Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How the Rosetta Stone Works

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

Sometimes providence smiles on historians. Thus is the case with the Rosetta stone, an ancient Egyptian tablet that served as the key for unlocking hieroglyphics, lost to time for a millennia. In this classic episode, learn about the international intrigue, rivalry to translate it and the luck that led to the founding of Egyptology. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's S. Y. S. K. Selects I've chosen a 2013 episode how the Rosetta stone works It's kind of amazing actually that had it not been for this one government decree that happened to be written in a few different languages We may never have figured out what the heck hieroglyphics mean and they would have been lost forever Including the culture that formed the basis of a significant portion of Western civilization So check it out. How the Rosetta stone works coming at you right now

Welcome to step you should know a production of iHeart radios how stuff works Hey And welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is stuff you should know the overly hot studio edition I Have a bit of a chill. No, you don't I do. I'm not at all hot yet You also said it hurt when our new co-worker shook your hand, so What does that say?

That he has a strong handshake, okay, and you're always cold Yeah, it's all these lamps in here. Well Jerry's decorated. It's nice. It is nice. It's just like an Ikea catalog That's right. Um Chuck. Yes, how many times have you been to Egypt? um counting that trip in high school zero Same here. Yeah, and yet we know an awful lot about Egypt Yeah, it's popular, especially ancient Egypt sure like I would wager that we probably know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egypt Oh, yeah, most people in the west. Yeah, is is there modern Egypt?

There is and uh, it's undergoing quite a bit of turmoil right now. Yeah, I know I'm kidding. Um, oh, okay I just wanted to make sure that you knew that Egypt was still around. Yes, okay um Well the reason that you and I know a lot about Egypt is thanks to a uh soft science one of the humanities You would call it. Um called Egyptology. Yeah pretty on the nose name for the study of ancient Egypt Yeah, it's a real popular thing. Mm-hmm and has been for a while A while but not too terribly long. I would say about the beginning of the 19th century. Yeah uh, and the reason that all of it was fostered and that all of it came about and that

We you and me know about Egypt was because of the discovery of a Tablet known as the Rosetta stone. That's right But you can also go back even further and make the case that if it wasn't for Napoleon Bonaparte We may not understand Egypt to this day. Yeah, that little guy. He wasn't that little though. Is that right? Right. He was average height. Right. Why why does Why do people say that then? Where'd that come from? Because some doctor wrote down I think upon his death that he was five foot two But what a lot of people don't realize is that the doctor was using

the french inch which is Longer than the british imperial inch really so when you translate five foot two from the french inch to the imperial He was six eight. He was about five six. Okay, which is average height And uh, the other reason why he was called like the little emperor by his armies. Yeah was because Compared to most of his bodyguards and his people he had around him. Sure. He was shorter than them Yeah, I guess when you're five six, he wants some six four dudes around you Right, so but the idea that he was a very short man is is not correct

Yeah, I'd always heard that but I didn't know the story the french inch. Mm-hmm. There's your band name for the day Uh, although I typically don't like rhyming names French inch doesn't rhyme. It's just it sounds similar. I wouldn't call it a rhyme French and inch. Yeah, french inch. Oh the e and the i. Yeah, that's nitpicky Well, yeah, it's the vowels that rhyme not the continents Yeah, but if you're steve malchmus and you put french at the end of a line and an inch at the end of another It would be it would be rhymy but and you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah um, yeah, well, there was our um

Pavement reference through the episode. That's becoming a daily thing too, isn't it? So, uh, you want to get on with this? Yeah, let's do it. We're gonna be talking rosetta stone, not the Language software, which neither one of us has ever used. No, we're talking about the the real thing which is Actually bigger than I thought, you know Many things are smaller for me like when you see them in person Mona Lisa Of course, Mona Lisa's small like I went to England. I was like big bin. That ain't so big. Oh, really? Yeah I don't think I had the impression of big bamboo. Okay. I was kind of underwhelmed. Hmm. It definitely didn't seem big Whereas the Eiffel Tower that was bigger than I thought that is where I developed a fear of heights

That still plagues me to this day Like it literally happened to me on the Eiffel tower on the way up Never had a fear of heights my entire life on the way down I like was hanging on to the fence really and it took me forever to get down because I was suddenly deathly afraid of height just hit me just right my brain Uh Changed. Yeah, how old were you? Uh

17 ish. Wow. Yeah. Huh. I didn't go up to the top. I probably missed out. I didn't either It was the first level that got me. Oh really? Yeah. Wow. All right. So, um Anyway, where was I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought it was it is um black basalt and it weighs About three quarters of a ton 46 inches high point five 30 inches wide and 12 inches deep And it's it's large. It's heavy. It's um You didn't write this, did you? No. No, um, it's about the size of a heavy coffee table Were you about to make fun of something? No, I I was just gonna say whoever wrote this reference, you know referenced an lcd tv

Of medium size. Yeah medium screen lcd television. Oh, by the way, thank you to tereesa dove fan requests. Oh, okay Yeah, that's who requested this one. Yeah, okay. So um, it's larger than I thought and And I learned a lot about this. I thought the rosetta stone because I'm a dummy Um was literally like Here's what our alphabet is and here's what everything means and now that you found it you can decipher everything Yeah, I think I had the same impression As well until I read this that I thought it was like created as a key to higher glyphics not at all not so It was a uh government document. Basically. It's a stelae

Or stela stelae is the plural. Yeah, and uh, it's not just the egyptians that use stela stelae Um, the mayans have largely been figured out. Their language has from old stelae. Yeah Um, well, and that's it. Those are the two That use stelae. Yeah in this case it's an inscription carved in three different languages Uh greek hieroglyphics and demotic with a t not demonic Yeah, demotic, but since I'm from the south I soften my t so it might sound like I'm saying demonic. Yeah um And basically it was in the three languages to ensure that everybody could read it because it was an official government decree

Not super exciting though. No, it wasn't basically what the rosetta stone says and like you said, it's in three languages there's a decree that says um essentially that tolamy the fifth is a great ruler and he is a A righteous worshiper of all the right gods. So he's okay in our book Yeah, and this decree was made by some priests who gathered at memphis and they um Inscribed the stoner headed inscribed and dated march 27th 196 bc Yeah, and it's not it doesn't actually say march 27th in hieroglyphics

It says 18 mashir which on the egyptian calendar translates to something like um March 27th And then they got the 196 because Somewhere in there It references the ninth year of tolamy the fifth serene right which is about 196 So that's where they got the date from the the what we would in the west equate it to Yeah, so um, like we said it doesn't say anything of particular interest at the time

It was an important message, but it's not the rosetta stone because of what is transcribed upon that stone No, it's the fact that it's in three different languages. Exactly. Yeah, so there's like you said hieroglyphics demonic and greek and hieroglyphics were a sacred um alphabet Yeah, they used that for really important stuff. So I didn't know this either

I thought just any old thing they wanted to write was hieroglyph. No, that's what they had Demiotic for or demonic That was kind of like an abbreviated shorthand More vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah, and in between that was uh, hieratic um Which was slightly more complicated than demonic but less complicated and not sacred like hieroglyphics Yeah, it was like a kind of a transition between Demotic and hieroglyphics. Yeah, it was cursive right so you can um, so you could use

um Hieratic for like a business transaction sure, but if you were saying the king is a very righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods You're going to use hieroglyphics. That's right. So to have it written in greek uh, demonic which was an offshoot of hieratic which was an offshoot of hieroglyphics. Yeah, and um hieroglyphics These priests that gathered and issued this decree that was written on the rosetta stone They made sure that everyone in egypt who was literate could read this one way or another

Yeah, and it was sort of it's not a stroke of luck. I mean it was just smart thinking at the time but ended up being a stroke of luck because The three languages. I mean without that. I don't think we we may have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics No agreed and um been lost forever. Exactly Um, and that's that's not the only way that the rosetta stone was kind of uh a bit of fortune But um, so the reason that it was lost was up until the fourth century ad Any average egyptian could have read the rosetta stone one way or another. Yeah, but after that the egypt It left the pharaonic stage

Cleopatra was the last pharaoh of egypt And then it came to be ruled by the greeks later on the romans the tolamites um and a bunch of different foreigners or different groups And with these groups came the introduction of new gods. Yeah, and the suppression of old gods and since hieroglyphics were um

Very much religious in nature. They're sacred or holy but associated with those old gods Hieroglyphics itself came to be cut off Stop suppressed. Yeah, especially christianity. Um, they tended to want to get rid of other competing gods And languages that are tied to those gods. All right, but luckily we still had demotic. That's right. And demotic wasn't taboo um that eventually uh became what's known as coptic and coptic uh used um some greek um and then a little bit of uh still of the hieroglyphic symbols So there's still like this this just a little bit very tenuous link between coptic and hieroglyphics But then coptic is lost. It's pushed out by arabic. Yeah, and then that was like way

Gone goodbye hieroglyphics. That's it. That was like that Hieroglyphics is no longer understood by anyone walking planet earth And that means that all of the ancient egyptian civilization itself Was lost. Yeah, thousand years aside from its structures Um, the the thought put into it the reasoning behind it all of the explanations all of the inscriptions all the writing all over these ancient buildings Are understood by no one now and then as a result of that The buildings themselves the last vestiges of this ancient civilization are Deconstructed and used for the next wave by new rulers and so

Ancient egyptian culture is lost to to the mists of time Yeah, wow. Thanks. Very nice. Yeah, there was no love loss. They were basically like we don't need this language anymore We don't need these sacred buildings anymore. They're paying in any way. Yeah, let's tear them all down build up new ones and oddly The rosetta stone was actually used As a buttress in a wall of a new Building. Yes. So it's part of the construction. Right. That's how this is another way that this is all just stroke of luck after stroke of luck So the first stroke of luck as you pointed out is that they just happened to decree that this thing be

Written into three languages. Yeah. Okay. Same message in three languages Then it's used for a building a wall Right. Yeah, then it happens to be discovered by some french who are marooned in egypt Because they got crushed by the british right when they tried to invade. Yeah, I guess let's talk about that person Okay, the french thought hey, we need to we need to get a stronghold on india eventually and napoleon said I think a good way to do that is to Start a little further away and let's say egypt. Let's cut off the the brit's Access to the nile river and that'll really help our cause unfortunately

The brit set a great navy and pretty much destroyed all their ships and stranded them in egypt for what 19 years Yeah, yeah, and so for the french whose ships were now at the bottom of aboukir bay They decided that they really kind of needed to set themselves To creating forts. Yeah, like since we're here, right? And it wasn't just military that was there part of this invasion this Strategy that napoleon had come up with to take over egypt Was kind of a hearts and minds strategy too And so he created something called the institute of egypt also known as the scientific and artistic commission. Yeah

mineralogists mathematicians art historians a lot of engineers chemists all like all of these people from the the letters and sciences Um brought together to understand and study egypt. Yeah, they were actually given military rank, but they weren't I think that was just more of a Here just so we'll call you military, right? Like they they weren't from military backgrounds So there were thinkers, but they were among this Invading force. Yeah, that was left stranded in france So as the the real military guys were building the forts the people from the institute egypt start studying egypt Yeah, I guess they were the first egyptalatists each. Yeah. Oh boy. It was close

Uh, they definitely were uh, and it was very covert Uh operation like they weren't really allowed to talk about what they were doing that much except to just say hey We're Following napoleon's orders acting on behalf of the good of the french republic, right? That's what we're doing. Don't ask any questions Yeah, that's what don't ask why I have this measuring tape out. Exactly or why i'm transcribing things from papyrus But they did um, they did become I guess embedded with the local population as well to help learn as much as they could And so it's under this climate that a french soldier one day

Finds this very polished black stone that's inscribed And something about it Told him that it was pretty important. So he took it to these um Early egyptologists the french and said you guys think this is important and they said yes Yeah, that was lieutenant pierre françois bouchard And uh, he took it to his boss and they they said okay. This is weird that this is built into a wall But it's clearly something of note. Yeah, and maybe we should take a closer look at it and um

Immediately they started get to work on on trying to transcribe it. It's super difficult at the time Um and would prove to be difficult over the years. Um It eventually ended up in the hands of uh, england, of course But luckily these uh, the institute of egypt people made copies of it. Yeah I think that like etchings or uh, and the plaster molds and things. I'm sure yeah, but they had Readable copies of the rosetta stone. So when they did give it up to the british It wasn't entirely lost to them. That's right and give it up as in not here have this It was more like here. We're taking this in the uh, treaty of alexandria

We're going to take this and a bunch of other stuff. So now basically you have The french and the british both have the rosetta stone The one group that doesn't are the egyptians, but we'll get to that later. Yeah Hey everybody when you're staying at an air bnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an air bnb And if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about lauren and nova scotia Who realized she could air bnb her cozy backyard tree house and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an air bnb too find out what your place could be earning at air bnb dot ca Slash host on the podcast pay dude the 90s called david lasher and christine taylor stars of the cult classic show

Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're going to use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember aol instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your game boy blowing on it and popping it back in As we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Both of them recognize that this is a very very important Something they know that it's some sort of decree They recognize that it's in three different languages and I think it becomes obvious to them that this could be the key to understanding hieroglyphs

Which people have tried to understand. This is not new. No people going back to a fellow named Horopolo Who was a fifth century scholar supposedly he may not have actually existed He created basically what was a translation For hieroglyphics right, but it was a false translation as we'll see But you know dating back Basically from the moment that hieroglyphics were lost to history People have tried to understand them. So these this this was the british and the french were aware of this like this may be the key to these

mysterious hieroglyphics And this is important. So we're going to try to translate it. Yeah, well it became a race really because They didn't like each other very much and they both wanted to be the first ones to to figure out what these hieroglyphics meant and how to unlock this history and So they sent their best and their brightest on the english side the british side Uh, it was a scholar named thomas young and then on the french side. We had jen françois shampoo yon

who uh He was sort of born to do this apparently. He was way into egypt as a kid even And as a young child said i'm gonna i'm gonna figure out hieroglyphics one day Yeah, he was even called the egyptian because he had dark skin and dark hair and um I think a magician like foretold his fame one day. Yeah when he was born supposedly a magician said this guy's gonna be famous And and he was and um, yeah, he was a very talented linguist. He studied under a uh, a guy named um A silvestre de sassy. Yeah, antoine isaac silvestre de sassy. Uh, he um

Who would take a crack at the rosetta stone, but he trained uh Shampoo yon, is that how we're saying it? Oh, yeah, sure He trained him. Um, but shampoo yon quickly became went from student to master He applied for uh, he applied to be a student at an institute in paris And they were Impressed enough with his application that they said how about you just skip the school part and come be on the faculty That's pretty good. Yeah, that's a talented linguist. Yeah, they said the same thing when I applied to georgia

Is that right? Like you just want to go and be an english teacher. Yeah. I went nah Oh really you turned down, huh? Sure. I want to be a student. Oh gotcha um So before all this happens, um We we have the greek inscription transcribed which that was reverend steven watson in 1802 and I don't want to say it was no big deal But there were quite a few people that could have done this. It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics No, but it was a necessary part of the process right so we want to give them his due

So we have a we have a translation an accurate translation of what the rosetta stone says exactly So that's step one and if you have one translated then If you're a linguist, I guess, I mean, it sounds really difficult to do to I mean, it's I can't imagine the painstaking Process of figuring out an alphabet Yeah, I mean, I think about how hard it is to translate A well-known language in a language that you speak imagine translating language that's totally lost Into something understandable. Yeah

Um, so we had the greek and then uh, eventually we had the demotic as well, um Yeah, thanks to Yeah, and thawin And that same year at the same time a swedish diplomat named uh, ochreblod Also translated the demotic And they both went about it two different ways. I thought this is pretty interesting. Yeah, so dasasi Figured out that there were two proper names at least in there Ptolemy and alexander and he used those to match up sounds and symbols

Um, ochreblod probably had the bigger breakthrough. Yeah, he used a different technique. He recognized that there was something Similar between demotic and coptic. Yeah, and he was well-schooled and coptic right which helped obviously Yeah, that that was his big breakthrough. He he figured out what words spelled love temple and greek and he used that To form basically this rough Uh structure for demotic based on his awareness of coptic. Yeah, that's only 11 letters. That's pretty impressive. Yeah But I mean if you've got 11 letters, it's a decent Uh, I think they called it a skeletal outline, right? I guess that's what you'd have Well, yeah, I mean especially since coptic was only what 22 plus a couple more from hieroglyphics

Yeah, it's like a big wheel of fortune game. Yes after that, right? So the thing is though this established connection now between Coptic and demotic and then demotic and hieroglyphics since they're side by side That kind of uh opened up this mentality that would be needed to finally crack the hieroglyphics for for um the rosetta stone And thomas young was the first to really try it. He was the british guy And he got somewhat far, but he gave up Yeah, he uh in 1814 his big breakthrough was uh figuring out what a cartouche was

Yeah, and that is um It's they say oval, but it's a little more squared away with round edges But it's a loop basically with hieroglyphic characters in it and he figured out that these are Not only proper names, but royal names. Yeah anything contained in a cartouche is a royal name Which was a big breakthrough because he identified tolamy The pharaoh's name in one of the cartouche's yeah cartouche Cartouche's cartouche's and uh

His queen uh baronica was in there as well. So he said you know what again, I've got these two names now to work with um, but he was still working on Heropoulos false premise That hieroglyphics was not phonetic in nature and then it was based just on symbols, right? That's what heropoulos big contribution was to confuse Yeah, the centuries worth of scholars. I thought that for young because he was on to something and if he wasn't using that the fake or Or not fake but just the poor system then he might have figured it out, right? So this is the thing like everyone believed heropolo because heropolo

Claimed that his translation was a direct translation from hieroglyphic It was written in the fifth century. Yeah ad right around the time we lost hieroglyphics so it was considered to be a primary source and basically completely Reasonable. Yeah, but it was wrong. It was wrong because it said that hieroglyphics are symbolic So like if you see a cart a picture that looks like a cart next to a cat And then a lizard what that should say under heropoulos translation is cart cat lizard

This kept throwing everybody off because it didn't make sense especially right, especially when compared to the greek translation And the translation of demotic it didn't make any sense whatsoever So like you said young gave up, but he published his findings and you can really strongly make a case that had it not been for Young's breakthrough Champollion would not have cracked the rosetta stone. No, which uh We should mention here that like They should just accept each other as as co-workers and colleagues and get along

but There was a competition that exists to this day of who what country claims That they translated the rosetta stone the french still say that champollion was really the one The brits obviously say no it was really young and even when they displayed it in 1972 at the one of the few times It's left england or maybe the only time Uh, they let france display it for like a year. Um They argued about the size of the photos Of the two on both sides of it when in fact the photos were the same size of young and champollion

Yeah, not photos, but uh portraits portraits. Yeah, yeah, but the french were like well. No young's is bigger The brits were like no his is bigger right and they were the same size. So they were really just they never uh Came to a common ground on who did it when in fact they both did and there were rumors apparently During that time that france was going to just steal the rosetta stone and keep it and not return it back to england And this was in the 1970s. So it's not like a long time ago, right? um, so champollion picked up in 1814 where uh, young left off and started to think you know what? I need to think more about this this symbol thing that uh,

Heropelo like I don't know if he was on base after all and that was actually the breakthrough he um He got some old cartouches and he figured out Um That the last two letters and one of them were identical. So That's a good thing because you know that it's the same letter. He figured out that it was the letter s and um Then the first character was a circle and he said maybe that's the sun right and in ancient egypt the sun god was raw and in coptic

Yeah, and so basically figured out that that name was ram seas Yeah, and that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the the identical letters the last two were s's the first one was raw And since he knew that it was in a cartouche that it was a royal name From that era the only person it could have been was ramsie. So that's how we crack the code like you say Yeah, and cracked it in Like hey, this is a phonetic thing. He was wrong the whole time and apparently he fainted on the spot Yeah, which is dramatic. Yeah, I'm kind of cute. He was french. Sure

Um So out of that moment Egyptology was fully born like now we had a way to understand all the stuff that hadn't been destroyed and reused as building material It took a long time though. It wasn't like they could just read it. It still took a lot of translating Oh, yeah, but they had the basis exactly. Um, yeah, all they'd done is transcribe one single stella They had millennia's worth of things to like papyruses and or papyri Um and building inscriptions and sarcophagi and all that stuff. Yeah, whatever, you know, sure um, and so Egyptology is born and now that it's understood at that moment

There's also a great desire to protect Egypt and all of its treasures Yeah, and to get things right because previous to that Napoleon and gang did a pretty good job, but they also Speculated a lot. Yeah, because they couldn't read hieroglyphic. Yeah, so they ended up correcting a lot of things about what they thought about Egypt and um Like you said they wanted to protect things because Egypt at the time was I mean they were selling these things off to collectors left and right because a they didn't know their true value and b It was there was a market for it. Sure doctors during the Middle Ages who were just big dummies would use mummies from Egypt Uh, they grind it up and use it to cure disease which didn't work

um, and so there was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians There was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the british That we need to get everything out of Egypt and into museums and into like the hands of us Who will preserve them and not sell them to middle age or middle middle ages doctors? Yeah for curals, but to his credit in my opinion, shampoleon argued very strongly in favor of keeping them in Founding a museum in Egypt to store these keeping them in Egypt. Yeah

I think he was a little bit of a control freak like he knew that he could care for things in the proper way And he I don't think he trusted Even other museums at the time to care for things in the right way and he was kind of right because a lot of it was destroyed Yeah, like apparently to preserve an ancient papyrus. You have to store it in a low humidity Um area Yeah In a chamber in a bamboo box container Yeah, and they didn't know this and they shipped them by seed to the uk and they all like crumbled the nothingness on the way

dummies Yeah, so the rosetta song still sits in the museum in london Where it's been since 1802 except for the time it went to france briefly And in 2003 egypt Was like, you know what? I want this thing back Not I we want this thing back

And it's ours and it's I don't care who found it. It's ours And england said in 2005 took him two years to build a replica and say Hey, how about this? This is just like it. I guess at least they didn't try to pass it off as the real one. Well, yeah, that's true um Cinema replica and they're like, I appreciate this. This is nice, but we really would like the real thing and england said no and not just england but A lot of the big museums the louvre and um a bunch of the world museums kind of all got together

In support of one another and said, you know what? Repay repatriation is we're not into it We're just not going to give things back anymore because we can care for it best It belongs to the world now and they just sort of banded together and said we're keeping our stuff crazy And that's I think where it's probably going to stay Okay, they are trying to get it for a uh I think in 2012 they tried to get it for a The grand opening of the grand egypt museum sounds like it didn't happen

But even then they said no, no, they'd want it for like three weeks and they said nope Under the guise of Well, I don't know if it's guys, but they said it'd be too dangerous to transport it. That's the story they have at least Oh, yeah, yeah So that's uh, how museums work No pillage and deny pillage and deny Um, you got anything else? No, sir. That is the rosetta stone everybody if you want to learn more about it You should type that word those words r-o-s-e-t-t-a stone in the search bar how stuff works

Uh, and it will bring up this article and uh since I said search bar means it's time for a message That's pretty stuff you should know Hey friends when you're staying at an air bnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an air bnb And if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about lisa and manitoba who got the idea to air bnb the backyard guest house over childhood home Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an air bnb too Find out what your place could be earning at air bnb dot ca slash host

On the podcast pay dude the 90s called david lasher and christine taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair

Do you remember aol instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your game boy blowing on it and popping it back in As we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Uh now chuck it's time for listener mail Oh no, how about instead administrative details Okay, all right for those of you don't know this is at the point where we read off

The people who were nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets and music and letters and all sorts of things and um Here we go. Go ahead. All right. Sarah sent us some cool, uh, graphic prints One of which was you can't take the sky from me From one of my favorite shows firefly. Nice. Yeah, very cool prints Uh, Amy sent us a lovely carved wooden cicada from timbergreen woods. Yeah. Yeah, it's very cool Uh, Anne McDonough sent us a snoopy postcard and a handwritten letter of thanks. Very nice

Uh, Liz from New Zealand sent us a lot of stuff. That's New Zealand candy New Zealand chocolates, New Zealand chips Surfboard postcard really lovely frame photos from her dad rudy goldstein photography. It's on facebook It's our goldstein photography. So check it out. Yeah, it's very cool. I have those on my desk Um, Sean and toniac sent us some custom vinyls some stickers from 811 graphics dot com he and his brother. Yeah, nice. Have this company and see that cool stuff like skater style stuff, right? Um buy costumes dot com. That's b u y costumes dot com Send us a full-size adult gremlin costume, which ben bowlin wore all day yesterday in the office

Yeah, ben bowlin from stuff. They don't want you to know in car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He emailed me. They did that. Did you actually see that? I haven't seen the picture of him Yeah, I put on the hand one day and tried to creep out stricklin But he was like that's not the first gremlin hand. I've had him my shoulder Uh cat teepee Megan. Oh, yeah sent a cat teepee my way because I have two cats And uh, my big boy laron gets in it now. We call it a spirit tent. Nice and he just hangs out in there and uh It's pretty neat. I mean it's what you think. It's just like a little small teepee for your kitty

That's very cute. So, uh, if you have a cat, I would suggest you buying one Um, let's see susan sent you a birthday card. It's a dog drinking beer. Yeah Yeah, that was nice. Yeah, it was. Uh, kellum clark sent us some t-shirts Um And he is a handyman in brooklyn and he gifted us two hours of handyman work Oh nice to give to someone we know in brooklyn in brooklyn. That is very really cool So I've actually texted our buddy joe randazo said hey, you need any work done? We have two free hours of handyman work. So if you're in brooklyn, you can go to not just handyman.com

And uh, give kellum a call. He'll fix your sink or do whatever you need around the house. I guess What's he gonna do for joe? I don't know joe didn't respond. What we'll go to hodgeman next I guess and just work our way down the list Although hodgeman he can afford to pay people. We should give it to like someone else. Okay. All right, I'll figure it out Uh, clive fenissey gave us some really cool Panama canal postcards Yeah, those are neat. Yeah, uh, rachel from uber. Have you heard of uber? It's a sort of like a taxi cab service now. Oh, yeah, but it's town cars And they have an app and you can like say just come get me now. Right. Yeah, you me was telling me about that

Yeah, they sent us uber gift cards. Um And I will send you your gift code for us. Awesome like a hundred bucks and wow That's a lot. I know somebody's gonna be going to the airport for free. Yeah Uh christin curran has been taking us along with her on a tour of europe It seems like we've got postcards from or from Edinburgh, bruge, amsterdam, slovakia, berlin all over the place Yeah, so thanks for those. Um, we also got something from threadless Self-designed t-shirt bigfoot cradling an alien Loch Ness monsters in the background. Yeah, there was also like a men in black and an abduction going on all sorts of stuff

Very cool. Uh, and then kira newrin sent the live some jewelry. Um, and you can visit her store. Thank you very much kira at caribouclassics.etc.com So that's that's our administrative details for now, right? Yeah part one We'll have a part two I guess on the next episode. Yes, we will where we'll cover music and books Nice, uh, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff. You should know and you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushouldknow.com Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works for more podcasts from iHeartRadio

Visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows On the podcast hey dude the 90s called david lasher and christine taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts 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 you everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye. Bye. Bye. Bye Listen to frosted tips with the lance bass on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts