Stuff You Should Know - You Down With OED?

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

The story of the Oxford English Dictionary is really something. From its origin to its crowd-sourced literary quotations. Dive in today to learn all about the best dictionary. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Daniel Tosh, host of new podcast called Tosh Show. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities. And certainly not comedians. We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling. But mostly, it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you. Listen to Tosh Show in the i I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner, Rob called me, so would Ed O'Brien and asked me what I knew about this crime. Well, ask who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president. Then we'll pull the curtain back on the cover-up.

The American people need to know the truth. Listen to Who Killed JFK on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, we want to let you know that we are doing our traditional Pacific Northwest swing for our live show. Next year, in fact, the end of January next year, very early next year. And we're starting out in Seattle, Washington on January 24th at the Paramount Theatre.

It's huge. That's right. And then on to Portland on January 25th at Revolution Hall. The place we always are. It's kind of our home away from home in Portland. And then we're going to wrap it all up at the thing that started the Pacific Northwest tour in the first place all those years back. SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theatre on Friday, January 26th, right Chuck?

That's right. And remember, you can go to stuffyoushouldno.com, click on Tours, in order to get to the correct ticket link or go to the venue page only, do not go to Scalper Sites. That's right, and we'll see you guys in January, okay? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh. There's Chuck, Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Uh, I believe a- Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do- Brand new writer. Oh yeah, great idea, Chuck. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, welcome aboard, Alison Miller.

Alison came to us. This is by way of Livia, right? Is a recommendation? Yeah. We said, Livia, you're great. You know any other great writers? She said, actually, I got one I can recommend and here we are. Yeah, and Alison Miller did a, how it works here is we do

like sort of a test article and this is that test article so it obviously worked and Allison is a historian and researcher and just did a fantastic job. So welcome welcome to the fam Allison Welcome Allison here. I'll coordinate you to Yeah, you do it better than me. So I'll open you a chime in. I just put some enthusiasm in I think that's the difference That's right. So yeah, we're talking about the OED today, the Oxford English Dictionary, and I have to say, Alson, knock this one out of the park, I get the impression that she may or may not have read significant portions of the OED in her lifetime. Yeah, I think Alson is smart. So she kind of starts off by talking about different kinds of dictionaries, which is significant because the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary, is a specific kind of dictionary.

It's not a regular average Joe, you know, work at a dictionary, like some other dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary is a historical dictionary. So it not only tells you the definition of the word. There may even be multiple definitions, by the way. I don't know if you've ever looked at a dictionary before, but sometimes one word can have more than one definition. It's not. It's right. The OED says, and by the way, here's where that word came from. And here's examples of its first use,

it's probably most recent use, or one of its most recent uses, so you can see how this specific word in the English language evolved over time. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's pretty ambitious. It is, and historical dictionaries, they don't say like, well,

that meaning is not something that people use it for anymore. Like macaroni, whatever the heck they meant in that song. The Yankee Doodle, the indie one? Yeah. I took that as a reference to pot. But my point is, they don't say, like, let's get rid of that old definition. Like the whole idea for the OED is that the English language is alive. And so the OED is alive. And we're going to leave it in there and go forward in time. But if you want to look up these old usages and these old meanings,

it's all right there for you in this massive, massive dictionary that whose aim was to include every word in the English language and every usage of that word up until now. Starting in 1150 CE. Yeah, as far as the words go. They didn't start the dictionary then, but they went back to middle English to get the what we now have as a third edition, more than 600,000 entries of which we have 850,000 definitions. See? Three million of those quotations, which is amazing. And although I think we're locked in with the beginning in beginning in the end because the first word is a There's no way you can get before that in line. No

And the last word is Zizava and there's no way that someone could create a word That is after Zy Zy VA it would have to be ZZZZ. Yeah Z Or ZZ top. I'm surprised would have to be ZZZZ. Or ZZ top. I'm surprised they didn't mention ZZ top. Yeah, don't talk to me about cartoon sleep bubbles. So I think we're locked in it as actually Allison has a great title for this, the OED, Colin A to ZZ. I'm sorry, ZZ has already messed it up.

Well, it's a tough word. ZYZ-Z-Z-Y-V-A. It's fun to spell out loud, because you say it like that with some oomph. But it's a tough word to say. Did you define it? No, go ahead. It's a weevil. Yeah. And it always was.

So one thing about the OED, you might say, well, like, wow, that's a lot of information packed into one tone. You'd be right. If you don't know much about the Oxford English dictionary, you may at least have the idea that it's enormous, that it's way bigger than your average dictionary, because those 600,000 entries with 850,000 definitions and 3 million quotations, when you put them all together, it takes up a lot of space. In you put them all together, it takes up a lot of space.

In fact, by my estimate, it takes up something like an eighth of the entire internet. Should we read some of this? These fast stats? Oh yeah, let's do that. So I believe this is the first volume. The first, yeah, the whole first edition, I think. Yeah, is the first volume. The whole first edition I think.

Yeah, the whole first edition. So this isn't even the current edition. This is the one that was finished up in 1928. At the time it had 415,000 words, half a million definitions, 1.8 million quotations. But this is the part I wanted to get to to 178 miles of type, 50 million words, four feet of shelf space, and 10 or 20 half volume. So, you know, that encyclopedia Britannicus that you grew up with in your hallway, that's basically what this dictionary's first edition look like. Yeah. And back in 1930, 1928, I guess, when it came out, you paid about today's equivalent of 3,360 pounds sterling for a dictionary, about $4 grand in the US dollars today.

And according to the Bank of England, that was equal to 228 days wages for a skilled worker in 1930. Imagine spending most of your year salary on a dictionary. Yeah, I think the point that has got to be that very like you had to be a very well-heeled person trying to impress other people by owning a copy of the Singback then, right? Yeah, or a library. Well, exactly. So, yeah, this was the first edition. It's got an even bigger as we've seen over time. And so now, finally, the internet was born, I think, to house the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is where we're at now. And one thing that they do, which is pretty sharp, as the dictionary comes out,

new words are being added to it all the time. They're probably finding less and less old words that they hadn't included, but, you know, like you said, the English language is living. So it's expanding and contracting and adding new words to it all the time. So by the time those things go to press in that last volume of the addition comes out, there's words that are left over that are just constantly being added.

So I think on a quarterly basis, they release supplements essentially that have new words that came out or were coined since the volume that contained that letter was published in the latest edition. That's right. And we'll get to how those supplements figured in back then and what they do with us today. But the other really unique thing about the OED is that it is a, and always has been

from the very, very beginning, a crowdsourced work. Yeah. Right from the beginning, the editors, who we're going to talk about the original editors here in a minute, they said, hey, public, we need help. So if you're into this, you've got a little time. If you like to read, if you're a linguist, you're into words, if you love language, go back to Chaucer, start reading, and find these words that we're looking for. Find usages of these words descend into us by hand on, they call it a slip, a little four by six sheet of paper and mail it into us and you could very well have a hand in creating the Oxford English Dictionary.

Yeah, pretty cool. And they got a really great response to it. And I think still do today. Oh, for sure. But that's also explains why you have quotes from Chaucer and Shakespeare. And also, as Allison points out, quotes from like a social media post as a usage example of a word. Yeah, she also used an example that came from the most

recent quarterly update from September 2023, porch pirate appears in there. And so it's a really good illustration of what the OED does. They explained that it's someone who steals packages from doorsteps. Everybody knows that. But did you know that it first came about from a news segment on KFOR from Oklahoma cities, one of their local broadcasting stations. Yeah. So they'll have that. Wait, you did know that?

No, well, no. I said they would have that. I got you. As like the example or whatever. And then if you want to dig deeper and just say, well, what about this word porch, then they'll take you back to the 1300s with the definition of porch. And then examples of these, what they call senses,

like that's when a, not a tense, it's a sense. It's like how the word is used basically. Yeah, and it might not be used that way anymore, necessarily. Yeah, but they will have all of them listed and you can see sort of the evolution of not only the word porch, but when you eventually get to something like porch pirate. Yeah, so it's pretty, pretty neat stuff like that's what they do and they've been doing this for 100 something years since they think the first, the first volume of the first edition came out

and I think 1884, right? Yeah, and those supplements you were talking about, a promise to kind of explain how they do things now. They were, for many, many years, they were released just like, hey, here's this extra thing, but it created a problem if you like, well, wait a minute now, I have to look up a word in two different places, if it has a more modern usage. And so eventually they started combining them. I think they finally did that in what, 1989, where the supplements were actually worked

into the main edition. Yeah, just the first edition. Yeah, so they finished that in 1989. A couple years before that, they had finally put it on a CD-ROM, and then like you said, it only exists today. Well, I mean, you can get copies, but they're not releasing out, I don't think print editions any longer. It's just an online subscription type thing now.

Yeah, and usually, I mean, it's pay, right? So yeah, subscription. So usually you can log in through your library. Pretty neat. They're also in the midst of putting out a third edition, so look for that in the next century. That's right. I say we take a little break, Charles, and then we'll come back and talk about the history of the OED. How we got here.

Let's do it. I am Daniel Tosh, host of new podcast called Tosh Show, brought to you by I Heart Podcasts. Why am I getting into the podcast game now? Well, it seemed like the best way to let my family know what I'm up to instead of visiting or being part of their incessant group text. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist.

We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you, but it will be entertaining to a very select few because you don't make it to your mid-40ies with IBS without having a story or two to tell. Join me as I take my place among podcast royalty like Joel Olstein and Lance Bass. Those are words I hope I'd never have to say. Listen to Toss Show in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history.

That's Rob Breiner. Rob called me, so I'll let Ado Bryan and ask me what I knew about this crime. I know 60 years later, new leads are still emerging. To me, an award-winning journalist, that's the making of an incredible story. And on this podcast, you're gonna hear it told by one of America's greatest storytellers. Well, ask who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president?

My dad, the 5JFK, screwed us at the Bay of Pigs, and then he screwed us after the Cuban Missile Crisis. We'll reveal why Lee Harvey Oswald isn't who they said he was. I was under the impression that Lee, who has been trained for a specific operation, then will pull the curtain back on the cover-up. The American people need to know the truth. Listen to Who Killed JFK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay, and just like pretty much everyone else on the internet, I make podcasts. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains. We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, and Bob wrote the cadaver note. In his own words, he had murdered Susan Furman. Why do they were so obsessed with dark

people like that? It's maybe part of human nature. The supernatural, there's something here, truly something going on. Our biggest fears, mental health, pop culture. Just a adrenaline being on a film set is incredible. And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, we should be very happy with you. This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the OED is not the first English dictionary ever. In fact, the first one ever was from 1604.

It's called the Table alphabetical of hard-usual English words by Robert Codry. And he basically just put this together to help people, I guess, explain themselves in English better. It was, I think, words that were commonly used, but not necessarily commonly understood. So that was the first one. But the, I guess, the OED really traces its spiritual roots to a more recent phenomenon that the brothers Grimm had started, which was essentially a dictionary of a language in order to show

the history of that language, ostensibly in order to prove how great that language actually was. Yeah, we shout out to a couple of great episodes we did many years ago, one on the Brothers Grimm, and was there one on just the fairy tales? Yes, they were like a part. It was a two-part, right? Yeah, that was a good series. So go back and listen to that, but Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm did what she said. They were like, hey, we want to create a German dictionary from Martin Luther on. It would would eventually they died before it came out but it was called i believe the the first uh... facical

and the fascist is just the first part basically like hey we finished a through jay or whatever i think the first fast call came out when they're alive but of the uh... joichis virgin book what to do and uh... out when they were alive, but of the Deutsche Spurzebruch. Brzezebruch? I love it. And I believe they died in the late 1859 for Wilhelm in 1863, and it finally came out in 1961 and full. So they weren't even close. And she points out, Alison, that Jacob died at the F's. He was working on the word fruit or defruct. Yeah. I want to say that. That was pretty good. Oh, you want to say it? I want to say it to Deutsche's Wurthavuch, which means literally German word book, right? Yeah. This is my like

Buch. Deutsche's Wurthavuch. Wurthavuch. Yeah. There you go you go. I said it way better in my head. I think I tried too hard. That's right. So like I was saying behind the Grimms, the whole initiative is not just like documenting definitions for German words. They wanted to trace the history of the German language because they suspected that far in the distant past all of these disparate

groups of people who are now members of separate nations were all members of the same Germanic speaking tribe and that this had been like a glorious amazing civilization that was now fractured and maybe if we understand it a little better it can come back together and dare I say take over the world. It's like easy brother's grim. Yeah they had a together and dare I say take over the world. Yeah, it's like easy brothers, Graham. Yeah, they had a good idea. I see where this is headed. It got a little perverted along the way, although it may have been a bad idea from the beginning,

you know? Yeah, this does link up very oddly with our episode that we just recorded on tectonic plates. It does. I think the lesson here is, any anytime you have a social or cultural movement to go back and find how great your specific culture is or was, that's a red flag for everybody else. Yeah, probably so.

So the OED, it was basically the same thing. They're like, well, you've got your German book, but what's greater than the English language? Let's do that for ourselves. We're gonna make an English word book. That's what it's called. So the the gentleman scholars and that's in quotes from Britain got together to form the Philological Society in London in 1842 from the Greek Phyloce love and logos words. So philology is just the love of words. It's really very plain and kind of wonderful. Yeah. And it's a study of the language and the written language.

And a lot of philologists will say like Greek and Latin are what we're concentrating in. But at this time, there were people like, oh, wait a minute, English seems to really be pretty important too. I know it's not Latin or Greek, but maybe we should look forward and get down with this English dictionary. And they said, yes, in 1857, after that, that's when it was.

That's when the Grims put out their first fascicle, in fact, was around the same time. They said they got a head start on us, but I think we can catch up and do a great job as well. And in fact, they did. Yeah, and as a matter of fact, word got out about this and everybody was like, hey, this is a great project. The members of the Philological Society in England were kind of celebrated culturally for trying to do this thing,

for documenting the English language and how great it was. So what they decided to do first was to find out all the words that weren't already in other dictionaries of English or any dictionary that contained English words. Unregistered words is what they called them, and they were going to make a dictionary of unregistered words, so basically complete everything. And there was a guy, Richard Chenavik's trench, RC trench, who gave some lectures against this idea and essentially said rather than patch an existing garment, let's make a brand new garment from whole cloth and it's going to be the most beautiful garment anyone's ever seen. It's going to be in the color of Dreamco.

Well, yeah, plus sequin shoulder pads, the whole shebang. To me, that's the height of amazing fashion. So he actually convinced the philological society to veer a different way and to rather than just take the words that hadn't been defined and define them and make that, take on the entire English language going back to 1150 forward. And again, when you're doing this, so just think about going into the deep past and say, okay, we're going to do all words from 1150 to 1850. pass and saying, okay, we're going to do all words from 1150 to 1850. That's daunting enough, but they were also signing up for essentially a never-ending unfinished work. Because as we've seen every time they put it in an edition, there's any number of new

words that have come along or that they didn't have before. It's an ongoing, never-ending process. They'll never be done with the OED. And I suspect that probably drives some members of the OED staff completely mad. Maybe. And you also have to keep in mind that they did this without a publisher secured. And in fact did work for about two decades

without a publisher even. Yeah. So they were just working on what was then called the new English dictionary. Was he, I guess the working title. And their first editor was a dude named Herbert Cole Ridge. And if you're thinking, I wonder if he was, yes, he was. He was the grandson of Samuel Taylor.

And there were several predictions in here. They were all wrong as to how big this project would be and how long it would take. But Herbert was the first one to be way off base and said, it'll be about 7,000 pages and we'll be done in a decade. Not how it worked out. They started working. They started building this thing from A forward. And they made a list of books, like basically the English language literary canon and said, all right, volunteers, you all wrote in, said you had some time.

So start reading, read these books, and look out for these words. And when you find them, put them on a slip, word for word, send them into us. Again, that's a four by six inch piece of paper. It was all very sort of regimented. And they said, please read these books and we like English literature because the whole point of this is to talk about how great we were and how great our works and language is. Yeah, so that's why that's why they first were like, we're going to look

through the great works of English language only because this is the highest use of these words. So these are the best examples. These are the quotations we want to use. They were very narrow-minded in that since they were really until the 20th century. They were very much centered on that. That's what they were going to use to derive their quotes from. Because it would just demonstrate how great the English language was. Look at how these amazing English writers used it, right? So Herbert Coleridge died in 1861. I get the impression he was only working on it for a few years, but he was... It's because he died.

Right, right. But... Four years later. Yeah, so it was like four years, right? But he really threw himself into it so much so that he apparently on his deathbed he had definitions like slips scattered about like on his on the quilt of his deathbed he died working Yeah, and he had contracted tuberculosis and when the doctor was like this is not ever going to get better It will get better, but you're going to be dead. That's how it's going to get better.

Herbert Coleridge was like, oh, I must start Sanskrit tomorrow, which is taking to mean that he had never learned Sanskrit. He was a polyglot. He studied all sorts of different languages. And he had never gotten to Sanskrit. Now that he realized he was going to die, he needed to start on it tomorrow. Yeah. gotten the Sanskrit now that he realized he was going to die, he needed to start on it tomorrow. Yeah, ironically dying of what was then known as consumption and later TB. So that's a new usage and a new entry. Yeah. 1879, we're skipping forward. Like I said, this is 20 years after they started.

This is when they finally found that publisher at the time, they were known, another sense, as Claren didn't later to be known as the Oxford University Press. And even though they didn't specifically call it the Oxford English Dictionary until later, I believe the very first publishing in 1928, it was called a new English dictionary on historical principles. And so we should mention that after Coleridge died, the whole thing kind of like lost momentum, he was a real driving force as the first editor. But you know, a few, I think, 20 or so years later, it started to pick up again. And it was thanks to a new editor named James Murray,

who I believe was the third editor of all. And he took this ball and ran with it, and he is the person that you can point to as the one who ultimately got the OED published. He was the true driving force of it. Yeah, absolutely. Murray with Scottish came from just sort of a regular working class, middle class background was the son of a tailor. Apparently his father was a very smart man and known for being a smart and sober person. And James as a child was a prodigy, was a language prodigy.

Learned his ABCs before he was 18 months, was apparently reading and writing in Greek by seven, left school at 14 was studying four languages, and eventually came to London to be the headmaster of a school there, and that is where in London, he joined up with the Philological Society. And like you said, he joined up with the Philological Society. And like you said, he was the guy.

He was also the guy who had another 10-year completion prediction. He said, this will take 10 years from now. And after five years of that 10-year prediction, they had A through ant. No. Yes. Wow. I would just see that and be like, well, I quit. He's like a lot of that was on boarding, you understand?

Jeez, man, that's crazy. Yeah. But it also goes to show how little they actually had gotten done apparently under Colourages command. Yeah, everyone was just, they wanted jokes about grandpa. Yeah, come on, tell me what was Sammy really like? So, the one thing that you said I think from the start was that this was a crowdsourced project.

Yeah. And it's not like the OED makes a secret about this. They're very deferential to the volunteers that have worked for them over the years because they just could not have done this without them. It was just too big of an undertaking for just a small group of people that to have done by themselves. And there were a lot of different people. There's a book out there called The Dictionary People. What is it about? Isn't that what it's called? I don't know. Where is it? Yep, The Diction dictionary people. I think it's fairly new.

And the author had worked at the OED and before she left, she had gotten from the archive. She'd come across James Murray's address book. And it was pretty thick because it had the names and addresses of a lot of the volunteer correspondence that were working, contributing quotations to the dictionary. And so she decided to write a book tracking down who these people were. And that's what she came up with, this book called the dictionary people. And she found some pretty interesting stuff. For example, about one in six by her estimate were women, including James Murray's wife and daughters, he drafted them and got a lot of support and help from them. Apparently, editing the OED did not pay much, but he had dedicated his life essentially to it and his family supported him and that was just pretty great. And there are a lot

of other women contributed too, right? Yeah, the daughter of Karl Marx, Eleanor Marx contributed and it was apparently fired by Murray for not doing the assignment properly, not sticking to the assignment. And by the way, Sarah Ogleley is who wrote the dictionary people. Yeah, nice to check that out. I'd like to check that out. I bet it's a good book. Another writer that Alison found from this book to highlight his name, Marganita Lasky, who's alive from 1915 to 1988, Marganita contributed 13,000 quotes to 20th century supplements. And Marganita was a critic and a journalist and a novelist and kind of made the rounds on TV shows and stuff back in the day, starting in the late 50s and into the 60s.

And, you know, when people are volunteering like this, they can sort of like guide their, like have their own path forward and how they want to tackle the project almost and who they want to highlight or words they want to highlight. And at some point, Margini Lasky got into sort of away from the high brow thing and said, I want to start looking at domestic manuals and all these old ancient cookbooks and modern newspapers and famous diaries. And just a really unique approach to come up with some of those 13,000 entries. Yeah, and that was a real change. Remember I said that they had really kind of had

their blinders on just looking for, you know, the pinnacle of English literature for quotations. I know James Murray, he was like, no, we're gonna not only look for new sources, we're also gonna include slang, we're gonna include like vulgar words like, if it's an English word, we're gonna include it because we're documenting the entire English language.

So that was a huge sea change for the direction of the dictionary. And apparently he was under a tremendous amount of pressure to not go that way, to kind of stick with the original plan. And he said, no. He said, nine. No, he said no. I mentioned Nickers, is that underwear?

That's what Nickers are right. Okay, I thought so. As soon as I said it, I was like, wait a minute, did I say the wrong word? You were thinking of Fanny. And what's a Nickerbacher? A Nickerocker is a think I think it's the short pants that were like kind of cinched at the knee that you think of with like a little news boys So the New York Knicks named after the nickerbockers. That's what they were I don't know if they did or not no They were named after the nickerbocker

Like the story club that Washington erving was a member of over it they were you making up a some no i'm pretty sure that's great i sometimes get things wrong but i thought this is off the dome so i'm looking at okay so back to murray he's working with his wife and eleven kids at his house mainly and not only at his house but mainly in in his little

uh... shed that he had built behind the house in the garden called the scriptorium. And they worked on it here. Once they got a through ant in 1884, he was like, we need some help here. So they hired a second editor named Henry Bradley and then not too long after that added two more co-editors. So you essentially had a team of four editors at that point that were working with teams and teams of people. So a lot of people working Murray at his scriptorium there at home, but then he moved to Oxford and built another larger scriptorium there behind his house and things were getting so busy, the local post put a PO box right there by his little front driveway by his sidewalk and it's still there.

If you look it up, this beautiful red PO box with a little placard saying that, you know, Marie lived here and this was the post to gather these slips that helped create the OED. I saw and actually I was obscure that the placard doesn't say that. It's just says that the guy who created the OED lived here and they just walk right past the post office box that's literally in front of the placard. They don't even mention it.

The most amazing part of the story. It's one of the greatest, grossest government oversights in history. So thousands of people contributing at this point. Murray is still beating the drum and like writing open letters to newspapers and stuff saying, hey, we're still doing this. We, you know, trying to keep that fire going. And people, it wasn't just people in England, people from all over the world were contributing. And I think when they finally, they had so many slips, because, you know, they're filing these as they get them alphabetically, they're slotting them in. And they had these lexicographers working around the clock as

well. When they finally put out the first supplement in 1933, they still had 140,000 slips left over. So nuts. Again, I would have been like, well, I quit. Yeah. It's just too daunting. I can barely talk about this stuff. Yeah, I think 33, that's the first year they officially called it the OED.

Okay. But everyone was kind of calling it that anyway. Were they really? Yeah. Okay, crazy. So they kind of went with the change, the English language, changed the name of the dictionary for them. Yeah, because whatever that long thing, I, a new English dictionary on historical principles,

it was printed by the Oxford English press. So everyone was just calling it that anyway. So yeah, I guess it was a sense. Plus OED sounds better than the Ned, you know? Yeah, yeah, sure. Do you want to take another break and come back and talk about arguably the most interesting contributor of all? Sure.

OK. Sure, okay. what I'm up to instead of visiting or being part of their incessant group text. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist. We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you. But it will be entertaining to a very select few because you don't make it to your mid-40s with IBS without having a story or two to tell.

Join me as I take my place among podcast royalty like Joel Olstein and Lance Bass. Those are words I hope I'd never have to say. Listen to Tosh Show in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner. Rob called me, so would Ado Breiner, and asked me what I knew about this crime. I know 60 years later, new leads are still emerging. To me, an award-winning journalist, that's the making of an incredible story. And on this podcast, you're gonna hear it told

by one of America's greatest storytellers. Well, last, who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president? My dad, 5JFK, screwed us at the Bay of Pigs, and then he screwed us after the Cuban Missile Crisis. We'll reveal why Lee Harvey Oswald isn't who they said he was. I was under the impression that Lee was being trained for a specific operation, then we'll pull the curtain back on the cover-up. The American people need to know the truth.

Listen to Who Killed JFK on the IHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay, and just like pretty much everyone else on the internet, I make podcasts. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains. We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, Bob wrote the cadaver note in his own words, he had murdered Susan Farman.

Why do they were so obsessed with dark people like that? It's maybe part of human nature. The supernatural, there's something here, truly something going on, our biggest fears, mental health, pop culture, just adrenaline being on a film set is incredible. And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, you should be very happy once. This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Murray dies of Pluracy in 1915 did not see the first final edition put out, which is very sad. That would be what, 13 years later, but did put out most of the fascicles by that point, just wasn't compiled into the one edition. Different people, JR are token, worked for a year on this in 1919, lots of volunteers, but as you promised, oh, and Murray was also knighted in 1908. I didn't know that. First troubles.

Yeah, apparently knighted, but still a bit of an outsider in the, the Hoi Ditoitii Oxford, you know, literati. Yeah. Always felt like an outsider and wasn't even given an honorary degree until like the year before he died or something. Yeah, and when he walked across the stage, what he didn't realize is that one of the faculty had taped a kick me sign to his back. So he never understood by the audience

was laughing when he grabbed his honorary degree. He was very sad. He never got it. So you promised to talk of the most interesting, perhaps most celebrated volunteer. And that is at one Dr. William Chester minor. If you've seen the movie or read the book, the professor and the madman, the book was by Simon Winchester and the book starred Mel Gibson as Murray and Sean Penn as the quote unquote madman Chester minor. I have not

seen it. Apparently it's not very good and Mel Gibson and the director tried to seen it. Apparently, it's not very good. And Mel Gibson and the director tried to, you know, they didn't support the movie in the press and they tried to get their, I don't know if it get their name removed, but they basically disowned it. Really? I thought Mel Gibson was the one whose movie it was, whose idea? Well, it was his production company, yeah. But he, he apparently, he took him to court because he didn't get final cut, like they said said and he didn't get to shoot for a week in Oxford Like he wanted to and he's basically like this thing is garbage because you didn't let me do what I wanted to Yeah, so I'm not supporting it. It's on pin just what what that stinks

Because apparently the book was just amazing the professor and the madman. I know and it's such a great story But I heard other people defend it and say, you know, it was pretty good. I had great acting and like he just, you know, got his nickers in a wide. So the madman is Dr. William Chester Minor, you said, right? It's the references. And the reason that they call him the madman is because at the time he was diagnosed with either dementia precox or Paranoid schizophrenia and today we would call either of those just plain old schizophrenia spectrum disorder but this was the mid 19th century and Dr. Minor

Was suffering from this at a time when they did not understand what they were dealing with. They just knew that this guy was pretty bad off and needed care essentially for the rest of his life. He had started out as a military doctor, I believe. He graduated from Yale Medical School and entered the Civil War as a military doctor pretty much right off the bat. And there's some stories about when his symptoms began. Allegedly, it was from things he was exposed to during his time in the Civil War. One is, there's a story that he supposedly had to brand a deserter, an Irish deserter

from the union with a D on his face. that having to do that to that poor man just made him snap essentially or brought his symptoms on as a different way to say it. Or he was involved in the battle of the wilderness in South-Syto-Spotsylvania, Virginia. Either we don't know, we just know that yes this man definitely heads schizophrenia We don't know how it came on or if there was even any trigger But we just kind of join him around the time after the Civil War ring still in the army But he's really starting to show symptoms Yeah, and also by the way

This is how we knew that Allison really has a goods as a researcher and writer because Allison was like, hey, be careful with this stuff because, you know, there are a lot of stories out there and just don't buy up everything you're reading here. Right. Music to our ears. She also told us how to pronounce Zizava. Right. That's true.

Yeah. The first writer to ever include pronunciations. It's nice. So, like you said, an army doctor, an army surgeon working at the U.S. General Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, also a flute player, apparently a very ambitious guy. And because of, you know, kind of how his schizophrenia played out were delusions of persecution, a lot of delusions of being attacked sexually, and I think that speaks for itself. They got pretty bad, and he apparently would wander red light districts of places where

he lived. He said this is because of his disorder. He was sent to an asylum in Washington while he was still in the army, although he would get his discharge in 1870 while he was still there. He thought he could get better if he went to the UK and get treatment there. And so in 1872 in London, he found himself in the waking from a delusion that he was being attacked, I think sexually attacked by an Irish Republican and got up from bed and ran out to the street like guns blazing, thinking he was shooting at

his tormentor and killed an innocent man, a brewery worker named George Merritt, who was on his way to work that early morning. Yes, so that was enough for the British government. He'd already been discharged from the army. I don't know if you said or not. By the time he made it to the UK and in the UK, the authorities were like, okay, we're going to introduce you to one of our asylum, it's called Brawmour. And in Brawmour, this is the 19th century.

You did not want to be in an asylum of any sort in the 19th century. They were horrible, terrible places where humans were treated like about as bad as humans can be treated. And yet, either he was charming or wealthy enough or a combination of both, he was able to play his flute, he was able to wear his own clothes, go on walks, and very importantly, he was able to wear his own clothes go on walks and very importantly he was able to bring his personal library a very rare books from the 17th and 18th century with him and they actually gave him another cell to serve as a personal library essentially an all bet Sean pen playing that flute is something to see i mean that above anything else is why I want to see that movie. It's like in Anchor Man he pulls it from his sleeve and yeah it's very fake. Hey, Aqualon. Banner, banner, banner, banner, banner. Oh no not again. Yep it just happened.

He stayed in touch. This is kind of interesting here that he did stay in touch with the wife, the widow of the man that he killed, and she brought him books, even, which is amazing, and kind of a nice ending to that story. I don't know the ins and outs, maybe, I don't know, maybe he did her a favor, maybe he was a bad guy. No, apparently he wasn't. He was a... Well, he apparently contacted her and apologized, made some sort of restitution. I took that to mean like gave her some money, but she accepted his apology. She didn't have to do that. So I think it says a lot about both of them. Yeah, for sure. When it came

to the OED, he really poured himself into this as an as an avid reader and had all those rare books, like he said, but didn't do the thing that they said which was hey read these books and look for these words he said nope here's what I'm going to do I'm going to read a book at a time and I'm going to start I guess it says with one letter I guess he started with a letter A and just started looking through all the books for all the letter A's and then again for the letter B's and so on and so on. Yeah, and it was a fruitful way to search for quotations using specific words because I think within just a couple of years he had generated and sent in between five and six thousand slips of quotations to James Murray and as the years went on No one seems to know how many he sent in but he

I mean tens and tens of thousands of slips came directly from Dr. Miner during his time and broadmore Yeah, they eventually met in person. I mean this was a relationship to span a couple of decades Yeah hundreds of quotes a week and they met in person. I mean, this was a relationship to span a couple of decades. Yeah. Hundreds of quotes a week and they met in 1891, finally, apparently the superintendent of the asylum had both men at his house and they met a few more times after that. I watched the trailer of the movie today and I'm not sure how accurate it is,

but it seems like they'd met here and there over the years. And in the book, it was like, you know, Mel Gibson doing a pretty bad Scottish accent saying like, you and I have partners. You complete me. It was kind of like that. And I'm not really sure if that was the real case in real life. Well, so apparently from what I saw, James Murray considered it just as a decent human being, he needed to go support Dr. Minor. Whether Dr. Minor was contributing or not, I think it helped that Dr. Minor was contributing, but they did have some sort of friendship or relationship,

but it went beyond just the editor and the contributor kind of thing. Well, but it went beyond just, you know, the editor and the contributor kind of thing. Well, maybe it wasn't. And supposedly, Dr. Minor kept, like finding excuses, anytime James Murray was like, well, let's meet, you know, I'm just across like the city, let's meet for lunch or something,

and Dr. Minor would be like, I can't, you know, I broke my foot or my sister's coming to visit, whatever. And then finally, I'm not sure how we finally found out. Either Dr. Miner admitted to it or James Murray found out somehow, but he finally did find out that he was institutionalized and then he started to go visit him.

Oh, okay. Pretty neat. And then he saw him off after Dr. Miner was released from Brabmore so he could go back to be institutionalized in America. It was clear that he wasn't going to be around too many more years. James Murray saw him off at the docks

and gave him six unpublished volumes of the first edition that hadn't come out yet. Yeah, he had a very sad end to a sad life. He had those delusions of being sexually violated. In December 1902, he tied a tourniquet around his penis, and he cut it off in what he called in the interest of morality, because what he believed is that he had delusions that he was being taking out of the Asylum for years and years at night, and forced to have sex with women all around the Asylum and in town.

So he cut his penis off, and after that things really just weren't the same for him. It seems like things went pretty downhill pretty quickly. Although he died in 1920, so that was another 18 years of suffering. Yeah, as far as his contributions, that really went downhill after that. Man. Yeah, very sad, but super, super interesting story. And great job, Allison. This was really really cool. Yeah, thanks a lot, Allison. This was great, great start. Welcome to the team. And what, Chuck, since I said welcome to the team, do you think it's time for listener mail?

I think so. Okay. I'm gonna call this cost of goods. In that episode, what episode was it where you're talking about the cost of goods? I think the Harlem Globetrotters is where it really came from. Yeah, like why is it so expensive to go to NBA game

these days or get a meal or whatever? Mm-hmm. We had a lot of people that write in, so I don't think we even settled on a final point. Yeah, I'm still looking around. There were a few different theories, but this one from Matt I'm gonna read. Hey guys, a partial explanation for the question,

why is it cost so much more for a nice meal than it used to, even adjusting for inflation? Balmol BAU-MOL, Balmol's cost disease might help explain this. First, the Rising Costs associated with service or labor-intensive industries over time, despite no corresponding increase in productivity. So imagine a restaurant in the 1950s. You have a server, take your order, chef cooks a food. Someone else cleans up after you're done. Fast forward to today, despite all the technological advances.

You still need that server. Just take the order, you still need the chef, you still need the staff to clean. The humans have not been replaced by machines or software in a lot of these cases. You can't speed up the chef. The way you can double the speed of a factory machine without sacrificing quality.

So if you own a restaurant, you still need roughly the same number of workers that you've had that you needed in the 50s, roughly, yet wages for the staff have gone up over the years. That's a whole other rabbit hole. The restaurant has to pay its staff more over time, without getting more meals per worker, so what do you do? You pass it on to the customers. By the way, this also explains why stuff like health insurance and childcare have also gotten way more expensive relative to other stuff. You still need the same number of daycare workers per kid and nurses per patient that you did in past decades. This was a good one, Matt. We got some other ideas and imagine it's kind of all these things probably, but Boulmau's Cost Disease is a great

explanation, and then it's from Matt Farmer Yeah, thanks a lot Matt. That was a good one. It's the whole thing's brewing I don't know what it's gonna turn into, but that'll definitely be part of it for sure Hmm, perhaps a Josh Clark solo tin part series the cost of goods with Josh Clark. I don't think so No No, I'm gonna make you do it with me. Oh, no, no. So, uh, that was from Matt, right? Yeah, Matt Farmer. Matt Farmer, thank you very much for that. And if you want to be like Matt Farmer and show off your braininess and try to answer a burning

question we have, we'd love that kind of thing. You can send it to us via email to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I am Daniel Tosh, host of a new podcast called Tosh Show. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities. And certainly not comedians. We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be

about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you. Listen to Toss Show in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner. Rob called me, so would Ed O'Brien and ask me what I knew about this crime.

Well, ask who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president? Then we'll pull the curtain back on the cover-up. The American people need to know the truth. Listen to Who Killed JFK on the IHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Payne Lindsay. Throughout my career, I've had the chance to travel all over the place, investigating true crimes, researching the unexplained, and I've been able to meet some of the most truly interesting people, and I've decided to sit down with them and pick their brains.

We're going to talk about life, death, unsolved crimes, the supernatural, there's something here, truly something going on. And honestly, just whatever the hell is on our minds. Wait a minute, you should be very happy with this. This is Talking to Death. New episodes of Talking to Death are available now. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts.