Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Mayday!

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Say it three times and help may arrive. But where did "Mayday!" come from? Listen in to find out.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is short stuff,

the shortest stuff of all the stuff. Stuffer? You calling stuffer? I'm calling you a stuffer, buddy. Oh, yeah? Born, born and bred stuffer. Stuff it. Stuff it like Pizza Hut stuff crust cheese. Cheese stuffed crust. I haven't had Pizza Hut in so long. Yeah, I haven't in a little while either. I had to order a garbage pizza the other night though for the first time in probably 20 something years. Whoa, are you calling Pizza Hut a garbage pizza? It wasn't Pizza Hut. It was another big brand of delivery pizza, but I, you know, we usually get the good pizza in the neighborhood like the neighborhood pizzerias.

Sure. That's also, you know, some of it's wood fired. It's nice. I don't know if I call it fancy pizza, but good stuff. But every once in a while you want, you know. Well, I got shut out. It was during the World Series and Halloween. So that's like a huge pizza night and they ran out of stuff to make pizza literally. And so I was forced to turn to the garbage pizza. And you know what? It was delicious. Yes, of course it is. It's terrible. It's terrible for you. There's nothing good about it. It is delicious. It was really great. It's been so long. I was like, man, I forgot about the garbage pizzas. So, and you're still not going to say which one, even though you're ultimately saying it was delicious, huh? That's fine. I'm just,

I think that's remarkable. Okay. Chuck, when you picked up the phone, because I'm assuming you did this old, old school style and used a landline. I did it. Picked up the phone online, but sure. And called the garbage pizza company that when they answered the phone, you said, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, I need a pizza stat. No, I said, pan pan, pan pan. Oh, there you go. Very nice. And they said, you want a pan pizza? And you'd say, no, and please don't interrupt me because I'm supposed to say it three times, pan pan. Oh, very funny. This is about Mayday the Word. We want to thank livement.com, wonderopolis.org, Science ABC. Today I found out in the government of Canada website was

pretty handy. Sure. So we're talking about Mayday and everybody knows that Mayday is a distress call. And everybody probably has a better handle on what to do in a Mayday distress call than you'd think because from doing this research, it seems that just about every Mayday distress call I've seen in a movie or on TV was pretty accurate, it turns out. Yeah. What you do is you say it three times. Like you said, you have to do it three times because there are a couple of reasons. They don't want to be confused. First of all, they don't want to mistake it for another word if you just say it once. So just literally reiterating Mayday, they won't say, did they say payday? Those are not that great. No, they're not. So that's one reason you repeat it three

times. Another reason, or it could be noisy in a plane or on a boat or something. And the other reason is that they know that you are calling for the Mayday yourself, like you yourself are in trouble and you are not relaying a call about a Mayday from someone else, which is something we'll get to called a Mayday relay. And you're not talking about, I think like you were saying that you're not talking about some Mayday call that happened three years ago, that was just so great. Oh yeah, like blowing your own horn. That's the Mayday call you've ever heard. Right, yeah. So you do want to say it three times, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. And then right after that, you've got their attention and you're on stage and they want to hear what you have to say.

So you're going to follow that up with what aircraft or ocean going craft you are. If you have some sort of call number or sign or whatever you'd want to include that there, then you're going to tell them exactly what the problem is. You're taking on water, which is a problem whether you're an aircraft or an ocean going craft. If you don't want to take on water in an airplane. No, you want to tell them where you're located or the last place your known location was and maybe what direction you've been traveling in. You want to talk about the weather, but not chewing the fat talking about the weather. You want to say specifically what kind of weather you're having in case you've got problems. Right. What else? What else, Chuck? Oh, let me see. Well, basically,

how many people are aboard? That might be a nice thing to mention. Sure. What kind of help you want? Yeah, and that's sort of the big one is, you know, my plane is going down over this part of the ocean and please send a boat. Yeah, that would probably know what to do. Yeah, I would have been like, please send another plane, but yeah, that wouldn't make any sense. You'd want a boat. Please send a giant trampoline. So I say we take our break now and then leave it as a cliffhanger as to where the word mayday came from to begin with. Nice one. All right, we'll be right back. End of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the

right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology.

But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, we're talking about the origin of the May Day Distress call. Where did it come from? Well, it started in 1923. It was an idea of this guy named Frederick Mockford. He was a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. And they were looking for a word. They said, hey, we need a word that somebody can say that everyone knows as a distress signal. And it's got to be really easily understood. Everyone has got to be able to get on board with this thing. And we don't want to go to a marketing department. So we'll just go right to the people who do this. And they've

been using SOS like Morse code. But since they were using radio communications more and more, they said, we need an actual word. And help isn't good because people say the word help just in conversation. Yeah. Let me help you. Yeah. So you don't want to send off false alarms. It's got to be something really independent from other words like that. And I think a lot of the air traffic at the time was between that airport and an airport in Paris. So he proposed a French word. Yeah. A French phrase actually, venez medir. And he said, let's use the shortened one of made air. Made air means help. Venez, venez medir means come help me. Apparently, it's also frequently translated as lend a hand come like lend me a hand. But the literal translation

is come help me in French. Send a boat. Send a giant trampoline. And so he said, how about made air? And they said, oh, that's even better. How about this made day? Let's use a word that doesn't even exist. Although it does exist, but one that no one would ever use in normal conversation and certainly not three times in a row. Like you wouldn't say like that made a made a made a party was the greatest made a made a made a party I've ever been to. Yeah. Like the made a celebration. Right. Right. Like in what was the follow up to? Yes. Thank you, buddy. That's right. People liked it. People started using it. They said, this is great. And three years later, four years later, it was officially adopted by the International Radio Telegraph Convention

of Washington. And then I think it took, I think it was mainly for planes. And what I think I figured out is it was 1948 is when it became a nautical term as well. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Because yeah, it says that it was official in 48, but this Radio Telegraph Convention and adopted it in 1927. Yeah, I think boats got on board a little bit later. That's weird because there were way more boats than planes in 1927. I don't know. Maybe they were, didn't get on board with the radio communications as quickly. That seems foolish, but okay. All right, we'll go with that. Maybe there's still the Morse code. So there's another way to send a distress call. And you mentioned it earlier, the made a relay, which is fun to say, hey, the made a relay is if you know that

another vessel's in trouble, but their communications equipment is knocked out, you can relay a made a request on their behalf. And it follows pretty much the similar format. It's just you're calling on behalf of that other vessel, right? Yeah. And I guess there could be a made a relay relay too. I guess it can go on and on. If you're not able to get a message to people, you can relay it through other planes and boats. But the problem is though, by the time it finally gets to like air traffic control, it comes out as purple monkey dinosaur. The old telephone game. Yeah. Good stuff. So let's say you make a made a call and you're just joking. Not funny. Nobody would consider that a big whoop, right? It's a big whoop in the US. You

can get fined. You can go to jail for six months. I'm sorry, six years. To jail. You can. I have a feeling it's more like you pay a fine and suspended sentence, but it's a hefty fine. Yeah. Can be up to a quarter of a million bucks. And it's one of those deals where if they call out the Coast Guard, you got to pay them back the money that it costs to run that operation. I saw somebody in Florida in 2009 was giving a hoax made a call and ended up having to pay the Coast Guard back $906,000 for the search that was mounted. Wow. Yeah. And well, you should too. If you knowingly purposefully call out the Coast Guard for kicks and they spend 906 grand, the Coast Guard should be made whole of that 906 grand out of your pocket, jerk.

And he was like, why was it that much? And he said, well, we built a really nice new boat for your call. Right. We use the gold plated boats for that call. Right. We ordered some really expensive dinner that night. Yeah. You don't want to pay the Coast Guard back. We got to take out from outback that night. Thanks. Thanks for that too, Chuck, by the way. I mentioned pan pan earlier as kind of a joke. Apparently, and I've never heard this before in my life, but apparently pan pan, and this is another thing that we nicked from the French. It's from P A N N E, meaning breakdown or trouble. They apparently pan pan is to be used if it's not life-threatening, but you still need help. And you also say it three times. Yes. That's a really important thing. You want to say these

things three times. That's what gets everybody's attention. Right? That's right. So that means the Tom Petty song in French is pan pan. Go ahead and give it to me. I love that. Okay, so pan pan is where you're basically saying like, I've got a pretty, like a noteworthy emergency here, but it's probably not life-threatening. Somebody on board our boat has fallen and broken their knee cap. They're probably not going to die, but they really want to get off this boat. Can you come help us as soon as possible kind of thing? Or there's, we actually have a breakdown, like our boat is broken down. We're not in any kind of threat because the weather's fine or whatever, but we do need some help. That's when you would use pan pan. That's right. There's another one too that I could

barely find. I found it referenced in one article on Wikipedia, Chuck. Oh, really? And that was it, but it's security. And I don't know if you say it security or something like that, but it's spelled S-C-C-U-R-I-T-E. Yeah, I think it's from the French as well. This may have been from the Government of Canada website, which would make sense. But this one makes a lot of sense. You'd say security, security, security, if that's how you say it. And then you just immediately proceed and talk about something that's like, there's a giant rock that wasn't there before in the shipping lane. Be careful of that. Or there's a shipping container that fell overboard. You're letting somebody know about a hazard, bad weather, something like that. You're not asking for help.

You're just making sure that everybody who needs to know knows about that. That's right. And then this is neither here nor there in terms of distress, but something you will... This is a movie trope that always bugs me. So I threw it in there. If you ever see someone in a movie say over and out, it's a screenwriter who doesn't know anything about radio communication. No one who knows what they're doing says over and out because over means I'm done talking and I'm ready for you to respond. And out means that you're done and you're leaving. So you would never say over and out. You might say over or out. You decide. I'll wait here. But never over and out. Man, that's... I love that though. I wonder who is the first screenwriter to do that.

I don't know. I hope somebody's talking about it. I want to find out. Do you ever see the... What was it? The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes? No. I did not like it, Chuck. I didn't like it and I thought I would. Okay. Well, that's it. Chuck's done talking. I'm done talking now too and that means short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.