it? It doesn't save space. Like it's not like X, I, that's 11.

It's like, yeah, but you could also just write 11 and that'll take up the same amount of time. Like what are you doing? What is this? Yeah, that's one less stroke. It's an X, you got to do three. Or well, you got the two and then the one and it's like no you just do twice it's i don't know it's it's bonkers it was a mistake is my point yeah i feel like we all know this at this point yeah it's telling it's telling that and i'm

i i'm going to definitively say this uh i don't care whether or not it's true it's telling that the only two cultures that have used roman numerals are the roman empire in america yeah yeah is that really it and we use it as like for like novelty it feels like why do we do it i guess the british empire i think we kind of got it from them though it's all one thing yeah yeah yeah listen i said straight away that I didn't care whether or not what I was about to say was true. This isn't a show about facts. I made it very clear that what came out of my face next was very possibly not going to be accurate at all. But you're going to say it with confidence. But I'm going to say it with so much confidence. Listen, if you want people to start calling you nunchucks,

that's the kind of confidence you need to have. I was going to say, this is big new name energy. I like it. A new name's coming. I can feel it. Yeah. I'm going to get nunchucks tattooed on my chest. Yeah, man. I'm gonna get a nunchucks tattooed on my chest Yeah man Well there's just one other takeaway for the main episode

It's pretty quick dude, let's get into it Takeaway number two Using the letter X to shorten the word Christmas Is actually a long time Christian tradition I always assumed it was like modern and lazy. It actually goes back a ways. Oh, wow. It does feel like modern and modern and like 50s modern.

Yeah. I feel like I actually knew this at one point from like, I don't know, some Dan Brown book or something like that. Like it feels like it'd be in one of those. Like I know I knew this at one point but please explain it it would be really funny if dan brown was my i would love that uh and here he is like tom hanks in a blazer and a real serious face is like with half inch long hair extensions. Oh, God.

Humongous, right? Woven into his head. Yeah, distracting. Yeah. Yes. So we got a, yeah, we're talking about Xmas, which I don't know if it's just the US, but it's a common shortening of the word Christmas. And the key sources here are a Snopes piece by David Mickelson and a Vox.com piece by Brandon Ambrosino. And Snopes kind of runs down the myths about this word X-mas.

They say one myth is that it was like concocted by secular people and atheist people to remove Christ from Christmas, you know. That's not what's going going on another myth is that the letter x is being used by christians because like an x resembles a cross and so it still has impact that way but that's not true either that's not where it comes from no because it doesn't look like a cross at all i don't know what they're talking about it looks like a cross that fell over i mean it looks like a cross if you're like british and you're talking about knots and crosses, but like, that's, no. Right. Is the real reason because Jesus was straight edge? Oh.

Is that it? Jesus was CM Punk? Yeah. All comes back to wrestling, folks. Yeah. So, yeah. Oh my God, does it mean extreme mess? Please tell me it means extreme mess.

Oh, man. Was Jesus eating nachos? Right. Wearing Oakley. Nacho cheese. Doritos. Wearing Oakley wraparounds. Yeah, because Jesus spins a chair around backwards and then sits in it.

And everyone took that to be really meaningful and powerful, yeah uh it's pretty extreme myself included it's the most profound profound aspect of his teachings he was the cool teacher yeah that's right um no so uh the the origins of it are like i because i i really i think i even had a CCD teacher in Catholic upbragging, like, mention once, don't use Xmas. It's like an anti-Christian, too modern thing. But this goes all the way back to that Greek language and how they used X shapes that do not sound like the letter X. that do not sound like the letter X. Because in the Greek language, they have a very similar word for Christ. It is Christos. And when you write that in Greek, the first letter is chi. It's that X-shaped letter that doesn't sound like an X. It sounds like the start of Christos.

And so going way, way back, that shape was used as like, oh, this has something to do with shorthand for Jesus. And then also the second letter in Greek in Christos is a letter called rho, but it's shaped sort of like a Latin alphabet P. And so I sent you guys a picture of what became known as chi ro it's the the x shape and that sort of p shape mashed together into one symbol that became another like symbolic shorthand for christ in the early church and with early christians so no matter what it came down to everybody saying christmas that's too long to write like we just we want a shorter version like it's still that it's it's it's coming out of yeah out of the religion but it's still people being like christmas too long also cairo the symbol looks like one of the something you draw on your notebooks in middle school like

it looks kind of like that s awesome yeah it looks awesome that's what i'm saying but yeah it looks pretty sweet. Yeah. That is cool, though. I like that. And because the other part of its popularity was, I think, badass in general because it's military stuff. But it became known as the Cross of Constantine because according to legend in the 300s AD, the Christian Roman Emperor Constantine took that symbol, put it on everybody's stuff before a battle and then they won that won the battle and so it also has like a military vibe which which people found cool oh extreme yeah yeah it's extreme yeah that is pretty chill yeah no i i like the idea that he

he's like or like before the war he's like all right all right hang on hang on and he just like took the time to put his little brand on everybody. Brought his Sharpie out and just put it on everybody's stuff. Listen, he understood the importance of branding. He understood the importance of branding. But yeah, and so yeah, from that very old route. And it's like you said, Dave, it is still about shortening. And so if people have a problem with that general that general element, then that, okay, that

makes sense. But this is not a new thing. It's a thing that goes back, you know, up to 1700 years. Vox says there's examples of British periodicals using Xmas, also using the verb Xmasing in the 1800s. There's also a piece of writing from the year 1021 that uses XP MAS because they're using the entire cross of Constantine in the writing, but like trying to write a short version of Christmas with the whole thing in it.

That didn't work out at all. They added another syllable. Yeah. XP mas is weird. Yeah. You did it wrong. Yeah. i mean i it's not the longest word to just write so like i yeah i almost have a problem where i'm like just write just write it out i guess but i get it is people you know people got stuff to do yeah xmas and also yeah

xmas does look cool because it looks like x-Men. You know? Yeah. So that's neat. Yeah. It all comes back to that. The important function of X is to be cool. Right. So could X-Men be Christ-Men? Like, is that a translation? That's where their true power lies, Dave.

Yeah. Nunchucks. I mean. Chris Claremont. Chris Claremont Chris Claremont pretty close pretty close I love the idea of like a super Christian X-Men

oh yeah that'd be amazing trying to tell Magneto about their love of Christ they save the day and then they're like we have some booklets to pass out that's fine thanks Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. It's like an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

I've never watched it. Is he super Christian? Is that a thing? Oh, okay. I didn't know that either. But yeah, he'll chase people down with his just incredible hair and orange skin. And it'd be incredibly violent and crass when apprehending people. And then when he's got them in his car and he's taken them to jail,

he'll start talking to them about Jesus. It's pretty sweet. Okay. That's a wilder show than I expected. Wow. And I already thought it was a bounty hunter show. You know what I mean? Like, wow.

Every issue is a bounty hunter show. It is exactly as like wow it's every every inch of it it's a bounty hunter show it is exactly as trashy as you're expecting it just has this additional element of he will also talk to people about jesus that's like his finisher move exactly yeah that's his tombstone pile driver man now i'm thinking about austin 316 is christianity just in everything is it everywhere i think it's everywhere cool it's great it permeates all of us you know i think yeah i think it's everywhere yeah cool great well while you're doing it you can say xmas it goes way back it does yeah not a problem so that means the x the the theme song to the x-men animated series is a christmas carol yeah i don't see why why not i want carolers to show up yes show up at the door

just like no no no no no no no no no no no that would be. I'd give them all the cookies and milk. I'd give them everything in my house. Yeah. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman for getting extreme about having fun with this. 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 mathematical variable x and the very strange mathematical field it came from. and the very strange mathematical field it came from. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of six dozen other bonus shows,

and to back this entire podcast operation. Not for nothing, there's also a live episode on Saturday, and you have to be a patron to be able to attend. But then once you are a patron, free, you're in. Awesome. And thank you for exploring the letter X with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the letter X got its shape and its sound from separate parts of a Mediterranean alphabet evolution. Takeaway number two, using the letter X to shorten the word Christmas is a longtime Christian tradition. And then a humongous stats and numbers section this week,

everything from how the X-Men got popular to how often you'll find X's in your English. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman are the two heads of a fantastic podcast network and streaming channel that is called Gamefully Unemployed. It's also home to the show Fox Mulder is a Maniac, which if you're an X-Files person is the best show you could possibly hear. You can also find Tom Ryman's writing at Collider.com and at 1-900-HOT-DOG. David Bell's writing at the Some More News YouTube channel and also his film scripts. Incredible stuff all the time from both these guys.

Please check it out. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. It's really two key books. I got to read a lot of neat books this week. And one of them is called Language Visible, Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z, and that is by classic scholar David Sachs. And another book called The Letter and the Cosmos, that is by Lawrence DeLuz, who is a languages and literatures professor at the University of Western Ontario. Plus tons of great internet sources this week, in particular a piece from Box.com by Brandon Ambrosino. 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. I also hope you love the live show on Saturday, the first one ever because you are a patron, you get in for free.

You're gonna love it. And of course, 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.