Stuff You Should Know - When Words Take on New Meanings

Episode Date: April 3, 2018

Historical words often morph and change to take on new meanings. Today on the podcast, Josh and Chuck sit down and talk about a handful of them, their original meanings, and how they changed over the years to reflect almost nothing about their original use. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's a lot over today. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And let's see, we've got a couple of producers out there. We're in a new studio. We've got Will and Mangesh from Part-Time Genius.

We all have our pants on. That's weird. That's the weird part. It's just a big family fest stuff you should know. Welcome, you guys. Thank you, guys. We're in this brand new studio. Isn't this exciting?

It is exciting. Pretty cough-gassing. I'm a little woozy from the formaldehyde. It's a lot like a science class in here. Yes, it is. I think that's what happens in here at night, science class. You make an extra money to pay for this new studio. To fill everybody in, we're just doing like in-joke frenzy right now.

Stuff You Should Know, or I'm sorry, HowStuffWorks, has expanded. We've got so many podcasts these days and so many coming down the pike that they've built out new studios and we're using, this is our first time, but you guys have used this one before, right? Yeah, it's an awesome studio. So, Chuck, let's introduce these guys, huh? Okay. Well, Will is who you've heard speak.

Mangesh is who you've heard laugh. You do have a great laugh, Mangesh. And they are the, we should have a laugh off at some point, you and me, if you really get it. You have to have a wonder laugh, right? I've been told, I don't know. All right, Mangesh, go. Oh, wow.

It truly is. Like on command. You need no plot meters. Yeah. Yeah. So, these guys are the hosts of Part-Time Genius and they just let us know that it is your and co-founders of Mental Floss many years ago, but today is your first one-year anniversary. We have been at How Stuff Works for one year.

Yeah. That is fantastic. Congratulations. Hopefully, Jerry will work in some sort of post-production sound effect or applause or... I should have. The official hit the fanfare button. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Well, congrats. And you guys, so you guys have been doing Part-Time Genius. Has it come out like three times a week from the get-go? No, it was two times a week at the beginning. Okay. And then... And we decided we didn't have enough work.

Right. Right. In another mix. So, it was around the time of the eclipse and we thought, you know what, we should have done an eclipse episode and let's just share some fun facts. And then the next week we were like, you know what, there had been some really bad news as there has been frequently recently and so we thought, you know what, let's do an episode on nine things to make you smile.

And so, most of our episodes are big questions where we ask a question like, you know, will we ever be able to live without sleep or something like that? And so, we decided to start throwing in these bonus episodes where we do nine things about whatever it might be, facts about Mr. Rogers or House Plants, you know, House Plants, the usual. But there's still pretty robust episodes, there's like 20 minutes basically, right? Yeah. So, three times a week, my hat is off to you, I'm also vaguely threatened by that because

I'm worried that somebody's going to be like, why don't you guys put out three a week? Yeah, we run a classic. I don't know if that counts because it's not extra work, you know what I mean? So, I'm a little nervous but still, it's pretty awesome. We're just building up to get the classics. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, right? That's right. So, how did you guys end up at House Plants because as Chuck said, you're the co-founders

of Mental Floss. Like, I feel like that's worth saying a couple more times. Yeah. Mental Floss Magazine. Yeah, one that, like a site we used and still use a lot, actually, we don't use it anymore now that you guys know. Yeah, did you? Yeah.

That's not true. I emailed them about a bug. I found a bug where like, if you went to go put the, like the, in the easy reader format or whatever on Firefox, it would bring up a different article. So, I let them know. They sent them a strongly worded message. I did. But I was like, one degree separated from the dev team at Mental Floss.

Yeah, Josh emailed me and of course we reached out to them and they were very much appreciative. Fixed it like that. Oh, cool. It's a great team there. It's still obviously a great site and we love all the crew at Mental Floss and we were just excited about what's happening in the world of podcasting. We've been big fans of you guys for a long time. Thank you.

And just knowing how much is happening in this space, we were eager to try something new when we were approached about the idea of coming here. And we've been doing Mental Floss. We've been talking about Mental Floss since we were 19. Yeah. Like it's been a long time and we've done like so many fun projects, so many things, but by the end of it, we're just managing so many people, you know, and we weren't going to do the creative stuff as much.

Right. At least that's how I felt. Yeah. And when we started like, you know, thinking about podcasts, it just really felt like how Mental Floss started, where it was conversations and it felt like intimate. And the way you guys have built such an amazing community of people who care and are so invested. And somewhere along the way, I felt like, you know, Mental Floss was such a massive site that I didn't know the readers anymore.

Yeah. Too many. Yeah, I can see that. And somehow, even though podcasts are huge, like, you know, you guys have millions and millions of listeners, like they all feel like they know you. And we sort of missed that connection. The cat is truly in the cradle, guys. Very sad.

With the silver spoon. Well, I'm glad you guys are here. I know Chuck is, too. So welcome. Thank you very much. Welcome to the family after a year. Well, on our first day here, we talked about this previously, but like, we went around the house of works offices, we met everyone, we're in these like meetings and stuff.

Everyone went home early and we're still... Yeah, that's a staple. It's amazing. I mean, everyone works hard, but they also get to spend time with their families, which is amazing. Sure, yeah. And when we got on the elevator, we were like, where did they keep the jerks? No, like, there don't seem to be any in this company.

It was just so nice. Did you say, are we the jerks? Yes, yes. That's what I said. Yeah. I was a little concerned. Oh, no. Oh, God, they needed jerks.

We're here. At the jerks. Yeah, that's one of the really cool things. Like, we... I think we differ from a lot of podcast companies in that way, in that we have all this great, like, talent on the roster, and we're also going out and developing cool stuff. Yeah. Very cool.

So, enough about all this. Let's talk about the show some more, all right? You guys have, like, quizzes, typically. You have lots of guests on. What are some of, like, the best questions that you've asked and some of the best guests that you've had so far? I mean, that's been one of the most fun parts about this, is getting to reach out to experts and different things, and even experts in areas that we didn't realize they were experts.

You know, we got to talk to America's only certified water sommelier. I mean, we always hear about sommeliers in the world of wine, and that there's an expert in the world of water that these fine restaurants reach out to, and getting to hear the ins and outs of that. Or Antarctica's Poet in Residence. Right. This was wonderful. He or she's not allowed to leave, though, huh?

Well, she eventually left, but didn't get to take a lot of hot showers when she was there. I can imagine. She probably swam away, made her get away. We had a guest on recently, an author of a book called Win, and it was about the science of perfect timing. His name is Daniel Pink, and he was teaching us about, you know, how much time of day affects all of us, and helping us learn the disturbing fact that we're all a little more racist than

the afternoons. And there'd be just weird things like that where he was talking about staging these court cases where they have these kind of mock jurors, and they put them together. This was not on a real trial. That would be an unfortunate way to test this. And they would test their behavior, and whether they were more or less likely to convict someone in certain scenarios, and they looked at what happened in the morning and what happened in the afternoon, and had people of different races, and they were more likely to come down

more hard on someone of, you know, a different race in the afternoons. Did they explain why? Was there any idea why? I mean, it really does have to do with our body clocks, our circadian rhythms, and... Post-lunch grumpiness? Honestly, that's part of it, but yeah, the science of that perfect timing, and we learned and we've changed our behavior around this. A different fact that came out of that one was that they've done a statistical analysis

on teams that do more high-fiving and chest bumping, and it said head-slapping. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but mango slaps my head before every episode. And they are actually shown to win more frequently. It might be because they're winning, so they're high-fiving, like if you're losing, probably not high-fiving. That is a good point. But it's just a lot of fun to have these people on that have studied such fascinating things.

You know, we consider them the experts. We're not experts, but it's a selfish thing for us. We get to sit back and learn from people who know so much about so many interesting things. Yeah, we didn't show on our rudeness and whether there's a rudeness epidemic, and there's this guy, Danny Wallace, who wrote this great book. And one of the facts he was talking about was that this mayor in Cartagena, or somewhere in Columbia, he fired the corrupt police force and hired a bunch of mimes to mock people as they were jaywalking.

Wow. And it basically shamed the city into being more polite. It was amazing. Or annoyed them into being polite. Either way, but I feel like mimes are an underused career. They really are, especially as civil servants. It was also a rise in mime violence in Cartagena. That's right.

That's right. There's another study being done about how that could have happened. Well, everybody out there, if you haven't picked up on the idea that you would love Will and Manguesha's show, all you have to do is go to their website. It's part-timegenius.com, right? Part-timegenius.show. We decided to take it to another level. Yeah.

Yeah. That's really, really forward-thinking of you. Part-timegenius.com wasn't available, you won, Josh, but we were really thinking about it. Right. Yeah. Part-timegenius.show. We've got the podcast archives on there, so everybody go check it out.

Yeah. Or, of course, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right. Isn't that what we say? I think we say those things. Yeah. All right. Fist pumps, guys.

That's right. I know. No, head slaps. Ouch. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, guys. It was good talking to you.

Thank you. It's always a joy to hang out with those two, huh? I love those guys. They're truly good guys. So, Chuck, we are talking about words today, specific words, historical words, that people may or may not be using correctly, that people may or may not have really defined some of these instances. There's really no problem with them, but they're fun to talk about, right?

Sure. That whole descriptivist-prescriptivist thing, you remember that whole thing we used to get into? Oh, boy. It's a trip down memory lane, isn't it? I think so. So, descriptivists are kind of like, language is constantly evolving. Oh, sure, yeah.

Let's go with the flow. Prescriptivists are like, no, no. Language is language, and if you're using it wrong, you're wrong. Right. Like David Foster Wallace was a prescriptivist. Right. Like, basically, grammar Nazi is another way to put it, right? Yeah.

So, let's go ahead, and this is not on our list, but let's go ahead and throw a decimate in there. Okay. Because that is a word that we used to hear from a lot when we said something was decimated, and we would have prescript, which one is the- Prescriptivist. Yes. Email us and say, decimate means, you know, desa is by 10.

So, reducing by 10% is what it means. Guys. Right. So, I just started writing people back and saying, you know, the modern dictionary even says that it has now come to learn, decimate can just mean, you know- Late a waste. Yeah. Late a waste.

Wiping out. Like, this Bush mail's decimated me last night. Well, it reduced you by probably more than 10%. Right. It depends on how much Bush mail's was involved. But anyway, that's always been a gripe for me, like, even when it's officially changed its definition over time and recognized as such, people will still get their hackles up.

And I'm like, dude, it's usually a dude, but to be honest. But that's a prescriptivist railing against it. Well, yeah. And it's also like, come on, man, like, I'm sorry we're not using the 15th century usage of the word. Right. So, yeah, decimate. They got their tunic in a twist.

Oh, no, tunics, technically. So I guess this one is, I think this episode is kind of for the prescriptivists, if you think about it. I still don't know who's who. Prescriptivists are the ones who are, who you were talking about. What are we? Prescriptivist pedant. Oh.

Right that way. So we're not that. No, no. Okay. We're definitely, we go with that to each, each their own motto. Yeah. And this is, of course, another, we haven't done a top 10 in a while. No.

But as everyone knows, our top 10s are never 10. No. And it kind of occurred to me, that's usually because some of them we just think are dumb. And also because of time. Sure. So the way we go, these things would be a way over an hour long. We decimate the top 10 lists. Yeah.

Actually. Yeah. All right. So let's start, man. We're talking again, I don't know if we got this across yet or not, but we're talking about historic words that come from history that are either used wrong or not fully, they don't really get across the original intent necessarily. Yeah.

They've just kind of evolved over time, right? Right. Those two kind of pair together quite well. They do. Like a nice wine and a shot of bushmills, right? Oh, God. I'm not even on a bushmills kick. I don't know where this came from.

That is a little weird. I haven't had bushmills in a long time. Yeah. And it's not something you would normally shoot either. Oh, yeah. Or drop in a glass of cavernette. Right. Yeah.

I think people shoot bushmills. Yeah. Well, people probably shoot anything. You know who do? Heed nests. Very nice. Thank you. You're welcome.

So that's the first word is hedonism, right? Yeah. So most people think of the word hedonism as, and they do mention in this article that there is a nudist resort in Jamaica called hedonism, which I'd heard of. And there's hedonism too. I think there's more than one. Well, there's a lot of nudists. A lot of nudists.

A little crowded on the island. I remember when we did our nudist episode. Oh, yeah. I ran across an article about like a swinger's resort. I think it was hedonism. Yeah. And it was just like, it may have been a men's health article or BuzzFeed or something like that.

But it was like, I went to a nudist swinger's resort and basically never want to have sex again. I'm so grossed out with myself. Oh, really? Humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Not to say that that's hedonism because they may eventually be a sponsor one day.

That's right. That hedonism is, most people use that, throw that word around to equate with just the ultimate in like sexual slash party debauchery. Debauchery is a great word for it. Drinking, fornicating, orgies, fine scented oils and silken linens. Right. Being completely ruined. Yeah.

So that is basically what most people think of with hedonism. It's like giving into your every desire, especially carnal desires, even at great personal risk and without much foresight. Right? Apparently that is not at all the case of what hedonism meant originally. But you can kind of see how it evolves over time because hedonism stems from the Greek word for pleasure, right, hedonia. And the idea is that originally, the hedonist, it was an umbrella school of philosophy.

I think we kind of touched on it in our Stoicism episode. But it was an umbrella philosophy where they basically said there's two things in life that you need to pay attention to and everything else falls into place if you are maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. Yes. Those are the two things. Pleasure and pain, maximize one, minimize the other. Yeah, but the whole thing is they don't say, nowhere in there does it say, and by the way,

this involves orgies, charcuterie trays. Which is weird because we're talking the Greeks here. Well, sure. Well, I mean, I'm sure hedonism, it also meant that, but it didn't exclusively mean that. Gotcha. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

You know, delights of the mind, intellectual pursuits, stuff like that. It even says altruism, which is, it's kind of funny to think about someone saying like, I bought groceries for my elderly neighbor and it was a purely hedonistic sensation came over me. So you're such a hedonist. But technically, back then, that could have been the way you might use that word. Yeah. Or to the point that hedonists said, there's something you really want to pay attention

to here. Yeah, you want to experience pleasure, but it is really easy for pleasure to turn into pain or degradation or addiction. And you have to bear this stuff in mind or else you're going to pursue pleasure at your own expense and then you're not doing it right. There's actually this guy in the, I think the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham, I can't remember if he was at Cambridge or Oxford and we're going to talk about him before. Five million emails, surely we have, but he was a fellow or a don or whatever of philosophy

at this university that's still around. And every year at one of their annual banquets, they bring his mummified head out and put it at the head of the table. I think on like a wax dummy, so he's dressed as himself and they've got the guy's mummified head. That's how much of a revered philosopher he was. He came up with this thing called philosophic calculus. It's basically an equation.

Right up my alley. An equation, right. This is pretty dry, but it's the whole point is to pursue pleasure as much as possible and to avoid pain. And he said, do you have to consider things like the duration of the pleasurable event, the intensity, how certain it is, the fecundity, like is it going to spawn more pleasure afterward, the purity, will it actually devolve into pain, the extent of it, which means how many people are affected by it.

And if you take all these factors into account, you can run any experience or any decision you have in life through that and decide, I'm not going to do this or yeah, I'll have that bite of cool whip out of the fridge. Is anyone still use that? I'm sure there's a few people out there that do. They're very exacting. I imagine so. So that's hedonism.

Yeah. Right? We took all the pleasure out of that pretty quick, but that leads to another word that's misused frequently in Epicurean. Epicurean. Yeah, that's the thing that nowadays you hear people use the word Epicurean. There are probably a lot of restaurants that have a name on some derivation of this word, but it's tied into food and drink, like really fine food, top shelf wine and food.

If you have Epicurean tastes, then you are someone who concerns yourself with the finer things in the dining room specifically. Right. And it's not quite as much identified with overdoing it as hedonism, but there's, I think more than anything, it's like you said, it's the finer things, but you might overindulge here or there. Yeah. And if you use that word about yourself, then you are probably pretty obnoxious.

Yeah. It's people like you who are needed at parties for other people to avoid. But the word, once again, from Greek, Epicure came from the philosopher Epicurus, and people, if you don't know much about the root of the word, you probably think that his whole deal was about food, and that's not necessarily the case, but he was a hedonist, isn't that right? Yeah, he was like one of the great hedonistic thinkers, but in the ancient Greek sense of the word.

Right. So, his whole deal was adoraxia, which was inner tranquility, and that you should pursue pleasure by just being content rather than going off and getting wasted or eating a bunch or something like that, and that if you did have desire, it was better to eliminate it than satisfy it, but if you did satisfy it, you should do it thoughtfully or mindfully. So really, he was kind of the opposite of what people who consider themselves Epicureans were. Yeah, but also, didn't he have a lot to say about following your own path when it comes

to that? It's like it was very centered around the self, so you do whatever is best for you in the moment and not necessarily what someone else thinks might be the best thing for you. Right, but again, the point is, is virtue, like value hedonism, like doing things that are actually good and that produce good rather than, I'm going to shoot this heroin even though my significant other doesn't want me to, that's not what it was about at all. It was moderation. You have to find what gives you pleasure in life rather than looking to other people,

look inward to yourself, but yeah, moderation was a huge part of it. Yeah, and what I couldn't find, and that was the case with a few of these, is where it got all wrapped up in food. I couldn't either. I think it was people like food. So it just sort of, yeah. That's all I can think of. I couldn't find, I was really hoping that there was like a turning point, where it was like

this is where it happened, and there were a few places where I couldn't find that kind of thing. Yeah. It's just not out there. It's lost to history. All right, so we're disappointed, so we're going to take a break, go put our heads together. Roll ourselves together. Turn our attitude around.

We'll be right back. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. 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. 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? You'll 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. I'm Mangesh Atikulur, 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 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 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back, and we're going to stick around in ancient Greece for a little while longer.

Hey, why not? I mean, they've produced a lot of misused words. Yeah, I got Frankincense all up in here. You like Frankincense? I don't even know what it is. It's a resin-based incense. Yeah. I don't think...

Have you smelled it? Sure, yeah. I mean, I was raised Catholic. Oh, is that a thing? You ever been to a Catholic mass? Nope. So, they'll go through with this big incense burner and just dink up the whole church with Frankincense.

I've seen that in movies. And well, that's what they're doing, is burning Frankincense, and it's actually pretty good smell. I mean, Catholic jams I've been involved in were sadly a couple, well... Wine tastings? No, a funeral and a wedding or two, maybe. Maybe four? Well, it seemed like four.

Four weddings, and that was close. So, cynic is the word... Did you already say that? No, I didn't. Okay. Cynic is the word, and this is one... I kind of like this word as we use it today because I try to abandon cynicism in my own life, and I'm pretty turned off by cynicism as a whole, which means, in our usage, is...

Like a cynic to me is someone who's always suspicious of what's going on. What's your angle? Yeah, that person's doing something seemingly pure, but I'm cynical, so I wonder what that's all about. Right. That can't be true. I saw a great definition of cynicism in the modern usage. A cynic is a person whose fated belief or curdled trust had left him unfit for attachment

to others. That's a deep cynic definition. Yeah, that's pretty heavy. But yeah, it can be a little lighter than that. It could just be somebody who's not willing to just kind of go with the flow and take things at face value and be happy about things. Trust other people. Yeah, trust, I think, has a lot to do with it.

Right, agreed. This is one of those words I actually kind of found where this one turns, which we'll get to in a second, but it's based on, so cynicism, again, is an ancient Greek philosophy. The cynics were not like the hedonists at all. They actually thought that pleasure was to be avoided, that if you're going to lead a virtuous life, you basically needed to take a vow of poverty, eschew any comforts or pleasures, just basically be a bit of a jackass, really. Kind of the idea of like, you know, the guys who walk around and whip themselves?

Yeah, self-flagellation. Right. That would have been a very cynical thing to do in the original sense of the term. Yeah, and our own article brings up this guy. Suddenly he was a pretty notable cynic, a diogenist. I think diogenes. Diogenes of Sinope? I don't know if it's Sinope or Sinope.

I bet it's Sinope. Okay, we'll go with that. That sounds nice. So diogenesis of Schenectady. Right, Dianetics of Elrond Hover. He was one of these guys that would, and the example that he's in here, he would go barefoot in the cold weather just to like acclimate his body. His friends would just watch with their arms crossed and shake their head like, what?

Yeah, but he would also bark at them, right, and say that you need to be doing this stuff. Like you and your luxurious things need to be more like me. You like that wine? You're a loser for drinking that wine. You're a loser for enjoying it. That was his thing. Yeah, you should be a cynic. Right, and he was definitely not one of those go along and get along types, right?

Doesn't sound like it. So maybe that is a little bit where it evolved from. He certainly seems to have taken cynicism to the extreme. One of the legends of cynicism is that he was at a banquet once, and he was, I think, kind of telling everybody what jerks they were for enjoying themselves. No idea who invited this guy. Yeah, what a buzzkill. But they threw bones at him like he was a dog.

Like here, eat these bones, enjoy yourself for once. Maybe they were saying, I'm just paraphrasing. But he said, all right, I'll show you what I think of your bones, and he peed on them, which this whole thing has just taken like a violent, weird turn. Violent? And we still haven't gotten to the root of where cynicism came to be understood as how we use it today. So do you know?

The best I could find was that it lies in the 18th century with Rousseau, who was a critic of the Enlightenment, who was, from what I understand, the embodiment of modern cynicism. He couldn't just trust that the Enlightenment and rationalism were the way to go and that it led to good things. He's a huge, vociferous critic of the Enlightenment, and I think was either self-labeled a cynic or labeled a cynic, and that was the modern use of the word. Haven't seen it everywhere, but that's the closest I've found. Man, ancient Greece.

How'd you like to hang around there for like a week? I don't know that I would. It just seems like such a crazy time, and that all these deep thinkers and philosophers, and then, hey, let's go put these 14 people in a room with some farm animals and some feathers and see what kind of party we can have. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess I want to take that back.

If I ever got the opportunity to travel anywhere in time for a week. Since I mentioned the farm animals, you're like, hey, I hadn't thought about the farm animals before. It just seems like a really crazy time in our history. For sure. Man. But almost like it took place on a different planet. You might as well have been like, ancient Greece was on Pluto, actually.

Yeah, but so many things, and that's what I'm thinking about, like the arts and sciences and mathematics is just like, what a weird, amazing time. So we're going to fast forward a little bit in history. Okay. So far, we've generally been hanging out in the fourth, third, second century BCE. Here we take a few hundred years. Now we're going to go to the 19th century, right? We're going to go to the antebellum south, which is where, surprisingly, the term cakewalk

came from. Yeah, and this was, remember when we used to blog? Yes. This is a blog post. I don't need to tell you that because you wrote it. Yeah. And then sent it to me yesterday. But I'm telling everyone else out there, we used to blog like everyone else did in the

early 2000s. Yeah, we had a blog. And this was one of Josh's posts, and I had no idea. You didn't read the blog post that I wrote? Back then? Yeah. No. Sorry.

But this has weird racist roots. When you hear the term cakewalk, everyone uses it now to say something that's super easy to do. Absurdly easy. Oh, that was a cakewalk. Like you just basically show up and you win the prize. It's a cakewalk. Right.

It turns out that that's actually extremely denigrating to antebellum slaves in the 19th century because cakewalks used to be an actual thing. Yeah, this is distressing and weird to me. It really is. And especially that you can trace the evolution of the word for once. Yeah. All right. So, on a plantation, and how often did this happen?

I would guess it was annual. It seems like something like that. So let's just say once a year, every so often, at the plantation, the white folks would get together and they would throw a big ball like they would throw for themselves, but they would have the slaves played the part of the white people. And actually it was a ball for the slaves. Yeah. And it wasn't like, here, let me reward you with something nice.

It's, hey, dress up as us and we'll all sit back and laugh at how you think we are. Right. And you do your best impression of slave master and kind of entertain us. Right. In a mocking jeering way. Right. Like have you heard of, well, I know you have Saturnalia, which is like, again, a Greek, I believe it was Greek, maybe Roman festival where social conventions were turned upside

out. Yeah. And the masters became the servants and the servants became the masters for like a day. And the whole point of this was culturally, socially, that it actually reinforced social norms because, yes, the slaves in Saturnalia and then the slaves at the cakewalk were mocking the social conventions that they had to live in the other 364 days a year. But they were doing it within a socially prescribed framework that was really overseen by the people in charge.

Yes, they were forced to do it. They were allowed to do it, I think, as you know. So actually in a really weird roundabout, but very, very real way, reinforced the social norms that kept slavery afloat. Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned the reason cake comes into it to begin with is whichever couple in the cakewalk did the best job and was able to mimic the white people the best got a cake as a prize.

Right. So the cakewalk was an actual thing and the story actually continues on a little further and it gets even worse to tell you the truth. Those cakewalks, they happened on plantations in the south. So if you went to a cakewalk, you were probably one of a very few number of people, especially outside of the south, who had been to one of these things. But the minstrel shows that led to the vaudeville shows in the 19th century, they would actually very frequently perform a cakewalk, but the cakewalks they did were basically making a

mockery of even the mockery that the slaves were undertaking. So at the very least, you could say of the cakewalks, the real ones, the slaves were most likely, they meant the mockery that they were doing, even though they were allowed to mock it. They still meant it. The reason the minstrel shows were so horrible is that it was a cakewalk, it was a staged version of a cakewalk, making fun of the cakewalks. So it even removed and robbed from the slaves that little bit of agency that the cakewalks

gave them, because it was white minstrels in blackface. Right, imitating white people. Yes, right. But the whole premise of the minstrel show version of the cakewalk was not that the black slaves were mocking white society, but that they were actually doing this because they really wanted to emulate white society, but were failing miserably at it. So it was a really despicable and disgusting change, perversion of the original intent, which is already pretty messed up to begin with.

Yeah, just one of the many problems of minstrel shows. Right, so the idea of cakewalks, since more people saw minstrel shows than actually were at a cakewalk, this was the idea of the cakewalk. So when people said this is a cakewalk, the idea was that even if you were just clumsy and inept and could never hope to succeed at what you're trying to do, you could still win the cake, that was the original usage of the word. So what I can't gather is, is this a term now that people just shouldn't use, or has it changed such that it's not a genuinely offensive thing?

I don't know, I don't think there's too many people out there that take offense to it, and I wonder if that's because a lot of people don't know what the origins of the word are. Not many people probably know this. Who knows? But you can also make the case that the use of it today is actually agist, because cakewalks are normally found in nursing homes. Really? Yeah.

I never heard that. And the couple's promenade is replaced with musical chairs, and even in these competitions of musical chairs, everybody's still basically a winner. I wonder if piece of cake comes from cakewalk. Yes, it does. So is that on the list? Piece of cake. Interesting.

I think we just covered it. Maybe I'm going to start saying it was a total piece of pie. Right, there you go. Easy as pie. Well, there you go. Where did that come from? It was probably somebody who knew what cakewalk meant and wanted to change things a little. Or I wonder if that came from the fact that pie is generally easier than baking a cake.

I don't know if that's true, is it? I think so, because there's not chemistry, like you combine some apples and cinnamon and stuff and throw it in an oven, you got a pie. There's a pie maker just like through their iPod across the room. Like a pie is not going to fall because you didn't put just the right amount of... That's a good point. You know? Yeah.

It's the easiest pie. There's no Lady Baltimore pie, I'll tell you that. I think what I'm saying is pie makers, you need to step up your game. Sure. Try a cake. Try baking a cake. United takeover. I love pie.

We've had this talk. I don't like it all. I don't see any reason to choose. No, I have both. Should we move on? Should we do Kafka-esque? Yeah, sure. All right.

So Franz Kafka, very famous writer. This is, I did not know that most of his works were published after his death. I didn't know that either. But he had a knack for writing books and I read the Metamorphosis in high school, but it feels like most of his books had a central character that was going through some, kind of like walking through molasses, some really hard struggle that they have no control over, probably have no hope of solving. And a lot of times it was, I guess, an allegory for an oppressive government.

Yeah, almost always, right? Yeah. So the person is being, their forward progress of their life or whatever it is they're trying to do is either interrupted or being opposed by some faceless, immutable entity, typically in the form of like a government or an office or something like that. Yeah, like the movie, the Terry Gilliam movie, Brazil, is probably accurately described as Kafka-esque. I would guess that's absolutely right.

But Kafka wrote, he's very well known for the trial, the Metamorphosis. But he wrote a lot of the different uses of Kafka-esque actually work because they definitely touch upon some of his different work, right? So one of the uses of Kafka-esque that came into fashion, supposedly in the 1960s in Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain fell, well, the Iron Curtain fell before that, but as the faceless centralized government bureaucracies like really kind of put their stamp on the lives of millions and millions of people, apparently the word Kafka-esque came into use then to kind of describe having to deal with these absurd bureaucracies that made zero sense, but still could just

shuffle you around for days on end if it wanted to. Yeah, and then our article uses a good example that it started getting misused and that somebody might say that they raced to catch a bus and then got to the bus stop and they made this great effort to get there, but then they find out there's a bus driver's strike and said that that was Kafka-esque when in fact that's just bad luck. It is, if that's the worst thing that happens to you that day, you're probably doing okay. Just life. But that's not Kafka-esque.

No, it's not, but that's not to say that there is a central definition of Kafka-esque. It is a pretty widely defined or multiply defined word. Yeah, although this guy does a good job of describing it, I thought. Yeah, he did. There's an author named Frederick Carl with a K and apparently in the New York Times, he said this, what's Kafka-esque is when you enter a surreal world, which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior begins to fall to pieces.

When you find yourself against a force, it does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world. You don't give up. You don't lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment with whatever you have, but of course you don't stand a chance. That's Kafka-esque. And that's Brazil.

Especially the last part too, it's like you don't stand a chance. But you still try. Because yeah, what are you going to do, just be like, oh, okay, well, I guess I'll die. You still try to save yourself or to follow your self-determination, but you're never going to win. You're doomed from the outset. That is super Kafka-esque. That dude, he was his biographer, I believe.

So he's kind of an authority on them, right? He knows. So doomed in other words. You want to take one more break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're doing that right now. 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. 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. I'm Mangesh Atikulur, 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. 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, cancelled 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, now it's time for one of my favorites on this list. Yes. Luddite. I got called this a few years ago. By who?

By my friend Scotty. Oh, Scotty. Come on. I got called this a few years ago, but I'm ashamed to say I had never even heard the word when he used it. iPhone? Yeah. I can't remember what I was complaining about.

Really, you hadn't heard the word Luddite, huh? Had never heard it. I mean, this wasn't like six months ago. This was like five or six years ago, but he called me that, I think called me that, or maybe Emily. Did you go what? Yeah, I think I was like, well, I'm not a Luddite, and then I raced over and looked at everything on my smartphone probably.

That's awesome. Yeah, so people throw that word around to mean anyone who's anti-technology, basically. Right. Is a Luddite. Yeah. A lot of people throw it around. Apparently Prince Charles railed against GMOs famously. Yeah.

He was called the Luddite. I know Franson just talked mad trash about Twitter. Johnny Franson? Yeah. I think on Twitter even, I can't remember, but he was called the Luddite. Well, come on. I don't remember how it played out, but I'm pretty sure it was on Twitter. But yeah, anybody who is like, I was just getting used to like Google Docs, and all

of a sudden we're using Basecamp around here. And I think you called me a Luddite, didn't you, or an old man, one or two? No, I called you an old man. Okay. But you could have also said, you're a Luddite. The thing is, this is one of those words that has evolved to basically mean the exact same thing as a technophobe, right? Somebody who's afraid of technology, either because they don't understand it, or they're

worried it's going to lead to the end of the world, whatever the reason, new technology makes you nervous, right? That is such a generally accepted definition of this word that for all intents and purposes, it is the definition of Luddite. The thing is, is if you dig back in history, this is totally wrong. Yeah. Luddites were people from ancient Greece. Really?

No, they weren't ancient. Who loved farm animals. They were from Nottinghamshire. I love that word. England, and they were weavers. So what was beginning to happen, and you can see how it got its roots here, is automated looms came around in the early 19th century during the Industrial Revolution, and they were like, wait a minute, this puts our jobs at risk, so we're not going to take it.

Like twisted sisters will eventually say, we're not going to take it. And they would go like trash these looms, and they named themselves or they took the name, or they were named, I'm not sure how it panned out, but they were called Luddites, because decades before, I think 1779, a guy in the same area named Ned Ludd had trashed like a hosiery frame, Ned Ludd, too many D's and too few other letters. He trashed a hosiery frame and became kind of a working class hero for doing that. And the thing is, yeah, you can get the idea that these people were afraid of these automated looms, and they were really afraid of technology, no, that has zero to do with it.

It turns out that looms had been in use for hundreds of years already. This is not really new technology, which is kind of an ironic thing about the whole thing. What they were, it was class warfare is what they're engaged in, not anti-technology terrorism. Yeah, they wanted to keep their jobs. There was a ban on trade unions, so they had no, well, let's say they had no choice. They felt like they had no choice, rather than to go out and riot and trash these looms. But they used all sorts of technology to do so. Well, I saw that to these people, to the Luddites, the looms were, they symbolized a concentration

of wealth, because they didn't own the looms. Somebody they worked for owned the looms, and they weren't seeing anything from, they weren't reaping any benefits from these looms. So when they were destroying a loom, they were striking at the loom owner, this wealthy person, which is why it was such class warfare, rather than anti-technology rioting. Yeah, and that wasn't, I think, until the 1970s, that Luddite became kind of the more modern usage. Is that right?

So I found, so this thing that says the 70s, there's actually an article in New Scientist that used the word in 1970. But apparently there was a famous essay called The Two Cultures by a scientist named C.P. Snow. And he basically said, we have a problem here, because literary intellectuals and scientific intellectuals are beginning to diverge, and you literary intellectuals, you guys are basically nothing more than Luddites. This is 1953, and I think he might have been the first person to use it to mean technophobes.

Oh, 53? 53. Or in this case, I think he was saying like, you don't understand what the importance of the Industrial Revolution. So people sat on that for 17 years. Yep. And then New Scientist was like, the time is right. Let's bring it back.

Yeah. All right, that's a good one. I like that one. All right. These are kind of like, I think a few of these you could throw around at your next dinner party and either make people think you're interesting or that you're an obnoxious jerk. It depends on how you present it. Agreed.

You know? Yeah. So what else we got here? I don't know. You want to do two or one? Let's do, well, let's definitely do Nimrod. How about that? Nimrod.

This one confuses me because of that Pixie song, Nimrod's Son. Oh, yeah. So Nimrod actually did marry his mother. He had a mother wife for a queen, but he was, that's not what he was known for. No. There was a real Nimrod in the Bible. And Nimrod was, if you've ever heard of Noah from the Bible, this Noah was the great grandfather of Nimrod.

Right. So he had quite a pedigree. He was Ham's son. Ham. Yeah. We don't use that as a first name enough these days. Yeah. Here it is a last name occasionally.

Sure. Ham. Yeah. With two M's. But you never hear like, Hey, I'm Ham Johnson. Good to meet you. That would be a great name for a sports caster or a weather person. Ham Johnson.

Or two podcasters. The Ham Cast with Ham Clark and Ham Bryant. That's not bad. That's good. That's our spin off idea. And we threw around that word a lot in our Ham radio podcast because they're called Hams. Right.

Maybe that's what our Ham Cast could be about. How nice Ham radio operators are. As well as bad comedy. Right. And then every once in a while we review a ham that we eat on air. Dude. Just figured it out. Look at that.

I mean, you predicted Sharknado. All right. The Ham Cast coming soon at iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. So Nimrod is Ham's son. He is a biblical figure. He was very well known as the founder of Babylon. Yes. I didn't realize that.

I'm not much of a Bible scholar myself. Really? Not really. But he was the founder of Babylon and one of the big features of Babylon was the Tower of Babel. Yes. This one I did know about. Yeah.

The Tower of Babel is what he was credited with constructing and that was a structure on top of a temple with the idea that you could reach God ultimately and destroy God. Yeah. Push him around. Yeah. So not a good thing for ancient Christians. No. It's like, I can kind of see into the future, so I'm not going to let that happen.

And he goes, different languages, Shazam. And all of a sudden, the people who are building and constructing this Tower of Babel can no longer speak to one another because they all speak different languages. And this is supposedly the origin story of different languages, foreign languages in the world. So everybody, since they couldn't really communicate with one another, went off their separate ways. And this is another one where they don't know for sure where it made the switch eventually

to be like a dum-dum. But I think this Bugs Bunny, I think this holds water. It definitely has some legs. It tracks. Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny, 1940s. Shout out to our friend, Jessica. Oh, yeah, whose grandfather was Noah, was Chuck Jones. That's right.

Great Chuck Jones. So Bugs Bunny in one of the Elmer Fudd episodes, who was a hunter, called him Nimrod in an episode. And I don't think we said Nimrod was known as a great hunter. Yeah. I guess that the irony was lost then. Right. Yeah, they were like, oh, I get it.

Yeah. So I don't know if they put Nimrod in there because Nimrod was a great hunter if it just worked out that way. It had to have been. Yeah. Had to have been because that was the thing, that was Elmer Fudd's whole thing. He was just terrible at hunting, but that's what he was always doing was hunting, right? So we called him a Nimrod.

Right. And I saw that it came into use as slang among teenagers in 1983. Yeah, that seems about right. Does it really? Oh, it feels like a very 80s. I heard that a lot growing up. Really? Yeah.

To me, it seems really square in like fifties. Oh, no, I'm thinking like, yeah, I hear Nimrod and I think Groty to the max. And like pop collars and the cost alligators. Did you ever pop your collar? Sure. I always, I never felt like I could pull it off. I was a bit of a prep. I was too, but I just, I don't know.

It never, I tried it. I looked at myself in the mirror a lot. Well, that's the key. You can't do that. Pop the collar and go out the door. Yeah, I didn't have that kind of collar. Still don't. You get done with your flowby cut, pop your collar and go.

Yeah. Yeah. It has nothing to do with confidence. It's just foolishness. It's probably the day how I haven't touched a hairbrush since like 1987 or eight. Oh yeah. Literally have not put a brush or comb in my hair. Did you have one of those goodies tortoise shell brushes from the eighties?

Remember those? No, I had a goodies and it wasn't tortoise shell, but I think it's probably the same thing where, yeah, it had it been. Or the burnout comb where you had it sticking out of your back pocket. No, I never, I didn't ever really use combs. I was a brush guy to get my wings down, but ever since high school, I've just been a finger comer. Yeah, same here.

These five fingers. Yeah. See that? I get out of the shower, just kind of spike the hair up and it stays there. Yeah. It's nice. That's very lucky. You don't use product.

No, man. That's insane. Are you kidding? No. Man, my hair won't stand up. It's just limp and lifeless. Well, mine is too. I wash my hair much.

How often do you wash your hair? Every day. Oh, well, that's your problem. Well, there's your problem. There's your problem. I got a little funk buildup. I need a little funk, I guess. My product is natural funk.

Go party with some farm animals. I think that was a George Clinton album. My product is natural funk. It should have been. It definitely should have been. And now, because of the Sharknado thing again, that's his new comeback album. You got anything else? No.

If you want to know more about George Clinton, you can type his name into the search bar at HouseOfWorks.com and it'll bring up something. And since I said something, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this vaping backlash. Oh, yeah. We're hearing about it. Yeah. It's nice to hear the vapors stand up and be like, hey, dudes, to heck with you.

Yeah. So in retrospect, I think we kind of made fun of them a little too much. You think? Yeah. In retrospect, sure. So this is from Peter. So this is a mea culpa, then? Well, sort of.

Hey, guys, usually enjoy your work, which is, that's always a great start. But the vaping episode, come on, guys, the whole episode wreaked of mockery and belittled all vapors, even the ones who were simply using it as a harm reduction method or to quit smoking. I'm 51 and used e-cigarettes to quit smoking instantly and permanently, mind you, about eight years ago. It's the only thing that worked for me. All I can do all day is puff fat clouds. Your research was seriously lacking in this one.

You would have been much more informed if you actually talked to a vaping advocate. I want to interject here. Our research was not at all lacking. We did a ton of research for this episode. Please go on. Well, we try to get in touch with vapors, but they're all out on the sidewalk, pulling back clouds. Right.

Or at least someone on the local scene, guys, from this century, preferably. Ooh, things have come a long way in the last 10 years. Some of the facts, he uses in quotes, your sighting were based on seriously flawed research. For example, the vaporized metals particles portion. Was brand new. Nobody, nobody, he says, would vape at the temperatures needed to replicate that in the real world. But as usual, people see the headline and don't dig deeper.

This guy's starting to really upset me, Chuck. Really? Yeah. We've researched just as much as we ever do, buddy. What's this guy's name? We'll get to that. Okay. We did get called out, though, a couple of other people said that those temperatures,

like you don't vape at those temperatures. No, but you can and some people do. And if I remember correctly, the leaching metals thing was not about temperatures. It was about the newness of the coil. Okay. I feel like I'm a, I'm refereeing. Some people stupid and dummies for vaping at zero nicotine levels smack my head. There's more to cigarette addiction than the nicotine issue.

I think vaping could potentially eradicate smokers from our society. The very least safe thousands of lives and millions of dollars in medical and pharma to paint it all with the idiotic foolishness brush is plain wrong and a real disservice to your audience. I'm pretty pissed off, as you can tell. There are only, I'm sorry, sure there are people who vape that make us all look silly, but man, this is the only smoking cessation method that works for many people. You just turned a lot of people away from it, who could really benefit and possibly

not die. Disappointed listener here, that is from Peter, Joe at in Vancouver, Peter, Peter. I will totally agree with you. Our mockery was way over and be above and beyond. Yeah. We yuck yum. Totally. For sure.

And I apologize. I want to make a couple of points here. We definitely did our research. We don't just phone episodes in, it doesn't matter what we think of the topic. We still do our research. And then secondly, I really don't feel like we turned people off of vaping and onto tobacco, because if I remember correctly, we definitely made it clear that you were even dumber if you smoked tobacco.

The tobacco was far, far worse. I think the whole point of that episode was that vaping was not necessarily as good for you as it's been portrayed in the same media that you railed against earlier. I would agree with that. I don't think we, I think we poo pooed all forms of nicotine inhalation. We definitely did. So there you go. But, I mean, if you're using it to get off of tobacco, that's great.

Step two is getting off of the vaping. Yeah. Well, if you're like Peter and you're PO'd about something, you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh M. Clark, Chuck's at Movie Crush. And we're both at SYSK Podcasts, Chuck's on Facebook.com, slash Stuff You Should Know, and slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at howstuffworks.com.

And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills. Of course, there is something else you could do if you got something to say. Start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart, and unleash your creative freedom. Maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your old boss, hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer.

Spreaker.com, S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R. That's all on over today.