So... Alright - What's named after who?

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Geoff dives into how we named our states, and who we named them after. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It was free with the Tim's Rewards points. I think I just stole it. I'm a donut stealer. Earn points so fast, it'll seem too good to be true. Plus, join Tim's Rewards today and get enough points for a free donut, drink, or timbits. With 800 points after registration, activation, and first purchase of a dollar or more, see the Tim's app for details at participating in restaurants in Canada for a limited time. So today. So today I want to do a little dive into a few states and how they got their names.

I was thinking briefly we would just do all 50 states. But that seems like it's going to turn into a book report really quickly as opposed to some passively interesting facts that you might throw around at a party. So I think we'll just do a few, maybe four or five. And then if it's interesting and fun and it produces entertaining results, then maybe in a future episode we'll do a few more. Going to stay off the emails today. I feel like I've been hitting the emails pretty hard and heavy lately. And boy, do I appreciate them and I encourage you to keep sending them. But I think today we'll give them a rest.

And let me catch my breath for a minute. Speaking of catching my breath, I did a bunch of homework in terms of watching television shows and stuff that you guys want to. me to do. One of my self-imposed homeworks was to watch the movie Death Valley. It is a 1981

I guess horror, not even really horror, suspense, thriller type film that was directed by a guy named Dick Richards and it stars in his very first theatrical performance, a young Peter Billingsley,

even younger than he was in a Christmas story, which obviously he had to be, because this was his first film. He's dressed as a little cowboy through the entire film. And I got to tell you, a little cowboy Peter Billingsley is about the cutest thing you will ever see. It's got a ton of people in it you're going to recognize. Paul Lamont, Catherine Hicks,

these are 70s and 80s names, but they are people that you are going to recognize when you see them. There is sort of a big, maybe midway through the movie. There's a surprise. I won't spoil it yet. We'll go through the film a little bit first. Anyway, here is my review. it is about a father

and it starts by the way with a father and son just going like walking around New York City having just like a day together you know just like not even sightseeing because clearly they live there

but they're just like on a day or around it's like a Saturday hanging out with your kid at the park kind of thing and you watch them I swear to God it felt like real time

they start in the morning and they're done at night and it felt like it couldn't have been longer than three minutes But it's such a long time for a mellow musiced intro montage to, I guess, show the relationship between the dad and the kid. But it feels like if it's a minute, it's a year fucking long.

It is such an odd way to start the film. And you're just going like, how are they still feeding ducks? How can they still be at the Flatiron Building? Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. Do something. It admittedly threw me for a loop right out the gate. I was kind of mystified by that choice because it just fucking drags.

But right after that, you get to the point, the kid doesn't want to go. He's about to get on a plane. Go visit his mom and her new boyfriend in Death Valley because his parents got divorced. Dad's actually the bad guy from the lost boys. You think he's the mom's love interest, but then he is actually the head vampire. Spoilers, if you've never seen that film. Anyway, he's the dad. He's great.

You've seen him in a ton of things. his name is Edward Herman. He's a great character actor. Anyway, so he gets on the plane. He gets off. He sees his mom and her new boyfriend, who's this kind of hokey, hunky, beefy cowboy dude. And you get the impression that his mom and the cowboy dude knew each other in high school. Maybe now that his parents are divorced, the mom has rekindled a relationship with the hunky dude. She has some snide comments about how his dad isn't a real man or something. And the cowboy kind of is. Dad's like a professor or a writer or something.

I don't know. You can, I'm not trying to get into their family trauma. Regardless, he seems like a well-meaning enough, if not dopey kind of dude. And so the mom, the boyfriend, and young Peter Billingsley embark on a vacation through Death Valley, which is I guess where the mom and the boyfriend are from or at least grew up

or somewhere near that. And they end up in like a little cowpoke cowboy town at some point. And I feel like that's the majority of the movie. But before they get there, they're just kind of driving around and exploring and Peter Billingsley ends up in a trailer where a serial killer has just killed a few victims and picks up a little piece of like a little choshky off the ground and then escapes without the serial killer realizing but the serial killer now knows that he knows and so the serial killer starts trying to find him

and then hunts them the family and they end up at the little fake western towns. and Peter Billingsley thinks he's like an actor in the town who's pretending to be a cowboy chasing him. And so he's clueless to the whole thing while the guy's really trying to kill him. And it continues on. And there's a big surprise at the end that you see coming from about 50 miles away, honestly. The one surprise I didn't see coming that was the most exciting to me in the whole film, I think, is that about halfway through it, the sheriff shows up and the sheriff is played by none other. than Wilford fucking Brimley.

And Wilford Brimley in 1981 is looking as slim as I have ever seen Wilford Brimley. Look, he actually looks like a sheriff. He looks so young and full of life in it. And he's not full of life for long because he gets waxed pretty early by the serial killer. I think. I think he died. Who can remember? I'm pretty sure he dies.

Anyway, good guys win. I won't spoil the big, twist and reveal at the end, although you, uh, it won't need. I, you're going to spoil it yourself in about eight seconds. She'll figure it out. However, I give it on a scale of one to ten, how do I rate this movie that was kind of looming out there in so all right land for a while based on this whole death valley journey we are on? And I feel like it's kind of considered like maybe the apex mountain of the death valley journey. It is, is rated on IMDB at 5.5 out of 10 stars.

Let's see what Rotten Tomatoes says. You know, it's a website I don't ever think to go to. And then I heard someone the other day said, Rotten Tomatoes is over now. You can't trust it anymore. And I don't know what that means or why that is. But let's see. Death Valley.

Yeah, this one listed in 1982 movie, 81 or 82. Okay. It has a rating on Rotten Tomatoes that's much worse. 27%. I'm going to give it a 6.1 out of 10 for the charm of seeing a little cowboy Peter Billingsley

and there are some there's a couple of scenes that are a little intense and interesting and I don't know, there's some there's some nice cinematography in it so I'm going to give it, yeah, whatever I said, six point whatever I just said. And I don't know that I recommend you see it

but if you're a Billingsley stand, you gotta start there. You gotta start there. I'm glad that I've now seen it. The only thing I have left to do is to read the Death Valley book, which is in my car. I keep forgetting to take it out. I don't have to get around to that at some point. My book, my books to read stack is getting longer by the fucking hour. It feels like, I gotta stop buying books. I don't know how I do it. It's like, it's like my brain tricks me and it buys books before I realize I've bought books and then books show up and I'm like, what are these? And my brain's like, oh, I forgot to tell you, I, uh, I bought those. I didn't mention it, but I bought a couple of books yesterday. And it's like, I, I, clue me in. I can tell you, like, stop. We don't have enough space. We can't read. I'll die before I read the books I've already purchased. Like, let's pump our fucking breaks. I'm buying books, but subconscious me feels differently. Moving along from Death Valley, I continue to inch closer to doing the break show again over at Regulation. That's my main gig. And The Break Show was a show I did for a couple of years where I opened up baseball cards. It was kind of the production expression of my fandom. And it died when Rooster Teeth died. Been fully intending to bring it back. It's just on the list of priorities and things that I had to get done first. It was pretty far down. But it wasn't so far down that we couldn't get to it because we have. And it is right around the corner. I'm very excited about it. In

preparation for it, I've been going through my collection at home and trying to organize and find stuff. I've been, when rooster teeth went under, I just grabbed, I basically took everything out of the fuckface office and just crammed it into my closet, right? Just so I could have control over it and have somewhere to put it. And I've been slowly moving it over to the new office. And yesterday, I just kind of poured through what was left. Found a bunch of stuff. I found Andrew's original Gerplor drawing. I found the remote control that Gavin smashed in his hands and spread glass everywhere and a bunch other stuff. And in the process of that, I've been getting rid of baseball cards. I'm trying to get rid of clutter as I'm moving stuff out to the office from my home office. I'm seeing how much

stuff I just had crammed in and it's making space and I'm wanting to clean it up. And as I clean up stuff, I see stuff I don't want anymore and stuff I don't need. And the end result is I decided to go through every card I own and get rid of everything I know I don't want. I just like hold on to stuff that I may, even if there's only like a 30% chance I want to keep that. But all the stuff that I'm like 100% sure of, 90% sure of I don't want. Just put it in a pile and get rid of it. I have now assembled 42 long boxes of cards, mostly commons, obviously, which I think is somewhere in the 32,000 card range, probably. So if you know someone who wants 32,000 cards in Austin, be it a collector, a kid who's looking to get started, that's a hell of a stuff.

start a hospital I can donate to. I poked around a lot about a year ago and I couldn't find anyone locally who would take cards. I found a lot of places who said they took cards and then when I tried, they said, well, we're not accepting any right now. So if you know of any place that is accepting cards, be in a children's hospital or a shelter or a friend of a friend, whoever, I don't know. If you're in Austin and you want some of these cards, let me know. I'm happy to meet you at a Walmart parking lot and dump a couple of boxes on you. I got to get this stuff out of my house and out of my life. And I got to do it ASAP. And I don't want to throw it in a dumpster. That seems like such a waste. But in the process, I've had so much fun going through and seeing

everything I have and starting the process of further organizing it and categorizing it and just be really just trying to make space so that I can do that with what I have left. And get ready for the break show, find the old product. We still need to open, et cetera, et cetera. I feel like I'm vomiting words now, but I'm really into cards right now, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. I've been buying singles on eBay a lot. I just got a 1929 Trist Speaker tobacco card. He is one of the hundred greatest players of all time. It is the oldest, second oldest card I own, oldest baseball card I own. I own an Alan and Ginter state card from the 1800s that I pulled as a one-of-one from a got a blaster, I think, actually.

But this is the oldest baseball card, and for my collection of the 100 greatest players of all time, it gets me a little bit closer. In addition to that, I recently bought a PSA 2, 1954 Jackie Robinson. It is in pretty rough shape, but it was still fairly pricey, and it, I think, is my, next to my Zimmers, because I got a bunch of, I got a bunch of vintage Zimmer. it is, I think, my favorite baseball card right now. It is just beautiful. I'm so jazzed and excited to have Jackie Robinson in my personal collection. I do have a National Treasures patch card. I got a couple of years ago from a Christmas present. Emily got me and I pulled it, but, you know, it's really nice and it's a patch card and I think it's numbered to maybe even 50, 25 or 50, and it's game worn, but it's still unlicensed. And I want for my collection to have actual vintage cards. So I'm really

jazzed to have the 54 Jackie Robinson, even if it is a miscut PSA2. But I was in Chicago recently for a weekend. And I was, I drove around Chicago and Detroit for a little bit. You know, Emily and I were doing some house hunting, not looking in Chicago. That's just where we landed and we were spending a day or two there. And I, uh, I tried to go to a Cubs game. Got rained out. Unfortunately, but right outside of Wrigley Field is Tom Brady's baseball card shop. And I don't know if you knew that Tom Brady had a sports card store, but he does. And it's right there, like right outside Wrigley Field. You can see it.

I'd been reading about it. I'd seen a bunch of TikToks of people talking about it and talking very highly about it and how good it is. I don't know if you go to baseball card shops or sports cards shops or TCG shops or whatever. I go every chance I get when I see one available. And I would say, and I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I would say like about nine and a half out of ten times, I leave disappointed. Inventory is overpriced, which I get. You know, it's hard to make a living in this industry. Or they're just like I can never find what I'm looking for. And I don't feel like I'm looking for stuff that's that hard to find. But if you just want like bog standard tops hobby to rip, it's hard to get in 2025. Current years especially, let alone previous years, or I'm looking for singles and, you know, that's a crap shoot that they're going to have a vintage single you want. But most of the time I leave a card shop disappointed and I'm kind of miffed by the people that work there and always a little disappointed at just their attitude. I feel like

people that work at card shops and tattoo parlors tend to more often than not have off-putting attitudes that bum me out because I want to enjoy and frequent those places a lot and I just I get rubbed the wrong way more often than not. However, Tom Brady Sports card store was fucking awesome. I didn't buy anything. There were a few things there that I needed and that I wanted, but they were a little too pricey for me. Not like he's overcharging. They were just like higher graded PSAs than I'm willing to pay for in the vintage world, you know? I'm a PSA 1 to 4 kind of guy. Five, if I'm feeling lucky and it's somebody, you know, in the 90s on the top 100 list, maybe, somebody 88, 89. I'm not plunking down any amount of money for a PSA 4 or 5, like Mickey Mantle for instance.

But regardless, it was clean, it was very small. I didn't go into the little area in the back that was like a museum because it was a bit of a line. But it was really nice and the people that worked there were friendly and I ultimately decided not to buy product because I was traveling and I don't want to have to cart it around. But I could have. There was some stuff there that I would have ripped and I don't know, just calling it out because it's pretty rare that you see a card shop that you really like out the gate. I will say I am a huge fan of card traders of Austin, my local card shop, no shade in the Austin card collecting scene. Those guys are great, and I do enjoy frequenting their establishment. So when I'm talking about disappointing car shops, I'm not talking about them.

And apparently I'm not talking about Tom Brady. Oh, hi, buddy. Who's the best you are? I wish I could spend all day with you instead. Uh, Dave, you're huff mute. Hey, happens to the best of us. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories.

Be like goldfish. Pumpkin is here at Starbucks, and we're making it just the way you like. Handcrafted with real ingredients like our real pumpkin sauce and rich espresso, sprinkled with pumpkin spice. It's full of real flavors you'll keep coming back for. Made just for you at Starbucks. I learned something the other day that I think is weird. You know, Sylvania?

Like, I think of them as a light bulb manufacturer, but they do a lot of stuff. They make a lot of car parts, a lot of light-related car parts. They, like, they, they're the number one automotive lighting brand in the USA, I guess, had light bulbs, that kind of shit. This is nothing to do with them,

except that their name, Sylvania. I never thought about what it meant. But the other day, I was reading about the origin of the state name Pennsylvania. And it literally means it's named after a guy named after a guy named PIN. And Sylvania is, it's Latin for woods or land with woods, I guess, essentially. So I was reading about how the state Pennsylvania got its name. And apparently there was this dude William Pinn who was given the land. that comprises the state of Pennsylvania by King Charles

the second in 1681, I believe. The Sylvania suffix was used because it's derived, like I said, from the Latin word for forest, which is Silva. And so Pennsylvania literally translates to Pins Woods or Pins Forest. Now, what does that have to do with Sylvania, the light bulb brand?

Nothing. It's just the only time I'd ever heard the word Sylvania before. And I don't know why a light bulb brand, is named after a forest. That seems strange to me. Maybe we could look into that. But first, I want to know who the fuck William Penn is, right? Like, why does he get a state named after him?

And who else has states named after him? Obviously, the state of Washington, I believe. We'll get into that, though. William Penn was an English writer, theologian. Man, they were always theologians, weren't they? Religious thinker and influential Quaker. You know, okay, I've read a little bit about the Quakers in the past, and I got to be honest with you. They seem like, all right, people to me.

If I were going to be a religious person, I think I could do worse than being a Quaker. Now, I'm probably going to get a bunch of emails to Eric at Jeffsposs.com from people from the Quaker community who are like, we don't want you, or they're going to say like, oh, it's not what you think it is, it's terrible,

or you're crazy if you want to be a... I'm not saying I want to. I'm just saying, out of all the flavors of religion I've read, Quaker seems to be pretty inoffensive in the grand scheme of things. Okay, he founded the province of Pennsylvania during the British colonial era, an advocate of democracy, hell yeah,

and religious freedom, Penn was known for his amicable relations and successful treaties with the Lenape, or Lanap, how do I, I don't know, let me be respectful here. Le nape, Le nape, Le nape, people. Okay, so treaties with the lay napee people, Native Americans who had resided in present-day Pennsylvania prior to European settlements there. Cana worms there. In 1681, King Charles. Charles II, granted an area of land corresponding to the present-day United States of Pennsylvania and Delaware to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father. He's like, listen, we owe your dad some debt. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take somebody else's land, doesn't belong to us, and we're just going to give it to you, and now we're going to say, this belongs to you. And then that'll, you know, debt's cleared. his father was the admiral and politician Sir William Penn the following year Penn left England and sailed up Delaware Bay

and the Delaware River where he founded Philadelphia. Okay, I apologize. I don't want to get too dry here. So William Penn was a theologian, religious thinker, Quaker, and a writer who was apparently a very successful and amicable person was known for being friendly with Native Americans, at least according to the people that wrote this

who were probably not Native Americans, and he was given the land of Pennsylvania that he named My Forest, essentially. Oh, and he was pro-democracy and religious freedom, so that's cool. Oh, wow, that dude was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London because of his Quaker faith. He wrote a book, No Cross, No Crown,

published in 1669, And it's become a classic of Christian theological literature. No cross, no crown. Wow. He exhorts the spirit of primitive Christianity. What the fuck is that? Restorationism, also known as Christian primitivism, is a religious perspective according to which early beliefs and practices

of the following of Jesus were either lost, adulterated after his death, and required a restoration. Okay, okay, all right, I see that. So he's like, hey, listen. Jesus had some cool ideas and since then a bunch of other people threw their shit in

and maybe we don't listen to them as much as we go back to the original Jesus ideas and maybe we'll primitively re-Christian I guess. Okay, well I don't want to get all up into religion here

but that is interesting so that is how I wonder now clearly in state history people from Pennsylvania chime in here please send me an email Eric at justboss.com

I assume you knew this I assume you learned this in your like Pennsylvania history class in the sixth grade or whatever year you take your state history. But this is, I think, news to me. You ever wonder how much stuff you've learned and forgotten in your life? Like if you could go back and access it, would you be amazed at all the shit you have forgotten that you once knew that you just couldn't be bothered to fucking keep in your brain? I think it'd be so depressing.

The second of our five states today is going to be the state of Rhode Island. They join the United States, May 29th, 1790. It is the 13th state to join the United States. Capital is Providence and has a minuscule population of 1,061,712. Do you know where Rhode Island got its name? It harkens back to the old world. The first mention of Rhode Island in writing was by an Italian economy. explorer named Giovanni de Verrazano in the early 16th century, who referred to an island

near the mouth of the Narragansett Bay that he compared to the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. So Rhode Island is named after the island of Rhodes. No shit. Still, others connect the name to the 17th century Dutch explorer, Adrian Block, who called it Rootet Island, meaning red island because of its red clay. Oh, so we don't know. where did okay after a little bit of poking around

on the internet it seems there is no clear consensus on which of those two scenarios created the name Rhode Island

I will say I never thought about the idea that Rhode Island was named Rhode Island but it is a part of

the contiguous United States it is in fact not an island that never crossed my mind until just this moment

the earliest documented use of the name Rhode Island was in 1637 by a dude name Roger Williams. The name was officially applied to the island in 1644 with these words. Aquithneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rhodes, or Rhode Island. The name Isle of Rhodes is used in a legal document as late as 1646,

and Dutch maps in the 1650s have it called Red Island, or Root Island. Island, as the Dutch say. So we know Pennsylvania, we know Rhode Island. Who's next? You know, it's interesting, we don't think about it, but how much of our past is named after British people. New York, the Empire State, was named after the Duke of York and Albany,

the brothers of King Charles II in 1664. There'd been a settlement called York in England since before the Romans invaded England. The word York comes from the Latin word for city. So New York translated literally just means new city, and it is, of course, named after some old British dude, which pairs well with Virginia. The state named after England's Queen Elizabeth I.

She was known as the Virgin Queen. The lands in North America claimed by England and the 1600s were called Virginia after her. Queen Elizabeth I granted Walter Raleigh, the chartered to create a colony there? I guess that's why we have a Raleigh and a Raleigh, Durham. Interesting.

What do you guys know about Vermont? We're hanging out at the end of the alphabet today for some reason. I'm not intending to. It's just where we found ourselves. Vermont. It became a state March 4th, 1791. It was the 14th state to join.

Capitals Montpiler. Has a population of only 623,960. The state of Vermont has a population less than half the size of Austin. Apparently French explorer Samuel de Champlain called the stunning green mountains of Vermont Verdmont, which is French for Green Mountain. So Vermont's just French for Green Mountain.

Easy peasy. Let's go up the alphabet a little bit, shall we? How about... Now, here's a good one that has nothing to do with British people. Oklahoma joined the United States in 1907 as the 46th state of our union that was on November 16th of that year. Capital is Oklahoma City. Population 3,940,521. That's a population. The sooner state's name comes from the Choctaw people's words, Oklahoma, which roughly means red people or red persons. There you go.

Oklahoma, straight to the point, named by the people who indigenously live there. Not some fucking British person. All right, that'll be our five. I, I feel I feel like if I went any longer in that, it would start to get boring if it didn't already. If you want me to do more of those in the future, I was having a genuinely good time, and I would like to explore those further. Still don't know why Sylvania, a light bulb company, named itself after a Latin forest. Maybe because, like with Sylvania, you can see the forest through the trees with their bright lights or something really convoluted like that.

I'm going to guess that's not the case at all. Have you guys watched Thursday Murder Club on Netflix? I got it into my head. It was a fucking television show that Spielberg did like an eight episode TV show and I got like his version of like only murders in the building, right? I was 35 minutes into that show and thinking when is this episode going to wrap up

when I paused it and realized it's a two and a half hour movie. It's just a fucking movie. I haven't picked it back up again, but I was enjoying it. I just felt a little duped. And the only person that really duped me there was me and my own stupidity. so I don't know why I would take it out on Amble and entertainment, but regardless, I've been watching Project Runway.

I mentioned that last week, I think, and I've been a little on the fence about this season. I love Christian, and I'm so happy to have Heidi back, and it's like the recipe for everything I want out of the show, and it just hasn't hit with me yet. I've been a little confused by the editing and kind of the way they're progressing the stories, but I think we're six or seven episodes, in now, and I feel like the show has found its footing, and I'm feeling a lot better about it,

and I'm enjoying it a lot more. I still don't know if I like it as much as every previous iteration of the show, but I'll be splitting hairs here. I'm just incredibly happy to have Project Runway back in my life. I missed it for the time that it was gone, and I have followed it through every twist and turn that franchise has taken, and I will continue to do so regardless. So it's pointless for me to even critique it because I'm still going to watch it. It doesn't matter. Next week I want to talk about a couple of movies. I'm really enjoying this movie homework thing where I have to go in and then just dive into a genre or subgenre of stuff and then come back and report on it to you guys. I think maybe for next week I found this list of essential Indiana

Jones ripoff films from the 80s and I'd only seen maybe three of the roughly 10. So I might watch all of those and do like an Indiana Jones ripoff episode soon. There's also a horror movie I really want to watch and kind of report back on. I started watching the Apple TV show Invasion. I have no idea if that's a new show or an old show, if it's currently airing or what. I just saw it in my feed and I started watching the first episode last night and I had to turn it off because I was watching it in bed and it was too scary. I made it a little over halfway through the first episode before I had to throw in the towel so I could get some sleep and not piss my pants. So if you've seen that show

Let me know if you think it's worth continuing with Kind of on the fence about it But I think I probably will I'm kind of in a horror mood right now Because of Alien Earth Which continues to be The best fucking show on television And the best addition to an intellectual property

I have seen in quite some time I cannot recommend it more forcefully than I am It is so fantastic You should absolutely watch it if you get a chance That's a lot of TV talk for a day maybe we should do a song of the episode and then I should release you back into the world I think today we're going to do

I don't know why I've just been on an Elton John kick lately I know I do know why because he's awesome and I love him and I'm always kind of coming going into or coming off of an Elton John kick it feels like we're going to do all the girls love Alice today that has been stuck in my head for about a week now give it a listen I think it's an underrated Elton John classic and don't forget

listen to the regulation podcast Listen to the Clutch My Pearls podcast. Check me out on Twitch at twitch.tv. TV slash fake Jeff. Don't forget, if you don't make my live Twitch streams, that's okay. I'm archiving them now and putting them on YouTube. Look up fake Jeff or fakey Jeffy on YouTube and you can see all of my Twitch streams. There's something like 80 hours of content on there already. It's building up quickly. I am on Cameo at Jeff L. Ramsey, but most importantly, I am mere seconds away from being in my kitchen. air-frying, a frozen burrito. I'll talk to you guys next time. All right.