Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Who Gets to Name Continents?

Episode Date: November 14, 2020

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, right? Maybe not. And who named Australia? Find out the unusually uncertain origins of the continents and other interesting stuff in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, everybody. Who gets to name continents? That's a great question. And we answered that on March 22nd, 2016. I think this was a Josh pick,

a really interesting topic because heck, I didn't know who gets to name continents, and now I do. And if you haven't listened to this one, give it a listen now. It's a very, very cool episode. Who gets to name continents? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know, geography. We are in North America. That's right, Chuck. According to some. Yeah. Actually, according to everybody.

No, not everybody. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we'll get to it. Okay. We don't want to spoil like basically the fact of the podcast already. This is, as I said, about geography. And if this kind of thing floats your boat,

I strongly suggest you go look at how maps work or read or listen to that episode. Yeah. It was a good one. It was. Remember, we found that like people, other people see the map upside down? Sure.

Yeah. It all depends on how you look at it. Agreed. And that actually kind of comes into play not just with how you look at a map and say, oh, I'm on top and you're on bottom. So therefore you must be developing. Right.

Naming continents is a kind of a, well, humans are kind of big on names, I guess. Yeah, agreed. We're big on location. Sure. We're big on identifying with where we're from, with where we live. That kind of stuff.

It's that whole in-group out-group BS, you know? Yeah. And boy, I have to say for a short-ish podcast, which this is going to be, it's not going to be our longest one. It was taken at break. No, not yet. I hazard to say that I learned more in this than-

10 Barbie podcasts. Than 10 Barbie podcasts. Actually, that's not true. I learned a lot in that one too. I love that one. But this is just loaded with interesting stuff because I am not the biggest geography buff for someone who is a math or a maps buff.

Yeah. Well, you like maps for their artistry, right? Yeah, and I just ordered a great new map. I wish I could remember the guy's name, but it was, I read an article on this super detailed, awesome map of the United States that this guy spent years and years drawing. Plotting the Arby's all over the country.

Not an Arby's map. That would be great though. Although you can just follow your nose. You don't really need. It always knows. Yeah, just like smell the horsey sauce. I love that stuff. Although the Arby's sauce is by far the superior of the two.

Well, I think you got to mix them. That's the key. Not always. I'm more of a beef and cheddar mix with the Arby's sauce. It's delicious. Than the horsey sauce. Although I'm okay with horsey sauce sometimes. I haven't had Arby's in forever.

Oh, yeah. I like it. It's delicious. That disgusting roast beef sandwich is so good. Right, yeah. All right. Anyway, I ordered this amazing map and it hasn't arrived.

I can't wait for it to get here though. It's going to actually, I'm going to frame this one, I think. Okay. You don't have all your maps framed? No. You need like a huge, huge wing of your house and just have every map you have framed on the wall.

I should. And be like, I'm starting to see a pattern here. That would mean I have a huge room to my house all to myself. And that's not true, unfortunately. You know how to swing a hammer, don't you? Yeah. Just build another room.

Okay. Chuck room. I wish, my friend. So Chuck, we were talking about continents and their names and all that stuff, right? Yes. It turns out that when you think about the continent's names, some of them seem kind of ho-hum or whatever,

but there's actually some really great stories behind these things. Agreed. And we should probably start at the very beginning. Way back. Way, way back. In 1948. Even further back than that.

1926. 200 million years ago. Oh. If you looked at the planet Earth, you would have seen that there weren't a bunch of different continents. So there was actually one huge continent that wore a headband and had enormous like four arms.

Yeah. Named Pangaea. Yeah. What a stud. That continent was. Yeah. And there was one ocean. And the name of that ocean was Panthalasa.

Yeah. It wasn't all divided up. It was just one big chunk of land and surrounded by one massive ocean. Right. And then as we'll see later. And this is a prominent theory, by the way. Right.

We don't, like no one was around back then, 200 million years ago and be like note to 2016. Right. This is the way things are land-wise around here. No. And this theory actually was, we've talked about it before. It had to have been in the Earthquakes episode.

This guy was awesome. Alfred Vega. Yeah. Back in I think 1915, he published his theory on continental drift. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. The theory, well, there's some reasons behind it,

but the theory is that, you know, the Earth has made up these big plates. If you listen to our volcanoes or earthquake episodes, we talk a lot about that. And over time, these things cracked apart and shifted and drifted. And we now have many continents. Right.

But that's not what people thought for a very long time. Like they, I guess they just took for granted that the continents were the way they were. But Alfred Fegner, first of all, he noticed on a map, like, wow, it looks like you could really tuck West Africa into the Eastern part of South America really nicely. Yeah. And in fact, the more I look at it,

the whole thing looks like a puzzle that kind of fits together. Yeah. If you have a brain. So that's where he got his idea first. And then he started setting about proving it or supporting, coming up with evidence. How about that?

Good. And one of the things he looked at was coal seams along edges of these puzzle pieces and found that they were composed of basically the same stuff. Yeah. Like coal in Pennsylvania, deposits in Pennsylvania were similar or the same to those in Poland

and Germany and Great Britain. Yeah. Which shouldn't happen because what coal is is basically compressed former organisms. Yeah. Decaying matter, right? Yeah. And I don't think that these different organisms

would have evolved differently on different continents if they weren't together. And the fact that they were the same and decomposed in about the same amounts suggests that they were all part of the same land mass at one point. Pretty neat. And then he also found fossils on different continents that really shouldn't have been the same.

Yeah. He saw plant fossils and said, wait a minute. I'm finding this stuff in places that are wildly different from one another, these fossils. So maybe, again, that lends to my theory. Or how about this mountain range? The Appalachian Mountains, very similar to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

Maybe it was all one big mountainous mass at one point. And it turns out they probably were. That's right. What was the name of that mountain range that the Appalachians were part of? The Central Pangea Mountains, which apparently formed through the collision of the supercontinents of Gondwana and La Russia.

Yeah, because we're also, in addition to this How Stuff Works article, you found a great article by Tia Ghosts, who writes for Live Science and writes some pretty great stuff. Yeah, this is really good. And Ghosts basically just broke it all out, like how Pangea formed, what Pangea broke into. It's a really interesting article. Yeah, and concise.

I like articles that it's not fluff, you know? Right. It's just packed with packs. Get to it right at the beginning, OK? I love it. And don't let up, don't stop till you have enough. So in the article, they talk about the process that spanned a few hundred million years with a continent

called Laurentia. That's a great continent name. Which includes part of North America and some other microcontinents that formed eventually Euramerica. That's not bad. It sounds like a Kraftwerk album. Oh, it does, totally.

Euramerica crashes into Gondwana, which I mentioned before. I like Gondwana, too. I'm just going to count and say it. I like these pre-current continent names. Pre-white dude names, right? I guess so. But I think they were named by white dudes, probably. More creative white dudes.

And Gondwana included Africa, Australia, South America, and Indian subcontinent. Yeah, so it's so hilarious that all of these ideas of nationalism and all this. Man, if you'd just gone back a few hundred million years ago. It used to be one. You'd be neighbors. Let's all just lighten up, shall we?

Exactly. And that's actually a thing that we talked about in the maps episode, too, is when you draw a map, you are making a political statement. There's such a sense of otherness and togetherness based on geographical distribution. And it's interesting. It says a lot about the human psyche.

Yeah, we should do a podcast one day on the human family tree. Yeah, we should. Super interesting. So getting back to the supercontinent, a couple hundred million years ago, Gondwana split off from La Asia. That's a good one, too.

50 million years later, Gondwana broke up. And then 60 million years ago, North America split off from Eurasia. And these are all the prominent theories, again. Yeah. Well, they follow the continental drift theory. And it's not like they're just like, we'll say the Indian subcontinent broke off from this continent.

It's like, no, they have gone through and done the geological comparisons and have seen when this basically matched up to that. And that's what they've come up with. It's pretty astounding that you can do that if you have that enough patience. Yeah, and brains. So interestingly, they talked a little bit in the article

about a climate and what it might have been like back then. And maybe the interior of this large supercontinent was completely dry because it was surrounded by mountains. Maybe parts of what is now North America used to be like the Amazon rainforest, like a super lush jungle. Right. It would be kind of cool.

Yeah. But once you got into the interior, when you crossed the, what was it, the central Pangea Mountains? Yeah. Like you were just, apparently there was a ring of mountains that ran around the middle of the whole Pangea in the interior. And it just produced rain shadows

that kept rain out from the interior of the continent. Yeah. So it would have just been just a totally arid desert. Pretty cool. It is cool. And of course, this isn't over. They point out in the article that things are still changing. Australia is creeping up on Asia.

Yeah. Very slowly, of course. Yeah, pretty cool. And part of Eastern Africa is trying to get out of the rest of Africa. Yeah, Eastern Africa is staying in so long. I'm going off on my own. I'm going to seek my own fortune and adventure.

Of course, this is over the course of hundreds of millions of years, so. You will likely not be around unless the singularity happens soon. Yeah, exactly. Then you may. And you can be like, this is pretty cool. The people of Sydney will have a docking party

with the people of Hong Kong. I love that. So you want to take a little break here, then we'll talk a little bit about these names? Yes. Yes. MUSIC 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. 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, 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.

Yep, 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, ya 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. So Chuck, that is the theory of continental drift. And the whole idea is that there's a layer of magma. Yeah.

And then on top of it are the continental plates, and they're constantly shifting and moving. Again, I'll be at it very slowly. And when they do, they expose a fissure, and you've got volcanic ash. And then, you know, they're constantly shifting and moving. Again, I'll be at it very slowly. And when they do, they expose a fissure, and you've got

volcanic activity, or two plates slide up against one another, or one subducts below the other one, and you have earthquakes. So there's a lot of evidence that continental drift is real, and that things like hollow earth are probably not correct. Probably. Have you noticed every time we do any kind of geography, especially when we mention plate tectonics,

that the hollow earth people come out of the woodwork and just send us emails and leave comments, and they're like the high fructose corn syrup people. They're like really active in the comment section. Yeah, Frodo and the gang. Oh wait, that's middle earth. Different. In Pangea, we should mention is Greek for all lands or all

earth. So that's a great name for the original supercontinent. Right, in Panthelossa is all ocean. The ocean that surrounded it. And Pangea was what's considered a true continent. And we should say this because it'll come up later, but a true continent is a landmass. Surrounded by ocean on all sides.

I'm looking at you, Asia and Europe. I know. You know? I know. In fact, part of, actually I think you sent this idea, didn't you? Yeah. What?

The whole idea for the show was from you, but not too long ago, I was, I think Emily asked me, she was like, what is Russia? Is that part of, is it Asian or is it European? And I was like, well, I don't know. Asia. Let's go look. Well, it depends.

Part of it. Really? Well, yeah, part of it. And same with Turkey, it's split. And you know, some people identify with Europe, some people identify with Asia. Wow. That's why the term Eurasia.

Well, no, I got that and I got it from this article, but I didn't know that like Russia itself was split. You know? Yeah, that's what it says. Like I could see like Kazakhstan or something being like straddling the sides, but I didn't realize like Russia itself was split some. That's pretty interesting.

Yeah. Maybe some Russians will write in. Tell us how you identify. Yeah. Are you Eurasian, Asian, European? Which one? Yeah, because obviously a lot of these lines are drawn culturally.

Right. Cause they're mountain ranges that separate it. That's not a, I mean, it's a geographical border, but when you're speaking incontinence, it's not. Incontinence? Right. Should we tell them Jerry's bad joke? Yes.

Before we started, Jerry said, I guess we're technically all incontinent. And I said, no, technically we're all incontinent. And then she said, or within continent. And none of the three things that we said were funny. But that's how things happen before we hit record. Yeah, that's why we don't release this stuff beforehand. It's usually much better than that.

So let's get down to this, Chuck. Let's talk about naming continents, right? All right. Apparently with continents, if you are prominently involved with this discovery, you typically get some sort of naming rights. Yeah, and a lot of these are very, just conjecture goes into maybe who named these

and who didn't, one big exception is Antarctica. Right. Because it's new-ish. It's like Pluto. Yeah, as far as when people discovered it. In fact, you can go to the New York Times and read in 1904 about the naming of Antarctica. Yeah.

If you were so inclined to be bored to tears. No, I love those old articles. I like a lot of them too. Like remember the subway accident where people got shot out of the subway tunnel that was being dug? Yeah. That was an interesting article.

This one is, it's bad. Oh, did you read it? No, just this one. Okay. Well, a man named Sir John Murray was a great explorer and oceanographer. He was part of the famous HMS Challenger expedition, which for my money is the greatest

of all ocean going explorations. The Challenger? Yeah, man, 69,000 nautical miles. Wow. Unbelievable. If you look at the map of this thing, the route, it was just, it's staggering. Do you have a map of it? I don't own one, but I looked it up today.

Okay. Which is pretty neat. Anne, I never knew what HMS stood for. Did you know that? Her Majesty's Ship. Yeah, I never knew that. Yeah. Oh, it's just like, yeah, HMS.

There's another one that I don't, like RMS. I don't know. And what is the USS, just United States Ship? I don't know. I never thought about that either. Probably. Probably. Someone from the Navy

can maybe point us in the right direction. So anyway, John Murray, even though the expedition, the Challenger expedition did not, they kind of buzzed Antarctica. They didn't actually see the land, but they came close. But he would later go on to do, like actually go to Antarctica. Oh, okay.

I was going to say, like, then how did he know anything about it? I guess his interest was piqued. He saw icebergs and stuff. Gotcha. I'm coming back. Yeah. Because this place is cold. He's come, I'm coming for you, Tarot and Jiro.

So in 1904, he actually was able to name it as a combination of Ant opposite and Arctic the North Pole. So it's opposite of the North Pole. AKA the South Pole. Pretty neat. And which one has penguins and, so Antarctica has penguins and the North Pole doesn't. Isn't that right?

I don't remember. But that's like, that's the case, right? Doesn't one have one and the other one doesn't? I know, we got a lot of emails. We did. I don't know why I'm doing this again. I know. I might as well just hook a car battery

up to my nipples or something. It'll get the same effect. I got you on that one. Yeah, that was good. So let's talk about America because- I just realized something, Chuck. This may be played in geography classes in like middle school and stuff.

So if that's the case, I want to go ahead and apologize to all the middle schoolers. They just had to hear me say that. That's okay. And don't try that at home. Bad idea. No, it doesn't matter what grade you're in or how long out of school you are.

Agreed. So America, the name America, if you went to took civics class or geography and elementary school and high school, you probably got the story that America of Espiuchy was named after him, European explorer. Yeah, that guy has been slandered, maligned,

maybe worse than Columbus even. Yeah. Apparently he had a lot of rivals back in Italy and they worked very hard to sully his name and it was quite effective over the centuries to the point where there was a big, almost a revival in hatred for America of Espiuchy. Interesting.

And a lot of really inaccurate ideas were revived based on propaganda, contemporary propaganda against him. So what's the idea that he ripped off Columbus? Well, that's not, it depends on your definition of ripped off. So I don't have the impression that he ever said, I discovered America, he said Columbus discovered America

but the distinction between Espiuchy and Columbus is that Columbus didn't realize that he hadn't hit already, that he hadn't hit undiscovered or previously undiscovered by European land, right? He thought that he had just found another route to the West Indies apparently until he died. Espiuchy was the one to say,

no European's ever seen this before, please. That was great. No, it wasn't. I like it. And so he is the one who supposedly, this continent was named after because he was the one to recognize it as previously uncharted land.

Yeah, and it's on record in 1507, a German cartographer named Martin Waldsemiola. Our two favorite accents. Yeah, Italian and German. Yeah. Two of the only two you can still do these days and not get taken to death for. Sure.

He very famously made a map that was a big effort in France in the 1500s to really bring the modern map into the forefront and like these old maps, like these were made by a bunch of dummies who didn't know anything. So let's really expand our geographic knowledge. Well, yeah, this is when like Mercator started working. Yeah, so this woodcut map that Waldsemiola made

was the first to depict a separate Western hemisphere, the first to show the Pacific Ocean as a separate thing. Oh, this guy, he was here. He's like, get that sea monster off of there. I'd leave a sea monster. Okay. Just for fun. But he...

It's an Easter egg. Yeah, there was one of these maps. There is one of these maps still existing. And in 2003, the Library of Congress bought it with donation from Discovery Channel. Oh, is that right? Apparently. Nice.

For 10 million bucks, it was in a castle for 350 years in Southern Germany. And they're like, let's buy it and display it. I read about a guy who found an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, folded up behind a painting that he bought at a yard sale for like four dollars. Amazing.

And I think he sold it for like a few million and then Norman Mailer bought it for like eight million. Wow. But yeah, somebody just found the Declaration of Independence. I guess in much the same way. That's amazing. I got nothing in my attic. I even looked.

Oh, you did look. I was gonna say, you don't know, but I guess you do. That's some old doors. Doors can be worth 30, 40 bucks. Yeah, the door from the early 1930s. Yeah. People love those things. They go crazy for them.

I think it's neat, but you know, I wanted like a stash of gold bullion or something. Like prohibition era of money. Yeah, my house isn't old enough. Where's your house built? Yeah, like 1930. Prohibition. Yeah, I guess so.

Maybe some old booze, some old moonshine. Right. That'd be delicious. So the reason this map is significant by. Valsamule. Is that it says America, like North-South America are designated America by this map. And this is map that is in question was from,

when was it? 1507. 1507. And somebody said, hey, buddy, why'd you call it America? And he said, I did it in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. Sure. So the first guy who really uses the word America

is on record apparently is saying he named it America after Amerigo Vespucci. Yeah. But a lot of people said that's a lie. It's a historical fallacy. It's inaccurate. Right. So one guy went so far as to say that

Amerigo Vespucci actually changed his name after America was named. And that his real name was Giovanni Vespucci? No, Alberigo Vespucci. Oh. And that he changed his name to Amerigo from Alberigo. To conveniently align with the naming of America.

Right. But apparently, and this is, again, this is contemporary stuff. People said, you changed your name, you big liar. Right. And then in like the 1970s, I think some historian revived it and like that was the idea.

But somebody else went back and apparently found his baptismal certificate that lists him as Amerigo Vespucci. The thing is, is that still doesn't mean that America was named after Vespucci. True. There is a long tradition among cartographers that had already been established

by the time America was discovered to name new lands if you were naming it after an explorer, you named it after the explorer's last name. If you want to name it after royalty, you named it after the royalty's first name. So think about it, Georgia. Yeah, yeah. Virginia.

And then Columbus or Hudson. Like the explorer's last name or royalty's first name is how you name things. So they would have named America Vespucci land. The United States of Vespucci. Exactly, rather than America. Yeah, that'd be great. But if it's not named after Vespucci,

then where did America come from? Well, there are some theories. One is that it was named after the Ameri-keek. Ameri-keek. Ameri-keek. It's a Mayan word, actually. Yes, mountains in Nicaragua and... This is where my money goes.

You think so? So people think that Columbus and Vespucci both went to these mountains after American natives said, hey, there's gold in them Darhills, which of course is really all they wanted anyway. Well, that's not true. They wanted to discover new lands, but hopefully new lands with gold.

Right. And people you could subjugate. Exactly. So that they went there and then it was named after those mountains. Yeah. Not bad. And did you say both Columbus and Vespucci

supposedly traveled to these mountains? Yeah, because they wanted the gold. Right, so that's a pretty good reason to call it that. And when you combine that with the evidence that a cartographer likely would have named it Vespucci land rather than America after Amerigo, it's entirely possible that America is actually named after a indigenous Mayan word for some mountains.

I think it means place of wind in Mayan. Interesting. Yeah. Another theory, and this one I don't think it holds water, but there was a British royal rep named Richard Ameriq, A-M-E-R-I-K-E, and supposedly explorer John Cabot became the first, well, this isn't supposed, in 1497 he definitely became the first to sail

under the British flag to the new world. And apparently when he got back, he got a big wad of cash from Ameriq, and he was like, hey, I'm gonna name the country and continent after you then. But there's really nothing to substantiate that, right? No. And then Cabot retired to make some pretty decent voter.

Oh yeah. Is that him? I think so. Okay. Surely it's him still. Maybe. And he's several hundred years old. Do you wanna take a break again?

Yeah, let's break and then we'll talk about our favorite continent, Australia. 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. 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 wanna 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.

This thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody 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 gonna get second hand 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 to handle on this

sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash 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. So Chuck, you were telling everybody our favorite continent is?

Australia. Yeah. That's what Lex Luthor, Gene Hackman, is Lex Luthor wanted in Superman. He wanted Australia? Yeah. To his own? Or Superman 2. Yeah, remember when the three Terrence Stam and the gang came down and Lex Luthor was working with them and they were like, well, what do you want in return for delivering Superman? He said, Australia. I don't remember that. Man, Gene Hackman was great. I saw this,

the beginning of a movie with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau. Robin Williams was like a baby at the time, but they foil a robbery and become heroes. They go to a survivalist camp or something? Yeah. I think it's called Survivors? I think so. I saw the first 10 minutes of it. I totally know the movie. But I was like, man, there is no one, no one on the planet like Walter Matthau anymore. He was awesome. Then I was like, God,

I just can't imagine Robin Williams and Walter Matthau working together. Then didn't they do Moscow on the Hudson too? Wasn't that one? Well, I don't think Matthau was in that one. Oh, he wasn't? I thought he was. Maybe he was. I could be wrong because I never saw it. Those early Robin Williams movies were great. They were. According to Garp. I never saw that one. That was by the guy who did Ciderhouse

Rules, right? Yeah, John Irving. He was pretty great. But then it made me think about Couch Trip. You remember that movie with Dan Aykroyd and Walter Matthau? I didn't see it. Was it good? Yes. It was so good. I haven't seen it in decades, but I guarantee it still holds up. I mean, it's Matthau and Aykroyd. Yeah. One's like a con man pretending to be crazy. And the other one actually is crazy who is the only person who

consents that this guy's a con man. You know, I've never been the hugest. No, I'm sorry. He's a con man pretending to not be crazy. Oh, okay. That makes more sense. It's great. I've never been the hugest Dan Aykroyd guy. He definitely is Dan Aykroyd, Dan Aykroyd in this thing. I don't dislike him. But Walter Matthau is providing a nice slow burning distraction over here. If you don't like Dan Aykroyd, you'll still like Couch Trip. Yeah. And boy, the odd couple,

Matthau and Lemon. I don't know if I ever saw that original one. So good. All right. That's called Movie Sidebar with Josh and Chuck. And that started with Gene Hackman. We didn't mean to talk about him. Oh, I love Gene Hackman. He needs to unretire is what I'm saying. Seriously. Like go make another movie. Yeah. Your swan song. That's what I say. All right. We own you Gene Hackman. Australia, which is what Gene Hackman is like Luther wanted. It is a bit of a mystery too.

Most people will point to Matthew Flinders in 1802 as the Namer because he was the first to circumnavigate it and create that map. And Australis means southern, so it all makes sense, right? Yeah. Back in the day, the cartographers were already aware of Australia before Matthew Flinders circumnavigated it, but they called it the Terra Australis, which is the southern land. Matthew Flinders is like, I like the sound of Australia more. It's more pleasing to the ear

apparently is how it was put. All right. The thing is, for a very long time, that's how Australia was named as far as anyone was concerned, but then Australia's National Library discovered a way older map from before 1802 from 1545. Yeah, from a German astronomer named Siriaco Jakob Zumbarth. That's a great name. Great name. Not at all German if you ask me, except for the Jakob thing. Zumbarth is, but that Siriaco definitely doesn't look German. No. But yeah, 1545. That's

like way, way before. Yeah, and apparently there's maps that are even slightly older than that around, and one of them might have been produced by Mercator himself, that also refer to the area around Australia as Australia's something. So, not everyone was referring to it exclusively as the Terra Australis. Okay. But it's probable that the Siriaco Jakob Zumbarth is the one who first labeled it Australia. Alright, we should do a

podcast on the history of Australia. Sure. Super interesting. Starring Hugh Jackman for the World War II part. By the way, when I mentioned Hugh Jackman is P.T. Barnum. Okay. He is in fact playing P.T. Barnum in an upcoming musical version of a movie, but I either didn't know or I subliminally knew. Okay. But I didn't overtly know. I thought later on after I found that out that you'd just been messing with me the whole episode. Well, I apologize

for assuming that. That's alright. I either didn't know or maybe I had read that and just forgot or something. Yeah. Because you said it like three times. Yeah. Or maybe I should get into casting. If you didn't know, then hats off to you because that was prescient. So, now let's move on to other comments. Oh, did you see some of the suggestions we got though? Oh, for P.T. Barnum? Yeah, I think that my favorite one was John C. Riley. He'd be an odd P.T. Barnum,

but he could totally do it. Yeah, I saw one. Someone said Tom Hardy who like he'd be great in anything, but he's in everything right now. He's so hot right now. And then someone sent Cole Meany who was sort of like the. That name's like I know the name. Who is it though? He's like the English John C. Riley. He sort of looks like him. He's older though, right? Or he may be Irish. Yeah, he's a little older. Yeah, yeah, I know who he is. They kind of look alike. A bit. Cole

Meany's got a little more dapperness to him. A little more suavness maybe. Well, there's nothing about John C. Riley to suave. Have you seen we need to talk about Kevin? Uh-uh. Oh, you'll love it. Is it a movie? It's a sleeper with John C. Riley and Tilda Swinton about they have a kid who's a bad kid and Tilda Swinton's having to deal with it. Interesting. It's a really great movie. It's on Netflix right now. I love John C. Riley so. He's kind of a a prop in

the background for this. It's mostly Tilda Swinton and I'm sure they appreciate hearing that. He knows. Okay. There's no way he played that role and doesn't know. All right. I never knew we could talk so much about movies in this one. I didn't see that coming. Um so let's talk about the other continents. Um Africa, Asia and Europe, basically what it boils down to with the rest of these is they were likely named by sailors who had to call them something. Yeah,

probably. Um and the like Africa has a few different contenders that are pretty good. Um there's a a the Afarak people who are in the northern part of Africa. They're they're a Berber tribe. Yeah. Not a bad source. Yeah. Makes sense. Um and then apparently, apric in Greek or aprica in Latin means sunny. Right? Yeah. That makes sense too. Uh and then there's uh so who who knows? The point is there's no documentation for when Africa was first named and

it was most likely Africa, Europe and Asia were named by seafaring folks. Sure. Who were like we're going this place and they needed a name for this place so they their um families would know where they were to go look for them if they didn't come back. Yeah. And so they came up with names like Europe and Asia. Yeah, Phoenician sailors uh it's believed they may have used their proximity to the sun uh because Asia uh might come from uh ACU, a queue for sunrise or

east and Europe which is of course west uh closer to the sunset if you're standing in the east. Right. Uh E-R-E-B Arab which means sunset or west. That's a Phoenician word. Right. So, it's possible Phoenician sailors named Asia and Europe. There's other ones too like Europa is a Greek um mythological figure. Right? Yeah. Um and then uh Asia could have been named after a ruler named um Azios, a Trojan ruler. Yeah. I don't think that's it. That's the fun thing

about things where it's like no one knows. You can be like that's not right. Yeah, you read certain, you read theories and you some make sense to you and some don't. Right. I like that. Uh that's why I don't uh I think uh math never appealed to me and why it does appeal to math fans just because it's rules apply and like there is a right and a wrong. Sure. I'm much more prone to be like to think about something and have theories about it. Well, you

know, they say you read a lot of fiction, right? Yeah. They say that people who read fiction are much more open to um ambiguous resolutions or non-resolutions. Yeah. They're lacking closure. Yeah. Um and because you so frequently get that from fiction. It leads to the question though which is first. Are you attracted to fiction because? Right. It usually has resolutions like that or have you been trained to accept resolutions like that from appreciating fiction?

Well, back to movies. One of my favorite things which really bothers a lot of people are movies with ambiguous endings. If it if done right, I think it's one of the coolest things you can do in a movie. Yeah. Is to not wrap it up in a little bow and kind of leave the end with a decision like sure what's going on here. Plus, it leaves it open for a sequel. Well, maybe. Um I bet math majors hate that though now that I think about it. Oh yeah. You know? Yeah. Uh and then

finally, some people still depending on where you are in the world don't recognize uh all the continents. No, and this actually makes sense to me because we said earlier continent is a body of land surrounded on all sides by a body of water, right? So, that means that a lot of the continents that we recognize over here in the west is continents, incontinence. Yeah. They're incontinence. So, according to some parts of the world, North America and

South America, that's just America. Yeah. Uh and then Europe and Asia, just Eurasia. Yeah. And that's it. Uh I've got a great pavement t-shirt that has North America on it and it says Canada and then Mexico and in the middle it says pavement and I get a lot of compliments on it and I think it's from people thinking I'm making a statement like the United States is just a bunch of pavement and like you know, Canada, Mexico aren't. Yeah. When in fact, it's just

the band. Yeah. Or maybe they're all just pavement vans. Yeah, maybe. You can't tell. You can never tell these days. Did I tell you I'm Facebook friends with uh Bob Nistanovich from pavement? You didn't. I tricked him because we had some mutual friends. Your mom said that you have to be friends with me on Facebook. No, it's pretty great though. I like seeing insight into these like people are Ruvier. Sure. He's a big horse racing guy. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he likes the ponies. I don't like going to the track necessarily but I like the big three. Yeah. Although I would go to the track. We just don't have them around here. Yeah, we don't. Uh and bring it on. Send the email about how I'm wrong for going to the track or wanting to. If you want to know more about naming continents or geography or any of that jazz, head on over to howstuffworks.com and type in geography in the search bar and it will bring up a mess of

great articles. Since I said mess, it's time for the listener mail. I'm going to call this road tripping. We get a lot of emails from people that listen to us while they're road tripping. Yes. Which is very nice. Uh hey guys, my husband and I are adventuring on a road trip from Texas throughout Florida. Uh I've been addicted to the show for a couple of months now but my husband has not listened to a

podcast in his life. Uh I started the driving in the trip and he asked if I could make it all the way to Florida. First of all, husband. Tom? Yeah, that's pretty serious stuff. Alright, we're in Texas, hun. Can you make it all the way to Florida? Yeah. I gotta catch some Z's. I need some sugar. Uh I said that if I could listen to stuff you should know, then I wouldn't stop driving. He sighed regrettably and then let me turn an episode on. Five days

into the trip, uh every time we get into the car, he now says, educate me on stuff I should know. Nice. Uh our biggest debates are deciding on which podcast to listen to next. We literally made it to one of our destinations and sat in the car for another 15 minutes after a three hour drive just to finish an episode. That's wonderful. Uh thank you so much for what you do and that is from Kim and Tom Kepler and since we are not recording too far out these

days, they are most likely still on their trip. Yeah, enjoy the trip. Be safe, have fun and drive, you know, every now and then, Tom. Yeah, really, Tom. Let's get it together, shall we? That's awesome. I hope they just heard this. Yeah. Uh if you want to get in touch with us because you love us on a road trip or you um whatever, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us

an email to stuffpodcast at housestuffworks.com and as always, 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 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. 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 band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, 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

podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.