Stuff You Should Know - How Family Crests Work

Episode Date: September 22, 2011

After 800 years of creating coats and crests, some meaning has been lost to history, but much has been retained and is still in use. Find out what a mullet on field argent with stags rampant means in this Olde English episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know, the podcast, as I just welcomed you to. Yep, henceforth. Yeah, I'm not quite as sick, Chuck. That's good. You've recouped?

Yeah, I've been on this orange lemon grapefruit juice cleanse, and it's helped quite a bit. Helped heal you, you think? I think so, yeah. I mean, it's just like a jam-packed dose of vitamin C every day, something on the order of like 9000 milligrams, I think. Wow. Really? It could be up there. I've been drinking a lot of vitamin C, but it has helped. I strongly recommend it. Good. Arden's Garden. I take a lot of vitamin C anyway. Yeah, like the recommended amount. B's awesome, too. You know Margaret Thatcher took a B12 shot to her bomb every day? Yeah, that's popular. Yeah. So you want to talk family crests?

Yeah. Oh, okay. Have you just been waiting for me to ask that? Typically, you intro the show somehow, and don't just stare at me. Have you – do you have a family crest? Yeah, I mean, I've got a – you know, they're all different, but there is a Bryant shield, and I looked up a bunch of them, and they're pretty similar, so. Okay. It's probably something like that, as do you. So if you contacted a service, they would probably be like, here you go. Give us $150. Here's your family crest. Go do whatever you want with it.

Yeah. And now that we've researched this article, Chuck, we could be like, Huxer. Scammer. Are they scammers? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say that these services are all scams, but there's a very high degree of potential that these services are all scams. Do you want to know why? Yes. Well, let me tell you why. Whether you want to hear it or not, Chuck, I'm going to give you the straight facts. The family crest is so individualized and has been so personalized over the last eight centuries that there's virtually no way for you to find the family crest that you rightfully own. Right.

So anybody at the mall or whatever is probably taking you for something of a right. Do they have people at the mall? They really do. I've never seen that. Yeah. They have kiosks at the mall that, you know, I'm sure you ran across it online. It's lousy. Like it's a kind of a subservice of genealogy sites like find your family crest or whatever. Maybe I don't go to malls. That's a problem. That is a problem. I would have to go into a mall to see a mall kiosk.

This is why the economic stimulus didn't work. You don't go to malls, Chuck. I'd buy things online. So Chuck, this is not to say that there is no way to possibly find a family crest that you're linked to or that it just simply doesn't exist. It's just that most likely the one you're going to get back for a hundred bucks online is not necessarily legitimate. There are bona fide sources. The very people who keep authority over these things that can help you. And we'll talk about them in a minute. But this article turned out to be cooler than I expected. Yeah. I'm nothing about this.

Same here. And now I know a lot about it. Same here. And that's kind of how it should be. Well, let's talk about the origin of family crests, right? Well, first, let's talk about the difference. On Twitter last night, I asked people if they had any questions about family crests. And the number one question was definitely, what's the difference between a family crest and a coat of arms?

Yeah, there's really no difference these days. I think these days, yes. Pretty interchangeable. It is. But if you go back further and further into history, I found three explanations for the difference. Let's hear. So one is that the coat of arms was actually a coat for your armor. And it basically was a cloth tunic that had your crest on it to keep your armor from heating up in the sun.

Okay. That's one. Another one was that the crest is the actual crest on top of your larger coat of arms. That's true. Okay. That's like the College of Arms definition or distinction, right? I don't know. And then the third one is that the crest belongs to a family while a coat of arms is an individual's.

Oh, I didn't see that. So those are possibly the three differences. Gotcha. But where did they come from? Well, they come from a long time ago. Originally in medieval times in the mid-12th century, they were used to distinguish knights on the battlefield. Once they were all covered with armor, they all looked alike. And then from that, I think they evolved to eventually putting them on the actual shield that they used as protection as just sort of a feather in their cap slash being able

to know the enemy from one another. I think the cap with the feather is a crest. It is, actually. Then eventually priests, well, then it kind of filtered down to people that worked with knights and noblemen like Pages and Squires. And then eventually priests started using them. And then eventually commoners and poor people, peasants in the 13th century said, you know what, I want to use a crest.

Yeah. Apparently until the Middle Ages, most of the peasantry didn't have surnames. So they eventually started taking the surnames of the people who, well, they're feudal lords. That's how a lot of people are linked to prominent families that had family crests. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I did not know that. And then after jousting in tournaments came about, the crests became even more important because that was how your page would announce you, your herald would announce you. Sorry.

Yeah, heraldry. That's what all this is really called under the big umbrella name. Yeah. It's all heraldry. It's the crest. It's the design of them. It's the registry of them. It's the way you announced it. Like when you were at a joust, your herald would say like, here is Archduke Ferdinand atop his mighty steed. He's ready to crack some skulls.

And his crest is as follows. And then they would describe what was on the crest, on the coat of arms, sorry. And that's called blazing. Yeah. Well, we'll get into blazing in a minute. That's a whole different thing. Yeah, well, it basically became like your corporate logo for your family. And they would put it on everything from swords and banners in your house to burning it into bread for special dinners.

That was neat. I would think so. Yeah. I couldn't find any examples of that. I don't think that photography in the Middle Ages, but I'd like to see that. You can get little brands for your barbecue to sear into steak with like your initials now. That's so stupid. It's very cool.

There's nothing cool about that. There is a lot of things that is, but it's not cool. It is very cool. You can get anything you want and just brand it in the steak when you're done. And then eat it. Yeah. With your initials. Right.

It is cool. Are you from Texas? No. Okay. I bet people in Texas do that. Yeah. I'll bet those are big sellers in Texas. So you've got the family crest.

You have the coat of arms and we're going to use these interchangeably agreed. Yeah. Okay. From what I saw, the College of Arms that originated out of these heralds uses a coat of arms. The UK version of the United States. UK. The one in the United States is the American College of Heraldry, where in the UK it's the College of Arms.

Yeah. And those are the best sources on the internet for stuff like this, by the way. Yeah. But they cost you some coin. Yeah. But they just have good info period. And I think it's the legit info. There's a lot of other stuff floating around out there.

Right. So Chuck, the College of Arms, these heralds, they actually became part of the households of these royal families. And they all banded together and formed a corporation and was actually granted a charter in 1484, I think by Richard III, who said, you guys are now the College of Arms. And they've been around ever since, basically keeping track of arms, registering new arms, linking broken chain of title to people who are alive today. And they've been doing it nonstop since 1484.

Wow. Yeah. 365. They open on Christmas? No, they're open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. I think Monday through Thursday. Sounds like a good definition of what it's called. Yeah. But it's self-sufficient.

They subsist on funds they charge for this research. They don't exist on public funds, they say. Oh, OK. Yes. Well, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. So, Chuckers, how are these handed down? Well, it gets kind of complicated, but it's a man's world back then.

And they're generally passed down from male heir to male heir for the most part. And cadency, you talked about every individual, like siblings can add their own little mark to their shield or to their coat of arms. Right. And that's cadency, that's the little system they use for each person to have their own individual coat of arms. Right. So, you've got your father's coat of arms, and if you have up to nine sons, if you're a tenth son, you're in trouble. But I bet they have a system.

You can take your father's coat of arms as your own, but then you add a certain something. And depending on the order of birth, let's say you're the fifth son, you're going to add an amulet to it, which is a ring. An amulet is a ring? Yeah, amulet. That's what I found. What is an amulet?

An amulet is like, it's a watch that you swing in front of somebody and say, like, you're getting sleepy. I always get those too confused. An amulet, I think it has two ends. It's a ring. It's a ring, like a gold ring. So, you add that to a family crest, and you can be like, oh, this is the fifth son's family crest, right?

A third son is a mullet. I know, I saw that too. But when you can see very quickly, like if you're the third son of a fifth son, over the course of several generations, these crests are going to become different very quickly. And if you want to claim title to these things, you have to trace your line back to where this crest left off, right? Yeah, and you have to prove it each time too.

Yeah. I think it's a little hinky, I think, the further back you go probably. Yes. Well, that's one of the good things about the College of Arms is you go to them with a wheelbarrow full of money and your birth certificate, your father's birth certificate, if you can get your hands on it and say, here you go, call me when you're done, and they will do the research for you. Yeah, and the rules get really complicated with the ladies, don't they?

Yes, very. Let's hear that. Well, if you are a woman and you were born to a man who had a coat of arms, and by the way, if your family has a coat of arms, it's called an armidrus family. So if you're born into an armidrus family and you're the only child and you're a girl, you can inherit the coat of arms, the family coat of arms. But as a woman, it has to be modified. Like, for example, the shield in the coat of arms has to be changed into a lozenge,

which is a diamond shape, or an oval, because shields are thought of as a man's implement of war. They're not appropriate for women. Yeah, and this article too said the shield shape was important, but I didn't find that to be true. I found it to be rare that the shield shape matters. Yeah. And like in some cases it might, but usually it doesn't. Yeah, and I think also that it may have been important at one point in time,

but then its import was lost to the ages maybe. Gotcha. But if you see a circle or a diamond coat of arms, then you're going to say that's a woman's. But this coat of arms changes depending on the course of her life. Like if she marries a man who is also from an armidrus family, they're going to combine them together. Yeah. And there's strict details on how they're going to combine them.

Like she can take her coat of arms and put them next to his coat of arms on a larger shield. If she's married, she can be on a shield. Right. But hers needs to be sinister, which is the left, if you're wearing the coat of arms. Yeah. It'll be on your left. And then his is dexter, which is right. That's right.

Have you ever heard that before? Dexter for right? I haven't heard of any of this stuff until we researched this. So that's passing down the coat of arms. And in a lot of cases, these things were just kind of lost. They just stopped. And the point is now it's a backtrack to find where your coat of arms left off. And if you're allowed to inherit it, then you can pick it up and start over again.

Yeah. Well, Kate Middleton just had one done for the first time because she needed one to get married to Prince William. Wow. So she had one designed by, well, first she had to pass an eminence test, which basically means you got to prove you're important. She's like, I'm marrying this guy. Exactly.

So she passed that pretty quick. And she got Mr. Woodcock, Thomas Woodcock, designed her new crest, which was, as you can see here, it is a. Oh, that's nice. The diamond. And they asked for acorns. The Middletons did. So they got three acorns, one representing each of the children, Kate, Pippa, and Jimmy.

Wait, Jimmy? James. Okay. It was like, really? We're close. There's a gold chevron in the center, which is sort of like an inverted V. And it represents the mountains and it's gold because her mother's maiden name was Goldsmith. And it represents mountains because they're big, they're into skiing.

It's a family. So this is what a modern, this is what you ask for in a modern family dress. There's like a plasma TV in the background. Exactly. There's a blue ribbon tied at the top, which means she's unmarried. And it's red and white because that's the colors of the flag of the UK. Very nice. And they are merging them now as the married are marital arms.

And I think, I think William is losing the unicorn. I would not lose the unicorn. You can't lose the lion. I wouldn't lose either of them. You have to. So what's, what's, what support is she bringing into it then? Well, I don't know, but it's just tradition. Like basically you're messing with the, the house of Windsor's coat of arms.

So it's a pretty big deal. Yeah, no, that is a big deal. But I'm saying like you're bringing her shield in her elements in, but I didn't see a support on that picture. Well, have we even said what a support is? No, we should probably talk about this. There's some common elements to any coat of arms as hodgepodge as they look, as often detailed or as sparse as they look. If you look closely, you're going to see certain elements,

about like five things that you're going to find on every single European coat of arms. Right? Yeah. Take it Chuck. Well, you got your shield. That's the main part in the center. Generally in the center, the background of the shield is called the field. Right.

Like it's a color. Yeah. Right. It's just the color of the shield. Yeah. Right. That's the field. So if you have a red field and it's red.

Right. Although they won't say red in the blaze and we'll get to that though. Supporters, if you, I'd sketch this out. They have stick figures as my supporters. Those are nice supporters. And that's like, if you look at a common thing, it'll be like, like the house of Windsor has a lion on one side holding it up. Yeah.

And then a unicorn for some reason on the other side holding it up. It's a cool unicorn. I know. And I'm sure there's a great reason for it, which we will find out. But yeah, usually it's a human or an animal or something that's on two legs. And then has the front two legs or arms holding up the shield. They're called the supporters. And that means if they're on two legs, it means they're rampant,

which is another part of the blazing process. Yeah. And did you notice how they, when they describe them, it is, you got to, you have a description to read, right? Yeah. Okay. Good. Because this is going to be.

That's my favorite part of this whole thing is the blazing. Is it? Yeah. I think so. I like the pictures. The pictures. So at top of the shield, you probably have a cornet, which is a small crown. Sitting on top of that, you have the helm, which is a helmet, like a night's helmet.

Right. With mantling coming off of the helmet, which is sort of just flowery little stuff. It could be like ribbons or something like that. Yeah. Some adornment. Yes. And then you have a small wreath called a torse on top of the helmet. And then the crest on top of that.

Right. And the crest is the topmost thing. It can be anything. It can be like a shaft of wheat or a lion or a dude with his tongue sticking out. It's a lot of lions. Yeah. Because lions are courageous and brave. You don't mess with lions.

And then a lot of times you've got a motto on the top or the bottom. And that's on a scroll. Yeah. And the scroll is on top of the compartment, which the whole thing sits on. So there's a lot of physics involved in this, even though unicorns show up in it. They all follow the laws of Newtonian physics. Like everything's resting on something else. And this actually, I didn't notice this.

This is a belt. That's a belt around the shield on the House of Windsor. Now that, Chuck. It's one of those cheesy old braided belts, too, that is looped around and tucked down. That is actually Scottish in origin. That means that they are followers of a clan leader. Oh, OK. They're members of a clan.

Scotland has their own set of crests. And they have their own authority. The Lord Lion King of Arms is responsible for registering them in Scotland. But that means they're members of a clan. And followers, not even leaders. The belt looped in like that means you're a follower, a clan member. So complicated. It is.

The shield we also should mention is many times divided into different compartments or panels. Yeah. Many times it's quartered. Yeah. In the case of the House of Windsor, you've got panels representing Ireland, Scotland, two for England. I think there used to be one for France that they replaced. Like it's changed a lot over the years.

And a lot of times when it changes, it's because of marriage. That's bringing in elements from the wife's family crest and adding it in. Right. So I guess the House of Windsor will have acorns. I guess so. Maybe that'll be the support of a giant acorn instead of a unicorn. Right. But a mutant one that's like growling or something like that.

It'll be fun. So those are the elements. Those are the, I guess, aspects that you're going to find in any European shield. Right? Or coat of arms. Yeah. And by the way, Mr. Woodcock, who designed the Middletons, he does this a lot. And he said he had a surgeon contact him one time that wanted a colon on his.

That's awesome. And he said it looked rather like a red worm. But he did it. Good for him. Yeah. I guess he'll do anything for a buck. I was going to say the same exact thing. Oh, Mr. Woodcock.

So there are certain rules that these things have to follow. Like you said, there has to be a helmet. There has to be a crown. The helmet that's showing, if you are a knight, then you can have the helmet a certain way. Like usually the visor's open and it's facing forward. If you are royalty, your helmet is gold. It's gold in the helmet. All right.

And so like if you are designing your own, which we'll get to in a minute, there's just certain elements you can't use. Like you can't be like, well, I want a gold helmet. It's like, well, you're not royal, so you can't have that. This, if you want to be bona fide, I'm going to make my own and it's going to have a gold helmet. Yeah. And it's also going to be colored in a crayon. That's right.

The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that and I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. People who don't know Bruce have to understand two things. One is he's built like something Michelangelo's card out of a piece of marble. Truth, this is true. And number two, he's the first person to show you that at every party, at every dinner.

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We tell stories. We definitely gossip. James Corden wound up kind of ripping off your set. There you go. And we always go deep. Listen to Table For Two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The speaking of the colors, one that kind of transcends all nobility or commoners, there's, you can't have, and I went and double checked this, but this is true.

You can't have color on color in a field or metal on metal in a field. Do you see your, your coat of arms? Yeah. See how it's yellow on the shield, yellow on blue? Yes. I guarantee you that originally that yellow was gold. It's supposed to be golden. You think?

Yeah. If you look at every single one, there can be white on the color. There can be black on the color, but there's, there can't be like red on blue. Gotcha. So there, but there can be like metal, like silver, gold, or bronze on blue or yellow or whatever. But there also can't be like silver on gold. And if you go look closely, there, you're not going to find a crest that has metal on metal color or color on color.

An authentic one at least. Yeah. Right. Did you know yours has ducks? It has a, was it ducks with those geese? I don't know. Those geese? I think they're geese.

Yeah, that's a goose for sure. And it's fun when you just look up the generic Google image search for your own. Yeah. If you find the case that there, a lot of them look pretty similar, then that's probably a good idea that that's what yours may have looked like. But I wouldn't necessarily like print that out on a t-shirt and say this is mine for sure. My family has a long history of mistreating geese for foie gras. Yours has got three geese.

Right. Now this is the English version of it. The, there's a Scottish version and an Irish version all of Clark. Yeah, probably same with me. And the, the English version is the one that has the geese on it every time. Well, I was O'Brien at some point probably. That's Irish. So, well now it's because I come from Ireland.

Oh yeah. But the Bryant ones all look about the same. Yellow cross, kind of classy. I wish I had an animal though. I got no animals on mine. I got three geese. I know, I'm so jealous. On the English one at least.

But mine's missing a crown. Oh, oh is it? Yeah, it's missing a crown and it doesn't have a wreath. It just has the, what is the mantling? The mantling? It has mantling coming off of a helmet turned to the side with visor down. Oh, actually I don't have a crown either. But look, my helmet goes straight forward left and right.

It's almost as if the Bryant's are always looking in all directions. That's a, facing forward usually indicates some sort of title or nobility or something. So. Well, this is facing left, right and forward. That's awesome. And what's the flag sticking out of the top is the crest. Mine also doesn't have a crest. I think that was a cadency.

I think someone added that like one of my relatives from Arkansas or something. Just stuck a flag in the top of it. Got a rebel flag in the top. So I was, I was looking online and there are different registries for just about every European country. Portugal has one. The Scandinavia has the best ones. The Scandinavian registry, which is like all these Nordic countries except for the Netherlands,

by the way. Yeah, they don't need it. But they have, they have in my opinion, the coolest ones. You can go check it out. It's the Societias Heraldica Scandinavica is going to take you to this registry. And a lot of them were created in the 70s. I guess there was a resurgence in interest in heraldry in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Oh, in Scandinavia periods.

In Scandinavia. If you're Irish, you want to contact the office of the chief herald of Ireland. Scotland, again, the Lord Lion King of Arms. That guy is in charge of not just registering crests, but also tartans. And you have to trace your lineage back to claim a tartan. What's a tartan? It's your, you know, like, um, plaid. I've never heard that one.

Well, yeah, it's like kilts are different types of plaid. Yeah. Like, like Malcolm and Blackwatch and all that stuff. Those are clan that just like a crest, that pattern is, um, it's associated with a specific clan. Yeah, yeah. And like you or I can't just go put on some kilts. Well, we shouldn't be doing that anyway.

But if we did, and we went to Scotland, they'd be like, oh, you're a Malcolm. And I'd be like, well, that's my middle name, but I don't think that's my, and then they just start beating me up and I wouldn't understand what they were saying, but they would be beating me up at the time. You just can't, you just like, we can't wear a t-shirt that's like, check out my family crest. Right. Even if we haven't made an official claim to it.

In the US, it's kind of willy-nilly. And we'll talk about that in Great Britain. You can get in trouble. It's basically like misusing a copyrighted piece of material or trademark or something like that. Oh, really? Yeah. There's laws to it.

It's called bearing arms. You have to register to bear these arms, the coat of arms. I did not know that. Yeah. In America, it means you can wave a gun around. Yeah. Exactly. So where are we?

Can we talk about where are we? This one's all over the map. It really was. This thing had strange flow, I guess you would say it. Well, you want to keep talking about how you can will them to people in some countries? Oh, really? You can. I didn't know that.

You can will them to people. So let's say you are an American and you want to register your new family crest in England. Can you do that? I couldn't get a definitive answer. Possibly if you're a fairly recent British descent. But your best bet is to go to the American College of Heraldry, which was founded in 1972. Something went on in the 70s in New Orleans and is now a registered corporation in Alabama somehow. But at any rate, this is the official organization for registering in America and all of them are new.

All the ones that you register are new? Yeah, they don't they don't track back because that's just not how it's done in America. Gotcha. There's no nobility. There's nothing like that. Right. So it's like you create your own and register it and start it there. Oh, that sounds like something that's worthwhile.

Yeah, if you're into that. I'm into it now. Are you going to do it? I think so. Good. All right, let's talk about blazing, which we mentioned earlier. Yes, blazing is the description of the coat of arms and it's really specific and it's got its own language and syntax. And which is all over the map.

Well, not really. It's actually really like if you can read it, then it's that's the point is it's not all over the map. Because what you want to do is you want to be able to hand your blazing over to an artist and not say what I'm looking for is this. You just hand it over and they look at that and they know exactly where everything goes. Gotcha. So it is the description of what it looks like without having to put I'd like this line to be this color and move them over here a little bit and put him on the left and him on the right. Dexter and sinister. Exactly.

So the rules are sort of an overview. You begin by describing the field, which we said was the background. It's usually just a color that you're going to say. And this is of the shield, right? This is of the whole coat of arms. OK. So you begin by describing the field, which is of the shield. OK.

And if it's a complex field, though, you know, you got to describe the variation after the color like red, checkered, or checkered red and white, and you can't just say that. It's like in different language, too, which we'll go over. Yeah. If the shield's divided, you got to describe how it's divided with its quartered or halved. And if it's horizontal or vertical, you got to describe the colors of each subfield and use words like Dexter and chief, which means the top and sinister. And they know what all this means because they're really smart. The principal charge, which is anything that you see on your coat of arms, like a tree or a flower is a charge, basically any emblem, you got to describe that next in the color.

Then the charge, anything that's around the charge, like if your lion is holding a thing of arrows or a thing of daisies, you got to describe that. Or spitting those arrows out of his mouth. Exactly. Then you have to describe, you do the panels one panel at a time. If your shield has many panels, you got to go from left top to bottom and left to right as if you're reading. And all this is done basically so they know exactly what to do. And you have license after that to draw it however you want. So.

Oh, like what? Like this is what I think aligned. Yeah, exactly. Gotcha. And as long as you get all the components right, then that's legit. It can be drawn a number of ways and it doesn't matter. What about like anime? You could do anime, I guess.

And a lot of it's in French because a lot of the English clerks wrote in French at the time that this was big. And we did mention the animals and I said rampant means standing on their legs. Rampant, garden is when you're standing on your legs and facing the person or whoever's looking at it. Passant means you're walking. Sajint means you're sitting and couchant means you're lying down. I thought that was kind of funny because you're on the couch. Right, he's just hanging out. So here's one example.

I'm looking at a shield that has a tree. It's split down the middle green on one side, white on the other. And then the against the white background, the tree is green against the green background. The tree is white and it's uprooted. You see the roots of the tree. Right. So the way this is described is party per pale, argent, invert, a tree eradicated, counter-changed. Yes.

So whoever does this reads that and they say, oh, I know. That means parted means it's divided in half. Pale means it's split vertically. Argent, invert means silver and green. And then eradicated means the tree is pulled up by the roots. And counter-changed is when it's the white color on the green and the green color on the white. Somehow that makes sense. I mean, it's just like learning another language.

That's exactly what it is. And once you do, then, yeah, that's pretty cool. I tried to train myself to speak in that, like, not speak. I was kind of hoping you were going to do it in like a British accent. No, but once you know enough of these words, if you see a sentence like that, you can kind of suss it out a little bit. So what you just did, like, that's not just a description for the artist. It's also, blazing is what the Herald, like Paul Bettany, would have said.

Is that what happens? Yeah, I didn't see anything about that. Yeah, that's, that was what they did. That's how they described, you know, sir. So if the knight pulls up with the lance, he would say party, propel, Argent, invert, blah, blah, blah. Yes, wearing this. Okay.

Basically, it's almost like in this corner, wearing the black trunks with the white trim is Tyson. I wonder if they followed it up. The tree eradicated counter-changed, aka Ricky. Right, just to make it easier. Yeah. The widowmaker. Exactly.

Ricky the widowmaker. And did we say where these came from? Where they started? Europe. No? Well, Europe, yeah. Rome? No, it's either, it's definitely European, Western European.

Either it started in England in the, maybe the 12th century, early 13th century, or it came from Northern Europe, right, like Scandinavia, and was brought down by William the Conqueror in about the 12th century, and really took root in England, and then just kind of spread from there. Gotcha. But you think of England as the heart of this, and for good reason. Yeah. And it started there really, started to spread to the rest of Western Europe from England.

Well, and you can get beaten severely if you do it wrong there. By Scots. Whereas we don't care here, by Begbie. Governments, a lot of times, will have, like each state has a seal, the United States has the seal of the United States, the great seal of the United States. Yeah. Not quite the same, but sort of the same as a coat of arms. Like a lot of states have them, I'm sorry, only a few states have a coat of arms.

They all have a seal. Right. But some, a few of them have both. But there's a difference? Yeah, a seal is what they use on documents, like the state seal, the heraldic device, which is the coat of arms, represents the state itself. I don't know technically what the difference is, although they look different. Well, yeah, I guess the seal of Ohio that has a bunch of wheat with a sign on some farmland

that doesn't follow the heraldic rules. Yes. Well, some of them, though, like Vermont has a seal and a coat of arms, but both contain a pine tree, a cowl, and cheese of grain. So there can be similarities. I don't know. And Ronald Reagan's, you know, a lot of presidents, most presidents have had their coat of arms done up nicely.

Yeah. Because they're presidents. Well, yeah, it's a big deal for them. And Ronald Reagan has a stallion, a black stallion atop his shield with an actor's mask, the little drama mask on the horse's chest. You know what that kind of looks like? It looks like the logo that Rocky Balboa wore on the back of his road. It totally does, because it's yellow and black, too.

That's totally rocky. And then there's his shield is divided. I wish I could speak it in blazing terms. But his shield is divided horizontally, black on top, yellow on the bottom, with an eagle and a bear representing, I think, California. Yeah. And then fact a nonverba is his motto, which is deeds, not words. That was an American bear.

That bear, do you notice his tongue sticking out? Yeah. And he's holding what's called, that's a mullet. Oh, the star. Party in the front. It's not the fish or the hair. Or business in the front, party in the rear. Right.

What else you got? Oh, actually, I could read Reagan's, if you want. A bear rampant sable armed in languid gills, holding between its four paws a mullet argent, silver star, on a chief sable standing on a do-call cornet, or a falcon argent armed and languid gills, wings, displayed and inverted. It's pretty interesting. It is. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off.

The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. People who don't know Bruce have to understand two things. One is he's built like something Michelangelo is carved out of a piece of marble. True. This is true. And number two, he's the first person to show you that at every party at every dinner. Maybe take a shirt off.

Shirt comes off like before dessert. I'm Bruce Bozzi. You may not know me yet, but you already know most of my launch dates by their first names and voices alone. That was George and Julia. But believe it or not, my podcast guests see me as more than just a piece of meat like my thoughtful friend Scarlett. Bruce Bozzi, I love you so much. And I love meeting minds with you. What we do on my new podcast, Table for Two,

is what everyone does when they're at lunch with an old friend. We tell stories. We definitely gossip. James Corden wound up kind of ripping off your set. There you go. And we always go deep. Listen to Table for Two on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We now know that a silver star is a mullet Argent.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, tell them about the Japanese thing. That was kind of neat. Well, Japan has its own set of family, Kristen. Actually, there's about 10,000 of them they estimate. They don't have nearly as strict standards. I read that supposedly, they were originally given out to people of samurai class or higher. Remember, samurai were pretty high up in the social strata.

But apparently, that has been relaxed. And over time, lots of families have a crest called a moncho. What is it? Moncho or Kaman or Mon? Poor, poor, poor. And like a number of different families can have the same crest. Gotcha. Right?

And they use it on their tombstones too, right? Yeah, that's a good way. If you're of Japanese, relatively recent Japanese descent, if you can get a picture of your grandparents' tombstone or ask your grandparents if they're still living, they should be able to tell you what your family crest is. But usually, they're circular, compact, kind of geometrical representations of things like flowers or leaves or bells or something like that. And there's, I mean, I looked up lists of coats of arms and it's like every country and even cities and states and people and I had no idea people were that into it, to be honest.

You mean I could make ours, I think. Herald-y? Yeah. Herald-ry. Herald-y? Yeah, I wonder, Emily's Cinebogan, boy, that'd be German, big time, German. Or Dutch, sounds Dutch to me. Oh no, she's German.

Okay. But I mean, I don't know, maybe further back it was Dutch, who knows. You know who knows? The College of Herald-ry? Yeah, or the German version of it too. What do you got to plunk down for that? Any idea? I know to find your family's Moncho is a hundred bucks.

I found a place called a Christia, or Christia, Q-Y-S-T-I-A dot com, I think. It was like a hundred bucks to do the research flight. So you and me would have a Moncho? Yeah. Interesting. Yes. But again, be wary of, there are legitimate authorities that you can, that deal directly with the public for money that are, that will give you the real deal info.

And they may say there is no crest that you have any kind of claim to whatsoever. Right. And if you're American, you can turn to the American registry and be like, all right, I want to start. And then start new. Right, yeah. And then register your own. And it even says on the document that they give you, like you have to name your heir.

Yeah. Because that, through that document, they legally are entitled to the family crest. And then they can create a document saying, this is who I'm leaving it to as well. Gotcha. So you can start if you're American. If you're British, you can start to, I believe all of the different countries, let you start registering your own. Right.

Like Kate Middleton. Gotcha. But they're also the places where you want to go to find if there's one already in existence that you can claim. Right, or that you could add a cadence to, right? Yes. And put your own little plasma screen TV out there. Exactly.

I think a lot of the family pride thing is, I don't know, it didn't seem to be as big of a thing these days. Yeah. It's kind of sad. Yeah, I guess it is. It's the kids these days. It's the, it's emblematic of the breakdown of society. Agreed.

Okay. So that's it for family crests, aka coats of arms, aka. Heraldry. Yes. If you want to know more about it, you can, well, just type in family crests on howstuffworks.com and that will give you some pretty good background. And then do a lot more research. Yeah, you should also, if you want to do, if you want to look for your family crests,

the real thing, look for it, like type in France or registering family crests in France or registering coat of arms in France or Germany or whatever. Right. And it's, you should be able to find like the official government version for that country. Gotcha. And it's a good place to start. Cool. So what else you got?

You got ducks, you got geese. I think I said, I said, well, at least you don't have geese. That's, that's worse than nothing. I think it's kind of, when I saw that, I definitely thought it was pretty funny. And also my last name, Clark is a variation of clerk, which means I come from a long line of pencil pushers. And look at you. I thrive, my family thrives in cubicles.

You probably had an E on the end of that at some point too, right? Yes. Or it meant cleric, which I find doubtful. You think? Yeah. Well, at some point in the last like minute and a half, I said, uh, handy search bar, which means it's time Chuck for listening mail. That's right.

You know, my dad claims he traced our family back to the Vikings. He told, he told me that like a month ago, because I remember he traced our family tree back pretty well, I said, how far did you get? He went to the Vikings. I went, really? He meant like, um, oh, I wish I knew some Viking football players. Randy Moss, he traced you back to Randy Moss. All right.

I'm the listener mail today. This is actually Facebook gaming with Chuck and Josh. Uh, I don't know if you saw last week I had a little, I do these little fun games from time to time, like, uh, like this one, which was, uh, I give the fans a synopsis for a movie and you title it and people go wild for this stuff. And so here was the movie I came up with, uh, natural disaster sweeps through a rural small town, destroying the only school when no funding and with no funding and little help, a young buck carpenter rebuilds it as an old timey one room schoolhouse.

Along the way, the project becomes a national sensation and he wins the heart of a beautiful young teacher. So we got lots of good, uh, titles. Okay. Uh, Brian Day, Lessons of the Heart. Samantha Smith, Back to Basics, Todd Eastep, Home Room, Dave Bingham, Back to Basics. Uh, and not a Kumar, The Education. Uh, Kubi.

That's a big immersion I agree with. Cubes, Don Kubi, Lecture of Love. Not bad. No. Russ Vic, you know Russ. Yeah. Making love out of nothing at all. Uh, Andrew Neil, Windswept, Mona, our buddy Mona, Hot for Teacher.

There was a few Hot for Teachers, by the way. Uh, Rich Marmara, Learning Curves. That sounds almost like Two Moon Junction-y or Ticasa Triggery. David Robinson, Learning to Live. Chris Crawford gave us Erecting Hope. That's probably what they would call it in Hollywood. You think? Maybe.

Kee Latimer, Foundations, Tammy U, Saved by the Bell, B-E-L-L-E. Wow. Uh, Michael Niedel, Measure Twice. Kind of clever. Yeah. Measure Twice, Cut Once, is the Carpenter's saying. Although I usually Cut Once and then Cut Two or Three Months. And then Measure.

And then Measure. Uh, J.J. Brice, Four Walls, One Roof, Endless Hope. And then there were some funny ones. Drew Chandler. His title is, This One Room Schoolhouse is a Metaphor. Jimmy Rabie Colford. Hers was Smiggy. What?

Smiggy. Okay. Like that's the Carpenter's name? I don't know. Okay. Kyle Betts, Captain Squaw Bear and the House That God Built. Jason Carpenter, The Hokiest Movie Ever, starring Tom Hanks. Terry Ekmeyer, The One Roomed House, The Story of a One Roomed House.

And then our own Rob Shep, Son of Twister. Nice. It's fun. That's Rob Shep from Stuff to Make You Smarter. Yeah. Which you can find on the Zoom Network. Zoom Marketplace. Zoom Marketplace.

Yeah. You know what else you can find out there? I don't know if it's on Zoom, but out there on the Internet. Say, I don't know, iTunes. Audiobook? A specific audiobook. Number two in an ongoing kind of, um, sputtery series. Long-running and sporadic series.

The Super Stuff Guide. This one is the Stuff You Should Know Super Stuff Guide to Happiness. Yeah? That's right. Starring my niece Isabella. That's right. Who kicks the whole thing off. Uh-huh.

With a quote from the Dalai Lama. And then we have about an hour and 15 minutes of really cool investigation into happiness. And here's, here's the, here's the clincher. It's not that happy of an audiobook. We uncover a lot of really sad stuff about happiness, right? We talked to all sorts of experts. We talked to one of the founders of the transhuman movement, David Pierce. Yeah.

We interviewed folks. Yeah. We, we had a lot of interviews. Gussied up sound design. It was, Jerry just pulled out all the stops. All the stops. It's $3.99 on iTunes. Yeah.

Apparently it's a little more in other places, like the Aussies are having to pay $6.99. Which is crazy because the dollar is weak right now. That's what they said. But we're not happy. So I remember in 2008, Canada went crazy because they're like, we're not paying more for this book. Our dollars were worth the same as a dollar. And booksellers up there were like, okay, all right.

Take it up with iTunes, man. No, they said okay. Oh, they did? Yeah. In England, I think they said it was two 49, two, two quid, 49 pence. No, I don't even know how they say this. I think you just nailed it. Is that right?

Yeah. Two 49 pounds. Two pounds, 49. 49 pence. Yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah. So you can get it on iTunes right now. Just go to the iTunes store and search Super Stuff Guide to Hackiness and it'll bring it up.

And if you don't have our economics super stuff guide, it's right there too. Is that evergreen? Yes. Is it? Somebody asked. And yeah, I mean, it's about how economics works. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it was framed through the collapse, the recession.

Right. But buddy, anybody who tells you the recession is over, punch them in the stomach. Yeah, that's true. All right. And then also, if you want more SYSK, you can listen to us on WFMU. What is it? 91.1 in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut metropolitan area.

And what is it for the Hudson Valley? 90.1 Hudson Valley. Okay. And then coming soon, everything goes right. You'll be able to hear us in Alaska, right? Yeah. College radio station and was it Anchorage? It's, you have like a 33% chance of what?

Yeah. That's coming down the pike. Yeah. We're excited about that. Yeah. And then if you want to play fun Facebook games, visit facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can tweet to us.

We are at SYSK podcast. And you can send us good old fashioned electronic mail to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ophira Eisenberg. I'm a comedian and a parent of the absurdity of telling jokes late at night and then waking up early with a small child in the morning. I have a new podcast called Parenting is a Joke. I'll talk to other funny people who are also parents. Will we be laughing? Will we be crying? Find out by listening to Parenting is a Joke on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.